Snapmap suffers from major bugs!

EDIT: I am not alone: https://community.bethesda.net/thread/14011

So not only is the SP portion of snapmap really half-baked. The stuff that is there doesn't even work as intended. Great job there guys! The more I keep using snapmap the more pissed I become.

EDIT 2: I have figured out the problem. You aren't suppose to put demons manually on the map. You are suppose to use the spawnes. You can actually make spawners spawn individual demons exactly where you want just as if you were placing them individually. You are only suppose to place demons directly on the map if you have a special reason to do so. I just did this and now all my demons spawn as intended.

I find it extremely baffling that snapmap never mentions this even once even in the tutorials. Oh well, at least I can go back to working on my map now.

EDIT 3: Never mind what I said about the spawning. That doesn't work as I thought it did. I figured out what the REAL problem was. Having too many enemies on the map that aren't hidden causes others to not load. Once I set most of the enemies to hidden and made them teleport in instead they worked. Still stand by what I said that it's baffling this isn't mentioned anywhere.

Original post: Is it just me or is snapmap very buggy? It seems like triggers and events only fire when they feel like it. One moment a trigger works just fine, and then the next time I play the level nothing happens. It's almost random. At first I thought I made a mistake but now I am almost convinced this is a bug.

Are you suffering from bugs in snapmap like triggers/events not working?

Yep, it's pretty gamebreaking not having enemies spawn when they are supposed to. Spent hours last night trying to troubleshoot as I naturally assumed that I had messed up somehow or accidentally deleted something vital before coming to the realization that snapmaps has a pretty large bug in it.

My module starts off with a switch that unblocks a passageway, says door open, and then unhides a lost soul that flies into your face and errupts in a large but harmless explosion. Worked great until I completed my module and now it only works about 1 out of 5 times I launch it. It's bizarre. It only appears to be enemy spawns/reveals that get messed up though as all the other actions that occur with the triggers work just fine. Sound files trigger, doors unlock, etc, but enemies are all screwy. Sometimes they work and other times they don't. Other times they sorta work as they'll spawn in one at a time or after the previous one has been killed, sometimes not. More often than not they'll spawn in much much later than they were supposed to.

Have a cool encounter set up with a cacodemon, imps, and possessed humans that is supposed to trigger when you flip a switch to unlock a door on the other side of the map so that you have to fight through this massive battle to get back to the door but it never triggers when it's supposed to, never. It does however trigger after I've completed the other side of the map to varying degrees of randomness.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that snapmap was made for multiplayer and that it's single player elements were a pure afterthought. How else could you explain the piss poor SP options (2 weapon limit you can't disable) and the game breaking monster spawn bugs?

hardcore_gamer said:

It's becoming increasingly obvious that snapmap was made for multiplayer and that it's single player elements were a pure afterthought. How else could you explain the piss poor SP options (2 weapon limit you can't disable) and the game breaking monster spawn bugs?

Yeah, they really should have put in some more work on snapmaps so that it actually, you know, works. Should have an option for the weapon selection wheel from the campaign in snap maps too. I want to create a coop campaign for me and the wife to play through with snapmaps but until they solve the spawn bug it's just not doable as filling every map with static monsters just doesn't sound that fun, either as a creator or a player.

I really hope they fix the spawn bug and expand snapmaps to have other tilesets and a greatly expanded selection of rooms and hallways because I'm going to exhaust them pretty darned quick once the spawn bug is quashed.

Now that I think about it the 2 weapon limit doesn't make sense even if snapmap was made just for multiplayer. What if someone wants to make an arena deathmatch mode?

A reason for the enemy spawning bugs is that only a certain number of enemies can be active at a certain time, this could be the reason why enemies come at you in waves in singleplayer.

RobbingSnake said:

A reason for the enemy spawning bugs is that only a certain number of enemies can be active at a certain time, this could be the reason why enemies come at you in waves in singleplayer.

I thought that might have been the reason as well at one point last night but after significantly lowering the amount of enemies in my map it made no difference as far as this problem is concerned.

I believe that it operates like the Timesplitters map editor in terms of active AI.

How I used to fix this in Timesplitters is have every enemy spawn scripted instead of being idle in the map, don't know if that will work here though.

mrthejoshmon said:

I believe that it operates like the Timesplitters map editor in terms of active AI.

How I used to fix this in Timesplitters is have every enemy spawn scripted instead of being idle in the map, don't know if that will work here though.

Tried it, didn't work.

Really? God damn it, earn your fuckin money Bethesda!

It might have had something to do with the conductor, because I did put the conductor on the map for a bit so I could test how the map flows and stuff and see how well the conductor worked, but I removed the conductor before adding the vast majority of placed hostiles. Maybe they never tested how maps work after the conductor is removed, I don't know. It's my first snapmap so it's a bit discouraging especially since snapmaps seems to have a rather deep scripting system.

I have figured out the problem. You aren't suppose to put demons manually on the map. You are suppose to use the spawnes. You can actually make spawners spawn individual demons exactly where you want just as if you were placing them individually. You are only suppose to place demons directly on the map if you have a special reason to do so. I just did this and now all my demons spawn as intended.

I find it extremely baffling that snapmap never mentions this even once even in the tutorials. Oh well, at least I can go back to working on my map now.

hardcore_gamer said:

I have figured out the problem. You aren't suppose to put demons manually on the map. You are suppose to use the spawnes. You can actually make spawners spawn individual demons exactly where you want just as if you were placing them individually. You are only suppose to place demons directly on the map if you have a special reason to do so. I just did this and now all my demons spawn as intended.

I find it extremely baffling that snapmap never mentions this even once even in the tutorials. Oh well, at least I can go back to working on my map now.

The only tutorial that I remember on spawning hostiles said to place them, mark them as not visible on start, and then have something show them (IE a switch). If your correct I'm going to have alot of work ahead of me, lol.

hardcore_gamer said:

I have figured out the problem. You aren't suppose to put demons manually on the map. You are suppose to use the spawnes. You can actually make spawners spawn individual demons exactly where you want just as if you were placing them individually. You are only suppose to place demons directly on the map if you have a special reason to do so. I just did this and now all my demons spawn as intended.

I find it extremely baffling that snapmap never mentions this even once even in the tutorials. Oh well, at least I can go back to working on my map now.

Ehm. Using the spawners they supply should make things easier yes. It should not be the only way to create bug free maps. In fact one of the example maps, "pain labs" I think it was, offers the best SP experience I could find on SnapMap.

It uses manual spawning (i.e. hide and show) for the majority of its monster encounters only in specific cases going for either a boss encounter or a survival. So I am certain something else is wrong, either with your logic (hey were all new at this) or with snapmap.

I've made a small prototype map all with manual spawns. It has lockdown esque functionality and manual waves (where if 50% of the monsters in the room are killed, two hell knights join the fight for example). While it was small in scope (maybe that the clue) it did work flawlessly (combat music and all).

Do you have a specific example where things go wrong? Perhaps you can upload a map showing the problem? I am kinda curious.

Also I could not resist giving E1M2 a shot:



You can avoid people triggering secret doors manually by placing a player blocking volume in front. When the switch (or anything else really) is triggered you open the secret door and destroy the player blocking volume. I was really surprised I could not specify on the secret door wether it was manual or switch triggered but eeh.. If it aint hacky it aint snapmap. ;)

Never mind what I said about the spawning. That doesn't work as I thought it did. I figured out what the REAL problem was. Having too many enemies on the map that aren't hidden causes others to not load. Once I set most of the enemies to hidden and made them teleport in instead they worked. Still stand by what I said that it's baffling this isn't mentioned anywhere.

IMO, the future of this game exists in community made SP content, much like Q1 and Q2 (q2 to a lesser degree). Very disappointed with the lack of SP support from Snapmap out of the box. I'm just hoping it gets patched.

If monster memory goes above 50% it seems, than not all manually placed monsters will appear until later. Even hidden critters I find won't teleport in right away. This might break some encounters, like a cacodemon that gates in whom you must kill to progress. I like to use such specific monsters in conjunction with AI conductors to provide mid-tier zombie and imp fill. :P

Also you can get close to true single-player of course, I like to create 'checkpoints' that enable a teleporter at the beginning of the map to bring you to a key door or whatever you just went through. And usually that's where I'd place a weapon pickup, with a respawn time of 10. If you die, you can start off at that area of the map - and that method works if it's non-linear, to boot.

Yah monster behavior is acting very weird. Sometimes they just disappear as well if I run far enough away from them.

Also what is the difference between custom monster encounter versus single? With custom you can only spawn 1 monster anyways ... unless I am missing something.

Seems to be the result of consolitis.

Custom encounter allows more than 1 enemy. I don't remember the name of the option, but it's right under encounter name, and then add more demons by pressing X (on the Xbone).

I went through the same bugs you did, but being deliberate with triggers and making sure that im not using too many resources at once solved the problem for me

I just had the exact same problem. I added possessed monsters manually in connecting corridors with the idea not to make my map boring. It seems that these monsters prevent monsters spawning in. After i removed all the manually placed possessed monsters, my map started working again. This is stupid beyond belief. Imagine the many map ideas going to waste because of this.

TheLastOttoman said:

I just had the exact same problem. I added possessed monsters manually in connecting corridors with the idea not to make my map boring. It seems that these monsters prevent monsters spawning in. After i removed all the manually placed possessed monsters, my map started working again. This is stupid beyond belief. Imagine the many map ideas going to waste because of this.

This isn't a bug. There is a 12 enemy limit for enemies spawned into a map. I'm sure this is to prevent performance issues. You need to make sure that any manually-placed enemies are hidden initially and have them toggle to visible by a door opening, passing through a volume, upon another enemies' death or any other creative means to make sure there are not lingering enemies spawned on your map that the player isn't near, because that is what's preventing other enemies from spawning.

Obzen said:

This isn't a bug. There is a 12 enemy limit for enemies spawned into a map. I'm sure this is to prevent performance issues. You need to make sure that any manually-placed enemies are hidden initially and have them toggle to visible by a door opening, passing through a volume, upon another enemies' death or any other creative means to make sure there are not lingering enemies spawned on your map that the player isn't near, because that is what's preventing other enemies from spawning.

Tnx for the tip. Ill try to create multiple custom monster groups then. Kill one group, spawn another.

12 enemies simultaneously may seem like small potatoes to you guys, but it's 4x as many enemies as you typically have on-screen in Doom 3. As to SnapMap's issues...I'm 100% positive that we'll see patches that correct them. It's the kind of thing where a combination of getting the product out on time and not being able to account for the infinite possibilities of the user experience forces bug-fixes to be added post-release.

SnapMap suffers from being SnapMap.

hardcore_gamer said:

2 weapon limit you can't disable

Why id, why..This is not your typical military shooter. No need to cripple the limit like you did with monsters too.

@The Civ: No, it also suffers from consolitis (AKA console limitations) as well.

Glaice said:

Why id, why..This is not your typical military shooter. No need to cripple the limit like you did with monsters too.

@The Civ: No, it also suffers from consolitis (AKA console limitations) as well.

While the weapon limit is disappointing, the enemy limit is completely reasonable. It isn't even a problem when you mix in the AI Spawner. You can have massive amounts of enemies in a map, just no more than 12 at a time... which is not much different than the Single Player that gets praised so much.

They've stated they will be looking at feedback and will be updating SnapMap continually. The game is a week old and as limited as SnapMap is, it hasn't even been out long enough to really see what talented people can do with it. So let's be reasonable here.

I know it's hard to tell, but there was a time before Source Ports, Doom Builder and TrenchBroom where making maps was not nearly as hunky dory as it is now. Doom's original engine limitations and early tools were not only very hard to deal with, but had plenty of limitations of their own. On one hand, custom layout and assets allowed more customization in Doom compared to the new one. On the other hand, scripting in SnapMap makes vanilla Doom look completely primitive in comparison.

Let's take it easy and see where this goes. There's plenty that can be better, let's hope id hear our suggestions and this thing grows into something great. The original Doom has 23 years on Doom 2016, let's see how the community and tools mature with this game... or at least wait a bit to see what can be accomplished. I doubt any decent custom content was coming out for the original Doom a week after it was released.

This was the exact problem I was having. Everything was working fine, and then when I went through a test play through, demons weren't spawning. Figured out it was because I had too many lingering demons spawning from map start. Changes them to trigger from something and it started working again.
It's taking a long time to create a nice SP map for me, considering this is my first time trying, but so far it's coming out pretty nice. It's a good thing when demons on your own map surprise you multiple times!

Obzen is right on the money. It took about 6 months until really impressive stuff was being made for the original Doom. I'm sure many of these flaws will be ironed out and the best elements will be improved upon. If they want the game to survive, that is.

OK. So I "snapped" a map, started populating it with "custom group encounters" (because the pre-fab "group encounter" has no decent choices). Each "custom group encounter" has no more than 6 monsters in. When I end an encounter (i.e. "encounter finished" option), I trigger another one in a logic chain (4 altogether). But then the problem is: the next encounter starts when the actual monsters are still alive! So I set an input/output delay for each subsequent encounter, but then I see a random mess of monsters spawning...

Is it me or is it the same problem as above? I checked the snapwiki but it's just the same blurb as in the editor: no explanation for what a "finished encounter" actually means. I thought if I set a custom encounter with 5 demons, I have to *kill* them all to make it *finish*, which triggers the next instruction in the logic chain.