I have, but I think it may be the vertices that are the problem or the way I split the faces possibly. 

To answer your question, yes I have tried deleting and remaking the brushes. 

so it always compiles wrong even when making it from scratch? what if you change the shape, is it still incorrect? 

Yeah I changed the vertices a bit and got a compile that worked. I still don't understand why the others didn't work, I thought splitting the face of the cube into triangles would have avoided any weird geometry problems.
I really wanted to get a lot more done today but instead I've spent the last few hours dealing with crashes and bsp errors. And I thought UED was stressful! 

it's hard to tell from that image exactly what is being done but i tried recreating it and when i move one of the verts out of line so it appears the same as your x/z & x/y views, it looks different to how yours does in the y/z view (i don't get clean 'X' cuts) which makes me think you cut the brush up differently

i have a 'vertex block' prefab saved which i made manually using six 3-sided spike brushes. not sure if that's how you did it? i can normally bend it any way i want though; it churns out compiler warnings if it's on too small a scale but generally works ok in-game 

The face at the back has been cut opposite to the face at the front (which when you see an X shape in the 2d view). Basically I split the faces of a cube to get a mesh to manipulate, I thought this would save me lots of time rather than making a bunch of triangle brushes. 

Using your idea RJ I have found making a bunch of triangular/pyramid brushes seems to work without BSP faults. Though there is a huge amount more work involved than my split-face method. Choosing between more work and more "error solving" is horrible, probably going to go with more work and not go crazy with the outdoor part like I wanted to. 

@FifthElephant, you are fighting the editor and trying to make it do something that it was not designed for. WC is old, designed long before people did tri-souping or terrain meshes. Valve got over these limitations by having displacement functions and lots of models.

You can easily do terrain or triangle meshes but with other editors. I have been work with GTK editors for years and have written plenty of tutorials. Have a look, maybe you should try a different editor? There are also plenty of tutorials for switch over to something different.

Terrain Tutorials
GTK Tutorial for Q1 

I have tried to wrap my brain around GTK Radient but I suppose I went for WC because of the Q-Adapter, and convenience is a big plus. I'll have to take another look. 

Using your idea RJ I have found making a bunch of triangular/pyramid brushes seems to work without BSP faults. Though there is a huge amount more work involved than my split-face method. Choosing between more work and more "error solving" is horrible, probably going to go with more work and not go crazy with the outdoor part like I wanted to.

you only need to do it the once. save it as a prefab and insert it at any time using the block tool; the brushes will be grouped automatically 

Gave up on trisouping for the same problems. I suspect its a problem with the compiler as well, getting muddled data from WC.

I was even getting problems with the 3-face pyramid cube method Rj mentions so started doing terrain in a different way.

It is much more work as well. 

http://postimage.org/gallery/2epxkb52/f346782f/ 

Mouldy Old Knight

I like the idea of a dual wielding knight with curved swords. The Quake Palette has lots of green/yellow and I wondered what it would look like stained on armour to show age. 

I prefer that flat sword to the runic one.

Two swords suggests (to me) that instead of having a ranged attack he'd be able to deflect player attacks - the non-hitscan ones at least...

Maybe give him a fiend style leap as well? He looks more agile than a carapace armoured DK.

Bad hair day? :) 

Wow - love it. Your monster models are the best thing to happen to Quake for a long time. 

what makes them so impressive, other than the artistry of course, is the fact that they fit in so seamlessly and perfectly with the existing monsters, and of course are made with the limitations of Quake's engine and model format in mind.

All too often I see people making the mistake of putting too many polys in their models, and you just end up with a horrible mess because the verts just get smooshed around with the 8-bit precision. 

The mouldy knight doesn't look like a friendly fellow.. I agree about the yellow writing on the sword too, doesn't seem like a good fit.

The doom level seems a bit simplistic, nice lighting though. The texture scheme reminds me of the space levels in Duke3D. 

The mouldy knight doesn't look like a friendly fellow.. I agree about the yellow writing on the sword too, doesn't seem like a good fit.

The doom level seems a bit simplistic, nice lighting though. The texture scheme reminds me of the space levels in Duke3D. 

@ijed, interesting idea with the deflection of player missiles, not sure how to implement it. Would he be stationary or running at the player with swords crossed while deflecting bullets?
@kinn, thanks, they are designed for Quake Pixel Vision!
@Fifth, the runes are only one side, I might fade them more into the sword but the surface certainly needs something to make it light up when moving. Any ideas? 

I'm surprised no-one has made a knight with a big mace or a spear yet. Or an ogre/knight hybrid, or two-headed super ogre. I should write all these down or draw them.
I wish I could help with the sword but I think the textures in quake 1 are usually too low res for fine details like writing, could be interesting to have him wielding shotels or yataghans. (also I like the deflection idea, like the airgun from PainKeep!) 

Was done in Quoth for the Death Lord - not sure of the method there.

We've got a version as well although it's a bit involved.

Basically you add a global 'shielded' that turns on in the animation while its blocking. All the weapon touch functions then check for this value when hitting anything.

If they hit it then reverse their direction;

self.velocity = self.velocity * -1;

And reset the owner field so it can hurt the player;

self.owner = other;

Or do something a bit more clever with scattering.

It's a bit more work this way but you can apply it whenever you like - so running or doing a standing block would both work. You can also have him receive lower damage from hitscan stuff as opposed to automatically damaging the player with an unfair reflected attack.

Not sure if this would work against the LG. I could investigate more.

Vague idea with the rune sword - why not use framegroups? You can animate up to four skins. Yes, it's a lot of overhead just to make a small part of the skin psuedo-shiny or glowing, but it could look cool.

If you 'group' multiple skins (max 4 AFAIK) in Qme it will flipbook between them automatically.

You can also do this manually by just calling the self.skin = whatever. Which could allow you to make the runes glow when he's doing something special.

Like blocking ;) 

Was done in Quoth for the Death Lord - not sure of the method there.

We've got a version as well although it's a bit involved.

Basically you add a global 'shielded' that turns on in the animation while its blocking. All the weapon touch functions then check for this value when hitting anything.

If they hit it then reverse their direction;

self.velocity = self.velocity * -1;

And reset the owner field so it can hurt the player;

self.owner = other;

Or do something a bit more clever with scattering.

It's a bit more work this way but you can apply it whenever you like - so running or doing a standing block would both work. You can also have him receive lower damage from hitscan stuff as opposed to automatically damaging the player with an unfair reflected attack.

Not sure if this would work against the LG. I could investigate more.

Vague idea with the rune sword - why not use framegroups? You can animate up to four skins. Yes, it's a lot of overhead just to make a small part of the skin psuedo-shiny or glowing, but it could look cool.

If you 'group' multiple skins (max 4 AFAIK) in Qme it will flipbook between them automatically.

You can also do this manually by just calling the self.skin = whatever. Which could allow you to make the runes glow when he's doing something special.

Like blocking ;) 

I've had good success with duplicating some of the mesh and pushing the faces outward a bit and then using alpha value. 

Another trick you can use is to take that duplicated & enlarged mesh, and flip all the triangles in it. This creates an "outline" effect around your model, where the original model can be seen inside even without alpha. 

I remember your (?) model that did that with an egg shape around an Enforcer.

This is how all cell shading solutions do the outline effect as well, duplicating the mesh and applying a 'push' transform and flipping the triangles, then applying a flat black colour to the newly generated mesh.

Where black lines are needed they just get painted onto the diffuse layer.

When it's done to extremes on low poly stuff you start to see artifacts:

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/93349-viewtiful-joe-gamecube-screenshot-starting-a-new-game-joe-and.png

For a Quake forcefield, if you wanted to go nuts, you could export the entire mesh plus animations, push it, flip it and then attach it inside the Qc so that it would follow the animations of its owning monster. This would allow you to apply a .alpha value, animate the skin and apply texture fencing.