Yes, there is a point in them being larger. It's the same for all games really, it's not uncommon to see a 512x512 texture on a 256x256 face. If you are making a texture that's ment for a 64x64 face, make the 24bit texture 128x128, 256x256 would be overkill. 

i haven't experimented with this idea at all, since i want to know if it's possible before i start.

basically, i want to have two different islands in a void that are fairly far apart from each other. you can see the one island from the other at all times.

obviously, you wouldn't want the island in the distance to be at full detail because most wouldn't be visible and it would probably slow down like molasses in winter.

is there a way to make most of the details in the island that is far to disappear and not be drawn by the game? sort of like how models look shittier at a distance to reduce the number of polys and thus make it faster to draw.

and it is possible to have details gradually appear as you get closer to them?

it wouldn't even matter if the transition from low detail to high detail was abrupt or smooth (ie: if the details could fade in or now) 

if doom3 has LOD you can make the islands in maya or max, rather than out of brushes. 

http://www.saunalahti.fi/dnaumov/e1m2rmx01.jpg

vs.

http://www.saunalahti.fi/dnaumov/e1m2rmx01-new.jpg

I am still thinking that the former looks way better. 

that was supposed to go to the screenshot thread 

I think the reason the second shot looks bland is because it's almost all the same texture, without respite. Add some wood and wizmet and I'd definitely prefer it to the first shot. 

Using the same texture theme doesn't mean you're barred from breaking up surfaces with trim and other details.

The flat lighting also doesn't help (cast by the sky, i'm assuming.) 

so you're saying that the meshes should get the LOD treatment automatically?

does anyone know if that would work? i know a lot of the hell maps were made out of meshes and not brushwork. is there a way to tell from those maps if LOD will work or not? 

I discovered a strange behavior of fitzquake recently. It crashes when my wc is open. When I close the editor fq starts to work properly again.

??? 

- What's the error message?
- Do other engines crash too? 

I don't know anything about it, but I'm just saying that if there's LOD, it's probably mesh-only, and therefore to take advantage of it you'd have to use meshes. 

if there's LOD, it's probably mesh-only, and therefore to take advantage of it you'd have to use meshes.

Or lots and lots of curves.

Hello bless.bsp. 

is that automatic? or do i have to model each level of detail myself and somehow assign each different model version to a certain distance? 

something like program will be closed - usuall windows error only

other engines (vanilla, agurRe's one ���) work 

I occasionally have BSODs in WinXP when having the OpenGL view open in QuArK and then start a GL-engine. In my case it's driver related (NVidia), maybe yours is too?

Does it seem related to whether the WC 3D-window is open or not? 

Doom 3 has no LOD.
Q3 had it by having several sets of models for each model, but as far as I can tell by poking around in the D3 code it has nothing of the thing. Shouldn't be too hard to set up in a mod tho I guess... 

I am not clear on the use of .wav files for sound effects in Quake.

I have seen from earlier posts that they should be 8bit/11khz/pcm. That's OK but do they have to be of a certain length or perhaps, not longer than x?

I have been experimenting and I have one file (an explosion) that plays as intended and another that keeps playing and wont stop?

Any suggestions or pointers to sites? 

could be that the second sound is looped. Looping for quake seems to involve putting a "marker" in the file. It's sort of confusing as the sound editors that can do it don't seem to consider it to be related to looping at all. I'm a little rusty though as the last quake sound i made was like 4 years ago. 

OK, you're on to something here. I used a different program to convert the sample to 8/11/pcm and it now does not play continuously.

But now I can hear what a crap sample it is!!

Without giving too much away, I want a sound that plays for a non-predetermined time, fades and stops. The player will inadvertantly decide the duration. Think of leaning on a bell-push - it rings at a constant volume until you realise it's you making the noise, then when you move, it stops ringing and goes silent via a short fade.

Therefore, I want to play the start, then the middle bit for as long as the player is determining (at random) then the end.

My problem is that in playing my sample, it plays start, middle, end; over and over, which gives completely the wrong effect.

I'm not sure if I am explaining myself very well but, if this makes sense, can it be done with one sound or do I have to use three sounds (start, middle, end)? 

it can be a driver problem, but (I think) it worked fine before. I noticed that strange crash only 2-3 day ago.

There was no driver update/fitzquake setup changes for that period. 

two ways of doing this:

1. Make a soundfile which include the start and middle section. mark the middle section only to loop.
Make a seperate soundfile for the end section.

Now, in qc, you make an entity play the start/middle sound when triggered. you then need to make some way to let the entity know when the player has stopped triggering it, and then make it play the end section sound on the same channel, so that it overrides the first sound.

2. Seperate start, middle and end into seperate sounds.
In your entity now, when it is triggered, it should play the first sound, then have a self.nextthink = to the amount of time that the start sound is in length. it should then loop a sound call for the middle section with a nextthink = to the duration of the middle section, and then simply play the end section to stop it.

burr... don't really feel like going into details, hopefully you got the idea. :P 

Thanks, I can work on that. 

do what necros said. This is how quake's door sounds work. Be sure to play both sounds on the same same channel so that the second sound cancels out the first. 

is there a console command in your engine that will display the amount of precached models? (that one where only unique models count, but doors and trains count for one each)