Sapien help

[shade1893]

First off, I'd like to say Hello to all you out there! I'm new here, but not necessarly new to Halo. However, I am to mapmaking. I may be around here quite a bit asking things until I get in the swing of things.

Right now I've got a problem with running radiosity in my map. When run through Sapien it just simply closes out on me. When run in tool it gives me some odd error shown below:

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g43/Shade1223/Toolerror.jpg

Why does tool speak in riddles?


Next, when thats not my problem, the whole map is viewed in darkness! I dont see a sky at all, and when I run radiosity it does absolutely nothing.

[teh lag]

Oh hey, it's a new user who knows the importance of spelling and grammar on the internet. Reps 4 u.

As for the error... how much ram does your PC have? Also, if you could show us what error is spit into debug.txt when Sapien crashes, it'd be helpful as well.

[shade1893]

Oh hey, it's a new user who knows the importance of spelling and grammar on the internet. Reps 4 u.

As for the error... how much ram does your PC have? Also, if you could show us what error is spit into debug.txt when Sapien crashes, it'd be helpful as well.
Haha, thanks. I hate being classified as a "noob" who cant spell to save his life.

According xfire when I uploaded my "Gaming Rig" it said I have 504MB RAM space.

For the debug.txt, I dont know how to get that. I use gmax and chimp exporter, if that helps.

[Darkness]

open your halo ce directory where you installed the game there should be a debug.txt in there

[shade1893]

Thanks.



12.20.07 23:25:27 sapien pc 01.00.00.0609 ----------------------------------------------
12.20.07 23:25:27 reference function: _write_to_error_file
12.20.07 23:25:27 reference address: 401b13
12.20.07 23:25:27 Couldn't read map file './sapienbeta.map'
12.20.07 23:25:28 CreateDevice succeeded with refresh rate = 0
12.20.07 23:25:34 Increasing sound decompression buffer size to 1048576 bytes
12.20.07 23:26:25 local player 0, weapon (0x0), deleted unexpectedly
12.20.07 23:30:35 EAX: 0xFFFFFFFE
12.20.07 23:30:35 EBX: 0x00B17A01
12.20.07 23:30:35 ECX: 0x0012EC40
12.20.07 23:30:35 EDX: 0x000002CC
12.20.07 23:30:35 EDI: 0x0012EC40
12.20.07 23:30:35 ESI: 0x00000000
12.20.07 23:30:35 EBP: 0x0012EB18
12.20.07 23:30:35 ESP: 0x0012EB08
12.20.07 23:30:35 EIP: 0x7C90EB94, C3 8D A4 24 ?????
12.20.07 23:30:35 EXCEPTION halt in \halopc\haloce\source\memory\array.c,#130: index>=0 && index<array->count

[p0lar_bear]

Just so you know, these are VERY out-of-the-ordinary exceptions, so help probably won't be instant.

Have you done anything to the stock tags that came with the HEK? Have you extracted any from a map with any 3rd party apps? Have you done any editing besides what might have been laid out in the official tutorial?

[shade1893]

Just so you know, these are VERY out-of-the-ordinary exceptions, so help probably won't be instant.

Have you done anything to the stock tags that came with the HEK? Have you extracted any from a map with any 3rd party apps? Have you done any editing besides what might have been laid out in the official tutorial?
I realize that, I've posted on other forums and hardly ever got any responses. And yes I have. I extract my model using Chimp exporter, and make the models using gmax. Other than that, everything else is included in HEK.

[teh lag]

Try running radiosity on another map; for example the given tutorial. It's possible your map is just making the lightmapper freak out.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

You may also wish to make sure their are no errors in the map model.

[shade1893]

Try running radiosity on another map; for example the given tutorial. It's possible your map is just making the lightmapper freak out.
Tutorial works just fine. And in what ways would my map make the lightmapper freak out? How do I fix this?

@ Lonewolf

What kind of errors? How do I check for these errors?


Lol I'm such a noob.

[teh lag]

Tutorial works just fine. And in what ways would my map make the lightmapper freak out? How do I fix this?

@ Lonewolf

What kind of errors? How do I check for these errors?


Lol I'm such a noob.

For example, does tool whine about anything on compile? (Degenerate tris and the like)? Is there any 'odd' geometry in your map, like extremely large/small tris or a high polycount?

[Gamerkd16]

Any spheres in your map? I got a weird error once because I have too many sides on my sphere. I think the limit is 12 sides. But maybe that might be causing it.

[shade1893]

Hmm.. well I'd tell you what my midpoint.scenario said when I opened it but Sapien decided to be even more gay and now it wont even load it. But I have a different .scenario (the one that comes up dark) and that one tells me:

Increasing sound decompression buffer to 1048576 bytes
WARNING: 1 cluster in structure_bsp levels\beginner\beginner have no background sound or scenary
Could not teleport camera into starting bsp

And I'm pretty sure when I load midpoint.scenario back when Sapien would load it it told me "Degenerate error: three or more tringles have bad geometry <blue triangle error>"

And I'd sit there thinking "What does that mean?"

EDIT: @ Gamerkd16:

No spheres, just a skybox and a frame.

[teh lag]

And I'm pretty sure when I load midpoint.scenario back when Sapien would load it it told me "Degenerate error: three or more tringles have bad geometry <blue triangle error>"

There's your problem. IIRC Sapien dumps errors like that to debug.wrl as opposed to tool and <mapname>.wrl. Import the wrl and see where your bad geometry is, as that's most likely the cause of your problems.

[shade1893]

There's your problem. IIRC Sapien dumps errors like that to debug.wrl as opposed to tool and <mapname>.wrl. Import the wrl and see where your bad geometry is, as that's most likely the cause of your problems.
What? I didnt understand a thing you just said.I found a debug_lightmaps image thing and when I opened it up it doesnt really tell me anything, its just a bunch of colors. How do I get the debug.wrl?

[teh lag]

What? I didnt understand a thing you just said.I found a debug_lightmaps image thing and when I opened it up it doesnt really tell me anything, its just a bunch of colors. How do I get the debug.wrl?

>.< Sorry about that. In your CE root directory, there *should* be a file called debug.wrl that Sapien spits out right after an error like that occurs. You can import the .wrl with Chimp, and it points out where errors in your map are. There's also a file called (map name here).wrl that Tool spits out as well; if you can't get anything from debug.wrl your next stop would be there.

[shade1893]

>.< Sorry about that. In your CE root directory, there *should* be a file called debug.wrl that Sapien spits out right after an error like that occurs. You can import the .wrl with Chimp, and it points out where errors in your map are. There's also a file called (map name here).wrl that Tool spits out as well; if you can't get anything from debug.wrl your next stop would be there.
Sapien didnt spit out anything. And the midpoint.wrl tells me:

#VRML V1.0 ascii
Separator
{
Coordinate3 { point[-504.211283 -51.009369 3004.419708, -497.475004 -52.577603 3004.419708] }
MaterialBinding { value PER_VERTEX }
Material { diffuseColor[1.000000 0.000000 0.000000, 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000] transparency[0.000000, 0.000000] }
IndexedLineSet { coordIndex[0,1,-1] }
}

Pretty sure its trying to tell me something, but I just cant read it lol.

[p0lar_bear]

He is saying that Sapien generates anddumps a file into CE's root called "debug.wrl" when there are show-stopping errors after you load the map data in Sapien. Tool, on the other hand, spits out a .wrl file named after the JMS file you attempted to build.

For any errors that interrupt radiosity in Sapien, use Chimp to import debug.wrl. For anything that stops level compilation in Tool, use Chimp to import the WRL file named after your JMS.