Can nodebuilders crash and erase a map?

After probably 5 hours of work on one level... randomly the nodes do not build and, upon exiting, my entire file is erased (like DB would say open map01... map 05, map 07...map 32).

I was about to put my fist through something until I found I kept backups.

But seriously, does this happen often? I lost a small bit of work, but if no backups were created I would have lost everything and probably quit the series I was working on for a week, or maybe forever.
It isn't like I just lost the parts I was working on since my last save, it just literally CLEANED the entire level from existence... :/

Does this occur when you are working with slopes/deep water stuff/scripts?

What editor do you use, and what nodebuilder?

I use Doombuilder and the default nodebuilder -bsp-w32.exe that comes with it. Curiously enough, Doombuilder comes with three nodebuilders, but the other two do not seem to work once I have used the default one on a level, thought that could just be my advanced level of technical uselessness. To answer your question, a nodebuilder should not be able to wipe a map. the map exists as an entity separate from the nodebuilder. Ive never had that happen on any nodebuilder that ive used, and ive used a number of different ones over the years.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-builder/40690-node-builder-does-not-want-to-work-from-doombuilder/

may be of some use to you.

hope that helps

P.S. never give up on something you start. Setbacks will just make it better if you push through them...

good luck.

IIRC, a bad nodes build will screw your map up, as it will cause lines to go all over the place, like this:


(thanks Dutch! :p)

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, though.

I've never heard of it deleting a map, though.

I've had DB erase maps in a multi map wad file. I lost an entire map while working on Phobia to that actually. Well, half a map anyway. Had to restart map05 from scratch. Damn that was boring.

kristus said:
Had to restart map05 from scratch. Damn that was boring.

But didn't you get some good new ideas as you redid it? Having to redo stuff certainly is annoying or tedious, but it often happens to me that the second time brings improved results.

myk said:

But didn't you get some good new ideas as you redid it? Having to redo stuff certainly is annoying or tedious, but it often happens to me that the second time brings improved results.

Yeah, it probably would.

Just usually if you put like 20 hours into a map (over a period of days, or weeks depending on how fast one works) it depresses you a lot. Though if you had good ideas, I found it helps makes my maps neater.

kristus said:

I've had DB erase maps in a multi map wad file. I lost an entire map while working on Phobia to that actually. Well, half a map anyway. Had to restart map05 from scratch. Damn that was boring.

Yeah,I've had that happen to me when I was working on the Kharkov map for Redstar...finally said fuck Kharkov and revised the story.

Black Metal said:

After probably 5 hours of work on one level... randomly the nodes do not build and, upon exiting, my entire file is erased (like DB would say open map01... map 05, map 07...map 32).

I was about to put my fist through something until I found I kept backups.

But seriously, does this happen often? I lost a small bit of work, but if no backups were created I would have lost everything and probably quit the series I was working on for a week, or maybe forever.
It isn't like I just lost the parts I was working on since my last save, it just literally CLEANED the entire level from existence... :/

Does this occur when you are working with slopes/deep water stuff/scripts?

Yes, a node builder CAN erase a file, because it rewrites the file. Any program that rewrites your PWAD has the potential to destroy parts of the PWAD. That included editors and PWAD managers like XWE.

Nodes themselves can never destroy any data, just appearance of level may be affected. All that takes to fix is to rebuild using something else.

This is why smart software doesn't do this:

1. erase old file
2. write new file

Smart software does this:

1. write new file to temp file
2. if temp file passes checksum/hash/whatever, rename old file to backup
3. rename temp file to old file's filename

This is good failure-proof software design. The former is garbage.

Quasar said:

This is why smart software doesn't do this:

1. erase old file
2. write new file

Smart software does this:

1. write new file to temp file
2. if temp file passes checksum/hash/whatever, rename old file to backup
3. rename temp file to old file's filename

This is good failure-proof software design. The former is garbage.

I do that [smart way] all the time!

This thread is mainly about how Doom Builder manages wad files when invoking the node builder.

In the documentation for glBSP I recommended people DON'T use the same file for both input and output. However if you do it (take the risk), the only time it could corrupt the file is when it saves all the data from memory into the output file, which is very quick. Pressing Ctrl-C during the build process will not harm the file.

Quasar said:

This is good failure-proof software design. The former is garbage.

Too much software still chooses the garbage design... :(

Ajapted said:

This thread is mainly about how Doom Builder manages wad files when invoking the node builder.

In the documentation for glBSP I recommended people DON'T use the same file for both input and output. However if you do it (take the risk), the only time it could corrupt the file is when it saves all the data from memory into the output file, which is very quick. Pressing Ctrl-C during the build process will not harm the file.

Honestly I don't understand anything about differences between nodebuilders or the benefits of different command line options. This is far too vague a question, but - what should I be using?

Always always always always backup. Use a version control system if possible.

Hm...this thread was pretty informative.

Nuxius said:

IIRC, a bad nodes build will screw your map up, as it will cause lines to go all over the place, like this:

[image]
(thanks Dutch! :p)

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, though.

I've never heard of it deleting a map, though.

I believe that happens when you open a Doom in Hexen format map in Doom in Doom format, or it could be vice versa. It's something to do with formats, anyway.

That phenomenon happens in that case because Hexen's maplinedef_t is larger than Doom's, offsetting all the linedefs inappropriately when reading one map type as the other.

But this could also just be the result of plain old data corruption. If the lump were out of position by even one byte, you could expect to see something like this. Or if it were just filled with plain random garbage, the end results probably wouldn't look much different. It's like a pile of Pick-Up Sticks.

Yup, that happened to me once when Speedmapping. But I got the map back, and released it within time limit. I seem to recall myself untangeling the webby mess by hand. O_o

kristus said:

I seem to recall myself untangeling the webby mess by hand. O_o

Damn.

Just like playing this