Caulking and leaks

(Lockeownzj00) #1

Before I continue, I hate to sound rude, but I want straightforward answers and not ambiguous posts until the thread is closed and I gain absolutely nothing.

I am making a simple, geometric open-air level. When compiliing, it says it is leaked–so I try to caulk the whole level, or “sky” the whole level to no avail. What am I doing wrong? The surface tutorials are good, but the sky section is totally vague. Am I supposed to make a giant brush that covers the whole terrain? And even supposing it DOES compile, how can I stop it from doing that overlapping glitch that shows like a thousand overlaps of whatever you’re looking at?

I desperately need help, and I can not find any tutorial or thread that has useful, straightforward information. I constatnly come across closed threads or bad answers. :frowning:

(chavo_one) #2

Is your caulk box accidentally made of detail brushes? Press ctrl+D and see if your caulk hull disapears.

(Lockeownzj00) #3

I’m not even sure what that means. Can you just tell me what you are supposed to do with caulk? I am obviously doing it wrong.

(Sombee) #4

Here is a good explanation about the use of caulk from Radiant. It should clear up any questions you may have (and possibly point you closer to a reason as to why you are having leaks).

(Lockeownzj00) #5

no…I still don’t know why I’m having leaks. I still don’t know why I can’t put in a sky. I still don’t know why all of this is not working.

in fact that made caulk seem different to me–as if it was not needed in order to seal off th elevel–THEN WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?

I don’t even know where to start with this. I look at the gold rush map and has odd textures everywhere. I can even see sometimes how it would work but sometimes there are just layers and layers of clip and caulk and I have no idea why how or what they are there for. The only way I have ever discovered to seal leaks is to make a lot of solid ceilings…

(SCDS_reyalP) #6

You level has to be a sealed box made out of ‘structural’ brushes. Non-transparent brushes are structural by default. You can use caulk anywhere that will not be seen.

You also must put at least one entity inside your level, and not put any outside.

If your map leaks due to not being sealed, you shoul see a big fat red line in radiant, going from one of your entities, to the outside, through the point which caused the leak.

(Lockeownzj00) #7

When making the other horrible level I made, the red line helped. I did not know how to seal so I just put ceilings. But now, it just leads outward. Just into the air. What the hell am I supposed to do? I don’t know the source of the problem. I have one entity inside my level.

Do I not use caulk at all? Is there any easy way to seal the level? Is there any HARD way? I don’t even KNOW either way right now.

If caulk is structual, why isn’t it working?

edit: hmm i hate to sound ungrateful, i appreciate your help, but maybe I hsould make myself more clear.

Can I just have instructions to how to do these things? Suggestions aren’t really happen as they could be right or wrong, but with instructions it’s pretty hard to mess up.

(SCDS_reyalP) #8

What do you mean the line goes out into ‘air’ ? You map has to be completely closed. Do you mean that the line goes through a solid brush ? Or that you didn’t close your level ?

caulk is just solid and non-drawing. You can use it to close your level, but if the player can see it, they will usually see the hall of mirrors effect.

(Lockeownzj00) #9

thats exactly what i dont want. how can i seal my level without that hall of mirrors effect?

And what I mean is, the red line doesn’t point to anything in this situation. It just goes straight out to open space in the level.

(AdamTheBastard) #10

If you don’t mind the cheap nast way of doing it… create a brush that covers the whole level assign your sky texture to it and press the Hollow button… hey presto sky box and hopefully no more leaks

(Lanz) #11

Ok here’s a few pointers to consider when trying to fix a leak, I list it in general not considering exactly what you have tried or not.

  1. Make sure there’s no holes between your hull brushes.
  2. Make sure the hull brushes is made of structural brushes,
  3. Make sure that the shader attached to the leaking brush doesn’t use surfaceparm nonsolid.
  4. Make sure that no entities are located on the outside of the hull or the map will leak.
  5. You must have at least one info_player_deathmatch in the map for it to not leak, you can use other entities later on but start with that.

Oh and btw, cheap nasty solutions is never a permanent option! :slight_smile: In the case of a terrain map, it might be the right thing to do to create a big box, and apply a sky shader to it but in all other cases it’s a sure way to screw up your map further.

(Lockeownzj00) #12

well i kind of got it working…i made top, bottom, left, and right walls, and made the bottom faces sky and the others made out of caulk. When it loaded, though, the sky was just orange lines and black. It did have the white border around it.

Of course, limbo crashed, but on my last map, I did the “max/min” coords thing and it worked, but this time it didn’t. I followed what hummer said in his tutorial, but now the map doesn’t even load. :confused: