Map2Dif Errors and solutions : Feedback

#41 Thanks for the input FruitBat. I conceded to defeat on the angled structure. Its all boxy looking now. Its ok i suppose just not what i wanted. Getting really tiered of looking at that model but it needs a touch of detail then it will be complete. I am currently drawing up some scetches of what i want to do with a town church next. It will follow the same design as the Inn with same textures. The whole village will do that. I do plan on making several texture combinations for some customability. I just think that my modeling is still sub-par. Alot has to do with the fact that i dont have the know how to scale and allign textures just right yet.

Oh and about the steps. They were just about the 16 unit X 16 unit standard i use for steps. Only they were beveled on the bottom. I think that was the culprit. I have found that a 16 unit step works just fine for The Orc-myster. The squared off 4 units thick planks i put in work great and they were at 16 unit increments going up.

I just wanna pick that brain of yours for some texturing know-how. Textures will be my ultimate demise if i dont beef those up. I have lots of good ideas and can implement most of them. But as i said before. Scaling and alligning the little boogers is still not going well for me. I'm working on it though.

#42 Ahoy!

I hate Quark!!
ok sorry for the informality.
I spent all day making a racetrack in quark using the make cylinder command, subtracting cylinders from eachother
to make nice curves, it looks good i gotta say, but it wont export. map2dif spits out 100 or so instances of

::createBaseWinding: Bad face on brush. > 32 points. DMMNOTE: Increase max win
ding points?

or

::createBaseWinding: Bad face on brush. < 3 points. DMMNOTE: Handle better?

So I am very upset :(
I ran a broken poly check, that came up clean, then I checked thin faces, there were a few, i fixed them, but I still get
the same results on export. What do these errors mean? Can I fix them? I don't yet know these things!
And finally, I know it's off subject, but it kind of isn't, is there a better way to get somewhat smooth curves? A right
way? And also, how do I specify a detail brush or a structural one? If there is already documentation on this, a simple link would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!

#43 Curves
curves and dif don't really go together I'm afraid, even quake with its bezier curves are a fake. Its a limitation of the technology used to levels. Search on the forums for 'Grav Rally' they managed to do it and ask nicely if they can give you some tips.

Details brushes
If you've got quark set up as normal, there are icons in a panel above the compass (blue boxes i think) these are called entities. The second on in is torque entities and has Brush Based entities, in there you will find 'Detail brush'. Click on that and a Detail item will appear in your worldspawn tree. Just drag the brushes you want to be detail into there.

Errors
Under search, select 'Find non-integral faces' and then go to 'Commands=> Fix non integral faces'. This will probably destory half your geometry but some of those errors dissapear. Can't realy help much more, map2dif is a sensitive beast and dif modelling is a real challenge.

#44 In follow-up to my previous post I have discovered something useful, you all might already know this trick but I thought
I'd post it anyway, ya never know. You can get curves in quark. There I said it. I tried using this trick I picked up in elementary school, where you draw a square, then a vertical midline and a horizontal midline within that square, then starting in one of the newly quartered areas, you draw a line connecting the point at 1,0 to the point 0,n, where n is the height of the y axis, [or vertical midline]. then you proceed by connecting X+1,0 to 0,Y-1 until you reach the bottom of the Y axis, giving you this cool spiderweb thing. If you use that trick on a platform or a cube in quark using the slice tool instead of drawing lines, then delete the spiderweb stuff off of the remaining large portion of the platform or cube, you now have a very smooth curve!, And best of all, IT EXPORTS!!!!

#45 Hey FruitBatInShades just wanna thankyou for such a great resource you have made here, this has helped my level design alot... and I was wondering if you have found more answers to some of the problems or alternative answers to ones you have allready listed?

#46 I wanted to ask some questions about the lw to map plugin. I saw user "Mathias Stolley" spoke about it, but I have no way to contact you, other than commenting in the most recent forum you participated in. Please e-mail me.

#47 @Lyle: I'm not doing much in the way of DIF editing at the moment. Got to a point where I can't get my models to light correctly. I'm waiting for the new map2dif lighting rewrite before I do much more. I'm making DTS's and learning to UV and skin at the mo. Might start a new thread on that soon.

#48 I think that would be a good thread, I have not got into that myself(at least not yet anyway)... I enjoyed reading your guides for Quark they were most usefull, and I am sure that anyone getting into the DTS's would benefit greatly from your experience(s).

#49 Hi,
Since all of you are discussing about structures, i did like to ask a question. What is the maximum amt of polygons a building shld have in a game but still retain a certain performance of the game itself.

#50 I cannot build valid polyhedron in QuArk as every polyhedron is broken. Even when I open some well-built .map file, QuArk will tell me the polyhedrons are broken and no more invalid.
I've tried some QuArk editions, including 6.3, 6.4 and 6.5, but they all don't work. I can't see anyting but the lights in the map. Every polyhedron in the default map are broken. And when I build a cube or other polyhedron, it is also broken. In the OpenGL view, nothing can be seen.
Even the editon shipped with the Book, 3D Game Programming, doesn't work either.
The Operating System in my computer is WinXP Home Edition in Simplified Chinese. I choose English Language when intalling QuArk.

Would someone help me? Thank you.