Bit of a Hammer vent.... Working 2 nights on a map. Walls, tunnels, textures, making checkpoint copies along the way. Before shutting down I reload a couple of older check points and see they look ok. All is good. Come back to do some more work tonight and open the latest file. Walls are a mess. Either the are missing, corners shooting off to who knows where and textures are just gone. Ok, I guess that last save was messed up. Let's get one from earlier in the evening that I test loaded ok the day before. Nope, just as messed up as the first and as several other checkpoint copies I try. It's like yesterday Hammer interpreted the map file one way and today it's reading it completely another. I'm already no fan of this tinker toy CAD program and I've read about frustration from others. It's no surprise map makers are few if this is the only tool they can use. This was a finished tunnel through a cliff.... well until hammer lost its mind anyway. Going to try again, bit different method, but if it keeps making trash like this I can't afford to waste more time.
Map->Check for problems. Usually when you make angled brushes with the vertices, there is a chance of a brush becoming invalid. Check for problems when you've used the vertice tool on brushes that are angled, etc.
Thanks, I'll use that more frequently and see how it helps. So far it looks like hammer is not very friendly to custom paths. While it lets you create whatever you want and it looks right while building, the final output is pinned in with much stricter rules. I'd compare working with this kind of like building with a deck of cards and blocks. Cut the cards and shape the blocks any way you like but make sure you're starting with cards and blocks. Custom primatives... forget it. I've redone parts of the maps with the above in mind. So far no check map complaints.
Also, if you're going to have those paths, it's best to CRTL + T and turn them into func_detail. Basicly anything that isn't walls, floor, ceiling, huge brushes, etc should be func_detail.
if you build angled brushes, build stuff out of 3 sided prisms (or tetrahedrons) rather then cuboids. you can form a plane through almost any set of 3 points, wheras on a regluar grid there are a whole lot less options for 4 points on the same plane. this ramp thing you try to build works best if you cut the blocks diagonally along the z-axis. hope what i wrote is understandable :D
Surprisingly yes. That's helpful, thanks. Still to build what I needed out of 2-3 times as many polygons in 3D landscape would be even more painful given hammer's limitations. It's great advice for certain things though.
Yes, works great when slicing and dicing those cards and blocks I spoke of. Not much help on an invalid planer brush with modified vertexs. But I didn't know it was invalid before I built it.
Thanks for the tip, trouble is these bits are to be walls an floors. I have to hope by the time I figure out how to use this thing, they're going to release a much better editor... If they haven't already. Now off to watch more vid tutorials. BTW, I can see how I might use carve to make some of the buildings I have in mind. And that Vid is classic. Just when the guys is trying to show you something, Hammer crashes. I think Valve keeps one version of the Map editor for themselves and this buggy version for the rest of us.
Btw is it possible to place working vehicles and tanks on the map without a VF at the start of a round? Or can those only come from a VF?
Yes. Use emp_vehicle_spawners in combination with a logic_auto. Or just decompile emp_downfall and look how they did it. http://wiki.empiresmod.com/index.php?title=Emp_vehicle_preset (the tank-type to build) wiki.empiresmod.com/index.php?title=Emp_vehicle_spawner (The spawn)
not every floor/wall/ceiling needs to be a worldbrush - only if it really blocks visibility. read up on https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Visibility_optimization, https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Visleaf and https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Func_detail ask what isnt clear - it sounds compicated at first, but is not that hard to understand no worries. if performance really sucks you maybe should ask one of our mapping gurus (keef, dz, ...) to have a quick look at what they see. ideally you would have considered all this vis-thing while planning the map, but i know thats not how it works
