Game Development Community

Export Problem

by Tobyn Manthorpe · in Artist Corner · 07/16/2008 (10:21 am) · 6 replies

I have a level pipeline issue that I was hoping someone could take a look at.

I've had Torque 1.7.1 for the last week and I've managed to get a character in the game so I'm happy about that... so now I'm trying to put in a level.

I have downloaded QuArK 6.6 Beta which includes the Torque exporters. I have also downloaded map2dif_debug.exe (0.900r-beta).

Here are my file structures with all files and folders:

c:\Torque
___\Levels
_____LF_C1Turret01.qkm
_____map2dif_debug.exe
_____\base
_______\textures
_________null.jpg

There are no other files under the "Levels" directory structure other than the ones shown.

I have switched Quark to export to Torque files. I have gone into the configuration of the exporters and set:

- "Torque converter" to "map2dif_DEBUG.EXE"
- "Directory of Torque files" to "c:\Torque\Levels"
- 1st through 6th + 9th program "program-execuatable" to "c:\torque\levels\map2dif_debug.exe"

LF_C1Turret.qkm has only one 'brush' in it, a cylinder with the null.jpg applied onto it. It shows up correctly in the editor. When I try to export to Torque, It gives me a pop-up windows saying "map2dif_debug.exe has encountered an error and needs to close."

Here is the log from QuArK's console:

- _____________________ Export220Map/Build High Detail DIF _____________________
-
- c:\Torque\Levels\tmpQuArK> "c:\torque\levels\map2dif_debug.exe" -v -h -o "./maps
- /" -t ./textures maps/lf_c1turret01.map
-
- Successfully opened map file: maps/lf_c1turret01.map
- Parsing mapfile...done.
- Creating BSP...done.
- Marking active zones...done
- Creating surfaces...done.
- Lightmaps: Normal...Alarm...done.
- Resorting and Packing LightMaps...done.
-
- STATISTICS
- - Total brushes: 1
- + structural: 1
- + detail: 0
- + portal: 0
- - Number of zones: 1
- - Number of surfaces: 0
-
- Exporting to runtime...
- /maps/lf_c1turret01.bsp: ignored
- /maps/lf_c1turret01.lin: ignored
- Files stored in c:\Torque\Levels\tmpQuArK\
- Operation finished.

I check to see what has been created in the directory structure and find a new dir called tmpQuArK with a .map file and my texture inside.

So it seems like either there's some silly setting I haven't found, my directory structure is messed up or my editions of each program aren't talking properly. Any ideas? Thanks for listening.

About the author

Tobyn has started Cedar Hill Games, a small dev studio in beautiful Victoria, B.C.


#1
07/16/2008 (1:37 pm)
Oh... Is it because I used a texture called "null"? That would make sense, as that is a name that is used to label torque objects. I'll try making a new texture.
#2
07/16/2008 (1:46 pm)
Huzzah, yes. That was it. Now the object exports, which is great... but doesn't load into torque. I get the error:

"Invalid st coord encoding in Teriror::readLMapTG"

I'll see if I can find any info about that.
#3
07/16/2008 (3:23 pm)
Sorry, I guess this is more of a diary than anything!

So I found out that you have to have the corerct version of map2dif, so I downloaded map2dif_plus and corrected those entries in the QuArK config. Exported fine again, and the engine (I'm running Stronghold) seemed to like it better than it did before.

But then it gave me a complete crash with a polite "...encountered a problem..." msg box.

This one might be more difficult to figure out.
#4
07/16/2008 (4:25 pm)
OK, so after running the debugger with the engine, I found it was a problem to do with mip-maps. It looks like the second version of map2dif I found (map2dif_plus 1.0r) was an incorrect version as well. I tried a third that I found (map2dif.exe 0.900d-beta) and that gives the same problem. I found a link to a specific version of map2dif for TSE (or TGEA) but the link is defunct.

http://www.garagegames.com/developer/torque/artist/#DIF

Anyone know where I can get the map2dif for TGEA? I'm at a loss.
#5
07/16/2008 (4:36 pm)
Oh good grief. I found this forum thread:

http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=32691

So I downloaded map2dif_plus_tse.exe. It failed on export from QuArK, so I ran it from a command line and it said it wasn't a valid Win32 application! What's going on? I'll keep hunting.
#6
07/16/2008 (4:44 pm)
OK! I got it now. I decided that there must be something I hadn't figured out, so I thought I'd check out what was included in the TGEA directory that I originaly downloaded and I found it:

engine\tools\map2dif_plus_tgea.exe

Works a charm. Maybe we should clean up some of the old documentation? Nah. Just leave it. :)