I have over 250 monsters in my latest FMB and thought it might be beneficial to dispose of the corpses as we go, especially as I haven't finished the map yet.

As a test, I have used:-

{self.nextthink = time + 60;
self.think = SUB_Remove;};

immediately after the death frames, which works fine.

But it looks a bit too sudden if you happen to see it in-game. Is it possible to 'fade' the image of the monster before removing it somehow? Or perhaps associate the disappearance with some other effect?


Rather than reinvent the wheel, does anyone know of this idea already released somewhere? (I have seen it in some Paks, including a nice sinking into the ground effect, but these have not been put out to public use)

I did Google "Quake SP corpse disposal" and got links to rather too many true-to-life ideas. 

Took only 40 minutes - I was expecting a couple hours or more. I may have read the timing wrong. It's stated in the readmes that the format is:

Changed time format when hours > 0 to "HHh MMm" (e.g. 12h 13m

About midway it started reporting:

Full: 56.4, Elapsed: 6:14, Left: 17:15, Total: 23:29, 26, then finally
Full: 100.0, Elapsed: 39:04, Left: 0:00, Total: 39:04, 100

Elapsed time : 39:16
State time : 0:02

So what confused me was, when I saw a number such as 34:16 - I thought it was saying 34 hours! But no, stupid me - it'd of been 34 hours only if it said: 34h 16m

:P To think I let this run while I slept... 

I'm familiar enough with if/else statements so this should be simple enough. I'm looking in CLIENT.QC and what I want to do, is have the "end episode" text actually display every 2 maps. The player does NOT need to collect the runes for these to display, and from what I'm reading, that doesn't seem to be a prerequisite either.

if (intermission_running == 2)
{
if (world.model == "maps/e1m7.bsp")

This tells me "if intermission is displayed on map E1M7..." - so, wouldn't I simply change "maps/e1m7.bsp" to "maps/mymap.bsp", and then my message will display?

Two other things, below the above:
{
WriteByte (MSG_ALL, SVC_CDTRACK);
WriteByte (MSG_ALL, 2);
WriteByte (MSG_ALL, 3); Do I need to change anything here?

Lastly, I should just be able to take the episode text in client.qc and compile it into progs.dat completely alone, right? Or would I need to just modify the client.qc, leaving everything else inside it intact, then compile the progs.dat with everything thats originally in it?

Thanks for all the help! 

First one: Yes, your assumption is correct.

Second one: Those are for changing the track of the CD, to play the intermission music. I'm not too sure about the protocol here tbh.

Third one: You will need to do a full recompile of the progs.dat. 

12.1.4. Set CD Track
WriteByte(MSG_ALL, SVC_CDTRACK);
WriteByte(MSG_ALL, val1); // CD start track
WriteByte(MSG_ALL, val2); // CD end track 

Here's a little bit of code that will make the corpses fade in engines that support .alpha. In engines that don't support it, the corpse will disappear as usual. There's no way to hack it in engines that don't support .alpha nativly, but most GL based engines have it. Here we go:

Open subs.QC, and right at the top add

.float alpha;

Then, add this routine below SUB_Remove.

void() SUB_Fadeout =
{
self.alpha = self.alpha * 0.8;
if (self.alpha < 0.01)
{
remove(self);
return;
}
else
self.think = SUB_Fadeout;

self.nextthink = time + 0.1;
}


Then, replace all the SUB_Remove bits you have with

self.alpha = 1;
self.think = SUB_Fadeout;


And it's done!

Course, it doesn't work for all engines, if you wanted to, for example, spawn a puff of particles/blood as you remove the corpse, doom3 style, just look at writing a function similar to SUB_Remove with a particle spawn. Weapons.qc has some examples of particle spawning to look at, with the blood functions at the top and that. 

The fade routine above doesn't act on gibs or heads thrown when you gib a monster. The gibs are removed on a timer anyway, but don't fade, and the head doesn't fade at all. Have a look at throwgib and throwhead and whether they can do the job automatically. Otherwise the heads will use up the entities. 

Thanks, I will get onto this first thing in the morning. Will report back how I get on. 

so uhm...
How do I reduce the overall brightness in texmex, and how should I go about removing fullbright spots in my textures?
Thanks again. 

in lost chapters the corpses sank into the ground with a delay. 

I'm editing the console and HUD graphics. All is typically going well except ATTN: METLSLIME! - your Fitzquake (0.75 and 0.80) crashes since my most recent GUI updates. However, Winquake does not crash! Usually the crash can be attributed to a file that is too large/doesn't meet the right size - but this is not the case, and all the graphics are the corret palette too. What say you? 

While Winquake does not crash immediately after launch (like FitzQuake), it does crash once I start a map and says: "Double Quake Error - Draw_TransPic: bad coordinates" -- whereas when FQ crashes it just gives a cryptic "This program has performed an error" or somesuch. 

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Fitzquake.

I tried DarkPlaces and at least saw the effect, which is quite cool. Thanks for trying.


Bambuz: I just checked Lost Chapters and it is a good effect, but the code has not been released to Joe Public. 

I'm interested in reproducing the crash, do I only need the gfx.wad and do you have a d/l link? 

You guys made me cry. Why won't anybody answer me? 

Have you tried right-clicking on the texture you want to change and using the Adjust Brightness control? You'll also find Remove Brites in there.

However, it tends to leave one pixel(255) as a fullbright. If that is a problem you will have to export that texture to a graphics program i.e. Photoshop, and adjust by hand. 

I prefer doodling around with Wally than TexMex -- a simple trick with Wally, just set brightness at -1 and contrast at +1 with the Q1 pallete loaded and it adjusts non palleted textures pretty accurately. You can even set up a wild cards that automates the process. I have never had a fullbright survive that sort or smack around before, so I say, give it a whirl -- as for TexMex, some swear by it, but I for one do not trust it. 

#3877 belongs in the drunk thread, but in case it is to any degree helpful . . . 

I believe this question was asked very recently and the answer(s) are posted above. Use TexMex. It has a function for adjusting the brightness of a texture once loaded ( and so converted to the quake palette ) which basically shifts each color up or down its respective color bar on the palette by however many places.

Two solutions were offered for removing fullbrights:
also using the Adjust Brightness dialogue, hit Remove Brites
or
go to View -> Preferences -> Workspace -> Color Conversion and uncheck Use Full Brites

Both of us who answered said that the other method didn't work properly. Try both and see which does. 

The second method for removing fullbrights only affects textures when they are imported, not if they are already in a wad. 

 

that was kinda weird 

Your question was answered at least twice, before you started whining about nobody answering you. 

I'm searching it for days now, having chequed mdl2map, dxf2map etc.

Is it possible to compile a bsp from a dxf file? Such as using a frame of a model to compile it to a bsp for bmodel.
It would be a nice sculpture.

otherwise I could construkt it again from polyhedrons, but then again I wondered;
is there a way to import dxf to Quark, or do I need another method for this? 

You could import .dxf into Qme, then save it as a .mdl, which you can then convert to .map in Mdl2map. And then compile the map as normal... if you wanted to?

But I don't know of a way to compile a .dfx file directly: the .dfx format is nothing like .map format.