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Well that alone would be a tool chain but, you forgot bspinfo and bsputil.
I could make an interface that sums up all of them. For instance you would (ex) expand the qbsp panel and all command line swiches would be available upon click. In the case of switches that expect extra data, a textfield or potentially a selection box would be available as well. Really there is only a couple/few reasons why this would be better than using batch/bash. 1 it would almost eliminate the potential for a typo. 2 you wouldn't have to remember shit cause all the choices/info would be right there in the interface and 3 it can come packaged in a way that separates the user from worrying about things like paths. Of course the app could be made to accept data (MapFile) straight from radiant, making the stock build menu useless. I don't know if I could do that for hammer/worldcraft but, I would assume I can. Both obviously have the ability to call compile tools and inject data. The app could just be treated like a compile tool. Bspinfo prints basic information about a bsp
Bsputils allows you to extract entities and textures and check that data structures are clean. They aren't amazing tools but, they exist so I would have to include them in the app. http://i.imgur.com/QljsEbE.jpg
Heres an ugly, quick and dirty example of the interface I see in my head. Of course this needs tons of work, but the concept is there. I have created a tool like this: https://shoresofnis.wordpress.com/utilities/ne_q1spcompilinggui/ but feel free to make your own, mine is getting on in age and it doesn't have the best setup and some things can be awkward to do like switching to different maps that have different configs.
If i ever go back to it, i'd probably make the ability to save 'presets' so you could load a different configuration for different maps (including different compilers)... but yeah, dunno if I will. I should probably just rewrite the thing in C# instead of VB anyway. Lol, i wrote what you see in html, css, (jquery, javascript) and VBscript. That's why it's windows only, it's an HTA.
I stripped the crap out of another project for the basic interface, styled it black and white right quick and detailed the light tool for example purposes. The cool thing is: I already wrote a savable profile code that I don't even need to tweak cause it is REALLY dynamic, and the code to run your selections as a command line is actually in the image I posted, right behind the app. In other words. I could probably make this entire app in one day just by cannibalizing (-sp) a different project, and customizing my collapsible panel info to erics docs. At this point, you should probably just do it. If you'd written code instead of all these words, you'd be done by now. :P
Truer words have never been spoken @ Spirit, and posts like Warrens crush it.
@Warren, Imma pretend you didn't say that so I don't feel the need to bitch slap you through the internet. Actually, I'm just done. It's time to find a social group that promotes being social. Enjoy your ents and fgds. I'm probably done at Quakeone too. I just don't feel this shit anymore.
don't get the point in forum drama. It's not like the quake community is super tight, it's fragmented as it is.
If anyone wants to play with it, I posted some alpha builds over at inside3d at the bottom of the first post:
http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5696 Note that the format is not frozen yet, so please don't release maps using it yet :-) The pain of having the light compiling twice... ouch.
And I'm trying to get a shot of the x16 lightmap-ness. It's taking an eternity to compile. I gave up on doing a full x16 pass after the line didn't move, instead I'm choosing a very select couple of surfaces.
I have to say though, even on 0.5 scale it's really really nice. I think having 0.5 scale as the default for http://i.imgur.com/Zu35DBO.jpg
jam2_sock relit with "-lightmapscale 0.25 -extra" (so 4x vanilla resolution) 1x res
https://www.dropbox.com/s/60oyen21bv83nc3/1.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/hdiiyktnsm56e6l/2.png?dl=0 2x res https://www.dropbox.com/s/rsbvrohtens5ouc/1-2x.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/7eham7t5t8a9j68/2-2x.png?dl=0 16x res https://www.dropbox.com/s/rtp7cildc0khzp2/1-16x.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ckqik3odfx4ko1/2-16x.png?dl=0 textured comparison, 1x res and 16x res https://www.dropbox.com/s/xpz05jtj2p4dve7/start-1x.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/2pr08ltxp1bq1fs/start-16x.png?dl=0 Takes a fscking long time to compile at 16x res. Looks pretty awesome. File size for This is on my start map for retrojam 3. I dunno if model lighting works well on 16x (model light is based on the floor luminosity rather than light entity), seems to get light or dark but doesnt always correlate to floor lighting. Probably needs more testing. I think 2x scale is nice. 4x scale is probably going to be what most people will aim for. 8x at a push. I can't see myself wanting 16x normal lightmap res. i think I prefer the blurry lightmaps in those examples... the high res ones just look like crummy doom3 shadows.
You'd likely want to approach lighting differently when at high resolution. Rather than do a single light entity that will cast stark shadows, which is ok when you have blurry lightmaps, you'd want a few slightly separated lights combined so that you get a penumbra effect to the shadows.
thing is that adding more lights increases light time by a lot since each light is traced on every face, regardless of visibility or whatever. :(
i think the solution is to scale the antialiasing and the soft effect to now match the new resolution of the lightmap.
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