Some mods provide .wad file. Are they actually used by any Quake engine or is it just leftover from mapping (something like a map’s source)? If they are needed, where do I put them? Should it be ./wads/*.wad inside a game’s subdirectory?
Same question about .shader files, that are sometimes found in ./gfx/env//.shader
the only wad file vanilla quake engine uses is the gfx.wad file which contains sbar artwork and NOT any map textures.
texture wads are thus used purely by the tools. usually specified as absolute paths so nothing breaks when build scripts copy the things around all over the place (this may result in a privacy issue when releasing compiled maps, so probably best to use something like c:/games/quake/ or whatever instead of c:/users/ohnoesthisispublic/*).
halflife added an external-textures feature which DOES have the engine reading .wad files. such wad files loaded by the engine will be directly found in the gamedir (eg “c:/games/halflife/valve/*.wad” in halflife’s case, or the id1/ dir in quake’s). I mention this because a number of quake engines can load halflife maps and may support halflifeisms on quake maps too.
Usually quake content will just use external .tga or .png or whatever files instead, leaving them free from the limitations of 8bit palettes. No wads at all as far as the engine need be concerned.
gfx/env/* is for skyboxes. there should be no shaders there.
Q3’s shaders can be found at the in the $gamedir/scripts/*.shader directory. These should be available to both the engine and compile/editor tools.
shoving .shader files in the skybox dir seems like a WTF to me.
Thank you for detailed answer. One more question, files like “./gfx/env/greycld_wind.cfg”, containing like so:
// distance yaw period pitch
skywind 1.3 5 25 10
can they also be safely deleted?
[quote=saturian1]Thank you for detailed answer. One more question, files like “./gfx/env/greycld_wind.cfg”, containing like so:
// distance yaw period pitch
skywind 1.3 5 25 10
can they also be safely deleted?[/quote]
That cfg file is only used by Ironwail version 7 and beyond. It controls the animated skybox for one of the maps (probably from a recent mod) in your Quake directory. Leaving it won’t hurt anything. If you delete it, it will just disable the animation of the skybox named “greycld”.