Wadauthor Woes

Okay, here's the problem. I've been working on a level for Wadauthor, and it was coming along very nicely IMHO, but suddenly, I can't save it without Wadauthor completely screwing up the level. Basically, as far as I can tell, it just switches all the sectors around, while leaving the linedefs intact. I am very upset, as I happen to love Wadauthor, and I really don't want to have to change, but it is absolutely impossible for me to continue working on my level. I've even done an experiment where I loaded the map up and then saved it without changing anything, and the same thing happens.

This is a node-building problem. When you delete a sector by changing it's references to something else (without deleting anything) this tricks WA's internal nodebuilder and all the sectors with higher numbers than the one affected take the properties of the sector numbered one higher, thus screwing up the map.


There are three ways to get round this:


1. If you're going to delete a sector in this way, make sure you split one of the linedefs and leave one of them referencing the sector you're deleting, change the other references and then delete this linedef. (thus deleting a sector by deleting it's last linedef)


2. Copy-and-paste the entire map into a new wad file. (this should work, although I haven't tested it)


3. Grab Zennode 1.1.0 and select external nodebuilding in the Tools -> Options -> Files box, putting this command in as well:

zennode.exe $_Wadfile map$_Wadmap (assuming zennode is in your WA folder)

If you haven't got round to putting monsters in your map yet, use this command instead:

zennode.exe -rz $_Wadfile map$_Wadmap

(this command saves an awful lot of time by skipping the reject build, which is only needed when your map is ready to be played with full monsters in. Remove the -rz bit when you're close to finishing the map)

actually that error has nothing to do with nodes. okay, say you have a map with 200 sectors. Now you go and delete sector #138. If you don't create a new sector (which will be a new #138) then when you save wadauthor will renumber all sectors coming after sector #137. So, 139 becomes 138, 140 becomes 139 and so on and so on. The only problem is that is apparently forgets to switch the sector properties along with the numbers. So now sector 140, which used to 141, has the properties of the old sector 140, which is now sector 139.

a way around this is, after you delete X amount of sectors, make sure you create X amount of sectors before you save (or make sure you're deleting the highest numbered sector). also it's a good idea to turn on backups and also make a couple of your own while you're editing. Ultimate Doomer's advice #1 is also a good way of deleting sectors and I believe wadauthor won't fudge up the sector properties that way as well.

Woohoo, thanks a million. I just added another sector, and now I'm back to work. Heh, and to think, I never would have even known about this had I not deleted a sector, realigned some textures, and saved. Yeah, thankfully I had a backup, and I do have the auto-backup feature on, so I didn't lose anything. I'd be very upset if I had to start over (I don't know how many half-finished maps I've lost due to them being deleted or having my hard drive crash or something).

Cyb said:

actually that error has nothing to do with nodes.

It must do, given that you can get away with deleting sectors wrongly when building with Zennode. (makes things so much easier when merging sectors)

Zennode's still better, though. (builds in 2/3 the time of WA's and you can turn the reject off, saving ~80-90% of the time)

Well, I'll look into Zennode, but I really haven't had problems with the internal node builder yet (heh, I remember back when I used Doomcad, I had problems all the time). But actually, I think Cyb's right, it seems more to be Wadauthor reassigning sector numbers than anything. Also, I'm not really concerned with build speed, as it only takes a couple of seconds on my computer anyways (sometimes just saving to disk takes longer than node building), though I suppose if I were to build some monstrous level (which I can't see myself doing), that might be an issue.

That sounds like my most recent map. It was so huge that it nearly took up all the space in WadAuthor. It took about 45 seconds to build the nodes if I added something new to the map. I would just build a lot of stuff at once and then save to fix that problem though.

The Ultimate DooMer said:

It must do, given that you can get away with deleting sectors wrongly when building with Zennode. (makes things so much easier when merging sectors)

Zennode's still better, though. (builds in 2/3 the time of WA's and you can turn the reject off, saving ~80-90% of the time)

I'm fairly certain it's not the builder, it's just wadauth renumbering stuff wrongly. I never used wauth's internal builder (since, as you said, it's not very good, and I've always liked warm), and I've still had maps get botched. It may depend on which sector you delete as well, and also I haven't had nearly as many problems since I started using win2k, but who knows why that is (more stable and better mem management than 98 I suppose). it's largly a matter of luck too I think. I've deleted stuff and everything was fine, but other times I'm reassign one sector and the entire map will become screwed (though that hasn't happened in quite a while).

I've been talking to John about releasing the source and it sounds like it's something that he's almost guaranteed to do. Maybe if there were more people emailing him about it, it might happen a little sooner. :)

Sooner or later, most people run into that WadAuthor bug. It's one reason that I frequently bump the file name up by a number or letter as I work and save, just in case I don't check the newly saved file and save again, thereby losing the good .bak file.

It was my guess that the problem is not node building, it's WA not properly book keeping the sector number and properties straight if the author does a certain type of thing. That "thing" is when a sector is deleted by just deleting the lines belonging to it rather than selecting the sector itself and deleting. But most of the time the error does not happen when lines are deleted so there may be more to it.

It's happened a few times with me unfortunately. Also, I've had WA's nodebuilder screw up on me a few times too, giving me invisible walls in places. This was fixed when I used zennode though.

Invisible walls are easily fixed when you just flip a couple lines...

The only problem WA's nodebuilder ever gave me is that in some ports, the skys are full of HOMs (even though I did them right). In other ports (namely GL ones), HOMs will appear for no reason in various places... or so I'm told. Moral of the story: screw GL. I'm gonna reccomend ZDoom 2.0.47 for my wad.

I have a problem with wadauthor. Whenever i get to ~4000 sectors or 30,000 sidedefs, the editor crashes (not during nodesbuilding.). Is there anything I can do about this?

4000 Sectors! 30, 000 Sidedefs?! How can you even make a map that big on Wadauthor's puny editing field?

cyber-menace said:

4000 Sectors! 30, 000 Sidedefs?! How can you even make a map that big on Wadauthor's puny editing field?

The map is not incredibly big.

Shaviro said:

The map is not incredibly big.

Oh, just Incredibly-Extremely-Super-Ultra-Detailed. I wish I could make wads like that, Unfortunately, I can't, simply because I use DeePsea and Switching to another Editor would be nearly Impossible.

netnomad312 said:

Invisible walls are easily fixed when you just flip a couple lines...

The only problem WA's nodebuilder ever gave me is that in some ports, the skys are full of HOMs (even though I did them right). In other ports (namely GL ones), HOMs will appear for no reason in various places... or so I'm told. Moral of the story: screw GL. I'm gonna reccomend ZDoom 2.0.47 for my wad.

Yes! Hooray for Zdoom! Can't wait for Tower of WAR!

I have a problem with wadauthor. Whenever i get to ~4000 sectors or 30,000 sidedefs, the editor crashes (not during nodesbuilding.). Is there anything I can do about this?

I think that's the infamous WadAuthor limit. I'm pretty sure there's no way around it. Go use DETH. It'll put hair on your chest. :P

I've used WadAuthor for three years and never had that kind of problem. Now, I HAVE had some problems with the internal node builder (it gets buggy after the map reaches a certain size, and impact triggered linedefs don't work right for some reason) so switched to using ZenNode.