But usually when shit like this happens, and you go back and rebuild it for the 2nd time it always turns out better :) 

start using svn. :P

tortoise svn is a really easy one to use, if you have the extra disk space to spare. 

it at work, and its great. Kind of miss it when I'm at home working on Quake. 

Maybe some unerase tool for Vista can restore it. 

you might be able to restore it with this nice freeware tool
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1 

Couldn't undelete it.

There was an RMF file that wouldn't open in worldcraft but no .map files even though I deleted about 5 of them yesterday. 

Hi i kinda want to try my hand at mapping. a friend of mine was telling me about a lighting program called q1rad but I cant seem to find a download link for it. Does anyone know where i can find it??

Thx. 

q1rad is way too complicated for a starter. Use the tools from http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/ instead:
http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/visbjp.zip 

I'll try those. still ive seen q1rad in action and it looks real nice. I would sure like to try it.

I have another question: where can I find out how to go about setting up GTKRadient for use with quake? Or should i just try a different editor? I understand you need to adjust some settings. also the .map file needs to be altered before compiling it. true? how?

Also is there a good texture resource on the net? where?

sorry for the newbie questions. I have a friend who was into mapping awhile back, however he is a bit vague on the details... and google seems to be failing me. 

I personally thing that there are two light tools which are any good. The best is AguirRe's "light.exe" - a heavily modified/improved version of IdSoftware's light tool for the original Quake, which gives a wonderfull finish, and there's no real beating it.
The other is Tyrlite. Which doesn't give as good of a finish IMHO, but supports coloured lighting. Both light tools support spotlighting and sky lighting, as well as min(imum)light, and the ability to use the "wait" key to control falloff.
I recal finding Q1Rad at one point and being frustrated with it. 

http://icculus.org/~riot/q1rad.zip

You can find textures here, you'll need to guess the contents and looks though:
http://www.quaddicted.com/wads/ 

is actually quite easy to use as long as you setup the texture lights file correctly.

you create a <texturewadname>.rad file in the same location as q1rad.exe and you can add light and colour values to textures, so you dont actually need to place any light entities in the map at all.

If you are interested in the effect this can give, I used q1rad on my map "crdm2 - mechanical tears" http://daz.quaddicted.com/maps.html

You need to be a bit careful with light placements though or the final effect can be quite flat and dull as the lights bounce off surfaces. Tbh I feel that tyrlite.exe or Arguires improved light.exe are superior in quality as you get more contrast between light and dark, but it takes a more experienced hand to get better effects. 

When a face is receiving light from 2 light entities with the 'no fall off' option tagged, it appears that the light stacks. What I mean is if both light entities are 200 brightness, if they both hit the same face, it's as if that face's brightness becomes 400.

Is there any way around that or do you just have to try and avoid them hitting the same face? 

What you say in the second part of your post is the solution, basically, unless you want the flat white effect.

Having said that, read up on AguirRe's documents (also on his site) since there's alot of extra control added through using the delay and wait keys on a light, including antilights, wide range falloff and spotlights without info_notnulls (or nulls?).

FYI Tyrlite is the alternative, supporting coloured light, although it's a bit trial and error.

Looking forward to your map. 

I would also say that Q1Rad is actually easier for a beginner to handle. You don't even need to set up the lights.rad file if you don't want surface lighting (it is, after all, optional).

Aguire's tool has many features, offers a high level of control and has a smoother "finish" as Ricky suggested (reduces the staircasing on shadow edges and stuff like that). It has almost everything you need and should definitely be your default choice.

Having said that, Q1Rad obviously does one thing that no other tool can offer: radiosity, which is certainly not to be underestimated! It does have less features though (some things just plain don't work as well, e.g. switchable lights... and it crashes on very large maps). 

I feel very stupid now, because I had so much trouble getting q1rad to work when I once tried it. 

for HL1 isnt it? 

coming from the q3map2 background, a light compiler without radiosity just feels plain stupid to work with.

It's annoying that q1rad makes faces that emit light fullbright though :/ 

Yeah that is a shame, and does limit its use somewhat.

Now I may just be talking out of my arse here, but wasn't there a hack or program that would read your texture lights file but light the map with a "standard" light util like tyrlite?

I forget... 

What are some Q1 mods with cool episode bosses in the medieval style?

I was thinking Vermis, but would like an alternative... I guess one would be those ghast things from Rogue...

any tips? 

Wasn't that ArghRad for Q2?

gb - don't forget the Dragons. 

the NewBoss from DeathmatchMaker. 

you could try PhantomPholly, I put it in there.
I never saw it in a mod so I tried to mae it look convincing.

Not sure if you think it's cool. 

Madfox: Thanks for the tip, I'll look at it.

Ijed: The dragon from Rogue? It's a bit static... flies around and tosses some projectiles...

perhaps if I have six or eight flying above the moat... but I want to have the boss fight indoors.

Use of svn: This is widely used in the open source community, even in small projects. It's practically standard.

I suggested something like this back when the map sources were released, to put them in a svn repository and gradually improve them in a controlled way.

That was before it became obvious that it's better to rebuild them.

Still, svn is definitely useful and I wonder why the Quake community seems to ignore it. Many open source projects are hosted on sourceforge.net, using svn. I can't see why you wouldn't be able to have a Quake map on there just as well as any other software.

I guess nobody tried it yet.

Also, most people don't like to look at maps as software. They are though, technically.

Theoretically, a community svn repository could be hosted on a site like Shub-Hub, too. Much like a miniature version of sourceforge.net. Such a central repo would be very vulnerable to attacks though.

Thinking out loud, as always. 

the general public can follow every single commit (via "browse svn" at sourceforge) and thus, even during a time without map releases, it's always visible that things are progressing.

People can watch the progress and read the comments. Work in progress would become more visible (and the "Quake is dying" thing would tone down because you can always say "there have been X commits last month so stfu".)

svn can be pretty transparent to the public. It's good for everybody.