packet overflows often result in dropped sounds 

Thanks, I'll carry on not being too concerned then. 

just a short question: does anyone know a good tutorial on making good looking rocks? (i don't mean terrain via triangle method, which i already use) i mean rocks like in kona's maps for example. thanx 

How might I emulate ai_forward(x); without using the walkmove function?

I want to move a monster in its forward direction x units where the direction has to be found AND he may be stuck in a wall (which is where the walkmove function (correctly) exits with FALSE).

I guess I can change self.origin but am stumped on how to calculate the new origin taking an unknown direction into account.

Any offers? 

if you set the movetype to MOVETYPE_NOCLIP, does it still abort? with that movetype, the monster wouldn't collide with anything, so walkmove would possibly not abort? 

You've said that the monster may be stuck in a wall at the start of the move, but how should it end the move? Is it ok for the monster to, for instance, be stuck inside another wall? Or inside other entities, possibly including the player? If you're doing some kind of ghostlike creature, that doesn't care about intersecting anything, then the crude way to emulate walkmove would be

makevectors(self.angles);
setorigin(self, self.origin + v_forward * x);

but that's going to do no collision checking, and also move your monster in discrete steps. Of course, in basic quake walkmove moves a monster in discrete steps, but in engines with motion interpolation this usually gets smoothed out. So a better way might be:

makevectors(self.angles);
self.velocity = 0.1 * x * v_forward;

assuming that the monster is going to think in 0.1 seconds time. You must make sure that the following think function either resets the velocity or gives it a new one.

Both of these functions are going to plow the monster straight forwards, so make sure they face the right way first(possibly with ai_face();)
For the velocity one you'll also need to give the monster a movetype that accepts velocity(eg MOVETYPE_NOCLIP). Finally, these functions don't think about the vertical, and the monster won't follow a floor(how could it if it's in a wall...). So there's still a lot to think about. 

Yes, I did try changing the movetype but the walkmove function ignores that. I can't fault that as once the game is underway you wouldn't expect to find a monster in a wall. 

what exactly is needed? when you say it needs to find a direction, you mean it needs to be using AI to track towards the player? 

if you just want it to move forward in whatever direction it's facing, preach's method will work absolutely fine, btw. 

I can ensure that the monster will move into clear space and that he will be on the floor even if he is partly in a wall, and I only want him to move in his forward direction. I can also ensure that he will not collide with either the player or another monster while he is moving.

I will move him only one or two units per animation frame and I have time to ensure that his animation will be complete before any interaction is required.

I'll play with the setorigin version and let you know how I get on.

Thanks both of you. 

your inquiry kind of got lost up there. I assume you mean the effect Kona commonly uses that blends rock material with building surfaces. This is done the same way that landscapes are handled in Radiant (without the terragen plug-in), except using a vertical surface instead of a horizontal and the end is tapered where you join the surfaces.

I recall a tutorial being linked on QeRadiant.com on how to accomplish this technique, but the site that I was looking (leaf-node) for is no longer available.

The way it is accomplished in Radiant (doesn't work in 1.5, you have to use
earlier versions) though is to make a square or rectangle and duplicate it.
Point your cursor on the side you want to manipulate on the duplicate block, press the left mouse button and cntrl key together and pull in the direction you want it to go. From there it is a matter of aligning several blocks together in a pleasing manner. 

thanks, i'm gonna try to port those instructions to QuESt (the good old :) i'm afraid that that's the way i'm already doing it (vertical triangles) and i simply have a lack of creative imagination for rock forms. i often have problems with working from a simple brush to natural forms. i thought there might be some kind of standard method that could help me there... 

Don't expect too much from yourself. You don't have to use too many triangles to make it look good. Use pretty large triangles. Make some wedge-shaped faces and some pentangle-shaped... some rock pillars... make some slanted floors and ceilings... just no 90 degree angles. If there are places where the seams look bad, cover it up with a pillar or something. Let the textures and lighting do the work; don't make your rock too detailed and don't light it up like a Yule tree. Break up walls horizontally or vertically into several brushes. Another idea is to build a framework of pillars and iron beams, and put the rock between those. It will look as if the pillars are set into the rock. Small, shallow pools of water are helpful to cover up less-than-imaginative rock formations, too.

I'm making rocks atm for my dm4 remake (I settled on mine theme) and I have those problems a lot.

Mine levels in Q2/Ground zero are really pretty inspiring. I often wonder how little you can get away with. 

I downloaded the movlight.zip by Marc Fontaine. A modification of a func_train to use for a moving light source in Quake, but
I didn`t get it working. (I use QuArK)
Can somebody help me ? 

what are average times for a map of say, 1k brushes, 500, 4k?

i have this tiny map which is taking forever to compile. i think it's about 500 brushes, possibly less.

i thought the whole point of d3 was that compiling takes a lot less time...

windows reports d3 is using cpu cycles for something, and it's certainly eating up ram... does it just crash without telling you and stay frozen, pretending to compile? :P

btw, no monsters in it, so it's not making any aas files either. 

i post to fast >_< just figured out what the deal is... apparently, i'm not doing skyportals right. :P 

I'm sure someone can help but you need to give more information e.g. have you set up a light_move entity with path_corners, are you using the revised progs.dat or have you incorporated the qc files into your own progs.dat, is anything happening and if so, what?

Also, what is your expectation for this - it doesn't light up the room as it moves around, it is simply a moving light source: basically a glowing blob that moves. 

thanks for your answer. I`m a absolute beginner and had the idea of a moving light that lit up the walls while moving, but after some googling for that, I found out that it is very hard or probably not possible at all. This movlight.zip (found in the ID-Database) has an example map, but that has only a moving sprite, not a real light. Today I thought maybe the misc_fireball is something to use for this, but I`m not a programmer. I think this qc-stuff is to heavy for me.

What is the revised progs.dat ? 

OK, the moving sprite is all that happens. I don't know of any way of lighting walls and ceilings in the way a hand-torch would light a dark scene, which I suspect that is what you are looking for.

The revised progs.dat that I referred to was supplied in the movelight.zip and needs to be used in place of the standard progs.dat. It contains the necessary compiled .qc files for movelight to work in-game.

The standard way of using these modifications is to set up a separate folder inside your Quake folder e.g. c:\Games\quake\movelight, and extract the files from the zip file into that. Then start Quake with the command -game movelight +map light. 

hi ladies!

i�m trying to make a .qkr file for Quoth,this way Quark can load the entaties, but when i open the addon in Quark dont reconmize the size that monsters ocupied :\ any help?

http://trinca.no.sapo.pt/Quoth.qrk

just made for two monster�s to test!!! i like Quoth mode a lot and i want to map more for it! so this might be nice when is finish :) and maby someone will find it nice also :| 

Yes, that was exactly the way I tested this "light-map", but as I say, it was only a moving sprite, not a light.

But this lava-blobs are looking like a moving light ( or is it just a fake ?), and if it is really a moving light, it must be possible to change this extension (qc.file) to something new, where you can choose the direction, speed, distance, etc... (in the editor)
Than you have a mov_light extension. Of course you have to compile a custon progs.dat to get it working.

Or did I talk nonsense, I don`t know ? 

Stop me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is that you'd like an entity which emits light in the same way as a lavaball or a missile does - a small ball of dynamic bright light. The only difference is that you would like to be able to move this light like a func_train. If this is what you want, then this can be done fairly easily. 

Sounds great. Thats exatly what I&#180;m looking for ! 

should mean > exactly what I&#180;m looking for! 

looks like the apostrophe did not work.
so once again
Thats what I am looking for !!!