Not so much for slowing your pc down, but more for selectively getting stuff out of the way.

My maps tend to have visgroups set up like this:

liquids
doors
buttons
details

With adding to the list as needed - the show entities option taking care of the rest.

Makes it alot simpler to build recesses for moving stuff, set up triggers and their areas, block stuff out, etc.

Hiding whole areas I don't bother with so much any more. 

that a shity thing in Quark :| but i love the editor... :)

I usualy dont use big wads...

visgroups? how? never try!!! 

Trinca, log in like normal people ;) 

Texture settings are in the prefs menu: in standard set up it is the tool bar icon, top row, 5th one in from the right (pref). Your settings are in there. If you look at my screenshots from earlier you will see I have textures just as you suggest.

Axedskullglow is 128 x 128 and azwall3_1 is 64 x64 

...select Textures from the drop down menu 

Really? Hell yes! That will be great, thanks for the info!

But no love on 3D vertex manipulation? 

I haven't seen that in 3D (not that I have looked) but I tend to select the face in 3D and then manipulate in 2D. The 3D window updates in real-time anyway.

I have a scroll wheel mouse so I select face in 3D, move the mouse over whichever 2D window is relevant, scroll to zoom in or out, right click and drag to move the view around, manipulate brush using this method.

I have been playing with terrain on and off for ages and I have no problems. 

Selecting a brush in 2D is just SHIFT and left click on the brush's centre x.

You can also change the selected face of a selected brush by left clicking close the the outside edge of the new face. 

OK, just checking. I had 3D manipulation of stuff in ToeTag and it was hella useful. I'll just have to get used to this method for now then.

Thanks for all your help, BTW. It great to have someone to fill in the holes that I can't fill with the help docs. 

Hammer visgroups are groups in QuArK... as far as I know ;) 

thanks JPL 

I was thinking of including some monsters from the mission pack(s).
Is there any documentation showing me what files I need to copy and how to write them into the WC fgd ?
I probably need to make a new pak then too, do I ? 

There is something I can't do at all and that is making new monster models. I don't want to learn it either, I think others can do a better job anyway. But I've got this idea of creating a really tall (bigger than the Shambler) version of an Ogre, carrying a large hammer or axe, that is really fast and crushes a player with one good blow. It would be cool to make him act hostile toward any non-Ogres. Not an end boss or anything, just an occasional annoyance. Dodging, shooting and staying alive would be the way past him.

If you like the idea, I would love to use your skills ... 

Model: open ogre.mdl in QME. Scale it up. Delete the grenade launcher (+shoot animation) and the chainsaw. Paste an upscaled player axe minus the hand and move the vertices of the blades until they resemble a hammer (or simply use the Mjolnir mdl). Align the hammer to the smash animation.

QC: no idea.

I'm not going to do it. :) 

I converted some monsters from DOE and SOA.
It's not such a difficult thing only qc is hard to extract as it worms all around.
I once tried the Gremlin for its weapon thievery.

I'm working on the Old Ogre so I could make something like that. 

where's your ID or email? 

Any help regarding any of these would be greatly apprecciated!

Textures - I am still unable to convert my Wads to HLwads. Does anyone know if there has been an updated version of Bakers wad conversion tool?
If not, what is the best way to go about converting the textures manually?

Curves - I have read and come to terms with CZG's 2 point curve technique. I was wondering if anyone could explain a nice clean way to extrapolate that into more detailed curves, using the arch tool or otherwise.
I usually find it impossible to keep my arches on grid/ at the right angles with the arch creation tool in WC 3.3.

Lights - How do I set spotlights up? Can detailed info be found on the Bengt page regarding that?

Thanks! 

OK, well Im nt going to carry on about the texture conversion, but the other points:

Smooth Arches - I tend to do this by eye, looking from the side.

Lights - so make a spotlight ad the key "mangle" with the value "0 -90 0".

The first 0 can be changed of you want the light to point in a funny angle (it rotates the angle of projection through the x axis), the second number "-90" says to point directly at the floor. This could be -45 for example, if you wanted it to point down at 45 degrees. And the final number "0" is irrelevant, it is just a marker. 

Are you on Vista?

Also, don't use any auto-creation tools in wc3.3 - they're all crap.

This is how I make 24 sided stuff -

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/24sided.jpg

Which should serve for high detail curves.

If you go back in mapping help history a couple of pages you'll find a discussion on twists / spirals. 

I include the subtract / boolean / carve on the list of bad stuff.

It's even better to make your own circles using slice, instead of having to auto-make one, rotate it, then snap it to grid with vertex manipulation. 

... yeah.

Ricky - thanks for that explanation - seems simple enough!

Ijed - I've only used the arch tool once - in sm149 (hence the title "Brushwork of The Damned") and I never plan to use it again!

The aspect that confuses me is making a pathway or maybe a hollow tube that encircles that 24 sided cylinder. tightly. without being leaky or buggy or otherwise shitty.

I understand how to me to skew and clip a path like that around a 12 sided cylinder, but I'm at a loss regarding how to do that around a 24 sided cylinder.

Hope that makes some sense. If not oh well, it's late and my eyes are bleeding. 

Right click on the tool and run as administrator - I think that's how it works. Or turn of UAC.

The jpg I sent shows you how to wrap stuff around a 24 sider though - if you try making pie slices out from the centre (same as for a 12 sided) you'll see it stays on grid.

Does take a bit more trial and error though. 

I'll mess around with it.

It's one of those things - I want to learn how to do it "properly" but it's frustrating tinkering around when I could be making a fun interesting map that just so happens to have crappier brushwork.

it's a fine line, especially considering this is just a hobby. I only want to map for fun.

thanks again for your help guys, I appreciate you taking time to answer my stupid questions! 

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/2403/24sidedarch.jpg

How close is this to what ijed sent you, Drew? Can provide map file if you want.

I did it like this (in gtkradiant 1.4): Start with 24 sided cylinder, 256*256, using standard ratios. On an 8-unit grid, the ratios are: 2:0, 4:1, 4:2, 3:3, 2:4, 1:4, 0:2.

Then copy it and scale it up 1.5x, and again 2.0x, radiant can do this scaling easily. Then draw imaginary lines from the center to the edges, the points should match up (pie slices as ijed says).

Now... wrapping a hollow cylinder around a cylinder... is possible, but a fucking headache, and it's actually somewhat editor dependent as to what's possible or not. Last time I looked at the problem, it was simply not possible in Radiant to wrap a 12 sided hollow pipe around a 12 sided cylinder, because of, well I'm not sure exactly, but it has to do with how radiant won't let you make invalid concave brushes like worldcraft will. That old "CZG curve tutorial" is somewhat useless in radiant because they handle skewing and group edge dragging completely differently.

However it is entirely possible to wrap a simpler, 8-sided cylinder around a 12 sided one. It should be possible to do the same around a 24-sided cylinder, though I'm not sure if I've ever tried. If you do, make the pieces really big so it fits on grid. In the above screenshot, the arch goes down to 2 and 4 unit grid already.