Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

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Carl
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Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-19, 05:31

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, but with Cafu (CaWE built July 17, 2016), I get a report that my (first) model leaks. OK. I'm told to load the pointfile. I do. No lines appear on any view. This means I have no way to know where the leak is.

My map is just a rectangular box--four walls, ceiling, floor. I went ahead and made them overlap at each edge, and somehow there is still a leak.

Confused. As I say, I'm sure I'm missing something.

Thanks,
Carl
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Carsten
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carsten » 2016-07-19, 10:43

Hi Carl,

I guess that you've seen Dealing with leaks? This page should at least explain what (CaBSP thinks) you're dealing with.

If you cannot make it work with the information provided there, please send me your map (either via a forum post attachment or via email) and I'll have a look at it.
Best regards,
Carsten
Carl
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-24, 01:51

Carsten,

First and foremost, thanks for taking the time to assist (and of course, create Cafu).

Second, sorry about the delay: my day job has been eating up my time.

Yes, I did read Dealing with Leaks. As I said, the problem is that the promised red lines showing the location of the leak simply do not appear. I'm attaching the map.

Regards,
Carl
Attachments
Basement.cmap
The map with the unrevealable leak
(5.39KiB)Downloaded 617 times
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carsten » 2016-07-25, 12:10

Hi Carl,

unfortunately I forgot asking you to post the related .cent file that is saved next to the Basement.cmap file as well -- sorry about that.

The "problem" is that when I created a matching Basement.cent file myself, running Compile --> Run Quick... worked well: The map compiled without problems and I could load it in the engine. (As a side note: Initially I was stuck in ground because the info_player_start entity was (a little) stuck in ground, too, but that may have been a side effect of my faking the .cent file.)

Well... did you place any entity outside of the room that you've built?
Does it work if you make sure that all info_player_start entities are inside the room?

An info_player_start entity outside of the map inside may cause what you're seeing: A leak with apparently no pointfile contents, because a pointfile walks from an info_player_start entity to the location where the leak is -- which is immediately at the entity if it is outside in the first place.

If that is not the case, please post the .cent file as well, and I'll have another look. :up:
Best regards,
Carsten
Carl
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-26, 02:04

Well, this is new. I tried to open CaWE and see whether then info_player_start location is within the map.

I get this error:

WARNING: No materials found in directory
Games/FWLI/Materials
We can continue, but the materials will NOT work.
Something is wrong that really should be fixed!

Interestingly, you didn't get that error.

Of course, the walls are all invisible because, well, they have no surface (or so I am assuming).

I'm attaching the .cent file.
Attachments
Basement.cent
(7.33KiB)Downloaded 640 times
Carl
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-26, 02:08

Additional data point: if I copy the Materials folder from DeathMatch to FWLI (the directory for my own map), the walls display but with tiled "File Not Found" messages instead of the actual materials I selected. Did a bug cause the proper materials to not be saved when I saved the map?
Carl
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-26, 02:20

Pardon the string of short messages, please.

I'm attaching two screencaps. problem-noproblem.png indicates an error I now get when I use the Map >> Check for Problems command: I get a dialog telling me there is 1 problem, but also saying that there is no problem.

info_player_start.png shows that the info_player_start point is clearly within the map. At least as I understand what those words mean ....

Puzzled, I am. I just did a git pull, but apparently you haven't made a new release in the last week. (No, I'm not expecting daily updates, it was just worth trying.)
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problem-noproblem.png
info_player_start-1.png
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carsten » 2016-07-26, 14:58

Hi Carl,

ok, let's break this down into sub-items:

You can fix the issue about the reported leak by moving the "Map" entity into the room. (When I open your files, I see it inside the bottom brush, which also counts as "outside" the room.) Dragging the "Map" entity should be possible without moving its child entities as well.
While this fixes the problem, it should not exist in the first place. I still have to investigate why this is reported at all!

The dialog's message about "No problem found." is badly made. I've already committed a fix that states more clearly and unambiguously when no problem has been identified.
Best regards,
Carsten
Carl
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-27, 02:12

Thanks. Of course, now when I load CaWE, even if I press "New" it insists on my choosing either DeathMatch or my own FWLI, and whatever I choose, brushes don't actually show in the preview windows ....

I'll reinstall, probably this weekend.
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carsten » 2016-07-27, 11:22

Hi Carl,

I just pushed a fix for the leaks problem, which was an unwanted and overlooked side-effect of our transition to entity component systems a while ago. With the recent fix, this problem should not re-occur.

The "no problems" dialog in the map editor has already been fixed yesterday.

By the way, when I ran your map in the engine, it initially started with a black screen. This is caused by the initial player position, before "fire" is pressed, being to high. That is, we're stuck in the "ceiling" before the player is spawned. I'll properly address this problem at a later time, for now you can fix it by moving the player start a bit closer to the ground or raise the room's ceiling.

This seems to leave the other problem with materials that you describe, which I've honestly not fully understood. Does it help if you copy both the Materials and the Textures directory to Games/FWLI? If it doesn't help, please described in more detail what you're doing and expect to see, but the map editor(? or is it the engine?) fails to provide.

Last but not least, I'm currently working on an importer for HL2 model files. It is very slow and frustrating work (in fact I consider dropping it), so there are only infrequent public commits at this time.
Best regards,
Carsten
Carl
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-28, 02:15

Hi, Carsten,

Thanks for the tip on the positioning of the initial player position.

AHA! I had copied in the Materials directory (from DeathMatch) but not Textures. Once Textures is there, everything works normally. Thanks for that one, also. (I still think they should be saved automatically, of course.)

It was the map editor, CaWE, as mentioned above, that was failing. I had never compiled the game (because of the leak) so I couldn't use the "bare" engine.

I hope you did not think I was complaining about no new uploads! If I were paying you per upload, I'd have a right to complain. As it is, I'm just grateful you've chosen to give away this useful software.
Carl
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-28, 02:53

OK, one more in a series. Now when I try to compile the FWLI map, I get this in the console:
No materials found in scripts in "Games/FWLI/Worlds/../Materials".
There is no Worlds subfolder of FWLI. Hmmm ... that ".." indicates the parent directory, so would Materials belong in FWLI (the parent of the nonexistent Worlds directory)? Because it's there.

More information: I'm running the debug version of CaWE.

I'll make a Worlds folder now and link the Materials folder in FWLI/Worlds and see what happens.

OK, with that symbolic link in place, CaWE gets farther into the compilation and finds a leak. Loading the pointfile still produces no display, but I got further. Now I'll try moving the Map entity upward as you had suggested upthread.

I hate to be a huge irritation to you, but I'm afraid that I might be. You see, moving the Map entity upward did get past the phantom leak. Now I get a new message, a dialog titled "Cafu Engine - Jul 17 2016" reading "Error loading MainMenu_main.cgui. see console <F1> for details." I'm assuming that the .cgui file is in another directory that was not copied into FWLI when I saved the map.

I ran these commands:

Code: Select all

mkdir Games/FWLI/GUIs
cp   -r Games/DeathMatch/GUIs/MainMenu/ Games/FWLI/GUIs/
I recompile. The Cafu engine start screen appears ... and shows DeathMatch, plays the DeathMatch music, and if I click New Game, offers me a choice of DeathMatch maps. I can't see any obvious way to start my own map. Ideas? To repeat, I compiled my new map, which is in a separate subfolder of the Games folder, and Cafu loads DeathMatch and has no way to actually run my map at all. (Also the mouse cursor is a white-on-blue "File not found", so apparently the mouse cursor folder also wasn't copied over.)

As I say, I appreciate your taking the time to read all this and sorry to keep pestering you.
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Carsten
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carsten » 2016-07-28, 11:37

Hi Carl,

I think that a lot of the problems stem from your having created the FWLI folder from scratch. I highly suggest to start it as a copy of DeathMatch (or at this time, augment FWLI from DeathMatch), then/later modify and delete as desired after own, custom game data is in place. I thought that this approach has been mentioned somewhere, but I may be wrong.

Also please see this post and the one that it links to for details about starting another game different from DeathMatch. :up:
Best regards,
Carsten
Carl
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carl » 2016-07-31, 01:38

Sorry about the delay: life intervened.

Copying the DeathMatch subfolders into the FWLI folder may have worked. I can't tell, because still whenever I try to run my own map, I get the DeathMatch maps as my only options. That is, I open basement.cmap in CaWE, compile it, and Ca3DE loads ... and Load Game is disabled, and New Game only offers DeathMatch maps as choices.

May I suggest that you add an explicit "New Project" option in CaWE, that automatically creates the folder and subfolders without the user having to know to do so manually? I'm a very out-of-date software developer, and I could do that fairly easily, so I'm sure it will be no trouble for you.
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Re: Pointfiles: they should have an effect, yes?

Post by Carsten » 2016-07-31, 10:48

Carl wrote:Sorry about the delay: life intervened.
Nothing to worry about. I'm not in a hurry. :wink:
Copying the DeathMatch subfolders into the FWLI folder may have worked. I can't tell, because still whenever I try to run my own map, I get the DeathMatch maps as my only options. That is, I open basement.cmap in CaWE, compile it, and Ca3DE loads ... and Load Game is disabled, and New Game only offers DeathMatch maps as choices.
Can you please try running Ca3DE from the command line, e.g.

Code: Select all

$ ./build/linux2/g++/release/Ca3DE/Cafu -svGame FWLI
?

I guess that the real problem is that CaWE fails to add the -svGame FWLI parameter when starting Ca3DE.
I'll look into it.
[EDIT: This doesn't seem to be the case: CaWE should already do that. In addition to the above, can you please post the console output that you seen in CaWE after compiling a map?]
May I suggest that you add an explicit "New Project" option in CaWE, that automatically creates the folder and subfolders without the user having to know to do so manually? I'm a very out-of-date software developer, and I could do that fairly easily, so I'm sure it will be no trouble for you.
I'd very much appreciate this! :wohow:
Such an option should probably copy DeathMatch, update the CaWE options and update the config_p.lua file (so that -svGame FWLI as above is no longer needed).
Best regards,
Carsten
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