Why do some things just not "stick" ?!

(Jizaboz) #1

I’m currently using GTKradianr version 1.3, and the newest build of Q3map2build. In one area of my map, there is a long ramp going up to a building. The bottom of this brush has an alpha “grating” texture and the other side has “Clip missle”. The side of the brush is NoDraw. So here’s the problem…

The map is new completed. However, let’s say I built the map with full light and VIS… the ramp looks good and works but I’ve found that for some reason another brush in the level is not clipping at all. so I fix it. I then build the map in nolight, fastVis… the brush I just fixed is now clipping… but now my ramp doesn’t work! It looks fine approaching it, but when I stand on it… it disappears and I can still stand on it… OR sometiimes it looks just fine but is now no longer even clipping! So, I re-do the ramp and fix it. It looks good again. I build it with nolight, fastvis to test it. Everything now works and looks good! Then, I leave my puter on overnight AGAIN to do another full build. The next morning I wake and test it… the ramp is disappearing again! So I replace the ramp again, by copying it and deleting the old one (like I did the last time) and now I’m waiting another 5 hours to see if I got lucky.

WTF causes this ?!?! This is seriously slowing me down, this map should have been released days ago. ANY help or even theories would be appreciated.

(MuffinMan) #2

i had a similar problem ages ago with nomissile-clips, it only happened to some of them which had the same angle - if i remember right there was a problem with the way the engine handles the brushes - if the side with the clip shader is not listed first in the brush it doesn’t work or something like that - try to open your .map with some texteditor, put the clip-shader line on top and try again

well probably i’m totally wrong but you could try…

oh and stop autosave - everytime it saved it rewrote my brushes again and so stopped them from working

(ratty redemption) #3

try using clip missle on all faces other then the one painted with the alpha texture.

(ydnar) #4

Put nodraw on the nonvisible sides of the grate brush and slap another brush with missle clip on top of it. It’s OK (and desireable) to overlap brushes.

y

(gerby) #5

What´s wrong with slapping clip on all the sides where nodraw currently are?
It seems to me that that´s what is causing the problem because faces aren´t given certain properties, they depend on the brush the face is attached to.
When a brush property is ´set´, it´s done pretty much by choosing a face at random. So what you need to do is make sure there´s no conflicting types to textures (here, nodraw and clip).
The same happens with water brushes that have nodrawnonsolid (a common beginner mistake - we´ve all done it!) - some of them are water, some you just plop through as if they aren´t there :slight_smile:

(Jizaboz) #6

Ydnar’s suggestion seems to work. I put the alpha texture on the top of the ramp, and noDraw on the others. Then I simply duplicated the brush, changed it to ClipMissle on all sides, then overlapped it in the exact location of the original. These results came from building in FastVIS and noLight, I’ll post again when the full compile is done in about 6 hours.

Thanks for the other suggestions as well guys. Muffin Man’s plan sounded cool because I wouldn’t have to compile again… but I don’t want to dive into a .txt version of a map I’ve been working on over half a year. The Auto-Save was turned off a long time ago… that’s a good tip, it can do horrible things. I had already tried Rat’s suggestion before my original post… it seemed like the logical thing to do but it just didn’t work. Gerby’s suggestion had been tried as well… and actually worked at one point I think but then refused to work again, just like my original method. And yup, I had water thinner than air as well when I was a newbie! Heh-heh

Thanks again for all the input… see ya in about 6 hours after the final build!

(MuffinMan) #7

we’re waiting for some beta (or is this final?)!

(seremtan) #8

If I understand your problem correctly, the simplest solution is to make the ramp out of detail caulk and apply the alpha grate to the top (or whatever side) of it. This way it will be solid, it won’t vanish mysteriously and you’ll be able to have metalsteps work. I suspect your problem comes from trying to apply one too many common shaders to a single brush.

(SCDS_reyalP) #9

some surfaceparms (like clipmissile) are actually content parms. They apply to the whole brush. In other words, an entire brush either clips missles or doesn’t.

If you have some sides with the surfaceparm and some without, you will sometimes get the desired effect, and other times not.

You can do what ydnar suggested, or make your own version of the grate texture, which also includes the clipmissle surfaceparm. Then put clipmissle, on all the other sides.

(Jizaboz) #10

What a confusing mess. Well, the full build also worked fine. Woooo-hooo! So it’s finally time to release it. Now I see one other detail in another area of my map I don’t like, but I really don’t even care now. Let’s just say putting an alpha texture on one side of a brush and solids on all the others looks kinda weird.

(Jizaboz) #11

mp_underground is now hosted at FilePLanet.

http://www.fileplanet.com/files/130000/135735.shtml

Let’s get my map on a few servers!!