ATTN ZEPH: Stop making maps.

[Zeph]

Now show up for some gameplay testing or I'm going to ban all of you. 8v8 CTF would make me superh appy.

20 July, 2010 8pm EST on Jcap's server. That's about 18 hours from OP.

http://modreality.net/lazy_walrus_032ffs.png

This piece of :effort: showed up after jcap pretty much canceled something I was working on for him. It should be "fun". If it is indeed "fun", then I'll work on prettyfying it. I mean, moreso than it is now. Seriously though, I spent considerable adhd :effort: to keep you guys from having a seizure while playing this thing and have a decent understanding of what's what and where's where.

Download link will go here when it's uploaded. Shouldn't be too long from now, but I found a screwup with hill indexes shortly ago and you all should know how bad I am at this.

[Dwood]

Hi Zeph. Downloading now when it's uploaded. Uhhhh Also. Where have you been? Oh, and hello, nice to meet you.

[Timo]

oh hi.

I'll try to make it if I can but i'm assuming 8pm EST will be some absurd time here.

e: midday tomorrow, i'm at lectures till 1. Sorry bro :[

[CrAsHOvErRide]

best avatar on this forum ever

[Zeph]

Erm, had a random urge to read Jurassic Park after I fixed the ones and zeroes. When I finished I remembered I hadn't uploaded yet.

Download here (http://www.modreality.net/lazy_walrus_032.rar)

Feel free to play around till tonight.

[ThePlague]

Sup. I'll hopefully be there. Don't think I have anything else to do.

[sevlag]

i like jurassic park, hated the movie, old man should have died like in the book

[Cortexian]

cumming for this

edit: there is no servers wtf

[ThePlague]

I was playing by myself a little bit ago, and you can get the warthogs pretty much everywhere. Was that intentional?

[Cortexian]

I was playing by myself a little bit ago, and you can get the warthogs pretty much everywhere. Was that intentional?
was just about to post this lol, at first I thought it was designed to prevent idiots from driving hogs everywhere but :fail:

[Hunter]

Server up yet?

[Siliconmaster]

If you left me know when the server is up, I can hop down to Panera bread and hijack their internet connection for a short bit. Otherwise, I have no way of playing.

Edit: Ohey, OP- 8pm, eh? I'll see if I can make it. Can't promise I'll be there too long though- they might get tired of me and kick me out.

[Cortexian]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK4U9Upy6tc

thought you were clever with that secret teleporter didn't you!!!!

[DarkHalo003]

OMG. Zeph. IS ALIVE? I thought you said you were gonna leave forever until the forum behaved like you?

Interesting map though. I haven't seen something this exotic since Yoyorast (I mean the good exotic, not the bad exotic).

[Siliconmaster]

Wow, I'd forgotten about that. Welcome back, Zeph :D

[jcap]

The server is up now, if you want to join early. It's on CTF, there is no mapcycle.

[Hunter]

Im in, join people :/

[Hunter]

Where is this damn teleporter? :/

[Zeph]

Just woke up in perfect time. Come play.

[Siliconmaster]

I'll be there in a bit- have to pack up my laptop and migrate to Panera. I assume we're running 1.09?

[Cortexian]

yes 1.09

[Higuy]

Map is alright. Weapon placements seem to be alright. I'd start working on making the map look decent. Should try to get some more players to test though.

Oh and, Freelancer, you suck :]

[Zeph]

:( everyone left.

[ThePlague]

My internet disconnected, again...

[Siliconmaster]

Yeah, but you left, and then everyone else just *poof* disappeared. And then Zeph and I screwed around for a little bit, and then my battery died so I left right after Sel showed up.

[Cortexian]

i left cause there weren't enough people for me to rape

[Lightning]

i pay wit peeps if still up

[Rook]

Hey so I missed this thread do a game tomorrow night (the 21st)

[Heathen]

Zeph's back...called it.

[Higuy]

i left cause there weren't enough people for me to rape
You mean you were getting raped to hard becuase your a scrub?

[Cortexian]

You mean you had a higher kill:death ratio than me and I got mad?
ftfy

[Dwood]

Zeph's back...called it.

Hey, he's stayed out of here for at least 2 years.

[Syuusuke]

What game is this for?

I'll play if people don't drag me to play alien swarmmmm

[Dwood]

What game is this for?


I think it's for alien swarm.

[Siliconmaster]

2 years? It's been that long already? Holy crap.

[Zeph]

So umm, two things. I was talking to Wave upwards of a few weeks ago when he asked me for a copy of this. Looks like I sent Jcap the wrong file to play on the server. Welp. Doesn't really matter though as structural differences between the intended and actual build wouldn't break play styles. But you heard it here, I'm really bad at this.

In other news, I require help.

http://modreality.net/NSE_Compile.jpg
http://modreality.net/bad_uvs.png

While waiting till the 27th when I'll regain access to my Cintiq workstations so I can complete the prettyfication of OP's post, I decided to go about prettyfying something else (http://portfolio.modreality.net/images/game_rollover.gif) since my internet died for a couple of days. 17 hours of remodeling later and I wind up with the above problem. It's the exact same radiosity problem I ran into that stopped the development of this map back five years ago, but this time the .wrl doesn't doesn't report any error geometry; only the nearly coplanar warnings, which show up in hilarious places might I add.

Five years ago, the last lead I had on this was a blue .wrl error report with the 100% full coverage of the exact same geometry, however the triangulation on every polygon was reversed. Tool could not build a structure bsp, so it never got into Sapien for me to see if it produced a radiosity error. This time, the sbsp was built, so no clue if it's an actual structural problem or if it's something on the UV side of things. The jms conversion doesn't actively seek out a vertex's UV node for writing, so I cant derive where that information is in the actual jms itself to see if the UVs are getting written correctly.

Any ideas how to proceed?

[Higuy]

import debug.wrl and look for the blue face. Re-uv it, re export, re do structure. also next time; do lightmaps in tool.

also

3ds max version?

[Siliconmaster]

^This. Sapien uses a different .wrl file than tool does, so the mapname.wrl file won't have that error in it. As higuy pointed out, if you open the debug.wrl file, just look for the blue faces. It's simply a face that has no uv coordinates.

Note: I have seen this error at other odd times involving simple parameterization on normally-textured faces, but I think that's the engine protesting really long uvs or somesuch nonsense. Don't think it matters in this case.

[Zeph]

Never knew about the debug.wrl. It didn't have the solution, but it let me find a duplicate edge which after deleting made everything fine (aside from somehow causing all normals to be flipped after export). Seriously, this level's idea is haunted and cursed; I probably wont live long after finishing it for that reason.

Using 2011, which is why I dropped back to Halo after CryEngine 2 seeing how Crytek dont support their existing games once they start a new project.
As for tool, I've ran lightmaps through it many a time, but the bitmap is never actually created on my machine. I just start radiosity in sapien and instantly save the results for these mass out type builds. When it actually comes time for me to need a high quality lightmap, I'll probably render it externally like Jahrain did back in the day.

[Siliconmaster]

Custom lightmaps.

They are pretty.

Do it.

[Higuy]

Using 2011

This is why you are probably having weird export problems, the jms exporter does shit things to your exported file, while blitzkrieg does not.
When I was working on Garden CE, I used max 9 and tool would give me a bunch of errors, but the wrl files never gave me them. Switched everything to 8, it gave me the errors correctly. I also had the entire map be inside out a few times.

[Zeph]

This is why you are probably having weird export problems, the jms exporter does shit things to your exported file, while blitzkrieg does not.
When I was working on Garden CE, I used max 9 and tool would give me a bunch of errors, but the wrl files never gave me them. Switched everything to 8, it gave me the errors correctly. I also had the entire map be inside out a few times.

Actually, the root of the problems are the conversion of object modifiers, the import/export process, merging/attatching objects with opposite backface culling settings, and that fucking demon that possessed the max package all those years back.

In short, edit mesh is essentially unsupported nowadays by autodesk since edit poly started doing what it did and more. It's only there for legacy support for this type of situation.

And btw, vB 4 sucks. I cant believe it's more javascript than CSS.

[DEElekgolo]

For some reason, my meshes work fine and .wrl files show properly when I give objects that are children under the frame object the "turn to mesh" modifier and use bluestreak 1.0.1. Bluestreak 1.0.2 does this automatically but it makes tool spit out errors while 1.0.1 does not.

[neuro]

the degenerate triangle has NOTHING to do with UVs'.

it's a triangle wth 0 surface area.

often it'll look like an edge, because the only way this can exist, is if 3 verts are on the same axis (resembling an edge)
they can be a bitch to track down sometimes, but they should show up in the debug file.

[Inferno]

the degenerate triangle has NOTHING to do with UVs'.

it's a triangle wth 0 surface area.

often it'll look like an edge, because the only way this can exist, is if 3 verts are on the same axis (resembling an edge)
they can be a bitch to track down sometimes, but they should show up in the debug file.

Actually, halo handles UV's weird. If you have a triangle with a UV surface area of zero (the UV is infinitely stretched) then it will throw a bad UV or degen tri error and show a blue triangle in the debug.wrl. It could also be a degen triangle like you said.

[Siliconmaster]

Oh, true- I forgot that badly uv'd faces will still compile- it's only faces with zero coordinates at all that get the degen triangle error. Or an actual degen triangle. Yeah. Halo sucks. :downs:

[Zeph]

Pretty much ready to move on to texturing, so I've been trying to get the new mesh in game. It seems that I'm still really horrible at this. There wouldn't happen to be anything particularly Tool.exe breaking about geometry that's .1 max units thick is there? Also, anyone care to give me a refresher on proper use of render/collision only geometry in a bsp? I was aiming for that slim geometry to be render only while a bigger collision only bit kept people from accidentally running through it.

I also have a nagging suspicion that the backface culling stuff Autodesk tossed in with Max 2009 broke floating light planes using the two sided material modifier. Anyone else get them working in a newer version of Max instead of tool just popping out open edge errors?

[sleepy1212]

I've only gotten two sided to work in 09 when all the edges are attached to something. It basically means you can have 3 planes attached on an edge instead of just 2 without the modifier or without render only (!).

render only: material!

[Zeph]

Cant seem to find method to the madness of collision only (@) elements. I'm using them exactly the same way I have in other maps from the past, but tool is spitting them out with open edges. Anyone care to point out stupid things I'm probably doing but not realizing?

yeah, I'm being intentionally vague.

[Zeph]

welp, after a bit of playing around with it some more, certain parts of the collision geometry work, while other parts dont. I was under the assumption that intersecting planar elements on the bsp threw exception errors by essentially blurring the boundary between space and nullspace. Are the special collision materials bound by a separate set of rules? I have one section where the collision was accidentally crossing over a piece of the bsp without returning open edge errors, but on other sections it does.

>_<

It's aggravating me very much.

[Dwood]

Can you show a picture in max demonstrating each?

[Zeph]

Been a while, but still without home internet and still having issues with collision not working uniformly.
works:
http://modreality.net/collision%20example.jpg
does not work:
http://modreality.net/collision%20not%20working.jpg

Don't really have an idea as to why. That one I showed as not working is mirrored as a perfect copy from the other side. All are using the @% shader symbols.

[ThePlague]

What I did with my stairs (back when I did it) I made the stairs a different part, and have the ramp connected to the map. Make the ramp collision only, and the stairs render only.

[.Wolf™]

or you use playerclips like he did. Is that just one big polygon or several polygons?

[Zeph]

>_> e3 chat brought me back.

Work on this stopped when I ran into something physically impossible for Max to break through. When converting from edit poly to edit mesh, one edge in a specific location breaks and will not seal even if created anew. Since I can delete a chunk surrounding it and still run into the problem, possibly elsewhere at times, it's something new with edit poly that just doesn't agree with the legacy edit mesh shit that should have just been deleted in Max 9. Tried to send it into H2V because of lol what open edges, but apparently broke a vertex limit in the cluster so welp.

http://modreality.net/lol%20map.jpg

So that's where it was left off way back a couple days after I last visited. It's pretty much done geometry wise, minus a skybox, and looking at having material IDs played with and having the shaders built. Anyone still run a copy of Max 8 anywhere? I'd use my old installer, but it wont work anymore. I'd like to try exporting this to Max 8 and seeing if its older conversion code would still do the same thing.

[LlamaMaster]

I have 3DS max 8.

[paladin]

my eyes

[Zeph]

I have 3DS max 8.
You on my steam list?

my eyes
I was worried no one would be hurt by my return.

[Hr3shy]

was just thinking about this thing bout a week ago. lol @ the render

[Zeph]

Welp, looks like this thing will never see the light of day. This problem was reproduced in Max 8 and there doesn't seem to be a way around it unless someone knows how to rewrite the jms.



Anyone know how to rewrite the jms so this forced open edge doesn't happen?

[Siliconmaster]

Copy faces, make new object, paste faces, rotate 180 degrees :P Tried that sort of silliness? It's fixed stuff for me before.

Or compiling the jms with a plain box, then recompiling with the more complex geometry again. Wiping clean the slate can fix stuff too.

[Higuy]

put it in max 8. max 9 use to do stuff like this all the time to me when I used it and never gave me a proper WRL file to use to fix it.