I knew about this method for having seen this done many times since Doom but I was hoping to make really vertical ladders, not what is basically a steep staircase.

Thanks anyway, Baker. 

each step needs to be <= 18qu high, and thanks to editors+qbsp compilers with non-integer verticies the horizontal distance can be 1/8th of a qu or so without any issues. Yes its not vertical, but can still be quite steep. That said, precision issues might favour sticking to 16:0.25 per step instead of 18:0.125
You could also sneakily angle the surface behind the ladder in such a way that the slope of the ladder is hidden somewhat.

that said, at high physics framerates it'll feel almost like teleportation... :s 

I'll try that and see how it goes. While you're here, I have a tiny OT question (sorry Sock) for you regarding QSS: is it possible to set water, dirty water, slime and lava alpha levels independently from each other? Also their respective opaqueness when the player is swimming under the surface? 

QS (and QSS) have r_wateralpha, r_slimealpha, r_lavaalpha, r_telealpha cvars. Also respective wolrdspawn keys without the "r". Can't have a different opacity above/below though. 

But there's no differenciation whatsoever between clear and dirty water, right? Also, I didn't meant "different opacity above/below" but "different opacity depending on fluid type". DP can do that, I was hoping Spike would have borrowed this feature... 

If you mean q3shaders then no, I didn't add q3shaders to QSS. Only FTE and arguably DP support q3shaders. On the plus side, you can get QSS to spew particles from your water... yay?
Quite frankly, q3shaders suck, which is how DP can get away with supporting them so poorly, while FTE's more complete support means that unmodified shaders end up with no specular/etc.

It would be nice to have some simple material script (instead of 'shaders') that specifies how to handle various textures without significant implementation differences, but that sounds too much like politics for anything to actually come from it. 

Small OT officially over. Since I had this question for you and we were already talking in this thread, I thought it unnecessary to move to the QS thread for such a small question. Should I have moved it anyway? Sorry if it bothered some people. 

You can make a staggered wall panel so steep it seems ridiculous that the Quake guy would walk up it.

Spike is right it's a mind-blowing 18 in the engine source.

It would be like walking up the side of a house, with some minimum size brushes. I think the minimum brush width is 2 units (?), but if I am correct the minimum placement unit is 1 unit?

1 unit is half as thick as the thinnest railing someone has ever made in Quake if the above is correct.

I imagine no one has tried to make a maximum abusiveness ladder because I don't think any discussion of the specifics has ever occurred. 

I have a duplicate of Tokay's Towers that I made for Quake. The ladders were recreated using thin clip brushes in front of the ladders. They're triangular from the top view and point out from the face of the ladder. I think they are only 1 unit thick at that point. The biggest problem is that the player moves up them nearly instantly. It feels very unnatural. 

"almost like teleportation", "nearly instantly"... Damn guys, that wouldn't do. How are ladders made in other mods vs. AD, then? 

@Rick ... good point.

@Mugwump ... generally there aren't. Rubicon2 has ladders, if I recall they require a use key.

Half-Life had ladders everywhere, but without checking I imagine they were special brushes and the engine has altered physics to accommodate. 

Ladders in HL are func_ladder brush entities applied in front of the actual ladder. 

I haven't played Rubicon2 yet but I'm almost 100% positive that I have played a few Quake maps/mods containing ladders that only required to press forward. Can't remember which ones, though.

I've just checked the AD readme. Ladders are entities. How could one modify the ladder entity so that it does what I want? 

almost 100% positive that I have played a few Quake maps/mods containing ladders that only required to press forward

If you can remember the names, I could probably tell you how they did them. 

Actually, I'd rather learn how to modify the ladder entity. It would allow me to play existing AD maps with ladders to my liking instead of only creating ones for my own maps. 

 

Actually, I'd rather learn how to modify the ladder entity. It would allow me to play existing AD maps with ladders to my liking instead of only creating ones for my own maps.

Please do it and let me know when it's ready. 

which is why I asked in the first place. Can someone point me to a tutorial or explain (in n00b terms) how to do it? 

But,
If you set trigger_ladder speed to like 200 or 250 you can climb faster.

Is that what you mean? 

but we can move this to mapping help if requested.

I mean setting ladders to be climbed in one go by pressing forward instead of jumping step-by-step. 

There was a mod called QuakeLife video.

As you can imagine, it is playing Quake co-operative with friends against the monsters on Half-Life maps.

It is likely that the source code to Quake-Life has a ladder solution, otherwise how could you play the Half-Life maps which are loaded with ladders?

https://github.com/autonomous1/quakelife (source code for Quake-Life) 

I've never seen QuakeLife before, though...

But Baker, you know I ain't no coder. I can't do anything with a source code... 

no need to jump step by step 

Well, in all my AD playing I never realized that! :$

It significantly reduces the need for what I have in mind. Still, I would like to learn how to do something like that, for educational purposes. 

don't quoth ladders do it where pushing forwards (while looking up-ish) lets you go up? Also the pox extras mod does it, right?