I can't get my custom particle effect to work when packed into the map

Acegikmo

aa

Jan 31, 2008

555

1,482

• Jul 24, 2009

• #1

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.
When the files are in their folders, the particle effect works great.
But when I move them into the bsp, they stop working.
Here's how I packed them in pakrat:

When I launch the map, the console show this error:

Code:

Unable to read particle definition particles/snow.pcf! UtlBuffer is the wrong type!

Then the console spams loads of these:

Code:

Attempting to create unknown particle system 'env_snowflakes' 
Attempting to create unknown particle system 'env_snowflakes_small'

Here is the content of the manifest:

Code:

particles_manifest
{
		"file"		"!particles/snow.pcf"
}

Do you guys have any idea what could be wrong?

 

Psy

The Imp Queen

aa

Apr 9, 2008

1,706

1,491

• Jul 24, 2009

• #2

I do mine like this...

Code:

yourmapname_particles
{
		"file"		"!particles/rain_with_collision.pcf"
}

 

Acegikmo

aa

Jan 31, 2008

555

1,482

• Jul 24, 2009

• #3

Icarus was able to pack his particles into ctf_vector and his manifest looks like this:

Code:

particles_manifest
{
		"file"		"!particles/vector_core.pcf"
		"file"		"!particles/vector_core_charge.pcf"
}

 

jpr

aa

Feb 1, 2009

1,094

1,085

• Jul 24, 2009

• #4

I did that too and it didn't work... Or so I thought.
Then we played it at a gameday and it worked great, dunno what the problem was

 

Acegikmo

aa

Jan 31, 2008

555

1,482

• Jul 24, 2009

• #5

I managed to solve this now; Pakrat was corrupting one file at random every time I saved it.
So I repacked everything and now it works great

 

Icarus

aa

Sep 10, 2008

2,245

1,210

• Jul 25, 2009

• #6

Acegikmo said:

I managed to solve this now; Pakrat was corrupting one file at random every time I saved it.
So I repacked everything and now it works great

Click to expand...

Wait, what? Is this something I should be worried about?

 

M

Mokagogo

L1: Registered

Jun 21, 2009

32

1

• Jul 25, 2009

• #7

I was gonna say file corruption was the likely culprit.

A couple of custom materials for menu thumbnails and so on got corrupted by PakRat when I was packing a new release.

What happened in my case was that there were a couple of files whose addresses had not been corrected to turn them into relative addresses in PakRat. I did 'Edit' and then fixed the addresses, and that actually corrupted those files.

When I finally figured out what was going on I just started the pack from scratch again and it worked.

 

Icarus

aa

Sep 10, 2008

2,245

1,210

• Jul 25, 2009

• #8

I thought thumbnails could'nt be packed in anyways, since they aren't precached.

 

M

Mokagogo

L1: Registered

Jun 21, 2009

32

1

• Jul 25, 2009

• #9

Yeah, I think the thumbnails have to be loaded from the server by a .res file. I meant the .vtf file that loads as 'polaroids' on the map summary screen before you play. I did also pack the 'quick map' menu thumbnails in, too -- just on the offchance that Valve updates their tech at some stage to handle them in PakRatted bsps.

 

Nineaxis

Quack Doctor

aa

• 
• 

May 19, 2008

1,767

2,820

• Jul 25, 2009

• #10

They won't, that would require TF2 to load every BSP in your maps folder every time the Map List is refreshed to get to the thumbnails... which is never going to happen, for obvious reasons.

 

Terr

Cranky Coder

aa

Jul 31, 2009

1,590

410

• Aug 22, 2009

• #11

Bumping this rather than a new thread... Having problems too.

KeyValues Error: LoadFromBuffer: missing { in file scripts/soundscapes_ctf_2fort_revamp_b2.txt
(*ticles_manifest*),

Click to expand...

Did it just drop letters from the front of the file?

What's the best way to detect/avoid Pakrat's bug? I noticed it had a thrown exception when doing certain auto-scan tasks, but I added everything item-by-item manually. Should I just use BSPZIP? Or decompile the damn thing and fix it myself?

 

Last edited: Aug 22, 2009

Terr

Cranky Coder

aa

Jul 31, 2009

1,590

410

• Aug 22, 2009

• #12

Yeah, it must've been pakrat... Making some batch files to run bspzip appears to solve the problem.