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Fighting Glitches - push it to the limit.


STRUNK

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Hi there builders :)

 

I'm new on the forum and have a very fundamental question.

What are the key rules to avoid glitches and maps that won't load .. exept from the voidleaks?

 

I'm trying to build a pentagonal courtyard but it just does't seem to work.

Here a short video of what I'm doing ... because I'm doing things wrong and you masterbuilders might be able to tell me what it is:

https://streamable.com/pa3z2

 

5 days ago I started with DarkRadiant, last 3 days I have been wondering: Why cant I make what I want without glitching?

 

I figure it might have to do with angles and/or allignment/snapping to a certain grid size ..

Is there a limit to that?

And if so, where is it?

 

 

 

 

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It's hard to tell from the video, but the leak seen when you tried to testmap version 17 might have appeared at some point while you were making version 16. testmap <map> is basically dmap <map> + map <map>, and if the dmap stage fails it'll still continue to the map loading stage, which won't fail if the files from an earlier successful dmap are still there. This can lead to errors arising from the use of obsolete files. Try using dmap instead of testmap and see whether there's a leak report.

Edited by VanishedOne

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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Well I did Jack .. and VanishOne .. 17 was was the same map as 16 with only one group, a little wall, moved a tiny bit : s

Every thing I did caused gliches on other things at some point. It seemed almost hopless : D

But: Today I started all over again and kept to grid allignment as much as possible .. and so far it worked. : )

 

https://streamable.com/dfdp5

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Angles like that are tricky and the compiler is going to be fussy with them. It really wants everything on 90° angles and 8x or 16x grid. You should consider having your angled brushwork contained within neater caulk brushwork like that surrounding it, which will then jive much nicer with visportals and preventing leaks.

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Well I did Jack ..

 

Sorry, I am not familar with the command "testmap" and thus I though you started mapping without watching the Springheel or Sotha videos first.

 

After learning about the command I agree with VanishedOne. You should consider using the command "dmap xxx" followed by "map xxx" to prevent the problems he mentioned.

 

I am not sure whether LDash is right or I do not understand correctly. However, as far as I recall from statements on this forum, the compiler does not care if you build in grid size 1, 16 or 64. Most important thing is to avoid leaks, and using larger grid sizes helps preventing leaks.

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Best advice is to make any angled brushwork into func_statics, and use regular prism brushes for sealing brushwork.

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NP Jack.

 

Springheel. It worked!

I have a simpje fence, wall, that I wanted to place in all 5 corners of the pentagram, but in one corner it just didn't work, and leeked.

Now I have firts put the wall/fence there, in that angle, tested it and it leaked. Then selected all brushes and exported it as a model, and replaced it with that and voila .. no leaks.

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I am not sure whether LDash is right or I do not understand correctly. However, as far as I recall from statements on this forum, the compiler does not care if you build in grid size 1, 16 or 64. Most important thing is to avoid leaks, and using larger grid sizes helps preventing leaks.

 

Grid size definitely matters when dealing with brushes that aren't on a 90° angle, that's for sure. You want to adjust the brush edges/vertices and keep those aligned to the grid, as opposed to just arbitrarily rotating a brush around and intersecting them together, even if it seem like a harmless 45°. You run the risk of having vertices that aren't going to place nice with floating-point accuracy in the compiler, even if the brushes seem okay in Radiant. This can cause havoc with carving/merging the compiler does and can cause leaks, or other anomalies that prevent the map from compiling/running, or if it does run cause other glitchy issues. Maybe one easy thing to remember is to select your rotated brush, press V then I, then press CTRL+G. Still not as preferable as adjusting vertices/edges manually.

Turning things into mapobjects is a way to go since they are treated differently by the compiler, but for that reason need to be understood in terms of visibility.

Edited by LDAsh
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LDAsh

 

"or if it does run cause other glitchy issues."

 

I had parts of faces dissapear and seems emerging. If finally something looked good, somewhere else there suddenly were other gliches.

Now that I made the map again, not using the substract tool, but the clipper tool instead, rotating the hole map 72 degrees every time to make straight cuts, I didn't have problems, until I was placing the fencing and rotated the fence rather then the whole map ... so that would explain a lot.

 

 

"press V then I, then press CTRL+G"

 

Does that also work for the smalest gridsize?

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NP Jack.

 

Springheel. It worked!

I have a simpje fence, wall, that I wanted to place in all 5 corners of the pentagram, but in one corner it just didn't work, and leeked.

Now I have firts put the wall/fence there, in that angle, tested it and it leaked. Then selected all brushes and exported it as a model, and replaced it with that and voila .. no leaks.

 

You don't need to export the brushs into models you select the brushes, right click on a orthographic view and select convert to func_static. Func_statics are treated by the engine just has any model imported from blender or other 3D tool, so they will not seal the void nor will they be used to calculate AAS (AI pathing), for that you need to use regular brushes, a trick for func_static floors (terrain patches for example) is just to put a regular brush bellow it, no need to make the func_static and the brush touch or conform, the AI will follow the func_static shape just fine, even with a flat brush bellow.

Edited by HMart
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I covered that in one of the early videos...I would definitely recommend going through New Mapper's Workshop tutorial series if you haven't already (link below).

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Springheel

 

Ok .. that should be an easier approach.

 

I've been looking into your tutorials some more today (they are great!), and got some sounds and particle fx in my little map.

Only still looking how to create some low hanging mist

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There is a fog particle that creates a fog hovering on the ground. Don't recall the name of it though.

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There is a fog particle that creates a fog hovering on the ground. Don't recall the name of it though.

 

What about a light with a fog material (fog light)? You can create a low fog with it easely and perhaps would be better for performance? The engine doesn't need to discard all those transparent pixels from particles.

 

What I don't know, because i've not worked much with fog lights, is how powerful is the material system for them, for example, I don't know if you can randomize the fog look with a image (apart from a ramp gradient) where some parts are very foggy and others are not, to create a swamp like random fog/smoke.

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Springheel

 

I only found tdm_dustfog2 to be hovering above the ground .. but it looks good

 

HMart

 

A light with fog material .. it sound nice, but where do I find that, or how to make it? I'm building my first little map and there is still so much to learn : )

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I don't know if this is really what you want but is easy to make a fog light, you just make a normal light and instead of selecting a normal light material, you select a material in the fog category, is that easy, the light bounding box needs to extend beyond the region you want to be fogued if not it looks bad, similar to ambient lights.

 

Btw a light to work has a fog light, needs to have a material with the global keyword fogLight so make sure that is true, if not it will behave as normal light and that is not what you want. You can make sure by going to the media tab select a fog material, right click and chose "show shader definition".

 

Here is the material definition for the basic fog:

fogs/basicFog
{

	fogLight	// tell the engine it is fog and not a light
	noShadows
	{
		map	_fog	// the internal fog image
		colored		// take rgba from entity shaderparms
	}
}
P.s -Forgot to say, i'm basing this on the fhdoom engine (is based on idtech 4 as well) so i'm not sure if fog lights still work in TDM, the team has changed the engine in many ways by now. Edited by HMart
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What about a light with a fog material (fog light)? You can create a low fog with it easely and perhaps would be better for performance? The engine doesn't need to discard all those transparent pixels from particles.

 

What I don't know, because i've not worked much with fog lights, is how powerful is the material system for them, for example, I don't know if you can randomize the fog look with a image (apart from a ramp gradient) where some parts are very foggy and others are not, to create a swamp like random fog/smoke.

For that you probably want a blendlight rather than an actual foglight (if you examine TDM's built-in fogs, several are actually blendlights). Textures for foglights are... an ongoing mystery to me, quite honestly: see my notes at http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=User:VanishedOne#Lights

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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Hum I don't know, from my experience a blendLight doesn't work exactly has the fogLight does, it brightens or darkens the scene but it doesn't make it look like it has volumetric fog, like the fogLight does, at least I never saw them do that. But I mostly used blendLights, before having shadow mapping, to project fake shadows unto the scene for grates, trees and stuff.

 

About textures for fog lights, Like I said I don't know much about it, I only know that basic fog works and pitfog_to_black also works, other original Doom 3 "fogs" don't look like fog at all to me but they don't have the "fogLight" keyword so that must be why.

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Is there a way to prevent particles from going through a wall?

 

I got triggerhappy and found a solution for the lavasmoke comming through a wall.

 

-Make the lava into a func_static and in the Entity Inspector add Hide with a value of 1 (now the lava is hidden and no smoke comes through the wall, also you can trigger it to unhide).

-The door that leads to the room with the lava is used to trigger the lava to unhide by targeting it via a trigger_once, otherwise , if the player closes and opens the door again, the lava would hide again etc.

 

I was playing with triggers yesterday to make some light fx and I found them to be a very simple way to let very awsome things happen, all thanx to Springheels videotutorials on building traps, where I got the basic understanding of working with triggers from:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Springheel01/videos

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