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LanHikariDS

Where the hell did my map go?!

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So, I've been using DoomBuilder 2 recreate Sneaking 15 from Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, and I'd finished making all the sectors, and texturing everything, and was trying to remember how Fonze had showed me to do floor over floor. He said I needed to either ZDoom (Doom in Hexen) or ZDoom (Doom in UDMF Format), so I switched to UDMF (I typically use Doom II or ZDoom (Doom in Doom Format)). I added the 3D linedef action to where the tunnel was supposed to connect, and the ends of the tunnel and when I stared it the map was weird, so I quit our, removed the action, and saved. When I went to test the map again to make sure I'd cleared the action properly, ZDoom brought up an error "Map has no Vertices". Figuring it was just a little glitch, I saved my map, closed DoomBuilder, and reopened it. When I brought up my map, it was COMPLETELY BLANK.

What the hell happened?

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Don't know where it went, but I suggest you check the folder it's saved in and try renaming the second most recent backup, which will hopefully take you back to before the weirdness.

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I tried that, and it was like that for all 4 of my backups. The only other backup I have that wasn't affected was before I even started the map, so that isn't of any help. (The SLADE backup)

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Make sure you open it in the correct format. Might sound stupid, but we all make errors.

That could be many things, but one I know for sure that causes something like that is not loading it up in the correct format.

Aside from that I'd just say you need to post it up and maybe someone smarter than me can figure it out for you. Or maybe I'll get lucky, heh.

Seems strange that it would apply to backups as well. Did those backups all come from the same session or were they made, then loaded from later? That could be an important piece of info, to know if these files were okay at one point.

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Fonze said:

Make sure you open it in the correct format. Might sound stupid, but we all make errors.

I tried it in all three formats I used to edit it

Fonze said:

Seems strange that it would apply to backups as well. Did those backups all come from the same session or were they made, then loaded from later? That could be an important piece of info, to know if these files were okay at one point.

It was all one editing session, but I did test (and save) the map periodically, with my last test before UDMF being when I'd finished the actual map.

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LanHikariDS said:

I tried it in all three formats I used to edit it

You can only edit a map in one format (Doom/Hexen/UDMF), as it only exists in one format (its existence is the format). So there's something incredibly wrong with this statement.

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scifista42 said:

Did you use a converter (or another one) to "switch" your map from Doom format to UDMF?

I just went into Edit>Map Options and changed 'Game Configuration' from ZDoom (Doom in Doom format) to ZDoom (Doom in Hexen format) to look through the linedef actions, then to ZDoom (Doom in UDMF format) when I didn't find what I was looking for. When the UDMF line action didn't do what I intended it to, I changed it back to 0, then put the configuration back to Doom in Doom format

Edward850 said:

You can only edit a map in one format (Doom/Hexen/UDMF), as it only exists in one format (its existence is the format). So there's something incredibly wrong with this statement.

*Configurations

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From my limited experience doing what you've done, man, I have another piece of knowledge I learned through the school of hard knocks, you can change the format to something newer and only experience minor problems such as different line-def action numbers (they won't align), but you can not go the other way. It messes things up. Now you say you changed everything back, so maybe that's not an issue, but at the same time, it probably is exactly the issue, regardless of whether you changed stuff back. That part I can't say for sure.

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Something that saved me about five hours of work on a map once: go to your temp folders (C:/Users/[Username]/AppData/Local/Temp, for Windows 8), and you'll find folders with weird strings of letters. Open the folders and you'll find wad files, files with the extension .snapshot, and files with the extension .tmp. You can change the extension of the tmp files to .wad and open these files in GZDB and save them to your usual wad folder and change the map name from "TEMPMAP" to "MAP01" or whatever. You might be able to find an old version there, before the change in format. This might not help (it's possible only the recent versions are saved), but it's worth knowing anyway.

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You know ,
Backup was the best job to do to prevent crashes.

If i didn't get a backup of my map , i would leave it forever or at least until a good time.

I made a lot of decorate coding , mapinfo coding , etc

So , my advice is always backup the wads & pk3 files. (I don't know what was zdoom or doombuilder problem as i didn't know what slade have done to my pk3 that only renaming some textures in my pk3 resulted to lose all sprites , textures , etc but not those codes !)

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Fonze said:

From my limited experience doing what you've done, man, I have another piece of knowledge I learned through the school of hard knocks, you can change the format to something newer and only experience minor problems such as different line-def action numbers (they won't align), but you can not go the other way. It messes things up. Now you say you changed everything back, so maybe that's not an issue, but at the same time, it probably is exactly the issue, regardless of whether you changed stuff back. That part I can't say for sure.

Whenever I changed Configurations, all linedefs had their actions set to 0, which I'm pretty sure is universal between all configurations...

rdwpa said:

Something that saved me about five hours of work on a map once: go to your temp folders (C:/Users/[Username]/AppData/Local/Temp, for Windows 8), and you'll find folders with weird strings of letters. Open the folders and you'll find wad files, files with the extension .snapshot, and files with the extension .tmp. You can change the extension of the tmp files to .wad and open these files in GZDB and save them to your usual wad folder and change the map name from "TEMPMAP" to "MAP01" or whatever. You might be able to find an old version there, before the change in format. This might not help (it's possible only the recent versions are saved), but it's worth knowing anyway.

I'm aware of the proxy folder... It caused me a ban in one game for quite a time...
Anyways, the only WADs I found in that folder all had a filesize of 0 bytes

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My point didn't revolve around the linedef actions, that was just a small issue when converting to a newer format.

My point is: once saved as a format, you cannot downgrade (go to an older format) from there; it's screws with the node-builder and crap over my head.

I always assumed it to be along the same lines as what causes crashes with older ports while running wads for newer ports, it's just not in the correct format for the port to recognize.

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LanHikariDS said:

Whenever I changed Configurations, all linedefs had their actions set to 0, which I'm pretty sure is universal between all configurations...

I'm aware of the proxy folder... It caused me a ban in one game for quite a time...
Anyways, the only WADs I found in that folder all had a filesize of 0 bytes


Yeah the WADs are all 0 KB. You have to change the extension of .tmp files to .wad.

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rdwpa said:

Yeah the WADs are all 0 KB. You have to change the extension of .tmp files to .wad.

tmp files? I just went to Temp and searched '.wad'

EDIT: Found them, and they were all just backups of older projects, like Haunted Mansion

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Ok, got the answer for anyone who's curious at this point what the Hell it was.

So let's start off with a few things:

First off, you can change the map's format while editing it to a newer format with relatively few issues. Of course if you make a huge map then do it, well, expect for a couple minor errors in a tiny map to become many huge errors. Not that I've ever tried that one before, but I'll go out on a gander and say from this experiment that would be the case. You should never change the map format while in the middle of a map, but this applies most particularly to changing from a newer format to something older.

Never, ever change map formats from new to old. Just don't do it.

So here we go:

In this first image you see 3 files. Guess what order they come in.



Here we open the map in zDoom(D-in-D) with the iWad a mystery... nah it's Doom 2, you jokers.



Here we see the basic map before 3D floors put into place (Hey, they weren't needed, yay for less work) That's 2 basic columns with a sector of normal floor in-between. So basic. Matter of fact, that wasn't needed either, but I like to get a better feel of what happened and it's like recreating a crime scene or something, heh.



Next we go to "Map Options" and consider the unthinkable...



Then we break the every commandment of creativity and succumb to indecision. We chose D-in-Hexen format for this batch of mortal sin.



Then we see the greatest screen known to man, the "Hey wtf are you doing stop you maniac you'll kill us all!" screen. So we do the natural thing and hit the red button. (That's not the "No" button)



http://imgur.com/kZqjY7u

Following that we save, quit, then load it back up. D-in-D is what we started with and where the problems lay, so that's what we choose.



As you can see, no surprises from that screen. Everything appears correct... Then we see this:



These vertices are all messed up.

Spoiler

As a side note, I messed around with this set-up further and found that it can still work, to some interesting results. If you simply add a new, real sector in and replace the player-start, it works. (Without doing so gives an error message that varies, yet always relates to vertices. Hence the reason why I was keyed in on this). Turns out all formats can be changed around to make weird stuff happen, while still working in the long-term. Perhaps this could be an idea for a map one day. A word of advice, design this part first, mess with the formats in the beginning, then design the rest of the map to avoid this happening to your almost-finished map.

Ok so now we make this map a D-in-UDMF format map, save and quit, then reload. We choose D-in-D to test it, once again, because that's where the problems lay.



Notice something odd here? Take a closer look. Look at D-in-Hexen below and the D-in-UDMF it just came from:





Now, in UDMF, which is what we saved it as, it appears fine. However, in the other two, it appears as "BEHAVIOR" and "ENDMAP," the first of which I noticed was BEHAVIOR, which I thought was funny because this is "behavior" that should never be done (kinda like building a FrankenBerry monster out of dead human body parts, or voodoo). So what does this mean? Well try going back and saving that "BEHAVIOR" as "MAP01" instead. What happens? Well, it tells you there already is a MAP01.
Spoiler

So basically you can have multiple map-sets in one wad for different formats, I suppose. As long as you find some glitch name like BEHAVIOR or ENDMAP that the format recognizes, it should work. But on the flip side, no port will be able to choose such a thing, so it is ultimately pointless to have a BEHAVIOR or an ENDMAP in a wad, unless as a secret editor-only thing.

And our final image is just for fun of what it looks like when you open that UDMF map in D-in-D format. Marvel at the hilarity of the criss-crossed lines and the possibly endless possibilities that they bring. Also, DON'T EVER DO THIS! (do it.)



Troubleshooting 101, baby.



Perhaps this will pique Ling's curiosity and he'll find some hack for it to make a Linguortal we can walk through.



*Edit*
I just realized that those pics are way too small to see the text on, so here's the link to the album:
http://imgur.com/a/U8K2V

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It'd be better to ask why the most advanced Doom editor still lets you do something that breaks your data. If UDMF -> binary conversion cannot be performed gracefully, it should not be allowed *at all*. This is piss poor software design, sorry.

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Quasar said:

It'd be better to ask why the most advanced Doom editor still lets you do something that breaks your data. If UDMF -> binary conversion cannot be performed gracefully, it should not be allowed *at all*. This is piss poor software design, sorry.


Idk if I can agree with that Quasar; to me, limiting functionality is poor software design. Yes it comes with problems, but as long as you know what you are doing, it is theoretically possible to use with a purpose. Also, it does come with a big ole "are you sure? This can mess everything up" message. However, as I said before, this is certainly not something you just do on a whim, halfway through a map. Indecision is a horrible way to end any project, let alone a creative one.

But once again, I think this breaks things just enough to create interesting effects. It does not break a map premenantly, either, only what was made before the change. Simply adding one new, real sector and a new player start is enough to allow the port to run the wad. It can be predicted with enough knowledge of the mechanics of things and a few tests to get the placements right.

Again, I'm referring to someone making a sector like this, changing the format to achieve the desired affect, then editing that the rest of the way to completion, without any further format changes.

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I would not suggest to use Doombuilder2 to perform any format conversions. For that matter, I would not even use DB2 for mapping.

On the other hand, GZDoom Builder will do a proper conversion, as far as the archtecture is concerned, from DOOM2 format maps to ZDoom (Doom in Hexen) format, but line specials are not translated properly. For a proper conversion for this case use zwadconv.exe, or be prepared to change the line specials manually, one by one.

However, use GZDoom Builder r2155 or later for

    Added Hexen -> UDMF and UDMF -> Hexen action conversion as described in
    "Universal Doom Map Format ZDoom extensions" (udmf_zdoom.txt). It is
    used when changing map format form Hexen to UDMF and from UDMF to Hexen.

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Interesting. I downloaded GzDB2 a year or so ago, but I've always loved good ole DB2. It never fails me. Part of being a hermit for so long, mapping only for myself; maybe I should update myself on over to it.

Though at the same time why fix what ain't broke? *shrug* Then again I do love the idea of more funtionality.

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Still can't be bothered to switch from DB2 to GZDB. DB2 does exactly what I want it to, what would GZDB have to offer that would absolutely make me want to switch?

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AD_79 said:

...., what would GZDB have to offer that would absolutely make me want to switch?


To a great extend it depends upon what format you map for. If you map solely for DOOM2 vanilla format, then only the more robust program structure for editing and visual mode may be enough to switch. Plus, of course, some of the build-in time savers. See Features: at http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32392

Spoiler

Doombuilder2

Spoiler

GZDoom Builder

But, alas, all I can do, is to point out all the good features of GZDB.

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