QuArK textures

Introduction

QuArK's philosophy is pretty tricky when you have to deal with anything else than stock assets, and this means new textures. In order to have a new texture set, you will have to create a new Add-on into QuArK and point it to your textures. It also is a pain in the ass to maintain as any new texture added to your texture folder will have to be manually added to the Add-on.

Process

Creating the Add-on

First, open up QuArK's map editor and bring down the Texture Browser (Toolboxes=>texture browser). The window is divided into two panels: the large right side being the texture viewer and left-side being the tree-view of your texture Add-ons. To create a new Add-on, click on the Folders button, then on New main folder. A window will pop in, asking you where to create the Add-on with three possibilities you will not understand if you don't have some help:

In the .qrk file opened in the main window: This option is supposed to help you keeping an entire project, including new assets, in a single .qrk file, but it seems not to function properly, or at least it's not as easy to use as it seems.
In an already registered Add-on: Only useful if you created an Add-on before, otherwise you will only be able to choose QuArK's default Add-ons. I recommend you leave everything basic to QuArK as it is.
In a new Add-on: This should be your favourite option: creates a new .qrk file in the QuArk/ directory. Choose it and hit OK, choose a name and hit "save".

A "new Folder" folder appears at the bottom of the tree in the texture browser. You can rename it, and you can add sub-folders to it by selecting it and hitting Folders=>New sub-folder. You will have to exit QuArK to save the Add-on, and re-open it. A new icon appears near the compass: the one linked to your new Add-on. You can delete an Add-on in the Texture browser by hitting Folders=>Add-ons, selecting the wanted Add-on, hitting Remove, Ok, and closing and re-opening QuArK. Notice that the .qrk file will remains in the QuArK/ directory, and consider deleting it by hand if you need extra-space.

Working with textures

Now you have a working Add-on. To add textures to it (which, I believe, is the idea), reduce the QuArK window and open your folder. Drag the textures and drop them inside the newly created folder or sub-folder. A message will appear, with three options: do you want the textures to be linked?

If you select Yes, the textures won't be added to the Add-On, but only linked. If you select No, the textures will be copied inside the qrk file created. If you select Cancel, things will be cancelled (doh). What's the difference? You see, when compiling a map, QuArK will extract the textures from you Add-on and place them inside a textures/ folder so that the game engine has something to load and map on your geometry. Now, if you have some textures placed inside your baseq3, basewsw, etc..., you don't need them to be created again and duplicated inside the folder, so you can just link them inside QuArK, and nothing will be imported. The engine will find the textures in their existing folders. If you don't understand, just hit "NO" and give me a break.

Mod Textures

You can place your textures in baseq3/textures/ and everything will be easier. Just create the new add-on and hit Make links to textures in a folder. Then, point the dialog box to baseq3, delete everything you don't use and enjoy. You even get the folder preview, which is not too much to ask.

About Shaders

QuArK can't display shaders. It will only read the shader, find the first texture mentioned and take it so he can display something instead of the default brown and black checker (which is awful).