This tutorial was originally written by None-1a. And were originally posted to QERadiant's website. They are mirrored here for archival purposes. QERadiant can be downloaded here.
Water and All It's Glory
Opening Statements.
Hi None-1a here (the message board FAQ guy). Are you ready to get wet?
1: The creation of static water, and some things to avoid while useing it. .
2: How to make water that flows, (and pushes the player along)
3: Creation of water that flows out of an area when a button is pressed, (actually lava but its the same thing)
4: How to make water that looks like it has waves in it. (it's not very convinsing but it works)
Water, Lava, Slime = water in this tutorial.
When this tutorial is over you will have that option to download my version of it, this version will show you some things you should all ways avoid (not all ways problems can be used to make neat tricks but I'll leave your creative mind to find out how)
Static water, No not tv static
Static water refers to water that doesn't go anywhere. It's actually very simple, but there has been a lot of confusion on how its done.
First lets make a new project and map, name them what ever you like. Now create a room to hold every thing in, so we can see it latter in quake. Texture it how you like, the roof should have a light emitting texture.
Right here where going to make a fish tank, and a simple ladder you can use to get in it. So First make a brush out of glass (this brush should be just large enough for the player to move in), and hallow it. Give the bottom brush a new texture, should be some thing different then the floor Also delete the top brush. Make a brush that covers all the area in the newly made tank, give this brush a water texture. Now make a brush right next to the tank, hit "s" and check ladder now hit 'ok'(You might want make this a non-transparent texture so it's easy to see) See figure 11-1 to see what my area looks like
(What my fish tank looked like)
see figure 11-2 to see what happens when your texture doesn't touched the brush next to it.
(This clearly shows why you should make sure you water brushes touched the sides of its container, the same effect happens from with in the tank)
Feel the Flow
Now where going to add a long ride like thing to two edges of the map, you might need to make yours bigger (get your mind out of the gutter)
Make a track ruing around two sides of the map (see figure 11-2 to see how mine looks) Now fill the area in with a water texture (do not use a transparent texture, if you do remove trans-33 or trans-66.) not hit "s" and check flowing and one of the current flags (what flag you check will depend on where you put the water brush, current-270 can be thought of as flowing down the screen, current-180 to the left of the screen, current-90 up, current-0 right, current-up popping out of the screen, current-down going into the screen. These are all useing the top view.) There should be two water brushes over lapping in the corner. Now build and jump in to the water, you should be carried around the corner and to the end of the second water brush. (note: flowing only goes in one direction relative to the brush, so you may have to rotate/flip the brush around to get it going in the right direction.)
On a side now if you use current down make sure you allow the player a way to get out, or they will drowned.
Remember to Flush
Now were going to make a simple lava brush that flows out of its container when a button is pressed, this effect was used in one of the id levels.
Again make your world bigger if you need to. Were going to use a little CGI subtracting to make the container. Our subtracting brush will then become the container. Make a 128x128x128 unit brush, use CGI subtraction to make a 128x128 unit wide hole in the floor. Now put the top of this brush level with the floor, and hollow it, deleting the top brush. (not to add some realism to the flush you can put a small area in the bottom of the lava container, you should be able to see into this area form above, but not get into it. This would make it look like that lava went some where, I'll leave this up to you)
Now make the lava brush, full the whole container with it, leave only a small lip at the top with our lava. Now hit "n" and find func_water and apply it to the brush. Give it a targetname of flush1, and an angle of down.
Now make a function button and give it a target of flush1, here I've use a floor button but you could use what ever kind of trigger you want.
(this is a little distorted, but gives you an idea on how the lava flush looks)
Ride the wave dude.
This ones a bit complicated.
Make an angled section, (I've used rock textures here but it really doesn't matter) also make a floor to this beach, for some walls. Next add a water section that covers, the angled area, make sure this water isn't transparent, I'll explane why in the traps section.
Next apply the func_water entity, to this wave brush, set the angle to down, and give it a targetname of wave1.
Now this is the hard part, make a func_timer. Give it a target of wave1, a random setting of 10 and a wait of 5. Also click start_on.
You'll now have a water brush that move up and down. Now we've got one thing to fix, it shouldn't go all the way down should it? Click the water brush, and add a lip, mines set to 100 yours may be different, also go to the func_timer and delete the random key, and change the wait time to .5.
The same up and down effect can be made with non-water brushes, to make a pump, you can also use a func_door to make something that can move in directions other then just up and down.
Traps
Water brushes aren't prefect there are some problems with them, mostly just limitations.
First never ever make a transparent water brush (or any thing) move, The effects on the player will move but the brush will appear to stand still.
Second, if you use a func_water on a water brush like that in the fish tank the edges of the water brush will be visible form and out side on all sides, not just when the water side doesn't touched the sides of other brushes.
func_water is only suppose to go up and down but some playing has lead me to believe this is untrue.
More Informative work form None-1a.
