I've created water using regions in WED, and all of this functions very well, but now I want the water to actually look like water. All I want is a way to add something that has a water texture on the top (or any other sides) of the region. It'd be nice if I could do it with blocks, but for some reason the PASSABLE flag for blocks was removed from the engine (yet, it's still there in WED... ugh).

People have suggested models or terrain, but you can't scale these things to any ratio. They always keep their scale ratio intact, making it very inconvenient when building levels.

Any suggestions? It'd be nice if the method also allowed for texture offset so I could make the water animate a bit, but it's not a necessity.

They keep their scale ratio? Not as far as I remember. I'm not sure how terrains behave, but at very least for sprites and models you can scale them independently in x,y and z dimension.

See scale_x, scale_y and scale_z in the manual.

For the texture shifting see http://www.conitec.net/beta/uv.htm

Yes, but when placing them in WED you can not scale their dimensions individually. Perhaps I could use the skills you can set in WED, but I wouldn't then be able to see the result in the actual level editor, being once again, very inconvenient.

Oh, yes, you're right about this. No idea why models can't be scaled independently of their axes in WED. Has it been always this way? Strange.

But how do you come to the conclusion, that the passable flag does not work anymore? It's in WED, it's in the manual and no change concerning that has been posted on the beta site.

I've requested axis independent scaling several times before and it's said to come in the future, but you'll have to wait for the new WED. Until then you have to use a script.
As a workaround, you can scale the water uniformly until you have the correct size in x-dimension, then save or memorize the scale factor and do the same for its y-size.

@Uhrwerk: The passable flag does not work anymore since OBB and meshes/ mesh mode for levels have been introduced, you have to use map entities or models.

be careful with scaling .hmp terrain from script, which is part of a .wmb level. as I remember I posted a bug report in connection with it... probably I got an answer like "we'll look into that"...

shortly: if you want to use vertex moving for water waving (ent_getvertex/ent_setvertex), A7 works fine, but in A8 scaling a .hmp within .wmb results in random disappearing of that passable water terrain. if it is static, it's fine. (and vertex moving works fine for non-scaled terrains). this bug is for .wmb insider .hmp only.

I think I'll actually use models as the water, but have the adjustable skills in WED change the individual scale dimensions. I assume this is possible to do, as I've not tried it yet, and won't for a bit since I'm rewriting another area of my code.

It's a bit inconvenient, but I think it'll be worth it.
Thanks everyone!