Dmap not creating *.cm file

[grayman]

Many moons ago I reported that sometimes dmap doesn't create a *.cm file if one already exists. I suppose we'll fix that when the D3 engine source becomes available.

 

However, I just noticed one effect that can have. I had a metal floor in a test map, and was searching around to see how far something was being tossed by an AI. It was small, and tough to see, so I decided to change the floor to ice, thinking I should be able to see anything on a white background.

 

But after dmapping, my new ice floor sounded like metal, and I wasn't sliding around on it. My first thought was something got messed up with the 'slick' attribute, and I checked everything that I'd put in place to support it. All was well.

 

Then I remembered the *.cm problem, and noted that my *.cm file was from before my recent dmap with the ice change.

 

So I deleted the *.cm file, re-dmapped, and now I had my slick ice floor with a crunchy snow footstep.

 

So, here's evidence of a very good reason to always delete your *.cm file when changing textures, and especially make sure the *.cm that goes out with your map is properly refreshed.

[Fidcal]

Yes, I regularly delete all the dmap files before dmapping. Not every time necessarily. For instance I found I think it was with Heart, when I added spiders that I kept getting aas48 out of date unless I deleted. Now I think I'm seeing it with aas96 for the sentry bot. Definitely with cm if you change a moveable cm

 

But that texture sound thing is interesting. Not sure if I heard that before but I forgot if I did.

 

Frankly I just wish dmap would *always* update all its files every time. It's just not smart enough to know when not to.

 

Deleting is fraught though. After hundreds of such operations of deleting around the map file I'm afraid of deleting the map file by accident.

[Serpentine]

I think I read through the compiling stuff a few months ago and remember it doing some form of geometry based hashing... this kinda makes sense now, since you didnt change any geometry and just swapped the surface texture. Just a random bit of interpretation