Disappearing movers ... !!!

[FraGnBraG]

Hi

I'm getting sick of this .. :/

I have 248 movers in this map. Around 200 or so are visible i.e. they are in the play space.
The rest are attach movers which are outside of the playspace.

First of all, all of the mover work correctly. My problem is after I build the map, a number of the movers become invisible (when you run the map you cant see them - they are there - just not rendering. Okay, I rebuild the problem movers, then rebuild the map, then run the map and voila they are now showing HOWEVER, another bunch (which were visible the first time) are now invisible. Rinse repeat, same deal over and over again, until I get to the end of the map - so this means I have replaced ALL of the movers, and then it starts all over again from the start... invisible movers appear again.

Now I'm not sure whats happening... and this is getting annoying -- Any ideas?

[Barbie]

We just had a similar problem in thread Blinking Movers problem. The only solution I know is to reduce the number of visible movers.
I noticed this issue even with only a handful movers.

[papercoffee]

What happen when you don't rebuild the whole map with optimizer settings?
I had the problem that movers (in my small contest map) weren't complete invisible but partial ...some faces got invisible.
Could prevent this by rebuild Geometry, Lights and Paths manually.
(yeah I know, dirty ...but at least it worked)

[Red_Fist]

I gave up several times on this. one map had 4 movers, a lift on each corner, another was 3 meshing gears, large gears to jump on.

It either works on one build then not the next.

My only conclusion is how many are rendered in the same area you can see all the movers. and how complex the movers are.

So all I can say is get rid of movers that can be seen all in the same space, or see each other, MIGHT help.

I also think it has something to do with movers that always move, looping, rotating, etc etc

[ShaiHulud]

The BunnyTrack mappers over at i4games have frequently grappled with this issue from what I've read on the forum over there. I'm not sure how comprehensive this result list is likely to be, but worth a look perhaps:

Google Site Search results

[Chamberly]

Yeah guys at i4g know how to find a way around it.

[Higor]

AttachMovers, make sure they are:
- Brushless (insert like any other actor)
- bHidden=True
- bHiddenEd=False
- DrawType=DT_Sprite
- All collision flags set to false
That'll alleviate BSP tree load.

Report back once done

[FraGnBraG]

@barbie - re: blinking movers issue - thanks, i'm not having the same problem you state, however noted the ideas and will see if moving or recessing a mover might fix some of them ... i'm a bit doubtful though, since i have movers that are "free hanging" and do NOT have any co-planer surfaces and thee still don't render. Actually that said, once a lift starts to move for the first time then you see it's surfaces... very weird..

@papercoffee - thanks - i tried building only geometry etc and lol boom! i HAVE to full build this map (i.e. with optimize) otherwise too many nodes are generated for the engine and ued just GPFs.

@red_fist - thanks, but i have so say I've rarely had this mover disappearing before, or at least that I remember - i've made some maps that have tons of movers as well with no problems...

@higor - thanks, i'll check those flags on the attachmovers but i'm not sure how an attachmover could affect the rendering of normal visible movers (like a door or lift) ... ?

@shiahulud & @chamberly - thanks, I will check out that forum next...

Thanks for the replies ...
I will return hopefully with findings

Cheers

[papercoffee]

@papercoffee - thanks - i tried building only geometry etc and lol boom! i HAVE to full build this map (i.e. with optimize) otherwise too many nodes are generated for the engine and ued just GPFs.

Woopsy... yes of course your map has much (much much much) more content than my contest map. Should have thought about this. On what build-order position are those movers?

[editor Dave]

@papercoffee - thanks - i tried building only geometry etc and lol boom! i HAVE to full build this map (i.e. with optimize) otherwise too many nodes are generated for the engine and ued just GPFs.

Im afraid this is your biggest problem. My guess is the geometry of the movers are not being calculated during rebuild so only those remaining surfaces (to the max node count) are being shown - or the optimization focuses rather on visible geomtry, and movers are being neglected. Actually, I rarely had good outcomes when optimizing BSP. And even if it is not that, getting near max node count is really prone to cause more errors in general. Your best bet is to either simplify the movers and/or the geometry or replace some of the structures with meshes or split the map in two parts (I guess this one doesnt satisfy you). To really be sure, how about you actually take one half of the map and rebuild it in a new file? If in both halves every mover is displayed correctly, there wouldnt be a problem with too many movers being close together or corrupted movers etc. and you most likely have to reduce the level of detail in your geometry and movers.

[FraGnBraG]

... To really be sure, how about you actually take one half of the map and rebuild it in a new file? If in both halves every mover is displayed correctly, there wouldnt be a problem with too many movers being close together or corrupted movers etc. and you most likely have to reduce the level of detail in your geometry and movers.

haha I like the way you think

I'd been thinking about something like that ... more that the map might be better as two maps ... or as an SP campaign having 4 or 5 smaller maps... hmm

I suspect you're going to be right about this, so I'm going to do what you suggest and let's see

*** EDIT ***

Okay that is it... now i have two halfs of a map actually, lats call them part1 and part2 --> part 1 is the original TOD map. Itr works fine now, except (now) for an ending of some sort...

Part two is 5 structures in a valley with a shitload of monsters and not much linearity so is questionable for MH...
maybe good as a 5 CP DOM map, which could be crazy...

yeah, i'm going to guess that info on movers is not shown in the build messages etc... that perhaps the stats-> nodes count value and whatnot does not include movers data (?) so if there's not enough "room" left in the map/bsp then it cant render them all. so map setting an artifical map upper size limit of say 50000 nodes might leave "room" for movers etc.. fkkked if I know, but hey ^.^

At least now I can see the end of this project

BETA(s) real soon

Thanks and Cheers