24 replies to this topic

[Miloch]

Yovaneth, on Nov 6 2010, 03:55 PM, said:

Wallgroup flags table updated in topic 'Area Basics'

This is useful, thanks. Speaking of wall polygon flags, have you ever noticed the bit 4 "hovering wall" flag crashes the game sometimes? I kept getting this until I made it a regular "wall" instead (though it was, technically, "hovering" but I guess it doesn't matter as far as dithering):

Quote

ASSERTION FAILED!
File: ChVidPoly.cpp
Line: 523

Exp: m_nVertices >= 3

Msg: no msg.

It was annoying, because this suggests (and has in the past) a polygon of under 3 vertices, and I had none like that (the one in question had 4).

[Avenger]

Hovering wall description is not correct in the tutorial.
The hovering wall polygon data is actually two separate data:
1. the first two points are a baseline
2. the rest of the points are the polygon

So, it doesn't make sense to have less than 5 points in a hovering wall polygon (and less than 3 would cause assertion). (3 would make a point, 4 would make a line, 5 would make a triangle).

There is also a rule about the order of the points (iirc, it is counterclockwise). But i think DLTCEP fixes them with the Order all button.

So, a hovering wall can have a different baseline than its normal baseline (which is the first line of the polygon). This is used for arches where the baseline (the ground) is lower than the lowest line of the polygon.

Edited by Avenger, 11 November 2010 - 08:59 AM.

[Miloch]

The one I was talking about had 4 points (the one circled here):

But are you saying I'd have to "ground" it with a couple more points or something? In that case it would overlap the wall below it. I probably wouldn't bother, since it seems to work just fine as a regular wall, but useful to note somewhere I suppose.

[Yovaneth]

Wallgroups are a complete PITA, so much so that I'm working on a large sub-topic devoted just to wallgroups and their problems. I see from the picture that you've very carefully lined up the edges of the polygons; you don't need to be so accurate as they'll still work if you have everything overlapping. Where your 'hovering' wall is set makes it effectively a normal wall, which is why it is working correctly, because the baseline is outside the cre-accessible area but any cres that move will walk into its sphere of influence.

A really dirty trick to get a hovering wall such as an arch is to simply not to add any flags at all. Any part of a cre that crosses a polygon boundary will be dithered, regardless of where its feet are.

@Avenger: hovering wall comments noted. I've only ever tested one and it worked, so I've never hit the assertion problem.

-Y-

Edited by Yovaneth, 14 November 2010 - 06:49 AM.

[Miloch]

Yovaneth, on Nov 14 2010, 09:42 AM, said:

Wallgroups are a complete PITA, so much so that I'm working on a large sub-topic devoted just to wallgroups and their problems.

Yeah, it's probably the worst thing about area editing. I keep meaning to try out jcompton's wallgroup automapper but thus far I've only worked with relatively small areas, so I've always figured it'll be easier to draw them from scratch (and still ends up being a PITA). I thought Avenger was maybe thinking of adding or supporting that auto-wallmapper through DLTCEP though.

[Yovaneth]

New version up. As promised, this includes making Wallgroups a separate sub-topic off Area Basics, complete with a full troubleshooting section.

-Y-

[berelinde]

Cheating with the night WED, part 2, AKA how to recover when the modder screws up. Or, how to copy over the wallgroups to the night TIS when you forgot you would need one in the first place.

I hesitate to bring this up in this thread since this is not the most elegant way of doing things by any stretch of the imagination, but it does help a modder recover from an episode of poor planning with minimal nail-biting.

I had my area, but I got crashing at night for reasons I didn't understand until I realized that the night WED assignment was set for the day TIS. Oops. I didn't want to make the area all over again, and the thought of redrawing 293 polygons made me feel faint, so I tried to make the best of things. Hey, the worst that could happen was that I would have to remake the area, and it looked as if I would have to do that anyway. I couldn't do it with DLTCEP alone. I needed the more primitive functionality of IETME. I opened the NEARLY completed area (I had not yet done the doors!) with IETME and then opened the night time BMP, the darkened, slightly bluish one I planned to use for the night TIS. IETME lets you replace the BMP on the fly without having to redraw the polygons. I saved the file as something else, G3120N where my original area was G31200. IETME doesn't let you save areas with more than 6 characters. I rebuilt the TIS, lightmaps, the works, all with the new name. The sole purpose of this exercise was to get the TIS. I renamed it G31200N. This is very important. After this was done, I closed IETME and reopened DLTCEP. I opened the area I was working on and clicked on night WED. At this point, I imported the renamed tileset I made with IETME. It was scrambled, all in a single-tile column over 2000 tiles long. I thought it was hopeless, but it wasn't. By setting the X dimension of the frame count to my original X dimension number of tiles, in this case 69, everything lined up perfectly. From that point on, I set the overlay and carried on as if I had made up the tileset on the spot. All of my wallgroup polygons were preserved. Note that this only works if you have not yet set the doors. If you have, you'll have to redo them because your night door tileset inlays will have day coloring and it will be obvious. But it's still quicker and easier than copying over a couple of hundred polygons, and far, far quicker than starting an area from scratch. Unless somebody says "Yeah, tried it, the area still crashes on loading," I may decide to do this on purpose. Doing wallgroups once is far better than doing them twice, or even loading saved polygon parameters.

[Yovaneth]

It sounds like you needed the 'So Now You want to Add a Night Area' subtopic. Or did I mis-read your problem?

-Y-

[berelinde]

No, that is pretty much what happened.

Dammit, the info I needed was there the whole time. I just didn't look in the right place. Thank you for not saying RTFM.

Edited by berelinde, 03 December 2011 - 02:34 PM.

[Yovaneth]

I can if you really want

-Y-

Edited by Yovaneth, 04 December 2011 - 03:27 AM.