Tip Of The Day (No Q:s. only A:s please)

[Krane]

About clean custom textures:

When using custom textures, create a "mymapname" folder inside the textures folder. Put all your custom textures there. Create a shader "mymapname.shader" file and put your textures shaders there. Open the shader and change where you read:

qer_keyword whatever

change to:

qer_keyword mymapname

This way keeps other ppl's main folder in good health. If they type "stone" or "wood" for ex., in Radiant, none of your textures will come up in the editor, and the guy don't acidentally use a texture he thinks is shipped w/ the game.

[crunch]

Here's an Oldie, but goodie:

When working with LOD Terrain, never Exit the Vertex editing mode with V. Always use Esc to deselct vertex editing. This will keep your brushes from "locking" in place, and you won't have to restart Radiant to continue editing your map.

Kill Ya Later!

[BiG_HeaD]

when your hand hurts, ur eyes bleed, and you can smell yourself, its time to get up, and step away from the computer, say again, STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER.

[m4rine]

use the .map tutorials - so many ppl post with newbie questions - i helped a guy on PM when he could have got all the info in one or two tuts rather than about 20 pm's.

[mohaa_rox]

to select a large group of brushes without missing one, draw a large brush over these in "TOP" view, then right click-->select-->complete tall.

lol thx ppl at mansteins, helped me a lot, and now i'm sharing this!

[m4rine]

OFF TOPIC POST

um i thought we were all supposed to turn off our sigs?

and that is one hell of a nice tip mohaa_rox

[Cheetohs]

Want to cut-back on Vis time while compiling?
Click on as many brushes you want that DO NOT touch the area outside the skybox. Now in a 2d view, right click and go 'Make Detailed'. These brushes will then have a green outline in the 2d views. Depending on how many brushes you chose will depend on how much Vis compile time it takes off. It can really help with larger maps.

If you made a brush detailed and want it back to normal, right click in a 2d view, and go 'Make Structure'.

Thanx to Nemesis Tutorial Page . http://users.1st.net/kimberly/Tutorial/vis.htm

***** EDIT BY Bjarne BZR ************
Yes you can do this, but you should not unless you are really aware of what you are doing. So read up on VIS before trying this. Besides, I think you get the same effect easier by opening up a hole in the skybox when you want "a quick compile just to see what something looks like" during developent.
The Storm:s "VIS for dummies, and why use detailed brushes?"

[tltrude]

Turns out that all doors have built-in locks. If the door has a targetname, you can command it to "lock" or "unlock" in your script. A door that has been locked by the script will automattically play the locked sound (locked wooden door sound) when a player tries to open it.

$door1 lock
$door1 unlock

I made a tutorial map and script for it. The doors start locked, and I included animated switches to unlock/relock them. I added a metal locked sound to the doors--using a "sound_locked" key/value. The zip contains a playable pk3, the .map file, and a text version of the script.

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/tltrude/Temp ... e_test.zip

[vonderbakluft]

With this technique you can dynamically connect and disconnect AI paths by script.
You may need that when wanting to toggle theAI going over objects like, drawbridges, trapdoors, elevators or create new paths after some obstacle (wall) is destroyed.

Mapping:
Make a solid texed brush roughly covering the pathnodes you want to dynamically connect/disconnect (if you want an invisible one i suggest common/clip) . Make it script_object and give it a targetname ex. ai_connector

Scripting:
$ai_connector notsolid
level waittill prespawn // The trick. It only works when made notsolid BEFORE prespawn - a k/v notsolid/1 in the map or flagging the surface notsolid or something like that wont work

If you want to make it solid make it solid again AFTER level waittill spawn.

From now on you can dynamically connect the nodes with

$ai_connector connect_paths

and disconnect again with

$ai_connector disconnect_paths

Von

(Note: You can also use the rotating parts of trapdoors and bridges to connect and disconnect paths as long as you make them notsolid before level waittill prespawn. The disadvantage - especially with elevators - is that the objects you use for connecting/disconnecting may not at the right place when you want to toggle connections. A not-moving "help-brush" as the clipbrush in the example keeps it bugfree)

[M&M]

**off topic**maybe some1 could make a tut out of these as they can be very useful,or they could be displayed in one page as probably this thread could get a bit large and have many pages like the compiling errors thread .oh and sry 4 the off topic

[Cheetohs]

(this might be listed already, sorry if it is)

Try avoiding the 'notexture' texture while making brushes. (for example you make your box and hollow it out, and put on the textures, sometimes people will forget about the sides of the brush that touch with the wall because they aren't seen, which can cause problems.)

A good idea would be to use the 'caulk' texture preselected before making your brushes, that way it will cover those unseen faces.

[M&M]

Click on as many brushes you want that DO NOT touch the area outside the skybox. Now in a 2d view, right click and go 'Make Detailed'

does that include small rooms ,like maybe an underground room or a room that doesnt reach the sky?or a small wall that blocks the view for a player if he is on the ground but not on a higher place ..........,there are so many examples

[Bjarne BZR]

Are you the type of mapper that wants to compile a lot to see your progress in-game? I am.
And I learned something today that shortened the LIGHT compile a lot: Don't do it.

If you just:
- Run a standard BSP compile.
- Run a fast VIS compile ( or even faster: make a leak in the skybox ).
- Don't do a LIGHT compile at all.

You will get a totally flat lighted map with no shadowing at all, but damn its fast ( i just compiled my latest map in 4 minutes, and when doing fast VIS and LIGHT it took around 5 hours... pretty good boost )

[vonderbakluft]

Why not:

Make a BSP compile and skip both VIS and LIGHT?

Making a hole in the sky is nothing more than creating an error to avoid VIS from running.

Von

[Andy]

"-radscale 0" speeds mine up a lot.