After CDA project, I'm starting a new project based on DKT1/DKT4 episode texture sets. I have a small issue with these "fullbrights" texture, which are considered as "lights" ingame (i.e. FitzQuake), and which have a very bad look ingame (BTW I didn't modified the initial textures to fit Q1 palette... like I already did in CDA without so much problems)... I found a quick turnaround setting gl_fullbrights to 0, and also adding this setting in my config file (in order to not have typing the line in console each time I test the map)... Anyway..

My concern now is much more about the method to add this feature in a pack file: how to include a config file without causing troubleshouting with the player's current settings ?
OTOH, I could add a note stating that it is recomended to set gl_fullbrights to 0 in order to have a better rendering...
I guess the answer will be obvious, but I would like a good advice there ;) What do you think ? 

You can add the custom commands/cvars to a new xyz.cfg file, copy the original quake.rc file and insert a call to this xyz.cfg file just before or after the call to autoexec.cfg.

You put it before if you want to let the player's own settings override yours (nice) and after if you absolutely want to force the player to use your settings (less nice).

This way you can distribute a pak without forcing the player to modify his startup procedure and still get your console commands to run.

Both files xyz.cfg and quake.rc, you just put in the game directory outside the pak file to make it easy for the player to alter or get rid of them if he wants to.

You can of course also put them inside the pak in its root directory and finally put the whole pak as usual in the game directory.

In any case, be sure *not* to add or alter any other commands or the sequence in the quake.rc file, e.g. loading the map. 

Thanks ! 

For me at least, the answer is obvious... don't try to turn off my fullbrights... just fix the textures.

Its pretty easy to do it on a per-texture basis in TexMex... open the .wad file, select the texture you want, right click, adjust brightness, remove brites.

This should replace the fullbright color/s with the closest possible substitute in the palette. Unfortunately it seems you can only do one at a time this way, but perhaps someone else can suggest a way of doing a whole .wad at once.

Generally, this will probably produce acceptable results, but watch out for any dodginess (i.e. just make sure the program doesn't swap the colour to something completely inappropriate).

Its far preferable to modify the textures than to change the engine settings. Consider the following points:

- you can then also use fullbright textures on your buttons and lights
- Other people may copy and use the textures from your .bsp file
- doesn't require engine specific commands... gl_fullbrights 0 isn't going to do much for someone using WinQuake...
- I like fullbrights and I don't want you to turn it off for me! 

Regarding the DKT1/4 texture files size, considering I don't have TexMex installed, and also considering I don't know how to use it... (RTFM I know ;)... ), I guess it will take much more time to convert the texture to Q1 palette (one by one, unless there's a way to convert the full file at one time) rather than typing the gl_fullbrights 0 command into console...
OTOH, I can understand your point of view... And like you, I wouldn't like to change my personnal settings..
Furthermore, as you already noticed for my previous projects, I'm also very "slow" to produce a map (i.e remember CDA took me around 9 months, regardless of fullvis process runtime... I only map 1 or 2 hours per evening, and not all days of the week...:(... family stuff there...).. so "wasting" time to convert a wad file to Q1 palette sounds ungood to me... I would not like to spend 1 year before releasing another map...
In anyway, I will try to take a look to TexMex (download ans use), and see if it's possible to use it for a "massive" texture conversion... Otherwize, I will not use it... ;P
Thanks for your point of view :) 

It's not like you are using thousands of textures, you can really easily eliminate fullbrights in TexMex, texture per texture, shouldn't take more than a couple minutes.
If you really wanted to you could set up a batch process in photoshop or something too, and do it all in one go (but you'd need to extract the textures from the wad first).
Looking forward to your next maps anyways. =) 

answers are almost certainly easy but i found it frustrating trying to get textures showing up in gtkradiant.

i've installed the 1.5 beta from www.qeradiant.com, set the engine to quake, set the correct path and opened a .map file (it was bambuz's 108 speedmap), and all the textures are "not found". ok so i have to extract the textures from the .bsp file, or i can download something like quakewad.zip to get them (assuming the map uses only the original textures).

i downloaded quakewad.zip, opened the .map file again and all but one of the textures appeared in the "used textures" frame. i'm assuming the texture still "not found" was because it was a custom texture or quakewad.zip isn't the way to go.

so my first question is if something like quakewad.zip is a good way to get the original quake textures for use in an editor?

then when starting a new map and making a brush i want to apply a texture to it. with a brush selected i bring up the "surface inspector" and i can type a texture name in, and can't see a way to select a texture from any kind of list unless it was already used.

so my second question is if this is how you do it? or if things are configured correctly are all the available textures meant to be displayed in the texture menu after the separator? 

the lava texture is from the team fortress pak file. (pak0 or pak1.pak) Get the equake tf addon pak (from quakeworld.us) if you want that tex :)

You can rip textures of maps and paks with programs. One at least comes with worldcraft. 

of course you can get the texture directly from the bsp too with some util... :P 

How do i prevent cracks on bezier patches?

how *do* i prevent that? :P

http://www.planetquake.com/necros/temp/patch.jpg

you can see that the highlighted patch doesn't match with the one joined to it (they are seperate patches)

how can i get them to have the same amount of sides so they line up? 

Apparently, GTKRadiant 1.5 will read .wad files directly from quake's id1 directory. You would have to extract the textures out of a bsp file manually, with a program like Wally. 

This will also disable fullbrights on torches, muzzle flares, and lightning bolts. 

works perfectly. 

i'm hopelessly behind the times, but help me out here... :P

basically, for my d3 map, i wanted to have a few specific settings that will be used for that map only, and they are all cvars... (namely, wanting to tweak g_kickamplitude and g_kicktime a bit to reduce 'owl neck' and pm_walkspeed to a *ahem* proper movement speed.

is there some kind of way to exec a cfg file or something? i can't even get an autoexec.cfg file to work-- i added g_kicktime 0 to my autoexec, but it gets reset on every level anyway. :P 

Not sure if your serious or not..., but select your patch, press s, check subdivide patch and adjust horizontal to suit. 

This will also disable fullbrights on torches, muzzle flares, and lightning bolts

I didn't really see any big differences about what you mentionned here... errr... though the effect might be for sure different with different engines.. At the moment I only checked the command with aguirRe's engine and FitzQuake.. I will took a much more carefull look on this point...

In anyway, thanks for the tips. 

what the hell is owl-neck? i've never played it, so i'd love some explanation :) 

When you take damage, your view swings around like crazy, which makes fighting the fast melee monsters quite annoying, as when they start inflicting damage to you, it becomes pretty damn hard to aim and fire at them properly to get them to shut the hell up. 

Not sure if your serious or not..., but select your patch, press s, check subdivide patch and adjust horizontal to suit.

cool, thanks for that. i think i'm just blind, actually. o.0 

 

This will also disable fullbrights on torches, muzzle flares, and lightning bolts

Metlslime, I checked what you said, and you were right (sorry, I would have to believe you... thousands apologies... :P... ).
However, I made further tests, and the results is I have to choose my textures very carefully. Then I guess I can keep gl_fullbrights 0 in my config file, just because:

1- My new project uses DKT1/3 texture sets which are globally base/modern textures (nothing like mediaval gothic stuff, only metal, computer, etc..) so I will use no torches... The idea is to try to be as consistent as possible, like I was with CDA using only DKT3 textures...

2- The "light-effect" rendering ingame (i.e using FitzQuake) can be balanced adding lights at judicious positions... I guess it wil be the same with other engines. I also made the test with flashing electric textures, and it was not bad at all IMHO...

3- I will try to avoid lightning bolt gun use in this map to solve the issue you mentionned above (removing it from the map is an option...)

In fact, I think the visual effect can be equivalent with or without gl_fullbrights set or not... I just have to take care about what I do..

I will post screenshots later to let you see the effects.. ;) 

Dude. Seriously. Just fix the textures. 

Ok, is it just me, or do HL2 displacements actually suck complete arse? What the fuck is that TERRIBLE displacement editor in Hammer? Effectively a displacement has the flexibility of a patch in Max, but the tools are designed as to make editing its geometry in an kind of meaningful way a near impossibility.

Seriously fucking dissapointed... Is there any way I can move the displacement vertices around like vertices of a brush?

Or maybe someone has some handy tips or a link to a good guide... 

It will be better if you fix the textures instead. It is very easy, even if you have no experience with TexMex. 

shutting off fullbrights to fix crappy textures = cheap hack
fixing said textures = proper fix.