but the mapping help thread is surely not the ideal place for this conversation. :P 

that map I sent you, Grahf. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night without straightening that stuff out. 

Thinking about recent questions posted here, I built an acending hollow pipe (that the player can walk in) spiraling around a cylinder. It worked out well, so I cloned it and mirrored it to make a hollow tube figure-eight. Again, no problems.

I am curious how any of that would be possible without using the vertex tool. Can curved tubes be sloped without vertex editing? 

I think vertex editing is the only way. In Radiant, edge dragging or skewing makes really messed up brushes that don't align right.

Do you have a picture or .map file of your creation? 

i use them; they work in some situations; vertex manip works in others; you just have to know when to use each one. 

I'm not set up to take screenshots in the editor, so I sent you the .map file instead. 

share the love. I'll host it for you if need be. 

I meant that in this particular case of curved spirals, edge dragging and skewing weren't working for me. rereading my earlier post, that should have read "I think vertex editing is the only way to make these spirals." That was a vague blanket statement the first time around. 

There are some cases where skewing can be the only way to achieve the desired result (at least, in a sane amount of time). Especially in an environment like Radiant where the editor will not allow to to create invalid brushes while working.

A good example is if you want to create a curved, 12-sided pipe using brushes. We all know you can't rotate on any angle other than 90�, and it would be completely insane to try to move each vert into the proper position (even if that is possible in your editor)... the only viable solution is to skew and use the clipper tool to finish up, once everything is in position. 

I have a small problem with light. There's always a fullblack stripe to the left from the brush that I use a lightsource (32x32x8 sized). The light spot is situated in 16-32 units in front of it.

Here's the screensot of it: http://www.quakemaps.nm.ru/misc/light2.jpg

Any ideas of how to avoid it?

the commands line is: light.exe -fast -gate 1  

removing -fast and/or adding -soft or -extra4. If it's still there it could be that you're using an editor that requires enhanced texture positioning (e.g. QuArK or Hammer), then try adding -etp.

The last thing I can think of is that there's a brush problem (misalignment), it can sometimes cause bad shadows. Try manipulating the brushes and see if it helps. 

I did some stuff, like a spiral staircase (a map in progress) but a ramp instead of steps. Thanks for help from func people and czg especially.

So don't read if you already know.

Since it is a twisted surface, it must be constructed of triangles. (The slope is steeper on the inner curve than the outer curve, so they can't be in the same plane and thus can't be edges of the same face.)
Requires vertex editing in Worldcraft and isn't that hard.
That technique should be extensible to tubes and all the like too. I think maybe sometimes by skewing the brushes and sometimes by rotating them. One by one.

I'm off now. 

skewing with multiple brushes selected in Radiant does wacky things. At least, it doesn't move them all as a unit. 

radiant "skew" isn't really skew. it's more like "drag all the edges that belong to this face." 

Worldcraft error:

I was innocently mapping away, when i clicked on the camera button. There was no camera to be found now. It seems to have disappeared. Even when i closed the map, and then reopened it, no luck, still no camera.

What's going on? 

Are you working from the .rmf or the .map?

The .map does not contain camera info, the .rmf does. 

Just shot through a .bsp and .map, that might be useful, to your gmail acc.

Title == Spiral Tube 

I was working from a .rmf.

I just ended up selecting the entire map, and pasting it on a new map.

Thanks though. 

Just copied entire map and pasted on a blank one, saved under old filename.

Thanks though Distrans, it was a rmf, have no idea what caused it. 

I gave up a couple days ago and worried about other things, but several of you have sent me interesting map files.

Distrans solved the problem actually, at least to my satisfaction. The answer is: the part of the pipe that curves around, cannot also be a ramp. there has to be a section of completely straight axial pipe that is the ramp upwards.

Now, another question:

Is there any syntax for the Radiant .def entity format that will cause a certain key/value pair to be added whenever I create a certain entity. Like, let's say I want all my func_doors to have a "wait" of 5 and a "sounds" of 4... can I specify these values in the .def file such that I don't have to enter them manually? 

I don't know if I understand your problem.
It happens often to me that I delete a camera by mistake when I press Delete while in camera view.
To create new camera. Just select the camera button, then go to any of the 2D views, hold Shift and drag the mouse. And you have a new camera :). You can have more than one camera in a rmf file. 

I LOVE ANKH!!!

I have been tackling Ionous' deleted camera problem the same way he has...until now.

THANK YOU - THANK YOU - THANK YOU!!! 

 

I have a 'no entity in empty space' warning. Usually I simply no_clip around the map and the empty space becomes self-evident, and is easily dealt with.

However, I cannot find this latest one. I know that it is not a major problem but as I am getting close to certain limits e.g. clipnodes, can you tell me what is the overall effect of leaving it? Presumabley, unnecessary clipnodes and marksurfaces? Is there any way to find the area? 

hull(s) you get that warning, qbsp doesn't fill (remove) the outside volumes, which most likely increases #clipnodes. Marksurfaces are only affected by the visible hull.

To fix it, you'll need at least one entity that's sufficiently clear from solids in all directions. Please remember that hulls 1/2 are expanded from the visible one, so they need increasingly more free space.

I don't recall the exact distances, but it sounds like you have pretty cramped quarters. Or all your entities are very close to the walls. You can e.g. just insert an info_null in the middle of a large room.

You're not using any odd qbsp options?