I am trying to get my maps to work with Darkplaces and I have setup all my bmodels (doors, buttons) with skip on their hidden surfaces. I have been using your newskip.exe program to move the skip surfaces around inside of the bsp, but strange things are happening.

Projectiles often fall through the bmodels with skip surfaces and traceline functions cannot recognize the objects anymore. If I compile without the newskip.exe the bmodels are all fine. I checked that the objects have the correct bbox and min/max setup but I cannot see what is wrong.

What exactly does newskip.exe do? I want to be able to explain to LordHavoc so that I can log a bug with him about Darkplaces and hopefully get the situation fixed. I really want to keep the skip surface function but I need to get more details. Can you help? 

basically skip tool will re-arrange the faces in the leaf or bmodel so that the skip faces are at the end of the list, then it changes the "num faces" count to be lower.

so if you start with this:

NumFaces: 6
Faces: A B C D E F

And B and C are skip-textured, you get this at the end:

NumFaces: 4
Faces: A D E F B C

So B and C are still included in the list, but won't get drawn because the engine will stop after drawing the first 4 faces.

Also the source code is included in the newskip archive, so Lordhavoc should be able to look at it in more detail if he wants to. 

thanks :) 

I thought it deleted the faces. That explains why newskipped bsps when loaded into another map as a .model still render all of their faces even when loaded by themselves they don't render. (Yeah I was playing around with the idea of instancing (you know like source engine!) multiple bsp's which works almost perfectly but would be absolutely horrid for performance in my case since skipping doesn't work. That and you get fireflies between mating surfaces of zero thickness (think tri-soup where two brushes only share an edge)); 

Wait how does the engine render entity .model's like for monsters and brush entities? Is there a way to have a skip utility that causes certain faces of a bsp to have the pink index color of transparency applied to them? 

The latest tyr-qbsp removes skip surfaces completely during compilation (instead of hiding them at the end of the surface list) in case that helps. 

Interesting, I didn't consider that use case when creating the tool. It should be possible to support it, though tyranns new absolute kind of makes my tool obsolete. 

"Absolute" should read "qbsp" -- cursed iPad autocorrect 

Darkplaces doesn't treat skip surfaces as simply tranpsarent faces by default like normal engines. Instead, to DP it's pretty much like they aren't there, so shots pass through and they don't block visibility. Check the sv_gameplayfix_q1bsptraceline* cvars, they can revert this behavior. 

i wish skip worked on external bsps. that would be radddddd 

Sounds like tyr's does? 

This question has probably been asked before but after hours of Googling, I have to turn to you. I've been using GTKRadiant 1.4 for Quake 3. I would like to use the same editor for Quake. According to several readme's from different maps, this should be possible.

Google has thought me GTKRadiant 1.5 has a gamepack for Quake and should be easy to configure. However, I don't like 1.5. I'm spoiled like that :)

Quake ED by Sikkpin is mentioned a lot. But all I find are dead download links. There doesn't seem to be a site for it.

Other editors are mentioned of course but before switching it would be great to hear if it's possible with GTKRadiant. If not, links to Quake Ed by Sikkpin would be appreciated since that one seems to be the best fit for me (based on what I read). 

The Quake gamepack should work with either version. Worth a try. 

Looking into it. Apparently official support is dropped for 1.5 and later. So no official gamepack download. Currently looking for mirrors :) 

A slightly modified version of it is available here.

And while I'm at it, might just drop this link as well: q1maptools.zip 

Should be pretty easy to pull that data out of a demo file (assuming you have code lying around that reads demo files, I have some oddball Python at https://code.launchpad.net/~mwhudson/+junk/demp, Mandel has some C at https://github.com/mandelmassa/libdemo or you can ram the demo through lmpc and parse the text). 

Thank you for those files. Unfortunately, the pack doesn't seem to be compatible with GTK 1.4. I got pretty far and solved several errors but eventually it would still crash.

Maybe someone else has any ideas? Otherwise a link to Sikkpin QE would be appreciated. 

You can totally use GTK1.4 with q1, but it requires some small bits of hackery.

Basically, you extract your texture wad as jpg or tga and store them like a q3 texture pack.
Then, when you go to compile, you convert the map that was saved from GTKR (which will be a q3 .map format) into the q1 .map format with a converter program. then you compile as normal.

When i get home, I'll see if I can dig up my old guide for this. 

That would be great. I thought about converting but figured it wouldn't work texture wise and Quake uses different entities and such. At least, when you decompile everything is messed up. 

http://necros.fov120.com/post.php?postID=7

Its very old, but it explains the process at least. You can probably make it so that you can select Quake1 as a game mode (like Quake3, RTCW, etc...) instead of overwriting the Quake3 entities file... see GTKRadiant documentation on how to set up different games for that. I haven't used GTKR in ages. 

btw, i forgot, but there is a better guide to using gtkradiant. i also forgot who made it. :\ 

GTK1.3+ Quake 1 Editor Files

Here is my Quake 1 setup for GTK 1.3+ Please check the readme file for more details of where all the files go and what they do. I was planning to test the entities.def file today, but ran out of time, it was a crazy day. I went through my own def file and took out all my custom MOD stuff, which may cause a couple of problems.

You will need to get some compiler tools, I only included the textures and editor files. You can use func_group entities with most Quake compilers, just remember to add the right switches, for example "txqbsp -group -q2map %1" will cope with Q3 map format and groups! :) 

@Necros: Thank you for the link. What editor are you using now?

@Sock: We can always count on you. Thanks for sharing. A couple of questions though:

The GTK 1.3.8 beta doesn't have native Quake support. I take it I have to create my own gamepack much like mentioned in Necros his guide?

Based on the files you posted I figured this:

Entities.def and q1.shader go in the q1.game folder inside Radiant. I have to make this.

I would need a q1.game file for the qames folder in Radiant.

Textures and maps should be in the Quake folder and Tools doesn't matter right?

Also, Radiant should be installed with only q3 game support? In your readme you mention SDRadiant. Perhaps that's the difference?

I got 1.5 to run with Quake but god I hate that editor. Getting into Quake mapping, while using 1.4, is harder than I thought. My head hurts after 2 days of Googling, trying stuff out and harassing people. 

I recommend you setup the editor like you are going to make q3 map.

* Go to the scripts directory under baseq3
* Rename the existing "entities.def" file to "entities.q3def" instead.
* Add "q1.shader" to the "shaderlist.txt" file
* Drop the zip file into the baseq3 directory.
* Extract the zip file
* Open editor, make cool maps!
* Setup quake 1 compiler tools in maps directory
* Setup compiler batch file (remember special switches)
* Compile map
* Copy bsp/lit files to quake directory 

Damn it, just use TrenchBroom! :)