It won't matter what editor you use, all compiled BSP files need to be in id1/maps in order for Quake to load them, no matter what editor you use.

Its very strange that windows will not let you create a new folder called 'maps' in your id1 folder, I have never heard of such an issue before. No way should a single file stop you from creating a new folder.

Not really sure what to suggest it sounds a bit odd, maybe post a screenshot of your id1 folder open in windows so we can see whats actually in there :) 

You can't create a folder called 'maps' if there is already one there called 'maps'.

"theres a .file in there called maps": is this file actually a folder/directory? 

yes, thats what i'm talking about.

don't know what to do with this one, maybe if I did two options

*moved that .fileto the desktop and then made the folder, then trying ti tat way

*or fiddling with the configs where I can use both the maps.file and a folder by renaming it.

anyone every done this before? 

Put the mapname.bsp file in the maps directory, start quake and type "map mapname" in the console, replacing mapname with whatever the map is called.

If you don't already have a maps directory then you need to make one, if there already is one then put the bsp in there. 

how come my cylinder wont show up when i compile and run?
here is a screenshot: [url]http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/866/cylindernn8.jpg[/url]
and here is my .map file: [url]http://www.st3ady.com/quake/fnp01.map[/url]
I'm a n00b workin on my first single player map in gtkradiant 1.5.0
someone suggested i switch to worldcraft but i dont feel like learning another program :( 

since i can't edit on this message board:
http://www.st3ady.com/quake/fnp01.map
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/866/cylindernn8.jpg 

You could try just compiling the bsp and vis stages (skipping light); that will let you see things clearly. It could be a lighting issue.

Also, look at the output of the map compile with the cylinder there, compared to it not being there. 

turns out quake 1 doesnt support patches, so u have to use prisms! :) thx anyhow 

Of course, you could just carve the cylinder out of a cuboid, if you're feeling really hardcore... 

Say I have a plat that I want to move a long way (say 1000 units vertically). What I'm hearing is that the sound plays from where the plat started and doesn't follow - so as you get further and further away, the sound dies out until it's silent.

Is there a trick to getting the sound to follow a plat that travels a long distance? 

and not just that, the sound will emanate from the plat's origin, which is determined by the center of the first brush in it's definition in the .map file.

well, ok, i suppose you could play the sound on the player entity's item, body or weapon channels, as those are special and always play through both speakers, but that would be dumb. :P

one thing i've noticed is that id tend to be pretty lazy about their sound in all of their games. 

Ahh crap, so no work around? Oh well... 

in the code, it looks like the sound comes from origin + (mins + maxs)/2, which means, the center of the bounding box at its default location, shifted to compensate for any movement (since origin for bmodels is normally 0,0,0.)

But, the mins/maxs for bmodels might be calculated badly by qbsp, so you could still be right, i'd have to look into that. 

If the platform is against a wall, you could have another hidden platform moving in exectly the opposite direction and maybe as you move out of the range of one sound, you'll move into the range of the other.

I have used that idea in a map where I wanted to draw the player's attention to a button operated bridge but the player was too far away to hear it - I just put another one of the same spec. in the floor beneath the player. It worked fine. 

Neat idea ... I'll try that, thanks! 

Remember that you can put eprint(self); in the spawn function of various things that use bmodels, and then compare them to what you think they should be.

Question for the coders, though: can you make the sound follow it around? 

can you make the sound follow it around with code changes? 

no & yes respectively 

Feel free to expand on both... 

without modifying the exe, sounds cannot follow an entity.

they are just spawned in at whatever entity it is tied to's origin.

this is the kind of thing i mean about id being lazy about sound in their engines.

another example would be quake 3 having doppler shift, but doom3 NOT having it. they actually took a step back... 

You can hack it in the progs too, for a reasonable return. The easiest way to do it is spawn a new entity with the platform, the "func_plat_sounddummy", so that the platform's enemy is the sounddummy and the sounddummy's owner is the platform. Then in plat_go_up and plat_go_down you replace the sound call with:

local entity oself;
oself = self;
self = self.enemy;

self.air_finished = time;
self.cnt = 0;
sounddummy_play();

self = oself;

Above them define:

void() sounddummy_play =
{
setorigin(self, (self.owner.absmin + self.owner.absmax) * 0.5);
sound (self, 1, self.noise, 1, ATTN_NORM);
self.cnt = self.cnt + 1;
self.nextthink = self.air_finished + 1.4 * self.cnt;
self.think = sounddummy_play;
}

Notice the unusual way to calculate the nextthink time, this makes the sounds play at as close to regular intervals as the discrete frames allow.

Similarly in plat_hit_top and bottom replace the sound call with

local entity oself;
oself = self;
self = self.enemy;
sounddummy_stop();
self = oself;

and define

void() sounddummy_stop =
{
setorigin(self, (self.owner.absmin + self.owner.absmax) * 0.5);
sound (self, 1, self.noise1, 1, ATTN_NORM);

self.nextthink = -1;
self.think = SUB_Null;
}


Then the sound gets restarted every 1.4 seconds. Of course, this isn't quite the same as the looping sound quake does usually, since it always plays from the beginning, and doesn't wait until the end to restart. But on a lift you can probably create a sound which sounds ok looped like this.

Further improvements would be to dynamically create the sounddummy and remove it once the lift has come to a halt(AND the halting sound has been given time to finish). Also making the looping time customisable/better fitted to your selected sound.

Of course, the best improvement would be to save the extra entity entirely. Unfortunately to do that you need to make the lift perform a number of "think" operations before it reaches it's destination, while remembering that it needs a "think" function for it's arrival at the final destination(see SUB_CalcMoveDone for the details of that). Add to that the fact that you have to work with self.ltime rather than time, and think about what happens to the sound if you're blocked(probably best to make the original sound a looping sample, but not to rethink - if you're blocked then the sound can afford to come from the same place until the lift is unblocked). So it's a much tougher proposition to get right. 

The duplicate entity moving in the opposite direction worked. Hooray! 

if anyone's mapped for half-life and knows what im talking about is it possible to get game_text into my quake maps? 

The map "Visions of Hatred" of Darin McNeal has a CCK.
A kind of Cut-Scene Construktion Kit.

Included is the 'Cut-scene Construction Kit' I developed for this level.
It allows the inclusion of scripted cut-scenes into quake levels."

http://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/vision.xml 

I am lighting a static model with a 'light' entity using 'mangle'. It lights the background but not the model.

If I then use 'light' without 'mangle' (default light value in both cases) the model it lit perfectly, albeit that so is a lot of the surrounding area, which I do not want (atmosphere, don't you know!).

So, I suppose my question is: could it be something to do with the (mangled) light's cone not covering the whole of the model's bounding box? Or is some other "undocumented feature" at work here?