I believe that what Im gonna do is make the level to a point where I need some testers, cause that way after I have sorted out the gamepley, I can fix up the lightning using Notepad!!! - Then do it all again for the final version :|

Yes, I believe I have popped my .map-in-Notepad cherry. I see now why its called 'Hacking'

Worldcraft 3.3

Nice GUI and texture alignment stuff, but if you export a .map from an .rmf, then re-load it after a bit of tampering in notepad (or even without any tampering I guess) you lose all of the extra texture alignment info!!

I got the lightning sussed. I moved the targetted info_notnulls to where the first few entities start after all of the world stuff, then use AguirRes engine to look at the edicts, get the number, then change the 'enemy' key appropriately.
I have also discovered how you can clean up a .map file by removing any extra shit you dont need!!!

Worldcraft and notepad dont work in unison very well tho! Worldcraft takes stuff out and adds stuff in like extra keys on import!! So backups have been essential!! - I have to resume building on an un-hacked version. The experiment worked, but I will have to re-do it all again anyway cause I can't resume working on the hacked version :( 

.map file mapping ... 

i just downloaded 1.5 gtk radiant and there isnt a textures menu can anyone help me? 

I only messed around with 1.5 briefly, I prefer 1.4, but anyway, is it called something else? materials or something maybe? What happens if you press the T key, does that bring up the texture browser? 

and the texture window will come up. Personally, I only use 1.5 for creating prefabs but not for texturing. I hate the new texture methodology here because of the fewer options and the less intuitive set up. Why screw up something that had worked well since QeRadiant? 

ill try that if it dont work ill download 1.4 instead 

they moved the texture menu down so that it is part of the texture viewer portion of the screen. (I think) 

can you use 1.4 to create maps for temulous? 

any of the Radiant builds can be used for Quake mapping. This is I do it - I set Radiant for Quake 3 Arena, I convert the Quake wad I'm using to the Targa format and place them in my Quake 3 directory like this:
Quake3/Baseq3/Textures/Armagon

Next, you'll need the definitions file, go to
Quake3/BaseQ3/Scripts folder and replace the entities.def file with the Quake1.def file.
Which you can find here:
http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake1.def
(Filezilla is the greatest!)

You'll have everything you need to build a map file. You'll run into a few things that might cause you trouble. Don't bother with the curve
tools, they wont translate over to Quake 1, and Quake 3 texture alignment is more flexible than Q1 native so it is best to experiment in this area to see what you can get away with.

Part I 

download the tools on AquiRe's site,
http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/

and read the instructions.

When I'm ready to compile a map into a playable bsp file, I make a simple batch file (a text file with a .bat extension) with this sort of text:

Txqbsp -q2map mymap.map
vis -fast mymap
light -extra -soft -fast mymap

The -q2map is a conditional AquiRe added that allows the compiler to convert the Q3 map (Q2 and Q3 are the same format except for the addition of curves) into Quake data during compilation. 

Maps, wad files and the tools all in the same folder, but you can be more orginized if you want to by including directoy info like:

Txqbsp -q2map maps/mymap.map

and include a line in the Worldtype for you wads like so:

C:\maps\textures\armagon.wad 

does anyone have one for gtk radiant 1.5.0? 

But this might help you. Documentation.

http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/files/radiant/docs/1.5/

Also, here's a tutorial for 1.5 that I found in a few seconds via the magic of Google, but I have no idea if it's worth anything.

http://files.filefront.com/GTKRadiant+15+Mapping+Tutorial/;6785024;/fileinfo.html 

I was looking at the Quoth tutorial yesterday and saw that they have facilitated lightning use with the entity trap_fired_lightning (or whatever it is). I may not have got the key name correct whilst sitting here typing but I was definately using the correct one yesterday (it is trap_fired_lightining, isnt it ;). How on earth do you make it fire downwards??!?! It doesn't matter what values I set for 'mangle' or 'angle', it wont fire downwards! Annoying really. I may just end up using the hacks I was gonna use for the lightning anyway, I just thought the Quoth one would be easier!

Any clues?

Ive tried 'mangle' '-90 0 0', '0 -90 0', '-90 -90 -90', Ive tried the same values for 'angle'. None seem to work!! 

http://kell.leveldesign.org/quoth/quoth_tutorial.html#trap_lightning_triggered 

Try angle -2 

If it says mangle in the documentation, that should just work straight up. I will take a look at this for quoth2. 

At the moment, mangle support isn't there, it will be for quoth2. Angles should work, but you'll run into the usual problem of the editor only exporting the yaw component. Your best bet is to add an info_notnull where you want the lightning to strike, give that a "targetname", and give the lightning a "target" key with the same name. 

mangle is the light direction saying "yaw pitch 0"
angle is the cone angle formed by the light

yaw is in [0:360] range
pitch is in [-90:90] range

As exmaple if you want a light that gives a top-down light cone you need a mangle set to 0 -90 0

But it mainly depends of both editor and light tool you are using

and Preach method is as good as it describes it, except it might consume edicts... but I'm not sure about that point...

and it has been saif, read the documentation of the light tool (if it exist)

Hope it helped. 

What JPL says is true, but it only applies to lights, not the lightning effect entity - a quoth feature that sends a bolt of lightning like the shambler's in the direction given. I just through I'd mention that targetting spotlights at an entity doesn't have to actually increase the edict count. Just use an info_null, not an info_notnull, as your target, and it will get removed at worldspawn. This is the distinction between an info_null and an info_notnull, the former is removed when the map is loaded, so it should be used for compiler time purposes like targetting spotlights. The info_notnull is not removed, so it's intended use is as a target for things that happen in game, such as lightning bolts. 

I had alot of problems with the Quoth1 lightning in warpd. Originally the laser blasters all over the place were going to be lighning, but they all pointed in the seemingly random directions no matter what I did with angles nulls etc.

Possibly the edict load was too high and the lightning was firing at other stuff in the edict list. The random angles were always cardinal directions but never where I wanted. Perhaps its for the best since the blaster traps are at least dodgable. 

I can't seem to emulate the cardinal directions only bug, hopefully it's gone in quoth2 or it's just a high entity issue like you say. I've made a test map, which suggests that angles works in quoth, but you'll have to edit the entity file if you want more that a simple yaw, because that's all the editor exports. Also targeted lightning works, which looked broken when I checked out the code for quoth2, but I guess wasn't. "mangle" support is not in quoth but will be in quoth2.

Just posting this to say if anyone else has known bugs like this in the current version of quoth, now's the time to e-mail me or leave a message. If you mention it soon, it'll make it into quoth2, but inter-version patches are unlikely for anything but game breaking bugs.

And yeah, the blaster traps worked really well, enough of a threat that you had to take care, but also useful enough to turn against monsters when ammo was low. 

this is what it says when i load 1.5:
Unable to find default tag file C:/Program Files/GtkRadiant 1.5.0/trem.game/shadertags.xml. No tag support. any ideas on how i can fix this? 

Sorry guys, I've been away for a couple of days - thanks for the cumulative response!

OK - Spirit, erm, yeah, I hope your right!

'angle' '-2'

I'll try that!!!

Preach - Targetting info_notnulls - er, sorry, tried that too, doesnt work (not for me anyway).
BTW, what do you mean by editing the entity file?

As for the editor only exporting the yaw, erm I've been using notepad and a command prompt for tinkering around with this, cause its less stressfull when all your doing is changing key-values!!

Ijed - by the sound of it, you know what I mean!

JPL - easy-to-make misunderstanding! I have loads of spotlights, and lights like

'light' '65'
'wait' '2'

in my current level but as you may have realised by now, I meant lightNing, sorry, not lighting. Although I have been bombarding this thread with questions about lighting and lightning ;)

So in short I can either:

Resort back to using hacks do do the lightning (which did work :) (thanks Preach)

or

Hope 'angle' '-2' works!!! 

A few things that many don't know when they start but;

-1 is up, -2 down for angle keys.

Putting a -1 in the texture scale (instead of 1) flips the texture in that direction. Useful if you've got a written sign and the letters are backwards because of which way round it is.

Negative trigger hurt's give the player health (even though they still scream / do pain fx). It's also past the normal maxiumum.

There's probably other tricks that aren't quite hacks as well; delays for lights (aguirRe's page) or proper hacks; the Teaching Old Progs .dat thread.