I don't use WC 3.4, so I don't know how most people get around this. An obvious, although tedious, solution is to scale up the brightness of all the textures in your WC3.4 wad. I kind of think there's another solution, though. Clearly, you'll need an answer from a Hammer user.

P.S. This sort of question belongs in the Mapping Help thread. We try to reserve new threads for topics that will have longer discussions. 

sorry, I will put it in the correct thread next time.
Maybe its possible to batch-execute some brightness corrections on the textures and use another set of textures for the compilingwork (to make sure that quake isn't all washed-out and stuff, not very horrific imho) 

The thing is, I can't remember if there's some program that will automatically batch convert a Hammer wad and brighten all the textures.

But as far as I know, the Hammer wads have nothing to do with how their corresponding textures appear in Quake. You could probably have a wad full of pink and purple solid textures, and as long as they have the same names and dimensions as their counterparts in quake101.wad, it would still look dark and horrific in Quake. :) 

Is that Hammer 3.4 doesn't let you adjust the brightness of the textures. The brightness doesn't effect the textures themselves, just how bright you see them in the editor. Earlier versions of WorldCraft did have this option, but apparently Valve, in their almighty wisdow, decided to get rid of it, since it's so obviously absolutely useless.

My solution was to turn up the brightness on my monitor. It's not very effective or practical, but it helps a bit. 

For me the brigthness in editor is just right. Do you mean brightness in 3D or in the texture selection window? The old Worldcraft feature with brightness adjustment was really good.
I'm using Hammer for some time now but I'm not really happy with it. I have problems with texture positioning and some other bugs. Meh. 

We try to reserve new threads for topics that will have longer discussions.

To be fair he did make the first post as verbose as possible.

Vigil, Valve probably ditched it to make sure everyone was looking at the maps at the same native brightness. Considering how important accurate and realistic lighting/texturing was in HL2 they probably even had a monitor calibration gestapo like most special effects studios. 

I hope someone knows a solution to the brightness problem. I have no problems on my old PC with it's CRT, but with my new computer with the LCD monitor, I can't see a thing if it's a dark texture set. I've got monitor brightness / contrast at near maximum as it is, and I usually get a very good picture from the screen, but at the moment I'm forced to change colour profile in my nVidia options when i use Hammer. I hope there's a more neat solution to this.

Vigil, Valve probably ditched it to make sure everyone was looking at the maps at the same native brightness. Considering how important accurate and realistic lighting/texturing was in HL2 they probably even had a monitor calibration gestapo like most special effects studios.

Maybe for HL2, but this is Hammer 3.4 we're talking about here. There's no editor preview of in-game lighting, all you need is to be able to do is see the damn textures in the 3d view, and they seem to have removed that ability in newer versions. Shame, as I really like Hammer, I'd find it difficult to go back to WC 1.6 anyway. 

Thanks for all the responses. I guess there is no way to fix the problem for me then. My monitor is already at it's maximum brightness (a really, really old and realy really crappy 14 inch one) so no solace for me there. Yesterday I downloaded Worldcraft 1.6, so i'm going to try that. Cheers. 

try to find Poland mapper�s (Qurnel,matt, mishu) they use hammer i think! 

Bloody hell dude, you could pick up a decent 17" secondhand crt for virtually nothing, why are you still using that? 

he lives in a very tiny apartment 

by apartment you mean 2 cubic meters closet? 

Don't mock my room! It's comfortable, and the rent's not bad. 

my apartment is small but i got view to the beatch :0) 

There is a way, I forget exactly how I did it but it was quite some time ago. I think it's something like this (aguire would be a good person to ask): you can convert the quake1 wads to Hammer format using the wadconv utility, and you can actually give wadconv a brighter palette so that the wads it converts will be brighter than the original quake wads. OF course, when compiling, the original quake wads will be used so the level will look normal ain quake but in the editor you'll be able to see what the hell is going on in the 3d window.

heck, if you want I could just upload all the brighter Hammer format wads I have for you 

Did you get my last two emails? 

Just got 'em now. Just got back from vacation. Expect a response as soon as I can screw my head on straight. I've only skimmed them so far, but a thanks in advance for the stuff you've done.