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Disappearing Worldspawn


Airship Ballet

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I think I remember a topic a while ago about the same thing or something similar but can't for the life of me find it again. I'm not sure how common this is, and if a fix even exists, but it's getting silly.

 

Simply put, perfectly vanilla worldspawn will disappear permanently and seemingly at random when dmapping and testing my map. I've done precisely nothing to it, and I can't see any correlation between placement and occurrence. So far a decent workaround has been to turn the offending worldspawn into a func_static and then place a caulked worldspawn inside it to plug the gap if it's sealing out the void. It looks ugly in the editor but perfectly fine in-game. Still, I'm getting a few instances where that won't work anymore. Removing them and filling in the gap fixes it but looks bland, so it's an issue with the brushes rather than that particular area.

 

Here's how the unfixable occurence looks in DR:

 

7A2xG.jpg

 

That's all pure worldspawn, nothing else. It was originally filled with water and steam emitters but I took them out to see if that was the cause of it being unfixable. It wasn't, so I'm left with just this.

 

And here's how it looks in-game (some of the wall framing is doing it too):

 

http://puu.sh/7A30S.avi

 

Like I said, it's pure worldspawn just made by hand. I thought it could be cloning and so re-did it the long way but to no avail. Was there a fix found for this? It was fine when I could fix it but now it's a real pain.

Edited by Airship Ballet
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That's peculiar. I'm unsure whether or not this will solve your problem, but intricate brushwork like that should never remain as plain worldspawn. Turn that into a func_static and seal your worldspawn behind it.

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Thanks, but I've been doing that with everything, this included. I just turned it back to worldspawn to make it as simple as possible to get rid of any conflicts.

Edited by Airship Ballet
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From the looks of that video, it doesn't appear to me that anything is disappearing. It looks like they're there but not being rendered correctly.

 

If you don't seal the bottom of the grate or the edge along the wall, does it cause a leak? If not then the brush is still there, its just something wrong with the texture on it.

 

Have you tried putting a different texture on it not copied from something else? Does that render? Then change it back using the texture browser (not copied) and seeing if it then renders?

 

Curious indeed.

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Changing textures does nothing, nor does cloning them, deleting some, lifting them off on their own or using different combinations of func_statics and worldspawn. I can stand on them, yeah, and they seal out the void as evidenced by the wall frames that let it dmap fine but also let me look out into the void. They also effectively caulk any area of any brush they intersect and are generally really trippy to look at. They sometimes take on the texture of the wall behind them or move with parallax, hard to tell. For what it's worth, I can't crouch on it. Also it all becomes visible if I noclip into the void.

 

Edit: lifting them off a significant way does fix them to a degree, but some ends still appear caulked and, obviously, it's floating worldspawn.

Edited by Airship Ballet
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Contrary to my educated guess, moving them a couple of grid units has helped and they're perfectly visible now so I'll just have to incorporate changes wherever it happens and turning them into statics doesn't work. Still, it would be nice to know what exactly defines where the areas that would cause this are, bearing in mind they've been on-grid the entire time.

 

Also bearing in mind that I'm color-blind, I don't seem to be getting any errors while compiling. There's a few nodes without volumes but their corresponding entities are just inventory items out in the blue room.

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I don't have DR on this computer, so I can't check the map file, but it seems like one of the walls of your room is a func_static? That'd definitely cause an internal leak, and be the cause of all kinds of goofy artifacts after dmap.

 

EDIT: Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of the telltale signs of internal leaks.

 

post-2515-0-85819900-1395155478_thumb.jpg

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moving them a couple of grid units has helped and they're perfectly visible now

 

 

That's interesting. Maybe it has something to do with surrounding geometery affecting those brushes which is why moving them changed the way they render. Just have to play around with it until you figure out what's causing it (or not).

 

Sucks to put a couple hours in to trying to figure out something when you could be mapping, though its good to get errors (if they are ours) out of the way so we don't repeat them in the future. And if its a bug, then it will help everyone else not have to go through the same agony. :P

 

I know from a personal basis that one time I was mapping and dealt with some issue for like 4-5 hours and was completely frustrated and said fuck it and went to bed. The next day when I got up, about 15 min after I started mapping again, I figured out what the issue was and it was something I had done incorrectly. Mapping can be very tedious and trying when I hit snags like that but after I've figured it out I feel all that much better about it and can move on. :)

Edited by Lux
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Yeah, but like I said that's a patchwork solution to the disappearing worldspawn. To begin with I was just working with worldspawn walls as per usual, then entire walls started disappearing as I built them. Making them into statics made them visible, so I did that and then surrounded them with caulked worldspawn to keep it sealed. If moving them a few grid units consistently solves the problem I'll go around undoing that and nudging them until they appear, but the static walls are the egg in this case, rather than the chicken.

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I know from a personal basis that one time I was mapping and dealt with some issue for like 4-5 hours and was completely frustrated and said fuck it and went to bed [...] Mapping can be very tedious and trying when I hit snags like that but after I've figured it out I feel all that much better about it and can move on.

 

Podcasts keep me saaaaane. I'm slowly running out of episodes of the one I'm working through at the moment though... :unsure:

 

Moving them by 0.125 is working. I'd assumed moving them didn't work as I moved them by large grid units and they stayed the same. Must have been unlucky enough to stick them into another place the compiler doesn't like.

Edited by Airship Ballet
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Any time I've had issues with transparent brushes its been caused by a visportal I didn't have correctly sealed where it was. Have you tried showing portals in game and making sure they are closing/opening/appearing where/when they should be?

 

Personally I would suggest removing any of the "band aid" FS/brushwork you added and reverting everything (hopefully with a previous save) to how it was prior to band-aiding it.

 

Then check the portals in-game.

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Is there a visportal in line? I'm on my phone so haven't seen the video, but that's been the cause of such things in the past. Springheel's thread probably the one you're thinking of most recently.

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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Yeah, these problems were cropping up before I started setting up portals. That's what's so weird: when I was doing it there was nothing but worldspawn and decorative models, not even any lights. They're all working fine, just simple ones in all the doorways since the hallway is featureless for now. I've not been doing anything odd, aside from to patch it up. It really was there from the start when it was as simple as could be. It's got me thinking it could just be a borked install or permissions.

 

I'm just now seeing how annoying it would be to undo all my rinky-dink patch-up work so I'll be lazy and leave it for now since just nudging any future problem will fix it. You're allowed to mock me and call me a fool and write a fable about my folly should it come back to bite me in the ass.

Edited by Airship Ballet
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OK, fired up computer and dmapped, I do see a fair amount of z-fighting, which may relate to the problem, overlapping geometry is never as good as grid abutted; but it's not your install, since I get it too.

Edited by RJFerret

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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Meant more my DR install, or something like that. The Z-fighting that's there is just because the room's barely started. I built everything you see and then dmapped and found that, and have been trying to fix it since.

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Yes, neither your DR or TDM install relate was my point.

 

My previous z-fighting thought is irrelevant, as it wasn't worldspawn overlapping, but a func_static.

 

Do you have a version of the map from before you started working around the problem, per Lux's suggestion?

 

(Note, deleting all the visportals didn't have an impact, which has in the past for these sorts of problems.)

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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I've a dropbox full of versions. I've looked back through them myself and found no correlation between anything. Cloned brushes, textures, models, nothing. They just seem to pop up at random and now I know they fix when I move them slightly out of line with surrounding brushes. This was happening on my other FM too and there's nothing common between them. Beats me but I'm going to leave it now that I know the fix is as simple as moving it 0.125 away.

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Whelp, I can tell you that the double building obscures other problems (like the leak I found in that room, took three times longer to find than normal). It also means you are doing twice as much work as necessary, and creating more entities than necessary.

 

I'm afraid shifting things 0.125 isn't a fix, it's leaving a problem and working around it. Most people build on a grid size of 8 or so. It seems being off grid is your problem here.

 

If you delete your func_statics, seal the leak in that room, change your caulk textures back to wall textures, then snap to grid, it all renders fine.

 

It was the off grid brushes causing problems apparently.

 

My guess is, since this has happened on a map of yours before, something about your building process is causing things to get off grid perhaps? It might not be pleasant to hear, but going back will make it immensely easier/faster/more fun in the long run.

 

PS: I also made the non-solid worldspawn solid.

nemo2c.map.txt

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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I don't see how not having everything look like Minecraft blocks could cause the problem. It looks fine in-game and runs at 60FPS. The messiness isn't going to be replicated going forward, so I really can't be bothered going back and spending a while fixing it for my peace of mind =P

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Think of it this way perhaps? You aren't creating the geometry, you are suggesting to dmap what you'd like the geometry to ultimately be; if you don't give it data it can work with, it can't create what you desire. I've never dealt with minecraft, so have no idea how that relates to this building process, but folks generally suggest a grid size of eight here not to build at that size necessarily, but to have flexibility of adding smaller details that remain on grid, and some have had troubles with sound going through narrower walls I've read. You also risk light bleed, shadow issues, AI activating things "through" a wall, and players frobbing things through walls too. As you know of my FMs, little is blocky, but more natural, curvaceous rock or snow built on brushes, many with funky angles--but all on grid. Your map I fixed snapping to a grid of 1.

 

For other mappers searching out this thread in the future, sloppy brushwork may lead to AI pathing problems, broken visportals, z-fighting visuals, polygon slivers revealing the void and impacting performance, audio problems, light bleed, shadow issues, from what I recall having read in the past, then what I've personally dealt with, improper location_info entity results. Hence learning clean work on grid eases the process down the road.

 

Are we going to be finding Nemo in this FM?!!?? \o/

 

From what I saw in the room in question, if so, Nemo is cooked! From what I saw of other rooms, if so, Nemo is gutted... :/ Either way it all looked pretty cool, and I anticipate Airship has some impactful stuff in store for us!

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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I don't see how not having everything look like Minecraft blocks could cause the problem. It looks fine in-game and runs at 60FPS. The messiness isn't going to be replicated going forward, so I really can't be bothered going back and spending a while fixing it for my peace of mind =P

Keep the barebones worldspawn "shell" of your map on a decent-sized grid--and then put all the details in the world you want inside of that worldspawn shell. This is just the way BSP map building has worked since Quake 1.

 

If you neglect that and you get internal leaks, then that is the source of all kinds of grief. Internal leaks can mess with map compiling (as you just found out), it harms performance by rendering more than is necessary, it can cause odd rendering bugs (esp. with lights), it can cause sounds to propogate in odd directions, it can confuse AI pathfinding, and more. EDIT: Ah, RJFerret beat me to it. :)

 

I used to do AutoCAD work for a local Battlebots team. If the CAD drawing of a machine part was "eeehh, it looks good enough", the actual BNC machining the part would reject it with an error message, or it would yield an obviously inferior piece. Think of it just like that. Your worldspawn doesn't need heavy intricate details (in fact, it's usually preferable not to.), but it should be a robustly foolproof leak-proof base.

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