For question 3, you might try playing around with the info_doddetect entity. It has "axis respawn factor" and "allied respawn factor" properties that are usually set to 1.0, but if you change them I believe it alters how fast each team repawns. Setting them both to 0 might turn off respawning...
You might also find the "tools/blockLOS" texture useful (stands for "Block Line-of-Sight"). Brushes textured with this can't be seen through by NPCs (otherwise, it's invisible and passable). I believe you can put it on a func_brush to toggle it on and off.
Vmex won't help you with the textures. You can extract the texture files from your BSP using BSPZIP again, see "Extracting Files" here:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Bspzip.
Or you could use Pakrat to extract them, also:
http://www.geocities.com/cofrdrbob/pakrat.html.
Not sure. As far as I can tell, the brush data is partly used in the engine for collision detection (unlike HL1, which used clipnodes), and being able to recover the original brushes is just a side effect. That doesn't explain why they can't get rid of at least part of it (say, the void-facing...
Wow, I didn't know there was any other than mine (Vmex). Links, please?
If you tried an early version of Vmex, it didn't do a very good job. Later versions are better.
It's incorrect to assume what was true for HL1 is true for HL2.
In fact, HL2 maps can be decompiled pretty much back to their original state. In particular, brush-splitting due to the BSP process isn't a problem anymore, since the .bsp contains (almost) all of the original brush information...
If you use a model texture (one using a VertexLitGeneric shader) on world brushes, the texture brightness will flash on-and-off as the player moves around the level, which would make it look like the light was flashing. I looks like that's what you're seeing.
Try changing that vmt to...
What shader are you using for these custom textures? That's the first line of their .vmt file. They should usually be "LightmappedGeneric" for textures used on worldbrushes, not "VertexLitGeneric" (which should only be used for model textures and small brush entities).
If that's not it, paste...
If you have a leak, then VVIS doesn't get run properly, and any water in your level turns invisible from outside. You have to fix the leak before it will appear.
(Technically, this happens because the TESTFOGVOLUME content flag doesn't get set on leaves that can see the water brush. One of...
Easy way: replace the logic_relay/SetHealth 0 with a trigger_hurt brush covering the places where the NPC can stand on top of the tower. Set the damage to a high value (>100). When the tower collapses, fire the trigger_hurt. If the NPC isn't standing within the trigger_hurt zone, it won't die...
Vmex can only cope with Source Engine (e.g. HL2, HL2DM, CS:S, VtMB) maps. It can't handle Half-Life engine maps (e.g. the original HL1, CS, DOD, etc.), since the format is rather different.
Bsptwomap seems to be the best-regarded HL1 decompiler.
Aren't those two maps from the CPL? If so...
The official cubemap limit seems to be 1024. You might try ensuring all the cubemaps are snapped to grid locations.
If you look in the .bsp file with bspzip after doing buildcubemaps (do "bspzip -dir mapname.bsp"), do you see envmap textures of the form "cXXX_YYY_ZZZ.vtf" (where XXX, YYY, ZZZ...
There should be a spawnflag (something like "enable motion on physgun grab") and also the Mass Scale property of the object will effect whether you can lift it.
Displacements use the coordinates of the underlying brush face (before you convert into a displacement) as the boundaries for the triangle mesh. If the underlying face is invalid (as is easy to do using the vertex manip tool), then the displacement will also move when Hammer "corrects" the face...
It does? The website seems to say it's not compatible with Source maps at all.
I can't really see the point of a BSP viewer, unless it's much faster to display a map than loading the game.
A Texinfo is one particular orientation, scaling, and alignment of one texture.
Essentually you get a new texinfo created whenever you apply a texture to a face the is orientated differently in the world (i.e. faces a different direction), is scaled, or shifted.
For example, think of a...