Could Hammer have corrupted my map?

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Mokagogo

L1: Registered
Jun 21, 2009
32
1
Hi,

Over the past day or so of compiles, my map has started displaying a couple of strange behaviors.


i) Sometimes thin dashed/dotted white lines appear along the floor, flickering as you move around and look at them. Normally I would expect them to be the result of poorly-joined brushes for the floor, but in this case they are actually lines in the middle of one-piece, unbroken brushes. I do think that they may be aligned with other, adjacent brushes a few feet away in the map, e.g. a section of wall.


ii) More weirdly yet, I am getting sections of floor which have a different texture when playing than in Hammer. There is absolutely no other brush beneath the floor; there's no other texture fighting for that area of the floor. I have no idea why the floor is taking on some of the wall texture there.


Screenshots:

In-game (wrong) --

cpairporthallb100010.jpg



In Hammer (right) --

hammerver.jpg



My compile is not coming up with any errors -- I ran it through interloper's logchecker.


Any thoughts on this? Has anyone else seen this? Could this be the result of a recent Hammer update, or perhaps a byproduct of a separate bug?



Cheers,

Mokagogo
 

Mokagogo

L1: Registered
Jun 21, 2009
32
1
I've gotten a bit further with this...it might have something to do with portals.


I don't know how long this has been happening -- I think not long, since I usually watch what happens with my compile logs -- but I noticed some unusual messages at the start of my last bsp compile. Interlopers has nothing on them. But here they are:

(start of compile...)
ProcessBlock_Thread: 0...1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10 (0)

FindPortalSide: Couldn't find a good match for which brush to assign to a portal near (-5102.0 -1024.0 284.5)
Leaf 0 contents: CONTENTS_SOLID
Leaf 1 contents:
viscontents (node 0 contents ^ node 1 contents): CONTENTS_SOLID
This means that none of the brushes in leaf 0 or 1 that touches the portal has CONTENTS_SOLID
Check for a huge brush enclosing the coordinates above that has contents CONTENTS_SOLID
Candidate brush IDs: Brush 343123:


FindPortalSide: Couldn't find a good match for which brush to assign to a portal near (-5120.0 -1003.2 289.3)
Leaf 0 contents: CONTENTS_SOLID
Leaf 1 contents:
viscontents (node 0 contents ^ node 1 contents): CONTENTS_SOLID
This means that none of the brushes in leaf 0 or 1 that touches the portal has CONTENTS_SOLID
Check for a huge brush enclosing the coordinates above that has contents CONTENTS_SOLID
Candidate brush IDs: Brush 343123:


FindPortalSide: Couldn't find a good match for which brush to assign to a portal near (-5084.0 -1003.5 289.1)
Leaf 0 contents:
Leaf 1 contents: CONTENTS_SOLID
viscontents (node 0 contents ^ node 1 contents): CONTENTS_SOLID
This means that none of the brushes in leaf 0 or 1 that touches the portal has CONTENTS_SOLID
Check for a huge brush enclosing the coordinates above that has contents CONTENTS_SOLID
Candidate brush IDs: Brush 343123:


(etc)


Furthermore, I note that when I do 'map/load portal file', the blue portal lines also go along where the flickering white lines were.

Sooo... Now I know they're related, but not really what to do about it or how. There's no leak, and I no pointfile to load. So it seems to be just a portal issue. I have no areaportals -- or to be more accurate, I do, but I disabled them in visgroups, so they shouldn't be a part of the compile. I did that because one of the structures they were in was leaking, and I decided to get them out of the equation for now.

From some wiki reading, I see that these portals are basically the same as visleafs, I think? Here's a screenshot of Hammer displaying the .prt file:

hammerportals.jpg



As you can see, the bottom of a visleaf occupies the same 'contested territory' where the wrong texture was being displayed. And the bsp log makes references to being unable to 'find a good match' for a brush to 'assign to the portal'.

Do you guys know how to deal with this issue, or investigate it further?
 

Mokagogo

L1: Registered
Jun 21, 2009
32
1
I searched for the brush it was saying was 'huge'. It was actually normal-sized, but I removed it and redid the brushwork underneath it. It wasn't anywhere near the area in question, but thankfully redoing that removed the portal errors.


Which just leaves me with problem number (i) -- the white lines. I did mat_leafvis in-game and confirmed that the shiny lines occur at the edge of various visleaves. Here's the demonstrative screenshots:

White line (near the back wall):

cpairporthallb100013.jpg


Covered by visleaf boundary:

cpairporthallb100014.jpg


White line (halfway into the alcove):

cpairporthallb100016.jpg


Covered by visleaf boundary:

cpairporthallb100017.jpg




Does anyone know why this would happen, or how to resolve it?


Many thanks,

Mokagogo
 

TMP

Ancient Pyro Main
aa
Aug 11, 2008
947
560
By chance have you been using the Carve tool?

If not, hammer decided it was a good idea to go crazy on the floor.
 

Vigilante212

L420: High Member
Dec 21, 2008
481
33
Ive had this happen before usually a bad brush from a copy paste caused it. Just delete the floor and remake it. Also in your last pic you should turn that ramp into a func_detail that way it wont carve the floor all up. Actually any ramp/stairs(just put a box behind them if they open to the void.
 

Mokagogo

L1: Registered
Jun 21, 2009
32
1
Ive had this happen before usually a bad brush from a copy paste caused it. Just delete the floor and remake it.

Man, deleting the floor is gonna be a b**ch. It's not as bad as if it were displacements, but there's a big 'basement'-type area in the centre of the level with ramps and sloping walls and stuff I'll have to think about.

Nevertheless, it seems like a good -- and probably by far the simplest -- suggestion.

One other thing that might be worth noting for anyone who reads this thread: I actually reduced the number of the white lines again a little bit. I put a 'hint'-textured horizontal face of a brush halfway up the level, in order to improve framerate. That also cut all of the visleafs, of course. And it seems to have eliminated about 1/3 of the problematic visleaf corners. But then, another one has crept in somewhere else :) So, yeah, I'll try that with the floor.

Also in your last pic you should turn that ramp into a func_detail that way it wont carve the floor all up. Actually any ramp/stairs(just put a box behind them if they open to the void.

Actually, that ramp and those stairs are all func_detail already. I think the line that goes alongside the table is from the edge of a world block within the large block to the left, which has internal rooms.

By chance have you been using the Carve tool?

In fact, I have not. I'm aware of the deadly threat of the carve tool, and I avoid it. I must admit, though, that the Clip tool is one of my dearest friends.
 

Open Blade

L420: High Member
Nov 30, 2007
439
34
FindPortalSide errors usually means you have a leak in your map. Leaks can all sorts or weird problems from texture problems to funky blurry sky's to darkened areas of your maps. In fact, on my last compile before this time, I had a ton of errors show up. PortalSideError's, NODRAW on terrain, etc....

I loaded up the pointfile (which means you have a leak), fixed that leak, when back to compile again and all those problems were fixed.

Check to see if it has a pointfile to load and then check where your leak is.