I seem to be on track then. I was worried it might end up loooking a little gimmicky or overdone. I think back to alot of maps that aren't real detailed but still look better than id-quality, just because the textures were used so well with the right brush shapes. (I'm recalling e1m1 remix by czg/vondur) That's what's inspiring. 

So, I'm working on this D3 map, and I have this area with a windowed ceiling -- basically I want the sky to light the room, thereby casting correct/realistic/logical shadows in the room.

Seems easy enough right? Well...

Doom 3 doesn't have texture lighting or environment lighting -- so the way to get sunlight is to have spotlight set above the area and surrounded by caulk. (at least that's the best way I've found)

Except -- this is what happens:

http://blitz.circa1984.com/wtf.JPG

http://blitz.circa1984.com/editor_d3.JPG

^^^ As you can see, the entire light is inside of the giant caulk box, but still, it doesn't come out right in the game.

I've searched D3W and it seems like the only other way to get this to work is to add a few lines into EACH INDIVIDUAL MATERIAL you want to have the effect (seems like a shitty hack and extremely time consuming)

So I'm hoping someone who has more experience than I with the D3 engine can explain what is going on here, and possibly offer a solution.

Thanks guys 

I figured it out!!! Woot. Everything is falling into place now -- I can feel it. In the past, this sort of thing would derail me for days, but now I'm feeling like my luck will change and everything is coming up BLITZ!! 

Very interesting ! Very nice ! Keep it up, it sounds good for the future ! 

Hmmmm...I've been doing a fair bit of sunlight in my map, and I just stick a big bastard regular light in the room, and offset the origin to somewhere behind the window. 

AFAIK you can make glas in quake using some trap_spekeshooter and trigger_once. I don't remember now how it works exactly but it is possible. The glas won't be breakable, and you can't shot thru it. 

What do you mean by 'I wish Quake had glass windows'. Do you mean textures that look like windows, or do you mean a seethrough, breakable brush? 

Seethrough, breakable and non-breakable glass. It looks pretty odd having an empty window. 

I've seen trigger_once with its health set to a large number and its brush where you want the "window" to be. It will then bleed when you shoot it, but you can't shoot nor pass through it. I guess that if you wear down the health it becomes passable again, but I haven't checked that. 

You're asking a lot of an engine that can't do it =).

Efdm9 has the bleeding glass thing in. 

See, you are thinking moreso of a functional window. I'm more concerned with the appearance of a window. 

Not really - we know you can VIS water and certain textures to appear translucent, so... 

I think trigger_once has to have low health and has to be shoot only once by trigger_spikesooter then it behaves like clip brush but you cant' shot thru it and it doesn't bleed 

different textures for see-through, breakable and non-breakable glass? 

Try this link and look at the Glass.txt file:-

ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/games/PC/idgames2/quakec/level_enhancements/

It mentions 'transparent, breakable glass'.

I don't have the Hipnotic add-on so I haven't tested it. 

I do remember that glass was available in some mod - perhaps custents - but that it was rather crap. What it actually was was an invisible entity with bsp clipping that could take damage. When it was destroyed it spawned really REALLY shit looking white "shards".

Oh, and did anyone ever use that funky moving water mod someone made a while ago? I was really impressed with that actually. There was water attached to a func_train and you could swim in it as it moved around. It was better than q2 water by a long shot.

Anyone know more about that? 

i think custents had glass, but it was totally invisible. The best you could do in quake would be to make a little oriented sprite of a window pane, mostly transparent but with streaks of grey or blue (like in the cartoons) and tie that to a solid entity. Then, create some other oriented sprites of broken glass shards, and when the glass breaks, kill it and spawn a bunch of spinning shards that bounce away like gibs.

The water than is talking about was made by pox, and i remember being really impressed but never getting around to using it. He also had ladders that worked slightly better than the rubicon2 ladders, and i was meaning to steal them but never got around to it. 

func_togglewall, toggleable solid see-through wall (essentially 'glass' but without the lame bleeding). usually used in conjunction with func_particlefield as those do not block objects.

if you're aiming for a custom engine for your map/mod, easier to find a decent glass texture (some of the ikbase ones are decent for this, or q2 ones), and give it an alpha value for transparency. 

Anyone play that level from 1997? I think it was called "The Fly." 

there was nice idea with gravity change... 

pox mod with water and and ladders and buttons attached to lifts and all working and it was mixed with the hipnotics I think

I fooled around with it a bit 

moving water brushes that you can actually swim around in?? how is that possible in Q1? 

I tried to made this with func_door (i.e water depth change), ... and water became solid... :( so I guess there's a special feature there... maybe in some pack mods... who knows ? BTW I didn't see it in any Q1 map... :P 

it exploits an engine bug where .watertype is not always set properly, so qc can change its value and it will stay at that wrong value. 

and, combines with v_cshift to fake the screen blend that normally accompanies water.