any one know why id chose to make ammo boxes bsp files instead of mdls?

They're easier to 'skin', 'cause it's just ordinary textures slapped on each side; skinning a cube-shaped .mdl would result in only 2 faces being textured properly.

Why not use a .mdl of something not-cube-shaped?
Because of the lighting I suspect. 

I can use the tri/quad-souping method for creating terrain, but for large scale things this is a true chore. Can anyone point me to some good tutorials on creating terrain for q3 engine (ET) with 3d studio max or a similar tool? 

that makes complete sense. and yeah, bsp models aren't lit beyond their original lighting. 

http://www.quake3bits.com/index.php

I'm thinking of the Quake3 tutorial for Blender, but You'll find a lot of useful info there. 

Try Nemesis' terrain generator. It is a fucking good tool (I used it for CDA as example).
Check it out at http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/ 

I've been wondering about this:

In many terrain maps I am seeing in Q3-engine games (read: ET), there are some parts of the terrain that logic tells me has been carved up to insert a building or a tunnel or whatever. I am wondering how this is done?

My understanding is that if you use heightmap-based terrain and start carving it up, you are bound to get BSP issues whilst iirc carving up terrain which is done as a mesh is flat out impossible.

What am I missing here? 

you just remove the terrain brushes that are in the way of what you want to build, so you got a rectangular hole in your terrain, and then proceed to plug the gap with whatever you want to build in the normal fashion. Same principle applies to terrain meshery; make the mesh with holes in. 

DM3. Do people prefer to play with translucent water or non-translucent water? 

translucent water for sure ! 

although i don't personally play, i'd think that non-translucent water for fairness would be in order. 

Do any of the hardcore players know? I'd prefer to have trans water for single player, but maybe I can save that for the Quoth version. Do competetive players still run Quake on p2s and shit like that? do r_speeds matter? The framerate is always maxed out on my machine - even with novis on, and that's at 1920*1600 in fitz with all the second passes and stuff for enhanced lighting (overbrights and fullbrites).

Maybe the competition mods have a server command to force wateralpha to a certain value? Anyone know? 

Do any of the hardcore players here know? I'd prefer to have trans water for single player, but maybe I can save that for the Quoth version. Do competetive players still run Quake on p2s and shit like that? do r_speeds matter? The framerate is always maxed out on my machine - even with novis on, and that's at 1920*1600 in fitz with all the second passes and stuff for enhanced lighting (overbrights and fullbrites).

Maybe the competition mods have a server command to force wateralpha to a certain value? Anyone know? 

I fucking refreshed that shit after nothing seemed to happen before, and there was no post. Now there are three! God damn it! 

r_speeds:
It would be useful if it worked in software fuhquake, you could try it (also pay attention to mipmaps if the textures are custom). Jago spent some time making enraged playable in sw with no greyflash. (And then the stupid qw people just ignored the map anyway! Sigh.)
Some percentage (I'd say 2%?) of people still play with 320x200 sw, more so at the top skills.

Water:
Transparent water has traditionally been off. I don't really know or remember all the settings on the server and in the maps and in the client that enable what combinations to be used, but there's a faint chance the way you do the map doesn't matter since it can be circumvented in the server sw. But I don't know, probably not, all that visibility and all.

I remember back in the day you could cheat in team fortress by watervising the map (in sw that was just taking the surface tex off completely) and you saw the people underwater. :) And then the mapcheck was introduced to circumvent that.

sw use:
If you can by some way view the obsolete url of IBC extended info
http://ibc.quakeworld.nu/extended.php
you could see what percentage of people used sw and which gl (in 2004).
(google cache of the non-extended info here:
http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:KdU9yFu7FWsJ:ibc.quakeworld.nu/+the-interceptor+ibc&hl=fi&ct=clnk&cd=1) 

It's just a dm3 remake for SP mainly, but I want to keep the classic DM layout more or less intact in case people do get sick of Romero's texturing.

Mind you, my rebuild isn't faithful in terms of tricks you can do or exact dimensions, so I doubt anyone who has bothered to play DM3 for 10 years will be interested. I'm still going to release a regular Quake version and a Quoth enhanced version (using quoth base enemies, trans water and that has a dm layout more optimised for ffa) anyway.

There are a couple of shots here: http://than.leveldesign.org 

Than: I don't think I know of any QW players that play with transparent water turned on. It doesn't matter really. If you play QW and use it, the effect will be limited to you only seeing the underwater brushes, but no players/items/etc which are under water because the servers are set up to even out the playing field, to eliminate any possible gameplay advantage a user of transparent water could gain.

Bambuz: yeah well, I worked quite a bit to reduce the greyflash effect in software and did nearly eliminate it. Once I realised I couldn't complete "fix" it without removing A LOT of details I would rather not remove, I discovered the wonders of r_maxedges "10000" and r_maxsurfs "10000" and put a note regarding these variable into the readme. Problem solved.

Than: Also yeah, you can honestly forget about getting the QW population to actually play your map, as frustrating and sad as that may sound. 

But if the map on the server is watervised, it doesn't know to not send the info from water, no?
All the visible leafs and so on?
Have to test this sometime.

Than: shots look good and inspiring. One thing for dm is there shouldn't be too many protrudings to get caught on (but no need to resort to q3 flatness!). And clipping doesn't help that much, it's uncomfortable when the visual info conflicts with the tactile or sth. Of course some is ok.

Btw, it's very different to dm3 if you can't jump from ring to quad etc at that central megahealth area. :) Dm3 probably overall considered the best 4on4 map.
If you really wanna stretch it, you could watch a demo from quakeworld.nu, they play dm3 among other maps in the NQR finals. There's even commentary mp3 so you can understand what's going on. It's awesome gaming and very tight competition, teams battling for ra control and going for the quad or the pent. Some extreme moves some extreme fuckups. :) 

yeah, that area is one that has changed quite a lot...

The layout is more or less the same, but because I changed the heights a little, and added a protruding lift shaft, it is now impossible to jump across. There are entrances at either side to compensate (and for SP flow), but it completely changes the risk factor of coming from the RA,SNG side to the decent side. The quad is now located in between the sides anyway. It's quite different I guess.

Anyway, it's not intended to replace the original map, it is a fairly faithful reproduction of the layout for DM second, and a decent (hopefully) SP map foremost. For this reason, I won't be changing large details like the pillars on the basefront in the shots at all.

It would be nice if the pro players gave it a try anyway (and then bitch about it being not as good or not the same as the original ;)

The sng area is very different architecturally (but using the same layout).

Would you be interested in testing (sp mainly), Bam? It'll probably be ready in a week or so depending on my load at work (crunch time!) 

Don't worry too much, the players are unpleasant anyway. :/

There were some modifications of maps, like e2m2tdm which added one lift, changing the connectivity a lot (it's a cross-shaped map, and this lift connected two "ends"), and people still thought it wasn't necessarily that much worse than the originals, they were played in a league administered by link.

So yeah you can change architechture.

I'm sorry but I can't try out quake stuff much nowadays, I've moved temporarily (until july) and don't want to install quake to the computer at the new place. If it's easy for you, you can send it and I might check it out if I have time when I visit my regular home. :)
meizah at gmail. 

I need a fast way to kill big amount of quake monsters but I can't use the killtarget -> targetname method. The killed monsters won't be visible by the player. The monsters just need to be removed from the map at a certain time and place. I'm close to packet overflow also.
Any ideas? 

trigger_hurt, func_door crusher, collective telefrag?
killtarget removes them from the map, but doesn't change the monster count. 

thanks! I was counting on you :)

trigger_hurt will do 

So, I don't add or remove any brushes. I add 20 or so lights, and about 10 monsters. The marksurfaces reduce from 31688 to 31250.

So, shall I just add another 100 monsters and 100 lights and expect the marksurfaces to drop below 31000? Cause then I can add some more brushes and improve the trim. But honestly, what's it all about? 

... really... nobody knows.... 

I just added a trigger_monsterjump and it reduced the marksurfaces by another 3!

Arrrrrrgh!