I got problems with my Snowfallcanyon map

[papercoffee]

ok here too:

I've got problems with my map ...when I rebuild the map a nasty HOM is showing up on the entrance of the blue base ...and some invisible cuts on the bulwark of both bases ...it is visible from below on the red base but on the blue it is totally invisible. you fall/shoot through the defending-platform where the teleporter is.
I don't know what to do ...please help.
here is the unfinished map. If someone can check it, it would be nice.

[>@tack!<]

i made the platforms solid instead of semi, build geometry build lighting and i didnt fall through the part anymore

btw that blue light in the sky is moving weird, its like its vibrating left/right ( not animation )

[papercoffee]

i made the platforms solid instead of semi, build geometry build lighting and i didnt fall through the part anymore

How did you ...it is one brush ...

btw that blue light in the sky is moving weird, its like its vibrating left/right ( not animation )

Don't know what you mean.

[papercoffee]

Ok, one problem is fixed (the disappearing X-mas tree) thanks to fragnbrag.
But the main problem is still existing.
Here is a screenshot ...on both bases on the same spot the vertices are fragged ...a semi-solid brush turns ingame non-solid.

I'm about to have a seizure because of this fucking map.

[>@tack!<]

ive made the whole platform brush solid on the red side and kept it semi-solid on the blue side, here is the result. blue side has that nonsolid part and red side is solid and i can stand on it not falling.

red side

blue side

[papercoffee]

Ah ok ...yes this is what I tried at first ...but I got another error.
If you stand on a certain position on the bulwark the whole construction disappeared. I got so many nasty BSB cuts.

[JackGriffin]

If you have an error you just can't clear, here's a little trick I've used in the past: Select all actors and drag EVERYTHING over a few units then rebuild. The engine must use the edges of the map in figuring the cuts because I've cleared some stubborn errors by just doing this.

[FraGnBraG]

okay papercoffee I fixed the whole thing - it was very unstable and there were some big (well, not big, i'd say medium NO-NO's you had in there) but it's nice and stable now if you have any questions about what I did and *why* feel free to ask Oh, there's one big thing i would do to those terrain "blocks" but that would mean you'd have to completely realign all the "exposed" surfaces and the p/n ration and framerates are good so I'd just leave it alone check all your other alignments and fix the bubble textures where you see them and you should be good. BTW, this map needs to be "full-built", mainly due to the insane amount of semisolid you have in the outside areas ... let me know if you want any more help

Cheers

*EDIT* This zipfile has the fixed terrain collision...

CTF-XMC-SnowfallcanyonFIXED2.zip

(1.18 MiB) Downloaded 131 times

[FraGnBraG]

hmm, i was testing and just fell in the terrain - hold off a bit on the map while I fix this...

*EDIt* okay it's good now - took a lot of frigging around - a nasty invisible colision wall on the blue outer route kept coming back ... i'd fix that, then on the inner route near the bridge you'd fall through to the ground. Fix that, and the damn collison wall error would come back Well, rinse repeat tweak the bsp, eventually worked... If I were you though, I'd run over every surfa ce you can and check for "fall through" and "invisble walls or ledges"... I spent a lot of time doing that so I think it's okay, but hey, thisis ut and ut bites you (especially when you have complicated terrain brushes (like you do anyways, hope this helps you out - it's probably not a good idea to add any more brushes - it could explode into problems again good luck

[papercoffee]

First of all ...Thank you for your time
Second ...How did you do this ...and what did I wrong ?

[FraGnBraG]

np Not so much that you did things "wrong", but more like what you wanted to be able to do 'ol UE1 didn't like too much and eventually developed some problems... I personally like the design, it will be a good ctf match when you're done. I my experience even simple (but large) terrain-based maps can have problems. I'm not sure how you went about it, but all I did was go back a few steps to just the terrain and internal bases (hiding everything else and only building visible brushes, then brought the extra stuff back in a little bit at a time so i could fix bsp and collision problems as they appeared. In the end it appears you have a working map (at least as far as I've seen, but I think you should test the crap out of it anyway I do look forward to playing the finished map

A few things I'll mention :-

- The terrain "backs" should be poly-merged and set to unlit, since they are now exposed in the worldspace. Unfortunatly, poly-merging will cause you to loose your alignments though, so if you'd rather not that is understandible, but you could still flag those un-seeable surface as unlit and rebuild lighting so ut doesn't try and light them.

- I wouldn't advise trying to rebuild the map geometry or fullbuild the map any more. Just do the texture work, aligning lighting and fix the bots. If you need to add in more objects, I suggest you use meshes. Of course, if you want to add more brushes go ahead, it's your map, but there's no guarantees you won't introduce problems again. Same goes for the terrain blocks standing away from the walls of your "world cubes". If you want to resize the worldcube brushes to snuggle up aginst the terrain blocks again then do so at your own risk - the reason I did that was to remove some recurring homs on the surface cuts on the outside walls. if you put them back you could get those homs again...

- Here's some simple tips (you may know some of these things already) :
Try to build your maps from solid bsp, and zone portals, obviously. Use non-soild sparingly. If you get into troubles from bsp complexity, then use semisolid. If you really want to use semisolids then do so where it makes sense to (i.e. for deco brushes where occlusion is not needed, and don't go too crazy with it because it does affect bsp collision. Semi-solids have a host of issues, they are not "free-lunch", even though they can drive the overall p/n ratio down. Try to keep the overall p/n at 2:1 or less using solid bsp as much as possible, but don't freak out if you have 2.5:1. Stability is most important.

*** Zoneportals and semi-solids should not touch *** sometimes it works, most of the time you get homs or extra zones.

Huge Zone-portals are not an effective way to zone for occlusion, and can sometimes give you some performance issues. I think you were using these for base "location" zoning, perhaps you could try that actor used in CTF-Face (i forget the name - maybe it's "locationid" actor or something like that) Anyways, you just set wide radius on the thing and assign your base or location name to that (then you don't need the big portals).

Order larger and more complex adds and subtracts first, and then semi-solids altogther after solids, then non-solids lastly. Avoid LARGE prefabs with many surfaces, if possible. On that note, your outer base platforms could have been made out of several smaller solid brushes, properly ordered and shaped in such a way as to not "puncture" the sensitive terrain blocks. Putting such collections of brushes into named groups allows for easy duplication and rotation etc etc but as one-peice prefabs they caused me stability and collision problems. You notice I turned some of your structures to solids. Oh those two empty cubes outside the map near the "trouble area" those are there to influence the local bsp. omg voodoo! yes. works too

- Lastly, your bots are (i think) broken. I would suggest you greatly reduce/simply the path network and make sure a bot FCs can travel to and from each flag base. At the moment (i know this) blue is broken (see pics)

That's it

okay there's the FlagBase, now go on, cap it!!!

Stop following me you idiot! It's right behind you!! doh!!!

[papercoffee]

Hey FraGnBraG you are green now congratz

Ok thank you ...for your help!!
Bots are broken ...Damn... I thought, to make the path more variable I have to make it this way... but now I see it doesn't work as thought.

I hope to finish this map as soon as possible.

I plan to remake my GangWar-Kairo1 map

[FraGnBraG]

np, I was going to look the BOTS for you as well, but truth is I'm not making much progress on my own big bag of unfinished maps (some really good ones (some old ones too), just a LOT of work to do get them wrapped up). I'm not sure what that homeBase thing is doing, it appears to do nothing. In CTF, it's well known that the flagBase "spike" has to be buried (or anchored) in soild addative BSP, maybe 16uu deep, otherwise there can be malfunctions - which is "historical" knowledge, I'm not sure the technical reason for the behavior, but I've witnessed FC capping problems fixed this way for years so there's something too that. I did try sticking the tree mesh into the floor, lol, but to no avail, the FC still can't cap even if he's standing right beside the flag. Maybe take a copy of the map, and replace the trees with new normal flagbases, properly anchored and see if that works. If it does, then thetree mesh is the problem. Could have something to do with where the actors pivot point is located relative to the BSP surface (i dunno). You could just place the tree as a deco, say, behind the flag area and use a normal flagBase flag...? Anyways, looks like your almost there, so get busy and give us the map

[papercoffee]

ok I put the Flag as Gift in front of the tree ...to capture the tree doesn't really work. The tree turns in a flag if carried away.
and it seams to be safer this way.

How do I anchor the Flag properly ... I followed a tutorial, but maybe you can explain it better ... right now I get it more if you explain it than I read a tutorial on the internet.

[papercoffee]

Many of the bugs seemed to be fixed (I still don't understand how the cubes outside fix this, but it works) ...only one non-solid from red base coming on the right near the bridge appears in the rock wall but it has no effect as long I can see.
last things to do is rearrange some textures of the rock near blue base (Sisyphean task) and test the bots ...maybe I have really to reduce the path-nodes.
So far ...Thank you ALL for your help ...I'll credit you.