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TyrUtils V0.11
TyrUtils v0.11 has been released:

*Support BSP2 format (qbsp requires the "-bsp2" command line option)
*qbsp: Fix animating texture bug when brushes are textured with alt-animations
* qbsp: Fix a crash in tjunc calculations
* qbsp: Exit with error if verticies exceed 65535 (BSP29 limit)
* qbsp: Add experimental "-forcegoodtree" command line option (thanks Rebb)
* vis: reduce "leaf recursion" error to a warning and continue processing

Download from the utils page as usual (Win32 / OSX / source).
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Nah Brah 
I will make sure that all my maps are minimum 16x res shadows...

I wont play by your rules!!!! 
 
would global 2x res be worth doing? Filesize prolly wouldn't be too bad? 
 
Like I said, don't call this a bust or anything yet. I'd approach my lighting differently if every/most things had crisp shadows, because I'd want to highlight those more often rather than the ugly blobs we currently have and use a bunch of blurring to make look passable. 
 
are there any quake maps that actually use cast shadows really well? We should test on those. I'm thinking like, dm2 and dm4 have a lot of shadows behind grates and stuff. 
 
dm6 stairs maybe? 
 
Don't know that it's the best test case, but dakyne is what came to mind first. 
DM2 
here's DM2, compiled with -extra4 -soft -dirty -dirtscale 1.5 -dirtgain 0.9 -lightmapscale 0.25 (4x resolution)

area1, lit, textured
area1, lit, lightmap
area1, lit2, textured
area1, lit2, lightmap

area2, lit, textured
area2, lit, lightmap
area2, lit2, textured
area2, lit2, lightmap

area3, lit, textured
area3, lit, lightmap
area3, lit2, textured
area3, lit2, lightmap

area4, lit, textured
area4, lit, lightmap
area4, lit2, textured
area4, lit2, lightmap

Obviously DM2 wasn't made with this in mind, but I think this does show were some of the higher resolution lightmaps can make a big difference. 
Cool Stuff There Scamps 
DM2 is definitely a good showpiece for this new feature 
Awwww 
just tried to compile dm2 at 16x with all those settings...15min compile to make a 93mb .lit2 that is too big and crashes :_( 
 
I was testing fte with a 173mb lit2 before I started messing with projected lights.

(side note: xz compessed it to 14mb, so if you can cope with the load times then its not completely impractical to distribute, just use 7z or xz instead of zip or gz - assuming lit2 was a finalized file format anyway) 
#413 
I prefer the blurry lit1 shots in all of those examples. 
#413 
scamp - any chance you could post a shot of area3 with 2x instead of 4x? 
Area Light Support? 
Wait dont we have area lights support in these compilers? If so then you can have sharp bases for the lights that widen out and look super sweet with this new resolution.

http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/forum/3/3dsmax_viewport_shadows.jpg 
 
Not going to bother with 2x. That goal isn't 'find a compromise where higher resolution and American McGee's lighting from 1996 looks good'. The goal is to make a high resolution lighting system, and make THAT look good. 
Alright Hitler 
keep your trousers on. 
 
I disagree. I don't like the 16x lighting. The hard edges and sharp shadows don't look good to me. What I'm looking for is a 2X, maybe a 3x, improvement in resolution. That would give me what I need to make Quake levels look better than they do today while still retaining the look that makes them work. 
After Testing 
I came to the conclusion that either 2x or 4x could be the new standard for modern mappers. I'm certainly going to map with this in mind. 
 
I think one of the factors making the DM2 shots look bad is the unnatural approach id took to lighting back then, using multiple lights to represent light from the sky as this screenshot taken at Scampie's location 3 indicates - http://puu.sh/hVGCZ/4ed3224645.jpg (taken with DarkPlaces and r_editlights 1 for the sake of convenience).

As a result, you get shadows being cast in several different directions, in a location where one sees a sky above and no other light source and thus expects all shadows to be cast in the same direction. Consequently it ends up looking weird when they aren't. This wasn't quite so prominent with lower lightmap resolution.

I think of all the screenshots Scampie took, the one at location 4 looks best, and that's not surprising since there is only a single light source there - http://puu.sh/hVH6K/089cd1541c.jpg - and thus it looks more realistic. However, as others have said, even in location 4 there is the issue of the shadows looking unnaturally sharp a la Doom 3 and the increased resolution can produce that old problem of better quality media appearing dissonant with the low fidelity of most of the game.

Nonetheless, ericw, I think once people have worked out what combination of compile options works best for a given scenario, this will be a really nice feature and I wouldn't be discouraged by the mixed results so far. 
 
Correction: the first screenshot in my previous post is actually Scampie's location 2. 
Multiple Lights For Skies 
AFAIK id never had the ability to scale lights using the options we have now, they certainly never had things like skyboxes casting light in pretty much any uniform direction. 
 
Yes, like I said, DM2 obviously wasn't lit with this in mind, of course it looks terrible. The test was for curiosity, and to see how much of a difference higher resolution lightmaps make on a map which relies heavily on shadows (as opposed to my maps, where I rely more on bright highlights of light)

And yes 5th, the original tools had no falloff options, no sunlights, -extra was the only compile option for added quality.


Anyone know a decent decompiler? I'd actually like to take a stab at relighting DM2 with a proper sunlight setting 
No Need For A Decompiler... 
all the map sources have been released by romero... you can pretty much just use that to redo everything.

No idea where you can find the files, it used to be on romero's website but that hasnt worked in a while. 
 
oh... must be on quaddicted somewhere. 
Ah 
Scamps... 
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