How the hell does this happen?
by Adam Beer · in General Discussion · 10/12/2007 (12:27 pm) · 9 replies
After 6 months of creating a 70 building city for my WW2 game, I finally decided to export a section in game. This was my result:
This is extremely frustrating especially after you finish what you've been working on for 6 months. So how does this happen? I exported with constructor and the dif was ok but there were missing walls and some surfaces were weird. It was made in radiant. This shot above is from map2dif_plus_tgea. If anyone can help I would very much appreciate it.
This is extremely frustrating especially after you finish what you've been working on for 6 months. So how does this happen? I exported with constructor and the dif was ok but there were missing walls and some surfaces were weird. It was made in radiant. This shot above is from map2dif_plus_tgea. If anyone can help I would very much appreciate it.
About the author
Adam is the owner of Ignition Games, an indie game and software development company.
#2
10/12/2007 (12:53 pm)
Yeah just tryed it. Theres still brushes that are missing and a bunch of stretched lines. 
#3
Neil
10/12/2007 (1:06 pm)
Hey Adam, have you tried just exporting using 'export to dif' in the new constructor ver?Neil
#4
10/12/2007 (1:13 pm)
I tried that, same result. In constructor the map is 100% fine and there is no brush problems. Would would make it all of a sudden decide to do that? 
#6
overlaping portals, overlaping brushes etc can cause this kind of prob also.
10/12/2007 (1:39 pm)
Is everything a structure? as that can cause probs, but its hard to offer advice with difs without the file if you get my meaning as they are so tetchie.overlaping portals, overlaping brushes etc can cause this kind of prob also.
#7
After a bit of tampering I found that when the brush was TOO big (Or too many faces?) it would fail and mess things up.
So he eventually sliced up the maps into quadrants to make them export perfectly. (80% of the time.)
Second possible fix is the CSG subtract tool. The tool itself works, but the strange poly angles (I think) its creating makes a mess of a shape. Often times I found empty polys. (Plenty of clear spots all over my maps!!)
I found a very simple, easy fix for this too: Planks. In-game planks work great. Even adds some style to the map. Only downside is the mappers get angry when they have to place 200-600 planks. =(
10/12/2007 (4:37 pm)
I don't know if this is a problem fix, but my mapper has complained several times of strange poly disappearance and textures gone wrong.After a bit of tampering I found that when the brush was TOO big (Or too many faces?) it would fail and mess things up.
So he eventually sliced up the maps into quadrants to make them export perfectly. (80% of the time.)
Second possible fix is the CSG subtract tool. The tool itself works, but the strange poly angles (I think) its creating makes a mess of a shape. Often times I found empty polys. (Plenty of clear spots all over my maps!!)
I found a very simple, easy fix for this too: Planks. In-game planks work great. Even adds some style to the map. Only downside is the mappers get angry when they have to place 200-600 planks. =(
#8
The way to "fix" this is to split your Interior up into multiple smaller Interiors and piece them together in the Mission Editor. Kinda sucky but fixing it in code would require a decent amount of 3D programming experience.
The "orange texture" I believe is the "Unmapped Material" texture that gets applied to any texture in TGEA that hasn't been mapped to a Material (the material.cs files you see in the other folders).
10/18/2007 (1:11 pm)
There is a little known bug in TGEA where you can have too many vertices in a single DIF and you get bizarre rendering artifacts (the stretched lines occur when you blow past the limits of a 16-bit index buffer).The way to "fix" this is to split your Interior up into multiple smaller Interiors and piece them together in the Mission Editor. Kinda sucky but fixing it in code would require a decent amount of 3D programming experience.
The "orange texture" I believe is the "Unmapped Material" texture that gets applied to any texture in TGEA that hasn't been mapped to a Material (the material.cs files you see in the other folders).
#9
10/18/2007 (1:59 pm)
Thanks for the reply Matt. We have taken that approach now and its working fine. 
Associate David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake