Hi there,
How to make a dark place on map? I played on Thief City map and i saw room which has lights, but corner of room was tottaly black 
&
What the following keys give you:
KEY:
_color 1.000000 0.925142 0.511275
_blocksize 2048 2048 2048
_fog textures/beach/beach_fog
fogclip 3096
gridsize 256 256 128
ambient 18
Thanks!
This can be found on this forum, but since I want to train my memory Iâll give it a go:
ambient: adds this value to all the light maps, black gets lighter, grey shifts a little bit to white and white just remains white. (Use with care!)
_color: changes the ambient lightingâs color
_blocksize: Q3Map2 divides your map standard in blocks of 4096x4096x? to have basic portals. This will change those sizes.
fogclip : the Q3 engine will draw fog from your view untill it getâs opaque at the distance specified.
_fog: sets the fog shader for the previous key.
gridsize: IIRC this changes the lightgrid size, if you makethe values larger youâll get a smaller BSP but allso less detailed model lighting.
I think it depends on what kind of place you want to have. For a dark room, you have to lower your ambient key and maybe increase the light from the sky shader and add some extra lights in places which are not reached by the sky light. For an outside area, you need a low ambient (or maybe no ambient light at all) and a low sun light. You would then have to add lots of light entities around this dark place to get any light in your map. Maybe you can post a screenshot of the area youâre talking about.
ambient: adds this value to all the light maps, black gets lighter, grey shifts a little bit to white and white just remains white. (Use with care!)
I think that s confusing as a description. Ambient gives your map a certain basic brightness EVERYWHERE (even where the sun donât shine & you didnât put any LIGHT entities). So its a good thing to use when you donât want your areas with shadow not pitch black but only a dark shadow where you can see playermodels nevertheless.
An ambient of 18 is a VERY high value and not to be recommended. It is the reason why you donât have dark shadows. I recommend you compile your map once with ambient 1 (which is almost 0 so you can see how dark shadows get without ambient). Then try something like 8, then 10 etc. until you get the darkness of your shadows as you want them.
So it works the other way round: you canât make particular shadows dark. You only can define the max. darkness of shadows using ambient, and then light up everything you donât want that dark with either sunlight from a skyshader or LIGHT entities.
The _light is a rgb-defined color that your ambient lighting will have. So with a 1 1 1 value you get white ambient lighting, with a 0.8 0.8 0.8 you get a light grey etc. This can be useful to give the overall map a certain atmosphere by a basic light-color from the ambient. I recommend you use something neutral at teh start. Or you mess around with your graphics program until you find a color that you want for that basic ambient-color. Again: only by trying out different things you ll find a good solution for your map.
_blocksize: Q3Map2 divides your map standard in blocks of 4096x4096x? to have basic portals. This will change those sizes.
Standard blocksize is 1024x1024x1024. Donât forget the z-axis blocksize too.
And if you are new to mapping, I strongly recommend you dont mess with the blocksize but let it at 1024 for everything. When you got a good idea on how VIS and leafs and VIS-blocking work, then you can mess with the blocksize. But you NEED a good understanding of that AND compile log to actually see whether changing those values does your map any good.
About the fog: If you use fogclip, you also MUST use farplanedist, otherwise the use of fog is pointless and will only give you a seriously bad gameperformance (=low FPS) (and FPS is KING). I recommend you search for fogclip and farplanedist on this forum, there are LOTS of posts on it.
Ok. Iâll check them out
Which compiling do you prefer McNite?
I use: Q3Map2: (single) BSP -meta
Thanks guys 
You need the latest version of q3map2 (can be found on the forum i think), and personally i prefer Q3map2build by Bobdev as the frontend (it makes logfiles too).
Donât compile within Radiant, that is incredibly slow compared to using a frontend and q3map2 directly.
I use: Q3Map2: (single) BSP -meta
Seems like you are not compiling the light stage, so thatâd be why you canât see any dark area.
If you are gonna keep compiling with radiant, then you could use Q3map2: (test)BSP -meta -vis -light -fast -filter.
About ambient lightning, I wouldnât use values higher than 10, otherwise the contrast between lights and shadows is in my opinion too low.
Using q3map2build as a frontend and q3map2 2.5.16 for the compiling, these settings were good for like 95% of my compiles:
BSP -meta -v
VIS -v
LIGHT -v -fast
If you want just to check on brushwork, leave out the LIGHT stage as its takes most of the time.
You donât want to use -fast in VIS stage, because then no VIS blocking is calculated and the FPS of your map drop endlessly.
Huh, i downloaded q3map2build, i set the preferences as you prefered to and compiled my map.
When map was loading, i have got an error, that .PK3 file is invalid⌠it means that something is wrong, but i donât know what 
Does anyone know why i have this error?
Igloo, i strongly recommend you search for a tutorial on âgetting startedâ, because it seems you r going through all the beginners things now.
And if you get this problem, you should at least post what you EXACTLY did when you got the error, because that is the only way we really can help.
Heh, you should to read my post again. I wrote that i set the same things as you set.
BSP -meta -v
VIS -v
LIGHT -v -fast
I didnât change anything else :drink:
Actually, the error you get is totally unrelated to the compile options.
As ]UBC[ McNite is saying, you donât know the full basics yet and it seems you try to much for what you know imho.
Furthermore, such errors can have a few reasons⌠So youâd better search around, eventually make sure your ET folder is clean etc.
Eventually, youâll be on your own as we canât see whatâs wrong from here. I can only wish you good luck.