Has good quake support. You may or may not prefer it.

P.S. Use 1.4, 1.5 bites. 

"The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process" is the error I get after trying to compile the first map/room I ever made into a bsp. When I try to run my map to compile it into a a bsp using QBSP.exe and Vis.exe and LIGHT.exe that is the error I get. Can anyone help me out? 

then run qbsp with the file ie "qbsp mymapnamehere" in command prompt by having all the utils and the map file in the same directory. Wait till it finishes. Then run vis and then light. In similar style.

Use aguirre's utils.
That "file in use" thing might be if some program was using the file and then crashed so it never released the lock. You might try to exit the editor, relogon, reboot or something to clear the lock. You must not run any of those tools simultaneously, but one at a time. 

OK so when I tried to convert to BSP using your method in command prompt I typed: ""C:\Documents and Settings\Sam.HOME-Z41XARD8MU\Desktop\Q1tools\QBSP.exe" first

First is the name of my map. I tried just simply typing "QBSP First" but windows couldn't find the file. So when I did what I tried above, a window would pop up for like a second then disappear. 

Wait I'm sorry.. Actually when I did it with qbsp I got: "first.h1", "first.h2", "first.prt", and "first.pts" but no "first.bsp" when I tried doing it with Vis and Light I got nothing new. just a split second window. 

the .map file (in my example evil.map) and qbsp.exe into the same directory like c:\maps
then go to command prompt and type these two lines (end with enter)
cd maps
qbsp evil 

That looks like you have a leaked map. 

Nevermind.. after messing around I realized that my file extension was too long so I had to move everything to C:/ . Thanks for your help here guys. 

Hey sorry to bother you all but I get this error when I try to compile my map:

LoadPortals: couldn't read C:\QUAKE\2nd.prt

is it because of a leak or something? too many textures? 

If the portal file (.prt) does not exist, then the map has leaked, yes. QBSP will have generated a pointfile (.pts) instead, which you can use to try to find the source of the leak.

Copy the pointfile (it should be 2md.pts for you here) into your quake/id1/maps directory. Load the map and type pointfile in the console.

You will see a dashed line coming from a nearby entity and going through a hole in the map (at least hopefully that's what you'll see, the pointfile isn't always completely reliable...) 

OK so I did what you told me the first time and it pointed me to the leak.. my leak was that the sky was open to the outside.. so i moved the sky down and made it bigger to cover the top of the screen. I try again. It gives me the same error again. So I try pointfile and it tells me "not enough free particles" "no points read" you think you can help me? Thanks in advance.

On a side note: How do I get more light into my maps? I put so many globes and torches and a lot of my map is still dark.. I even added a sky. 

In the worldspawn, you have to add a light field, and set a value: it will give a minimum light for the map, and then no more completely dark areas ;) 

In the worldspawn, you have to add a light field, and set a value: it will give a minimum light for the map, and then no more completely dark areas ;)

don't do this. it looks horrible

you just need to scatter ambient lights around carefully and play with their values; not all your light needs to come from torches or globes. it's very much a case of trial and error.

as a very rough example guide, in corridor type areas i put ambient ents 64 units off the ground, about 192 units apart from eachother and will typically give them a value of between about 140 and 170 depending how light i want it in there. then for bigger rooms it's a case of spacing them further out & increasing the values.. you really need to experiment though. and contrast between light & dark is important; you need sources lights & well-lit areas but quake wouldn't be quake without the dark shadows! 

that should be.

one other thing to add, a nicer alternative to minlight for quickly lighting large areas is having a couple of lights with 'delay' set to '1' (assuming you have a custom light compiler). try putting one at the centre of a large room & tweaking its values, although it shouldn't be too high and there definitely shouldn't be more than a few in the same area (unless you're using them as an alternative to sunlight). really they're best used as an accompaniment to normal lights, rather than a replacement 

It is however possible to have complete dark areas, even with some minimum light value set in the worldspawn.. Just use antilights, and compile with -nominlimit during lightning processing, in huge map it is necessary ;) 

and only 95 monsters.... 

you should do the opposite: 1000 monsters and 95 lights :P 

i'm aware of them, used them before. i didn't mean select dark areas though, i meant all those little shadows & corners that otherwise wouldn't get touched by light. flooding them all with flat dim light sucks so much potential atmosphere out of maps & makes them look ugly, imho (that was actually my main gripe with 5rivers)

and it's never 'necessary', no matter how big the map. just lazy :p 

I have learnwed that minlight is a bit crappy - it was used well in "The Bile Plant" alongside some light fog, but generally alowing maps to have areas wich are black is good. So no minlight !!

Used these instead:
{
"classname" "light"
"light" "60"
"wait" "0.18"
}

Usefull to light up areas whcih are completely black but you don't want them to be.... 

What does the wait key do in a light? Obviously it's for a specialized lighting program but what does it affect? Fall off? 

It determines a light's fade distance. Higher values makes it fade faster. 

Hey Well I just started mapping.. what do i do with that code you gave me? also how do i apply fog, make breakable glass, etc.? 

what code who gave you and you need to use a mod for breakable glass.

"60" lights sound pretty dark to me, there is nothing wrong with making bright areas bright (200-max (255?)) actually. 

I assume your name isn't "to ricky" :-)

Well when you make a map, the output of your editor is always in .map format. You can open this file in wordpad or notepad (I use notepad, although there are apparently better text editors). Try opening a map file in a text editor, and scroll to the end of the text (of which there will be shitloads!) The end of the map file is where all of the entities are put.

In more practical terms, in my case I use Worldcraft, whenj I put a light entity into the map by default the light has a bunch of "keys" - these are the settings or parameters of the entity. If I look at the properties of my light entity in Worldcraft it gives me the option of using "smart edit" - sometimes I use "smart edit" but to add a "wait" key to a light entity I need to turn it off. Then click on "add". This sends me to a window where I can enter the "key" and it's "value". So in this case the key would be "wait" and the value would be "0.18" without the quote marks.

As for the wait key on lights, well it works with Tyrlite and AguirRe's light tool - ot makes the light travel further or less distance!

values > 1 = the light travels LESS distance
values < 1 = the light travels MORE distance.

I like to put lights like:

{
"classname" "light"
"light" "450"
"wait" "6"
}

close to sourced lights, but along side that I would put another light which is less bright but travels further like:

{
"classname" "light"
"light" "60"
"wait" "0.2"
}


and maybe another like

editor is always in .map format. You can open this file in wordpad or notepad (I use notepad, although there are apparently better text editors). Try opening a map file in a text editor, and scroll to the end of the text (of which there will be shitloads!) The end of the map file is where all of the entities are put.

In more practical terms, in my case I use Worldcraft, whenj I put a light entity into the map by default the light has a bunch of "keys" - these are the settings or parameters of the entity. If I look at the properties of my light entity in Worldcraft it gives me the option of using "smart edit" - sometimes I use "smart edit" but to add a "wait" key to a light entity I need to turn it off. Then click on "add". This sends me to a window where I can enter the "key" and it's "value". So in this case the key would be "wait" and the value would be "0.18" without the quote marks.

As for the wait key on lights, well it works with Tyrlite and AguirRe's light tool - ot makes the light travel further or less distance!

values > 1 = the light travels LESS distance
values < 1 = the light travels MORE distance.

I like to put lights like:

{
"classname" "light"
"light" "450"
"wait" "6"
}

close to sourced lights, but along side that I would put another light which is less bright but travels further like:

{
"classname" "light"
"light" "160"
}

which is just a normal light!

You can have loads of light entities in a very small map! This way you can make a more realistic lighting effect IMHO! It has to be done right, and it's never completely simple. I always have to change things a few times to get it right..... 

You can map for Quoth 2!

If you make a brush (of what will be glass) into a "func_breakable", and then give it a "alpha" key with a value of "0.25" then that would behave like breakable glass, but it would only work in engines which suport alpha on brushmodels, like AguirRe's modified GLQuake, or Darkplaces or whatever........