sorry aguire, that was a totally different thread I thought I was posting in

hee! :( 

Did someone indicate a few weeks ago that it's possible to build Quake maps with Hammer if one happens to be sick and tired of Worldcraft? If so, are there any instructions available on how to set things up, and what possible downsides should I expect? 

Try BspEditor 

Everything you need is on this page: http://www.quakeone.com/qadapter/ 

http://www.quakeone.com/navigator/

go to developer/Map Editors

I prefer QuArK 

I should have explained: my map was saved and compiled just at the point where the packet overflow was becoming acceptable. If you throw the grenades then the packet overflows start a bit because the backpacks drop, which push the poly count over its limits, I think, or it's the gibs. Anyway, I originally had a much taller tower with about four times as many enemies, heh. I just wanted to make a level that had a horrendous amount of gibs going on. 

Are there any limits to what shape a func_door can be?

I have a door which is a 7 sided semi-circle, 8 units wide, (152*76*<128 vertical>) and its supposed to move up into another similar shaped slightly wider brush, but it behaves strangely in that it doesnt trigger even though theres no targetname.

Any clues? 

I came to an even more dire problem with another map I was making -- I tried putting some enemies inside a box of explosive boxes (so that the explosive boxes surrounded in the enemies in a box-like shape, that is), which I thought would be fun to blow up, but Quake only handles about four or five of those boxes and a few enemies in the same room before it crashes -- you're just supposed to use one or two at a time. The barrels in Doom were definitely more fun! 

The exploding box idea is pretty weird =) There used to be this game "C-Dogs" (a top-down 2d shooter) which had some levels with explosives lined around all walls. The trick was to not die (there would be chain reactions etc). I remember it to be really, really funny. It's sad that this would not be possible in Quake then... it was one of the ideas on my mental list.

The mass enemy idea I have is to just spawn in something that looks like an army (Knights are fine) and having the player feel like he's getting totally swarmed. He would not have to fight them though, they would be some distance away. So no chance of gibs etc. occurring. Perhaps some hack to take away his weapons, to make sure... it would be just before the end of the level.

There is an older speedmap (Doom theme?) which has quite a lot of different enemies at the same time (like 30, and then another 30). It was fun and I don't remember packet overflows... although there were ogres , hellknights and vores involved... I'll see if I can find which it was, I'd like to play it again. You get a bunch of weapons at the start (Doom style) and then chaos... 

You could put a transparent "glass" between the monsters and the player. 

Too many explosions at once crash the game because all the particles exceed the active edicts limit, I think. Only limit-removing engines can help here. 

No, it's because of a QC bug that too many of them won't work together; they'll cause a stack overflow in most engines.

This bug and too many others to mention are fixed e.g. in the Warp or Travail progs. With one of them, you should be able to have more boxes (and spawns) without stack overflow.

And particles are not edicts, usually they're controlled engine-side with the -particles option. Having many particles will cause a slowdown in most engines, though.

And poly count doesn't affect packet overflows either, the former is entirely client side and the latter is mostly server side. Gibs (ot other edicts) will definitely increase the risk for overflow, though. 

Weird thing is I have a func_door elevator with loads of brushes, (all 90 degree angles tho) nearby which works fine.

No clues? 

It's not too clear what your problem is, but AFAIK the size or shape of a door affects its function in no way at all, unless you're talking about the lip value.

Doors trigger when a player or monster moves with 64 (?) units or so, if it has a targetname and is next to another door then both need to have their 'door don't link' flag checked in order to work. 

You could put a transparent "glass" between the monsters and the player.

Yep... or I might find a clever way to end the level, and then just have the army shown by the intermission cam. Something like that.

:-) 

Was hoping to find some decent mapping tool that I could use in Linux, as I've been slowly transferring over to using Ubuntu full-time :) Any suggestions are welcome! 

GTKRadiant is probably your best bet for linux mapping. 

...I won't blame WC1.6, as I pointed out the size/entity definitions for the ammo and health are exactly the same in both .fgd files. Yet I can place with pin point accuracy in Travail and by pure guess in Quoth. Any other ideas? 

QuArK runs on Linux with wine (QuArK version 6.3 + Miniphyton) The tools were emulated too. 

;) 

Hmm, Ill try the doors dont link flag, I never thought of that. You see there are two doors not four units away from eachother. Ones meant to close (has 'starts open' flagged) and the one I was talking about is supposed to open, but only if youve got the gold keycard.

Thanks for the tip. 

Works like a treat, and you can use aguirRe's tools via wine for compiling, they also work fine :) 

Oh come on man, THRED is where it's at.

In all seriousness though, I would strongly recommend GtkRadiant 1.4 (hacked to work for Quake editing) if you're on Linux.

Also, if you're on Linux, be sure to direct your self-righteous fury [1] at anyone who has released updated Q1 compile tools for win32 but has actively refused to port them to your operating system of choice.*

[1] Otherwise known as "I fucked myself in the ass, but I cannot admit that to myself, so I'm going to accuse you of fucking me in the ass, mister tools programmer!"

* Actually, don't - you'll just make yourself look like an idiot for saying something so astonishingly ignorant. 

Fribs means, is that you can ask for Linux ports but you can't demand them. 

Interesting looking game. Something for DOS made in 1997-1999?

"Enemy count alone seems to be no problem."

yeah I think you may be right.

"The mass enemy idea I have is to just spawn in something that looks like an army (Knights are fine) and having the player feel like he's getting totally swarmed. He would not have to fight them though, they would be some distance away."

I've never actually finished a map before but I think that's the best thing, to keep up the illusion and intensity of enemies swarming in, even if it's never more than five on screen or something.

I tried a glass wall once with a lot of enemies behind it -- maybe similar idea to what was brought up. You jump down into a room after being chased and suddenly you see a ton of enemies in the room, impossible to fight, but then are supposed to be like "phew!" when you realize they're behind a glass wall. But somethign about it was just didn't work, so i scrapped it. i can't remember