I'm on a shitty connection and too lazy to search... What r_speeds would you consider ok for a new map? About 800-900 seems to be nice to me (yes, I just read nico's posts about the "new huge maps"). Yes, I finally decided to map and No, it's a small and not outdoor level. :) 

thanks.
again, i was too hasty posting that without proper searching/thinking.
it was indeed a sounds field i forgot to remove (even though on a different notnull). 

I would also like to see skip support implemented in qbsp. The current utility is fairly rough and doesn't really delete the polygons from the bsp file, only references to them. (I believe it simply reorders the marksurfaces list, and then shortens the marksurface count for each leaf so that the last few surfaces occur after the "last" marksurface.)

It's been a while since I looked at it, but I remember having to change the rendering in fitzquake .80 to fix the problem of skipped polygons being rendered in .75 :) 

The other advantage of course is that true surface removal would actually reduce lightmap usage, while the current method does not. 

if it is implemented better, should it also be renamed caulk, since that's what it's called in the Q3 engine, and skip is something else...?

�_� 

Metl's explanation is right and yes, the tool is very rough. It would be nice to redo the util properly (and call it caulk this time), but I don't think I'm going to find time to do it anytime soon. 

it's illegal to use q4 textures in d3? 

so are all the Daikatana\Hexen\Q3 textures we use for Quake maps.
It is illegal in the sense that someone, Raven in this case owns the copyright, but don't really expect your nation's equivelant of the FBI to come breaking down your door.

I mean they could, if you take the warning screens on DVD's seriously. Traditionally this has been a matter entirely concerning civil law, but legislation on copyright law in the past few decades has steadily shifted these matters towards the criminal law.

For a new game like Quake 4, someone may take notice; the worst you should expect though is for a lawyer to get his paralegal to right you up a cease and desist order. 

i was almost certain it was like that. :P i was just hoping i wouldn't have to start making textures T_T

thanks :P 

and I wanted to avoid making some from scratch, I would consider using Sock's Tech series, maybe the Evil Lair Q2-style, and add Normal maps and Luma to those textures using the Gimp. 

it was just a few of the really nice rusty trims from the levels with that fat sitting thing that punches you, and the bloody/gibbagie floor textures where all the zombies are.

the hell textures for d3 are seriously lacking in staple textures, like a nice 64x64 tile texture, any type of light fixtures, and the only really good wall textures are those big and small brick textures. plus the trims are limited to ones that are 32 high.
atm, i'm working on filling in those gaps, but i'm not the greatest at texture making, and not that mine suck outright, but they just don't match the same quality of the original d3 ones. :( 

So I broke the law using Daikatana textures in my 2 latest maps .... Wow, I was not aware of that... But as our maps are not designed for commercial use, but only for fun, I guess they cannot do anything....

OTOH, I would like to extract HL2/Doom3 textures and see if it is possible to convert them for Quake. Is there anybody who already attempted to do that ? And is there any methdology advice I need to know ? 

JPL et al - Generally, using assets from other games is always illegal.

But - from experience it seems that ripping textures from old games for use in Quake (e.g. Hexen2, Dkt, Q3, Rune etc. etc.) is "ok" only because no-one seems to care - technically it's still illegal.

On the other hand, I think it's safe to say that ripping textures from modern games (HL2, D3, Q4) is likely to land you in a world of hurt. 

I think the reason nobody seems to care is that nobody has noticed, and if they have, the don't care because the original Quake is not a real competitor to any of these games.

id has complained about texture theft once to my knowledge, and it was when they were used blatantly in an Unreal Tournament (Q3's number one competitor at the time) map.

I don't think you are likely to be bothered by any lawyers if you release (for example) a Quake map with Quake 4 textures scaled down to 128x128, but there's always the chance, and is it worth the trouble to convert them with such an abundance of more suitable textures from older games already available and converted? 

i don't see why id should have a problem with it, since they are even encouraging modifiability. besides, using quake4 textures in a quake1 map should be even less an issue, since both are id games, and the textures stay within one series, too. also, custom maps are distributed in a non-commercial way (and credited), so what's the deal? 

Quake 1 and Quake 4 have different publishers/distributors. id Software may not even have much of a say. Or if they do, they may find out about it too late. And if they try to stop the publisher, that may set a precedent, and thus they may have to allow everyone to use the textures, etc.

Kind of a situation it's better to avoid in the first place, especially if you might use that map in a portfolio while searching for a job. Do you really want to showcase pirated material as a representative work of art? 

wasn't Daikatana somehow given away to the world or something, for whatever use seen fit. Don't remember... 

... what would be the good method to extract textures from games like Doom3, HL2, etc.., and then export them into Quake format... avoiding fullbright issues ?

PS: I discovered this afternoon that DKT2 texture set has a lot of fullbright pixels to remove in order to look cool ingame... and so a huge amount of work is already waiting for me at this time... :( ... so Doom3 and HL2 texturs will have to wait unfortunately... 

Which hold the texture files in Doom3 are just .zip files renamed. There is no special protection there, like say splitting the separate
files in to two seperate coded parts that are rebuilt during execution. I have been told that is how the Myst copy protection works. 

Id used a protection scheme like that, imagine, Marcher Fortress would have had to have been made
with textures rebuilt on snapshots. Kind of like taking a camera into the movies to make bootlegs. 

Marcher Fortress would have had to have been made with textures rebuilt on snapshots

Or even *gasp* textures made from scratch!!! 

in all fairness, not everyone is gifted at textures, as i'm learning myself... lol XD

as for extracting textures used in d3/q4... well, that could be more complex than other games, simply because they use more than just diffuse maps with small effects. for the most part, the diffuse maps alone are useless as they look shit without proper lighting with their respective bump maps.

you'd need to find a way to load up the diffuse maps and apply the bump maps to them, and then cast some light on them to get the shadows to show up and then save the result as a new texture file... a lot of work for poor results if you ask me, since those new textures will *still* be limited by the q1 palette, unless you go the external tga route. (external tgas can yield awesome results though... ne_marb looked wicked with the vivid green doom textures :) 

I've just extracted the .pak4 files... and there's not only the textures, but also the skyboxes (i.e Hell and Mars outside... ) and there are awesome..
And concerning textures, there are a lot of interesting stuffs.. but it is a serious amount of work: all textures are .tga files, and there are 500 MBytes for all the stuff (i.e skyboxes + textures..) Hey guys ! I feel suddenly alone in front of the task... and so I would need some help ;P
Anyway, I will open all these files, and see what would be cool to keep... cause after a quick fly, not all can be used in a wad file...
And concerning HL2 textures.. I need to extract the textures from the bsp files... and this is another story...
In anyway, thanks for the tips ;P 

Email me if you need help to automate pic conversions. 

Good one, Kell.