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[hika]

To begin with a first report for new Santacruz revision, Hellrider, ChainLightnin' and me found leak lights that probably already exist in the original map.




And more in the cosmetic :
It seems that some blinking because of thin emptiness between brushes ?



"Hall of mirrors" have also been noticed with "no shadow" in certain areas ... but I will let Hellrider or ChainLightnin' for a bit of their report

[ChainLightnin']

OK, we found a strange eclaboussure de mirrors, HOM in front of the Saloon, and I believe Red found the one in front of the church. Screenshots are the saloon anomaly by the hitching post, and another possible light leak. Nice warm looking map.
Chain

[Breli]

hmm ...

Although I would love to see the light leaking issue fixed I want to point out that we had light leaking in 2.1 and 2.0 all over the place. This is nothing we introduced in 2.2 or the SA. It is simply a "glitch" in the matrix that screws something up during compilation of the maps. It is not likely that we can really fix this. Especially since it appears irregularly: one spot doesn't leak after compile one and leaks after compile two. Red reported something similar.

We should keep in mind that we are dealing with almost 10 year old stuff here (compiler, engine ...) ... So unless leaking is caused by bad map designer practices, we cannot do something against it. That is, assuming that nobody wants to fool around with the compiler code. Maybe we should call ydnar LOL!

Maybe we can find a compiler switch or a map property like _lightmapscale that helps to suppress light leaking, though.

Breli

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Maybe we can find a compiler switch or a map property like _lightmapscale that helps to suppress light leaking, though.

Unfortunately, adding _lightmapscale to the worldspawn doesn't fix a lot of leaks. As for the HOM anomolies, this is somehow introduced by us. I have yet to determine the cause but I'm focusing my investigation on _blocksize.

[Hellrider]

Also we found a not aligned texture:





Next point is about a small gameplay change: It's very hard to go out of the church's windows on the top. Maybe you could make them wider and/or higher?





And if you land there:





It's nearly impossible to go back into the church whitout jumping from the roof...(If you do not know the way ---> you've got to jump on the clock and then you must jump towards the steeple's windows)


The last point is a code sided bug :

I got infinte molotov cocktails. I'm not sure how it happened exactly. All what I remember is :

I lightened a "molo" (the last one left) and I did not throw it manually. After the "molo" was "autothrown", I had infinite molo's. I'm not sure about this but I think I was writing a message when it happened
The display showed me that I have "0-" Molotow-Cocktails.



Ok I think that's all so far.

BTW: The map looks much better than the old one

[hika]

I lightened a "molo" (the last one left) and I did not throw it manually. After the "molo" was "autothrown", I had infinite molo's. I'm not sure about this but I think I was writing a message when it happened

I have tried that during the test session, and this is not enough for having infinite molotovs
Have to find another way to reproduce this bug I witness, but I expect you will

[Breli]

Unfortunately, adding _lightmapscale to the worldspawn doesn't fix a lot of leaks.

I know. I just wanna say: Forget about the leaks and concentrate on other stuff ... sig11 once said that light leaking even makes sense in a western setting with loose planks and all ... LOL!

As for the HOM anomolies, this is somehow introduced by us. I have yet to determine the cause but I'm focusing my investigation on _blocksize.

Thats different. I somewhat doubt that _blocksize is too blame but we can check that.

Breli

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Forget about the leaks and concentrate on other stuff ... sig11 once said that light leaking even makes sense in a western setting with loose planks and all ... LOL!

I'm not concerned with eliminating every last one of them. But if they can be reduced... then why not.

I somewhat doubt that _blocksize is to blame but we can check that.

The only other things I can think of that these revisions have in common are newly introduced bot clips, textures & shaders. (Remember, no light leak fixes in Santa Cruz yet so we can rule that out.) Gotta start somewhere right? Blocksize seemed like the most logical place to begin. Either that or some physical brush changes, or changing structural brushes to detail could cause it? Anyway, here are my observations so far.

This is the prt file view that is closest to the HOM in Durango. Looks a little funky in the center of the image huh? For non-mappers, you don't really want to see colored blocks this close together. However, the same thing occurs in most wq3 levels but without the HOM effect. My own noobish map designs have spots like this in fact. And all of these levels perform fine in their orginal state. Only the revision maps seem to suffer.

And here is the prt file view in Santa Cruz. The red line I added represents where the HOM occurs. The HUGE structural ground brush, that covers much of the ground, is a rectangle that touches the void. Experienced mappers will note that there is no visible reason for an HOM effect here.

When I turn 180 degrees I see this. Red line added again to show where the HOM happens. Notice the many splits just like in Durango?

Here is an ingame shot of the spilt. If you look closely you can actually see the line at the bottom of the pic between the pistols.

Here is another shot showing the split. Player shadow shows up on one side but not the other.

And finally, the HOM itself....but only if you look down at a certain angle while standing there.

So what does this mean? Hell if I know. But I do know that _blocksize is 1024 by default. Changing to _blocksize 512 "splits" the bsp tree twice as much, which could 'theoretically' cause weirdness like this. But changing _blocksize back to default (or simply eliminating the key) doesn't get rid of the problem. So I'm wondering if this corruption is irreversible? IE, forcing me to revert to older map files.

As for shadows that appear on some brushes but not others, I am clueless. Here are two images from CoyoteBluff where this same phenomenon occurs.

I can safely rule out terrain blending as the cause, since Santa Cruz has none, but not phong shading untill I perform more tests. Maybe player shadows won't be noticed by most people (since it hasn't been mentioned till now) but the HOM effect is obviously not acceptable.

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Well _blocksize 512 isn't the culprit in Durango at least. A new compile has no HOM effects. I'm stumped.

[Breli]

One thing is sure: the abundance of micro portals is not good and may even screw things up (and causing looooooonnnng compile times). The old maps are full of it since way too much stuff is structural for my liking (99% percent of stuff in my maps is usually detail).

Have you tried to override vis splits by using a hintskip brush in that area? is the map file on the FTP?

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Since I'm at work I can't say for sure, but I believe I uploaded pk3's to the private ftp that contain the map files.
I compiled the original SantaCruz last night. It's ok (no HOM) if I leave it alone. When I changed _blocksize to 512 & recompiled the HOM is back. Seems I was right in SantaCruz's case.

[ReD NeCKersoN]

This post isn't about El Paso but I'm putting it here since it pertains to the HOM effect & other oddities we're discussing. I started over with Durango & basically kept my changes very simple. I didn't do anything that should cause problems & I did not change blocksize. I've only done fast light compiles & nothing else. (No vis) Still getting player shadows in some places but not others, on the same texture for no reason. AND more importantly, the HOM effect is back. That makes no damn sense without a vis compile. And get this, once I started over with the original map file, the light leaks went away on the first compile. WTF! Lethal has suggested reinstalling Radiant & the compiler. I guess that's the only thing left to try. Dammit, these revisions should be simple but this has been nothing but a headache so far. I could knock these br revisions out in a couple of weekends if it weren't for all of this stupid weirdness. I'll reinstall this weekend & see what happens.

[Breli]

Dang! Why can't things be easy AT LEAST ONE FREAKIN' time. I think reinstalling everything is a waste of time, red, sorry . I have the same problems in my revisions which makes me think. We are sharing some shaders but other than that ... I never had problems in maps I did from scratch ... what is also very strange.

I turns out that making stuff from scratch is faster than tweaking ICI stuff