A func_illusionary is a static entity. This means it does use a model slot up, and it is added as an entity. However, it then gets turned into a static entity, which means it takes one of the static entity slots, rather than the regular entity slots. There aren't as many static entities available, 128 I believe. But there's also less competition for them, as you can't modify a static entity once it's made static - meaning you can't kill them. The model precache however works as normal, it still takes up one slot per model from the same pool as regular entities.

As for the modification for a compiler, I'm not really sure if it's doable. Which isn't to write it off - the compiler aguirRe made that makes the clipping hulls visible instead of the regular surface means you can have drawn faces that differ from the map walls. On the other hand, I'd guess that just making them non solid wouldn't be enough to stop them splitting the bsp up, since vis relies on the portals and whatnot. So if you want something illusionary for the sake of it and need to save a model precache this might work, but if you are trying to save faces by making things illusionary so they don't split things, I suspect it wouldn't. 

Trinca just asked me about the monster_fish "well known" issue: i.e fishes are not counted as dead monsters at the end of a level, even if you killed them all... I know this issue, but don't remember how to solve it... so ... is there a noble man to refresh my memory (and then give advice to trinca) about how to solve this issue ? Thanks in advance ! 

It's a bug in the original 1.06 QC; fishes are counted twice at spawn time, but only once when killed. Comment out one of the total_monsters increments near the end of monsters.qc.

This and similar killcount issues are mentioned in my latest ToolTips. 

ouch... It means QC, and progs.dat rebuild... hhmmmm, I'm not yet used with QC, and I guess Trinca is not as well... Would it be possible you send me an updated progs.dat thta solve the fish issue, or is there a link where I could download the stuff ? Thanks a lot for Trinca and myself ;) 

I've uploaded my latest std progs here http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/std_progs.7z . It's packed into a pak2.pak file that you can put in the id1 directory.

If you already have pak files with higher numbers than the original pak0/1, just rename this one to a higher number. You can of course also repack this progs into the original pak0.pak if you wish.

There are several other gameplay issues fixed and some debug help for e.g. missing teleport destinations. 

Downloaded ! Thanks a lot !! 

does anyone know where I can get all of Kell's skyboxes? His DL links are down :(

Thanks. 

http://kell.leveldesign.org/skies-kothic.zip 

Thank you, Kell! 

Same question for your texture sets ! I downloaded some days ago knave and apocryphia texture sets, but fury and KDM links are broken.. could you restore them please ? 

you ungrateful bastards ;) 

he he he .... I'm not a bastard.. at least that's what my parents told me ;P

Happy New Year to all of you !! 

Has anyone used Rogue's Lavaman?

I thought that when triggered, he is supposed to rise from the lava but all he does is rise to floor level regardless of where he is placed in the map.

Is there a door/platform trick required here? 

If I change his .movetype from STEP to FLY, he seems to do what I expected.

Does anyone know if I have 'broken' something else by making this change? 

but since the lavaman doesn't move anyway, it might not matter, but check if rocket explosions will move him around. if he has his onground flag set, than he won't but if that gets taken off, he could start flying all over the place. :P 

His flag is 'FL_MONSTER' and 'droptofloor();'was called although I commented that out when I changed him to FLY. I don't know if that is significant.

He doesn't move but the walk frames are there. And he doesn't fly either: he just stands there throwing his lava-lumps.

It's OK but I would prefer him to move. 

Ok, a few things I�ve noticed and would like to know ->

why are the texture alignments fucked in Q1? Example, an off-axis crate which looks perfect in WC (properly aligned TX�s etc.) is correct in terms of TX rotation but is off by 32-odd units in each direction in Quake, WTF? I experimented but the problem was perpetual.

Is it possible to import 3dsMax models in .Md format for Quake? If not where can I find a decent .Md supporting editor. I ask because I won�t be making monsters . . . yet . . . but there�s alot of misalignment problems with intricate detail models in Q and I�d prefer to use misc_misc�s (Nehahra model entity) which will look perfect, without any skwiffed geometry.

Last one - I know the text screens in the original Q were coded in ie. on completing an episode, finding a rune - is there an easy way to create your own? This is a question from someone with zero C knowledge.

Thanks. 

This might not be the prob, but for correct tex alignment, use qbsp -oldaxis or -alternateaxis if you use aguirre's tools. (I don't understand why this isn't default!) 

or rather texture rotation, if that's what you mean. If you're using TreeQBSP with WC, you could try adding the -oldaxis option.

This affects textures that are rotated 45 degrees and historically, there probably was some mixup between different WC versions and TreeQBSP, therefore the option was added. You could also switch to TxQBSP which doesn't have this problem.

If you actually mean texture alignment, then the classic Q1 map format can AFAIK not handle any rotation in all three axes. You'll need an editor that can save to another map format and a compiler to match.

Editors with enhanced texture positioning map formats are e.g. QuArK, Hammer and GtkRadiant and my compilers support QuArK ETP, Hammer (Valve 220) and Q2 format (same as Q3). 

Can someone explain to me why the Doom 3 and Quake 4 incarnations of Radiant are bad at handling complex brushwork?

I was reading over on kat's great site ( http://www.quake3bits.com/htm/tutorials/quake_4_editing_tips.php?subaction=showfull&id=1134661814&archive=&start_from=&ucat=13& ) that Quake 4 and Doom 3 don't handle trisouping well, so it's best to do it in another editor and import as an .ase or whatever.

After I read that, I thought of the issues I had with gaps in the brushwork when I tried making some manual curves in Doom 3 ( http://blitz.circa1984.com/curves.gif )

So, I guess what I'm asking is, why is it that the Doom 3 engine has such a hard time (at least in the editor) handling more complex brushwork like curves and trisouped brushes?

Don't be afraid to give me a fairly technical explanation if possible if anyone does in fact know the technical reason behind this phenomenon. 

what can i say more then

THKS

aguirRe and JPL

happy new year to u all :)

i promiss that in my next map i will surprise everybody... 

In most cases.

Trisouping with brushes doesn't work well for a few reasons. The most important is that smoothing will never occur between brush faces, whereas model and patch geometry can be smoothed. Due to the per-pixel lighting, seams between unsmoothed triangles will look hard and ugly, so trisouping will pretty much never be visually acceptable.

The second big problem is that for whatever reason DoomRadiant lacks the option to project textures axially on brushwork. That means angly brushes can't easily be aligned, which doesn't help the already fucked lighting on unsmoothed brush faces. Using models solves both those issues completely, and is a bit more performance friendly to boot.

Additionally because alpha blending can't happen on light interaction surfaces, blending needs to be controlled by vertex colour. There's no way to do this within DoomEdit, so if you want texture blending in d3 you have to use a model with suitable vertex colours painted in.

The circular brushwork in that shot doesn't look like it'd be problematic to me assuming everything is on the grid, although since smoothing will not occur on those brushes you will see seams. The editor preview sometimes suffers from sparklies that don't show up in game, and I suspect that's what is going on in that screen. I'd say that the d3 engine is actually more powerful when it comes to curved and complex stuff than any previous id tech, with the caveat that certain lighting conditions can make polygon-heavy scenes very expensive due to the performance-raping goodness that is stencil shadows.

To get the most out of the engine I suggest you use models or patches wherever possible for curved stuff. 

When doing trisouping, I've found that it's a really good idea to do it via dragging edges rather than vertexes. Vertex manipulation seems to be kind of unstable (in that it unnecessarily splits faces and sometimes just outright breaks them).

It seems counter-intuitive (or perhaps even impossible when first considered) to do trisouping with only edge-drag--at least it did to me the first time--but it's actually easier once you get used to it...

And yeah, if you want nice seamless (axially-projected) texturing on that surface, I'm pretty sure you're out of luck... 

models/patches are generally a better solution... 

Ok, I�ve got 3dsMax (and five years knowledge of it�s use) and want to try creating some bad guys for Quake 1. Where can I find a live MedDle (or equivilant) download link?

cheers