The point of them is the trade off though. Easier level building/tweaking in exchange for messier brushes. And, really, if the level runs correctly does the brush configuration really matter? 

When you do coding, do you favour methods that work, or methods that work quickly? 

diggers=Compile it and see how it looks ingame.

When you want to have a door somewhere else: just move the negative, otherwise you have to modify more than one brush and doing this severeal times would be a lot of work.
When you are sure build everything around the negative brush. 

"When you want to have a door somewhere else: just move the negative, otherwise you have to modify more than one brush and doing this severeal times would be a lot of work.
When you are sure build everything around the negative brush."

That sounds sensible. If you're concerned about how the brushes are laid out, go with this strategy. Fast iteration times = win. 

I have to say, considering some of the extra UI involved in some of the features described above (especially the process of linking texture alignment across multiple faces), I'm not sure if it's worth it. Moving doors and stuff in radiant has never been a huge issue for me, and creating/modifying alcoves is also pretty fast. Retexturing multiple faces with the same alignment is very fast too (edit face one, grab the texture alignment with a click, then apply it to other faces with one click each.)

Radiant is far from being perfect or ideal, but I think one of the nice things about it is that it makes a small collection of core interactions very efficient, and you can usually do complex things using those. 

While it's not for everyone, I think you'd really have to get into Unreal mapping to fully grasp how great the subtractive brushes can be. Nowadays we mostly use meshes in Unreal so it's not all that applicable anymore but subtractive brushes were so incredibly useful back in the heady BSP based days,

Of course, UnrealEd would let you see the resulting BSP right there in the editor viewport and you moved the wireframe brushes around to change things so it's not quite analogous to Quake mappping. 

=

Awesome 

It's changed somewhat though. I'm not sure how recent your experience is but UnrealEngine3 switched from a subtractive world to an additive one.

So you add brushes like you do in Quake now. Subtractives still work and are heavily employed but you don't start with carving out a space anymore. You start in empty space. 

I've been working with UED3 for the last 2 years of my life.

Subtractive geometry is awesome, since you can build a quick area out of 'Quake style' additive brushes for your layout and gameplay blockouts, then later, when you get art assets and want to trim out a level, you can carve out of your flat blocked out level to place wall meshes, or to add larger scale details to the BSP. 

Oh cool! We're doing things a little differently for Gears 2 in that we're blocking out levels with BSP. Then, once we determine that the layout is fun and gameplay is solid, we convert those BSP brushes into blocking volumes (for those who don't know Unreal - basically, clip brushes), and then add meshes inside of those to flesh the level out.

Works well! 

Cool!

Loved Gears one! (I could tell you were a pro)

You remind me of another pro (but not quite as nasty!!!)

(dont know where to look now!) :-o 

Why did no one tell me you were Warren Marshall? 

Because it doesn't matter? :) I'm just a guy who likes making Quake maps. 

that the creme de la creme of the industry comes back focussing on the best game ever... I´m John Carmack btw hehehe 

I KNEW IT! 

Just wondering if anyone has any idea on this small issue.

http://www.quakeone.com/qadapter/ - I followed this guide to get WC3.3 to work for Quake mapping, but I noticed a small issue. When I want to apply textures, I can't seem to select a seperate face of the brush - but this should work? I'm just wondering if anyone has a clue on this?

I've tried using QuArK, but I find the process of applying textures quite slow. Guess I'm too spoilt and used to Hammer editor. Haven't really tried out WC1.6a fully yet though. 

shift+a. Press that to get into texture application mode and that should let you select separate faces. There is also a button (a cube with multicoloured sides) that does the same thing.

No idea what the problem could be otherwise. Perhaps it's a 3d card driver problem? I can't select anything in the 3d view in WC 1.6a if I enable 3d acceleration, but v3.3 and up are very different to 1.6a and support proper opengl rendering. 

I was gonna type here, but I get sick of sounding like a blabber-mouth!! :-)
Are you selecting "Texture Application Mode" by clicking on the icon or shift+a as Than describes? Then you click on the face in the 3D view, you can ctrl+select to select multiple faces.

About once every blue moon WC3.3 throws some bug at me. The other day I was unable to get out of this mode where I couldnt select any brushes and I was only able to drag the 2D views around with the mouse (navigation style). Restarting the program wouldn't fix this (god knows, I probably pressed some button or something) but restarting Windows did!

Sometimes I get an error message something like "OpenGL shutdown failed" or something when I exit WC3.3.

Generally it's great though! I hope you get it working Quakis, cause the texture application features of WC3.3 are second to none! ('fit' - yes please!!)

OK so I am a blabber-mouth :-| 

Pretty much I can't select anything in the 3D view, that includes the brush itself - only from the 2D views it allows me to. Therefore, even in texture application mode it doesn't select a single face I tell it to. 

You have to turn off 3d acceleration. Or another option that's in that same window. T remember this being an old WC bug with certain video cards, but I thought it was limited to 1.6a and fixed in Hammer.

Give it a try though. 

I checked through all the options in WC3.3 and found nothing related to 3D/Hardware accelertaion for me to uncheck.

I also installed a copy of WC1.6a test if it does the same. I set it up and made sure hardware accelertaion was unchecked and everything works fine in the 3D view for this version.

Sorry if I sound like I'm pestering, I just don't like giving up too soon on things. 

I've stuck with 1.6a - the features of later version of hammer not being a sufficient draw as oposed to the various problems caused - having to convert textures, no texture packs above a certain size etc.

I just assumed 3.3 would have the same tools/options/3dviews - thought it did from my time messing around with HL1. 

Try tools => options => 3D Views => Filter Textures (in 3.3)

I think that probably has to do with the hardware accelleration . . . ?

What graphics card are you using? You could try altering the settings in either the NVidia Controll Center or the Catalyst Contoll Center if you have NVidia/ATI hardware, there could be a global setting which is interfering with WC3.3

Make sure all of the global settings are default or "let the application decide" or whatever....


?

(let us know how you do...) 

We've had problems here and there in the past with anti-aliasing messing up selecting things in UnrealEd. If you've forced that on in your video card settings, that might be it. 

Unfortunetly, it doesn't seem there's anything on my video card settings that seems to cause it. I also check anti-aliasing but I don't even have it forced.

@ijed: 3.3 camera movement feels a lot more nicer than in 1.6a, and I can go about texturing things much quicker and have a better workflow than the camera movement in 1.6a, amongst a few other things which help.