InsideQC Forums

A potential drawback with q3 bsp is dynamic lighting in dark areas. Dynamic lights are multipliers, proportional in strength to the lightmap. Compare to q1 and q2 bsps where dynamic lighting is additive and can go from zero to overbright.

This was done as a performance enhancement, lots of hyperblaster dynamic lights in q3 with minimal hit to fps. A good trade-off for multiplayer gaming where very dim areas are undesirable anyway.

That's Q3's renderer's fault, not the BSP format. Raven didn't have that issue with Jedi Academy, they had additive dynamic lighting just fine.

Absolutely, it's important to distinguish between the renderer and the BSP format (that's why I left skyboxes out of the advantages of Q2 BSP).

A guy called tZork is making a vehicle plugin for Nexuiz.

The maps (Quake BSP format, I think) looks absolutelly wrong with that scale. The small light circle on the ground that a rocket generate may look ok on indoor areas, but on a open outdoor area is totally wrong for some reason. And here is the key... It seems that to do outdoor lighting right, you must use multiplicators to the lightmap, not additive!!.. at least, it would look better. Very interesting, guys.

That's Q3's renderer's fault, not the BSP format.

I stand corrected. Lighmap textures are still independent (colored!) bitmaps in q3, so it's up to the engine. I learned that Generations Arena has a cvar to switch from dynamic lighting 'multiply' (faster) to 'add' (more realistic).

to do outdoor lighting right, you must use multiplicators to the lightmap, not additive!!

Light from a rocket is much dimmer than "real" sunlight... completely light-up a dim room, but invisible outside. Maybe the outdoor areas should be almost max overbright to compensate? Or greater fall-off on the dynamic light?

My vote for Q3BSP (+q3map2 compiler!)

about q3bsp
>>You can't Worldcraft it.

You can convert q1map file to q3map file with my converter: http://scrama.3dn.ru/tmp/MapConverter.zip