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. 

I don't know shit about 1.5 or Tremulous, but have you read these instructions and followed them?
http://tremmapping.pbwiki.com/GtkRadiant1_5-Win32

Seems pretty straightforward...don't miss the part about downloading the missing files, etc.

If you have done all that, and things still don't work, I would suggest asking for help in the dedicated Tremulous mapping forum here:

http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?board=12.0

...and probably read the guide at the top of that forum as well.

Google is your friend. 

-1 and -2 for angles won't work in this case. It only works for certain entities, namely ones that call the function SetMoveDir(), which correctly reads the angles. The function is designed for creating a unit vector that the entity uses for movement purposes. The lightning doesn't move, it just gets fired, so it uses the angles as they are set. More like a info_intermission(or it will be once mangle works correctly).

http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/trap26.map
is a map that shows the info_notnull way to set it up. So try copying that.

Entity file: There are some quake tools, like adquedit, that will extract an "entity file". This is literally a plain text file containing the entity data from the map. It looks fairly similar to what you'd see in the map file, but without any of the brush lines for brush entities. The added bonus is that you can then import an edited .ent file back into the map with the same program, so you don't have to recompile it. Furthermore, some engines will automatically load an .ent file with the corresponding name of a map, in the same way they'd load a .lit file. Except this time it replaces entity information, not light information. 

Arches are a pain the arse already, but what I haven't done before is diagonal ones. How do I make it so that it will evenly fit into the space?

Here is a screenshot of where I want a double-arched window.

http://www.esnips.com/doc/61063d95-e191-4e23-87be-81c76859d544/arches

How would you do it? 

Is there any way to just simply add a vert to a line on a brush? Really made life easy in Doom mapping, so I'm hoping for something similar in Quake, but I can't find any way to just simply add a new vert without having to clip the line. 

Kenny, regarding diagonal curves, I made this for you: http://www.jbeck.demon.nl/temp/bobby.jpg 

Apparently a lot of people like a 15 degrees rotated version of the simple curve showed in my pic... here is the 24-sided version of it (linked by bambuz): http://e.photos.cx/czg_arch_baseunit_12-f73.png Anyways this should give you some ideas how to make curvy stuff the right way. 

Why not making a simple arch+wall and rotate it by 45�? 

problem with that is that rotating it would result in all the brushes being off-grid and probably have gaps, creases, and overlaps. 

And why not making a wall and rotate the negative arch by 45� and substract the brushes? 

Im gonna retexture the map you posted and compile it and try it later, but looking at it in notepad I dont understand why the lightning has a 'mangle' and a 'target'. I mean I have tried both of these techniques but not together at the same time, mainly cause the tutorial said to use 'target', 'mangle' or 'angle' - one or the other?!!?

Also you have light entities with:

{
"classname" "light"
"light" "400"
"wait" "1"
"mangle" "0 -90 0"
"angle" "70"
"origin" "-96 -88 384"
}

Surely you could ditch the 'angle' and write

"mangle" "70 -90 0"

Hehe - I was thinking I'll probably end up just using the hack for the lightning anyway cause it sounds better!

Also if I had some small func_trains following a path round in a circular shape (a six or eight edged route), I could source some info_notnull lighning in the middle using the CastLightning style entity, and then target the trains using the 'enemy' key... - voila - Half-Life intro style scene! 

Substracting is just as evil as rotating. 

Just make the shape by eye - all of these fancy tutorials and techniques for making quake-friendly curves dont give true curves anyway. A true circle wouldnt hit a 1*1 grid anywhere (potentially). Use wedge shaped brushes to make the shape, or four-sided brushes with a clipping tool for example. If you can get all of the edges on the grid you can go back and re-make the shape using less brushes. 

If you make the arches as simple as poss, say with two wedges in each corner, rotate by 45 degrees, then use vertex manipulation tool to line the points up on the grid! I dont think you would get any illegal faces because its 45 degrees all the way. 

The thing about the fancy methods is they let you build it once and know for sure it'll work, letting you copy it throughout the level. Also you can make much more complex shapes, like helix' multiple curves etc. Look at the very first room in czg07c to see a good example.

And it's much cheaper for vis time. 

I have an .rmf called acurve.rmf full of pre-fabricated curved shapes. Its soo easy to use them for whatever.

The problem is that rudl needs it to be 45 degrees rotated. Thats a pain cause although you could fit all of the points onto a 2*2 grid or whatever, you might find yourself with illegal faces, which worldcraft will render ok, but by the time its been through a Qbsp.exe its gonna distort the shape - you might end up with small gaps between brushes. 

http://files.myopera.com/christig/albums/391747/angledarch.png

1: Make your arch.

2: Rotate your arch 45 degrees.

3: Scale your arch in the X/Y plane by 1.060606... , OR up so the bounding box is 1.5 times larger than the original arch.

4: Snap to grid 1/4 of what the original arch snapped to (IE if the original was on grid 8, snap to grid 2) 

FYI, angle and mangle keys are not related to each other in a light entity, angle is spot light cone and mangle is spot direction.

Now you seem to be mixing up lighting with lightning ... ;) 

Dont listen to me anybody - I'm only ever speculating.

Rudl - Listen to czg, im only speculating here but I would say he knows about 50 times more about gemetry than I do. Maybe 52 times more...

AguirRe - I did not know that. So increasing the 'angle' of a light which already has a 'mangle' increases the size of the cone. Whats the default 'angle'? 

I cant even spell the word...