My big map has a big problem, something to do with the blockmap I think

[mikenet2007]

The map im working on is gigantic and unfortunately this is causing problems. The pic below shows my map, I had to flip it on its side to have it fit on the screen so the North end of the grid is on the right side of the pic. Ive had problems before with nodes not building so I had to split the map into 2 maps to continue constructing it, this is the whole thing pasted back together.

The problem im having occurs regardless of whether or not the two maps are pasted back together so I doubt that its my having too many walls.
It may be a combination of the maps size and the actual location of the problem areas, both of witch are at the north end of the grid as you can see in the pic.

What is happening is two things, one has to do with wall clipping. If you run into a wall in many cases after being stopped, the running motion will continue in place even if you let go of the controls. this can be stopped by stepping back off the wall but is very annoying and unrealistic.

I fixed this issue by using an external zdbsp builder to do the nodebuilding and build a better blockmap. My map flat out crashes Zenode

Unfortunately the second problem remains and its a bigger problem, in the areas pointed out in the pic, ammo will go straight through many monsters off and on especially floating monsters like the Caco. This is very frustrating because it waste ammo and makes the map unrealistic.

Being that both problem areas are on the north end of the grid. If it is the location of the problem sectors only the bottom of the two can possibly be relocated. Its the smaller of the two and is not directly connected to the rest of the map. the bigger problem area at the top right of the pic can not be relocated, its too big to have room anywhere else and its connected to the rest of the map to boot.

I cant move this entire map south on the grid because I started the map near the southern end of the grid, and notice that biggest empty area is where I plan to put a skybox so I cant move anything there.

What I need is to know any alternative there may be to building a blockmap, particularly methods that are known to work well with larger maps. Any advice is welcome.

My alternative to this would be to make this 2 maps instead of 1 and thats something I wouldnt really want to do unless there is a way to make the map intermission more seamless. In place of the typical end map screen perhaps have just a message screen or no intermission if possible. It would be nice just to use an end map sector to transport the player to the first sector of the second map seamlessly but this would mean the monster count and time count would be reset and the player wouldn't be able to go backward. That would suck so I want to keep this as one map if possible but advice on this is also welcome.

Here is the map with the problem areas pointed out.......

[scwiba]

I don't know a whole lot about the workings of blockmaps and the way Doom deals with large maps, so I don't know if I can really help, but I have noticed bugs like these before.

mikenet2007 said:

What is happening is two things, one has to do with wall clipping. If you run into a wall in many cases after being stopped, the running motion will continue in place even if you let go of the controls. this can be stopped by stepping back off the wall but is very annoying and unrealistic.

Odd. I just noticed something like this playing scythe.wad with the Zero Tolerance weapon mod. On some of the later maps, I'd encounter something like this. Did you sort of stick to walls rather than sliding along them as well?

mikenet2007 said:

Unfortunately the second problem remains and its a bigger problem, in the areas pointed out in the pic, ammo will go straight through many monsters off and on especially floating monsters like the Caco. This is very frustrating because it waste ammo and makes the map unrealistic.

This happened to me playing europe.wad. The map was so large that going past certain points made it basically like everything (players and monsters) were no-clipping.

Couldn't you just move the octagon-ish room into the southeast corner where there's empty space -- maybe turn it on its side if you needed to? I don't see it connected to anything else, so I assume you teleport there anyway. The other problem area, though, is tough. You might have to cut down its size and shift some parts around.

Of course, there might just be an easy fix for this without rearranging anything...

[Grazza]

Another nodebuilder you could try is glbsp. I have found this sometimes works for maps where other nodebuilders don't. It also provides a lot of information about any problems it encounters.

Choose "GL and Normal nodes" and if it doesn't work with the default value for "Factor", try increasing that to 32, and see if that helps. (A lower value gives a better BSP tree, but tries less hard to avoid splits, and this might lead to problems on large mass.)

[Vegeta]

Here are some questions that may help us to help you out?

--
Which editor are you using? Zeth use to cause me node building problems, no matter which node builder I use.

Could you build the nodes before the map reached certain size, or before you build certain room?

Did you use the editor option to detect bugs? Is any bug detected?

Do the node builder display certain error message? perhaps the problem isn't there.
--

At the moment I only can suggest to try out idbsp (it's the nodebuilder that works the best for me).

If you're using DB, copy and past one of the trouble some areas to an empty map, if even so you can't build the nodes, then the problem is on the map itself (angles, lines, unclosed sectores, and what not).

Oh, and whatever you do, save a backup copy.

I can't judge the size of the rooms with that screenshot, but I think I have seen bigger maps without these kind of problems.

[Ismaele]

I have seen bigger maps too... and I am finishing to work on the final map of "Italian DooM - Episode 2: The Singularity", that has got a problem with nodes too! Here are the statistics:
27476 vertexes
31694 linedefs
56547 sidedefs
5590 sectors
2371 things
I tried to build its nodes with the node-builders of Doom Builder, but both ZDBSP and ZenNode fail to build the whole map and stop after some time! Nevertheless I can play it with ZDoom, although the port finishes to build the map, before loading it. What can I do?!

[mikenet2007]

RoneKyakone said:

I don't know a whole lot about the workings of blockmaps and the way Doom deals with large maps, so I don't know if I can really help, but I have noticed bugs like these before.


Odd. I just noticed something like this playing scythe.wad with the Zero Tolerance weapon mod. On some of the later maps, I'd encounter something like this. Did you sort of stick to walls rather than sliding along them as well?


This happened to me playing europe.wad. The map was so large that going past certain points made it basically like everything (players and monsters) were no-clipping.

Couldn't you just move the octagon-ish room into the southeast corner where there's empty space -- maybe turn it on its side if you needed to? I don't see it connected to anything else, so I assume you teleport there anyway. The other problem area, though, is tough. You might have to cut down its size and shift some parts around.

Of course, there might just be an easy fix for this without rearranging anything...

Yes this seems to be what happens, the player sticks to the wall as the screen bobs up and down untill you back off the wall, and the monster problem is just like what you saw in the europe wad.

I did find out that the monster clipping issue is in fact local because I did move the octagon shaped room to the southeast corner and the monster clipping problem there went away but still remained in the other northern section that will be much harder to move or resize.

Grazza said:
Another nodebuilder you could try is glbsp. I have found this sometimes works for maps where other nodebuilders don't. It also provides a lot of information about any problems it encounters.

Choose "GL and Normal nodes" and if it doesn't work with the default value for "Factor", try increasing that to 32, and see if that helps. (A lower value gives a better BSP tree, but tries less hard to avoid splits, and this might lead to problems on large mass.)
[/B]

I should have mentioned that im using Zdoom, will Glbsp work for a regular zdoom map???

Vegeta said:
Here are some questions that may help us to help you out?

--
Which editor are you using? Zeth use to cause me node building problems, no matter which node builder I use.

Could you build the nodes before the map reached certain size, or before you build certain room?

Did you use the editor option to detect bugs? Is any bug detected?

Do the node builder display certain error message? perhaps the problem isn't there.
--

At the moment I only can suggest to try out idbsp (it's the nodebuilder that works the best for me).

If you're using DB, copy and past one of the trouble some areas to an empty map, if even so you can't build the nodes, then the problem is on the map itself (angles, lines, unclosed sectors, and what not).

Oh, and whatever you do, save a backup copy.

I can't judge the size of the rooms with that screenshot, but I think I have seen bigger maps without these kind of problems.
[/B]

Im using Doom Builder to construct this map, and originaly I segmented the map simply because I could no longer use the 3d mode in doom builder because it stopped building the nodes after the map got a certian size. At this time the game always worked fine, either that or I didnt notice the monster problem untill I started placing bad guys in the northern sectors, but the wall clipping issue is no doubt new, and occurs in more areas than just the northern most sectors.

Im confident this all has to do with map dimensions, scale, and possibly the number of walls I have. I cant think of any particular structure that is directly causing this problem though.

As for the in game error detection there has been little to speak of in some time. On ocasion Ive done something wrong resulting in an unclosed sector but when this has happened I have either loaded the last good map and started over or in some cases fixed the problem by reassigning the walls to there proper front and back sectors.

The in editor nodebuilder only refuses to build nodes if both maps are pasted together, and it says something like "nodebuilder did not build the required structures, plese check the map for errors" Something like that but I relate this to map size and wall count. Seperatly both map sections build fine but the problem with the blockmap is still there.

Lastly to give you an idea of the maps size because I can see how you may have a hard time telling from that one pic here are some in game shots of only a few angles of the massive part that is connected from south to north in the overhead shot. The connected areas make up the first part of the map while the sections disconnected are in the second half but I don't have in game pics of the second half areas because they are still highly incompleted, But one of the smaller areas of this map is the octagon shaped room in the lower right of the pic, and although it looks small in comparison to its surrounding areas its about the size of the main combat area in level 30 "icon of sin"

Anyway here are some shots of the maps first half...










I'll do a search for the nodebuilder you mentioned and see what happens, in the meantime if anyone knows of anything else I can do or any other good nodebuilders, my ears are open :D

[Grazza]

mikenet2007 said:

I should have mentioned that im using Zdoom, will Glbsp work for a regular zdoom map???

Don't see why not. Why do you think it wouldn't? It builds *normal* and GL nodes. If you just want the normal nodes and don't want the GL nodes at all, then you can simply remove them.

What I wrote above relates to its building of normal nodes. That is, I have found that it is sometimes able to build normal nodes successfully on maps where other nodebuilders have failed.

[mikenet2007]

Ismaele said:

I have seen bigger maps too... and I am finishing to work on the final map of "Italian DooM - Episode 2: The Singularity", that has got a problem with nodes too! Here are the statistics:
27476 vertexes
31694 linedefs
56547 sidedefs
5590 sectors
2371 things
I tried to built its nodes with the node-builders of Doom Builder, but both ZDBSP and ZenNode fail to build the whole map and stop after some time! Nevertheless I can play it with ZDoom, although the port finishes to build the map, before loading it. What can I do?!

Thats a big ass map, mine will have stats in the same neighborhood when complete so its good to see I can go as far as I want with this given I solve this little problem of mine. When did you encounter problems with nodes?

This is the current stats of my map but its about 75% complete as of now so I still have a ways to go.


12992 vertexes
15692 linedefs
28832 sidedefs
3043 sectors
1726 things

The stats in your map give me a little hope though that I can continue on building for some time as long as I can solve my little problem. I will run some more test and try the nodebuilder mentioned by Vegeta and see what happens.

Grazza said:

Don't see why not. Why do you think it wouldn't? It builds *normal* and GL nodes. If you just want the normal nodes and don't want the GL nodes at all, then you can just remove them.

What I wrote above relates to its building of normal nodes. That is, I have found that it is sometimes able to build normal nodes successfully on maps where other nodebuilders have failed.

Cool, then I'll give that one a try as well.

[Ismaele]

Your level looks really imposing and awesome from the screenshots you posted... :) ...although you can improve it, in my opinion. ;)
I trust the error message that Doom Builder shows to you: I think it's a problem with something you built badly, such as an open sector, that makes the nodes your map "un-build-able" and causes monsters no-clipping in one area! Maybe it's that area that has got a problem... maybe it's an open sector. I suggest that you see and fix the bugs in your map and then build its nodes again. I think you won't have problems any more. ;) Moreover your map doesn't look so big that it can give a problem related to this.

On the contrary, my problem is due to the size of my map (see statistics above)... :P ...since Doom Builder doesn't find any problem and I have always been careful with bugs like open sectors and such! Moreover I tested it with ZDoom and I didn't encounter any problem, after ZDoom completes building nodes. But how can I solve the problem of building nodes?! I don't want player to wait ZDoom to complete node-building.

[mikenet2007]

Ok I did try glbsp and got the following errors

2 serious warnings
and 22 minor warnings

The 22 minor warnings are errors doom builder did not detect that I hope I can fix through reconstructing or reassigning walls to there proper sectors.

They include

Warnings for Sector mismatches " not sure what that means "

One warning indicating its Skipping a very short seg "not sure about that either"

Some warnings stating certain sectors have sidedefs facing other sectors

and the rest are warnings indicating unclosed subsectors.

....................................................................
Apart from the minor errors that I wish doom builder would have detected, here are the major warnings....

First one says """Number of segs (37022) has overflowed the normal limit!""" How do I change the limit?

Second one says, not to my surprise, the following """Blockmap TOO Large! Trancated to 172x219 blocks""" How do I go about solving this problem?

I believe the problems causing the gameplay issues are the ladder two , becuae the 22 minor errors were so minute that Doombuilder didn't even detect them. I will try and fix the minor errors manualy but I dont know what to do about the last two errors yet.

[andrewj]

Disclaimer: I'm the author of glbsp...

First off, glbsp should work fine with ZDoom, and can even build the compressed node format that ZDoom uses for very large maps (that overflow the normal limits).

mikenet2007 said:

Second one says, not to my surprise, the following """Blockmap TOO Large! Trancated to 172x219 blocks""" How do I go about solving this problem?

It may not be fixable, but there is something you can try. Using the command-line version of glbsp you can give it the -maxblock option. For example:

glbsp -maxblock 56000 mymap.wad -o newone.wad

You could try 60000 too.

If this doesn't fix it, then your map is too large to work in the original DOOM.EXE. However it may still work in various ports, e.g. BOOM, PrBOOM and EDGE should detect the overflowed blockmap and build their own (run them with the -blockmap option to force it). Presumably ZDoom can do this too.

First one says """Number of segs (37022) has overflowed the normal limit!""" How do I change the limit

This is the limit of DOOM.EXE and you can't change it, except by having less linedefs in your map. Again some ports support upto 65534 normal segs.

Hence you need to decide if want this map to work on plain DOOM.EXE (or chocolate-doom). There are other potential problems, e.g. if the number of things is over 1000 or so then savegames can break.

Warnings for Sector mismatches " not sure what that means.

Some warnings stating certain sectors have sidedefs facing other sectors

This usually means there are unclosed sectors somewhere.

One warning indicating its Skipping a very short seg "not sure about that either"

Very short segs are bad because the precision of normal nodes is 1 map unit, so short segs would become zero length, and that crashes the DOOM.EXE engine. GL-Nodes have much higher precision and hence isn't such a problem for ports that use GL-Nodes.

Hope that helps

[mikenet2007]

I long abandon the idea of having this map work in vanilla doom, Ive been designing this map for zdoom although it may end up working in other ports. Im glad you caught this forum because I have some questions about your nodebuilder and some zdoom limits as well.

I haven't tried the dos prompt method of launching your program but I will experiment with it. One thing I did do was open up the configuration settings text file and change the block_limit to 64000 that way. That seemed to be the highest it would go without reseting itself back to default. It may have helped a little but didnt solve the problem.

I want to know what the problem ive described is related to, im guessing the blockmap, am I right? I just failed trying to use bsp51 in dos prompt mode but I must have been getting the command wrong somewhere, hopefully I have more luck with yours but my dos knowladge is limited.

Another question I have is about what zdoom may allow with nodes that regular doom wouldn't. For a zdoom map is the warning """Number of segs (37022) has overflowed the normal limit!""" even a problem for me? Is the ""Skipping a very short seg"" a problem either?

Lastly, being that some of this terminology is very new to me what would be the ideal setup for building nodes with a large zdoom map like this one? In the windows version of your utility I built "normal nodes only" because I was unsure what effect building openGL nodes for a map being designed for regular zdoom would have. I assume the GL nodebuilding is for those designing for ports like gzdoom but if I can get any benifet from using glnodes let me know. Any other dos promt settetings that may help me Id love to know about as well ;)

Also one more thing, would bitting the bullet and making this a GZdoom help lift any blockmap limits im running into?? Thanks

[andrewj]

If this is a ZDoom map then re-asking your question on the ZDoom forums may be your best bet. I personally don't know much about ZDoom.

The block_limit thing in glbsp isn't going to help you, because you have so many linedefs. It only helps when a map is very large but doesn't have many linedefs.

I'm not sure why ZDoom has a problem with the map. Maybe they haven't added an internal blockmap builder yet. Or maybe you need an option to force it to be used.

Those serious warnings (too many segs, skipped short seg) probably won't stop the map working properly in (G)ZDoom, once you fix the blockmap problem.

mikenet2007 said:

In the windows version of your utility I built "normal nodes only" because I was unsure what effect building openGL nodes for a map being designed for regular zdoom would have.

Building GL Nodes wouldn't do any harm. Though it would make the output WAD a fair bit bigger. I don't think ZDoom uses GL Nodes, maybe GZDoom does. I know ZDoomGL uses them.

For a list of command-line options, run glbsp with the -help option. They are all described in the manual (glbsp.txt).

[Graf Zahl]

Ajapted said:

I'm not sure why ZDoom has a problem with the map. Maybe they haven't added an internal blockmap builder yet. Or maybe you need an option to force it to be used.

Sure it has. How would any port be able to play overlarge maps without one? Unlike nodes nobody has developed an expanded blockmap format yet (and that's understandably because rebuilding it is quick enough to do it internally.)

[mikenet2007]

Im not sure what to do about this, I havent tried fixing the minor issues yet because I think its the blockmap limit thats killing me, I need a way to build a sufficient blockmap for a large zdoom map containing many sidedefs, I know its been done. Is there a utility that is designed just to build a blockmap?? I actually did post this in the zdoom forums before posing it here.


Ismaele has a large wad with many sidedefs without the blockmap problem, so I guess today I will try and fix the minor errors glbsp found and see if that helps, if I can hunt down all the sector and wall locations. I'm getting frustrated with this.

[andrewj]

No clipping problems are usually related to the blockmap, but as Graf so helpfully said, ZDoom will build it's own blockmap if the one in the wad has overflowed -- check the ZDoom console for a message about it.

Perhaps try your map in another port, such as EDGE1.29RC#5 from http://edge.sourceforge.net (it's the one I work on). ZDoom features won't work of course, but the common Doom stuff should work, e.g. see if the same clipping problem occurs. EDGE 1.29RC#5 requires GL-Nodes, and will build them itself if the wad hasn't got them.

[Cadman]

If it's at all possible, could you send me your map so I can examine it, and maybe just maybe we can attempt to fix this thing for you. I promise not to change any of your design, nothing like that. Just let me have a go and see what's up. It's for ZDoom right? If I'm able to help it out I'll send it back to you. If not, I'll just delete it from my hard drive. I will not share it with anyone...


e-mail for me is: dharris147@tampabay.rr.com

[mikenet2007]

Ajapted said:

No clipping problems are usually related to the blockmap, but as Graf so helpfully said, ZDoom will build it's own blockmap if the one in the wad has overflowed -- check the ZDoom console for a message about it.

Perhaps try your map in another port, such as EDGE1.29RC#5 from http://edge.sourceforge.net (it's the one I work on). ZDoom features won't work of course, but the common Doom stuff should work, e.g. see if the same clipping problem occurs. EDGE 1.29RC#5 requires GL-Nodes, and will build them itself if the wad hasn't got them.

Unfortunately this map has far to many zdoom effects that I wish to keep to switch to any port that does not support them, unless of course launching the map in an alternate port will save the nodes it builds to the wad, allowing me then to use my wad with zdoom hopefully with the nodes properly built, I'm not sure if it works that way though. The other port Im considering as of now is GZdoom because I found that it at least eliminates the wall clipping problem but the monster clipping issue still remains.

Gzdoom does unfortunatly have some undesired effects like my colored lighting going from red to purple, and the monsters look kind of funny if they are above you. It renders the map beautifully though. Very crisp looking. I need to try building glnodes then running gzdoom to see if that helps the monster clipping at all. Honestly half this stuff makes about as much sense to me as trigonometry, so its constant trial and error. I consider myself a decent mapper, I've been doing it for years mostly for newer games, but honestly I admit to knowing little about blockmaps and nodes and how they function.

[mikenet2007]

Cadman said:

If it's at all possible, could you send me your map so I can examine it, and maybe just maybe we can attempt to fix this thing for you. I promise not to change any of your design, nothing like that. Just let me have a go and see what's up. It's for ZDoom right? If I'm able to help it out I'll send it back to you. If not, I'll just delete it from my hard drive. I will not share it with anyone...


e-mail for me is: dharris147@tampabay.rr.com

Great! Id be glad to. Just let me fix a few things and I'll have it sent to you sometime today.

[Grazza]

mikenet2007 said:

Unfortunately this map has far to many zdoom effects that I wish to keep to switch to any port that does not support them

I'm pretty sure Ajapted was suggesting trying the map in another port just for the purpose of finding out what is stopping the map from working at all. That is, if it refuses to load in any other port, then that provides useful information. If it loads and you can start to play it without certain problems occurring (never mind that it has unsupported effects - that's not the point of the exercise), then that also provides useful information. And in both cases, you might get some information from the port (on-screen and/or in its output text) about what the problems are.

BTW, playing a map in a particular port should not change the wad file in any way (if it does, then it's a horrible bug, and I am not aware of any such cases). Anything it builds related to the map will be a temporary thing in memory or (perhaps) an additional file separate from the wad itself.

[Searcher]

That is all good info above.

Also, have you run a good error checker over this map yet?

A good error checker will show unclosed sectors, zero length lines, texture errors, etc. and should be able to show those to you either in a log or directly on your map.

I am most familiar with the Deepsea error checker, and love it, but it is not the only one around.

[Cadman]

Allright, I got the map and here's what I have so far...some stats first.

Things: 1719
Vertices: 12996
Sidedefs: 28840
Linedefs: 15696
Sectors: 3044
Segs: 31377
SSectors: 11915
Nodes: 11914
Reject: 1158242
Blockmap: 0
Behavior: 13156

I'm using my editor Deepsea for this process. I have rebuilt the map using different node settings. The first thing I tried was building the nodes without splitting, then an auto-split and next I will try a vertical split and horizontal split as well. So far I have had no issues building the nodes using DeepBSP.

I'm also gonna attempt to pack the sectors and sidedefs as well. I also ran the error checker from Deepsea and it found 7,053 issues with your map. Some of these issues may be on purpose by you, that I don't know. I will send you the error log with all 7,053 entries tomorrow...take a look at it and see what the issues are that you may need to address. I did find that all your sectors are closed, which is good!

Over the years that I've been playing Doom I have gained lots of experience about maps and one thing I noticed about your map is the "Line of sight" issue while running through it. At times I could just see forever! (at least it seemed like it at times) Your lighting and transparency effects have a tendency to "bog" down the game play. Those are just some quick thoughts, I'll get back to it tomorrow.

[mikenet2007]

Cadman said:

Allright, I got the map and here's what I have so far...some stats first.

Things: 1719
Vertices: 12996
Sidedefs: 28840
Linedefs: 15696
Sectors: 3044
Segs: 31377
SSectors: 11915
Nodes: 11914
Reject: 1158242
Blockmap: 0
Behavior: 13156

I'm using my editor Deepsea for this process. I have rebuilt the map using different node settings. The first thing I tried was building the nodes without splitting, then an auto-split and next I will try a vertical split and horizontal split as well. So far I have had no issues building the nodes using DeepBSP.

I'm also gonna attempt to pack the sectors and sidedefs as well. I also ran the error checker from Deepsea and it found 7,053 issues with your map. Some of these issues may be on purpose by you, that I don't know. I will send you the error log with all 7,053 entries tomorrow...take a look at it and see what the issues are that you may need to address. I did find that all your sectors are closed, which is good!

Over the years that I've been playing Doom I have gained lots of experience about maps and one thing I noticed about your map is the "Line of sight" issue while running through it. At times I could just see forever! (at least it seemed like it at times) Your lighting and transparency effects have a tendency to "bog" down the game play. Those are just some quick thoughts, I'll get back to it tomorrow.

""""Over the years that I've been playing Doom I have gained lots of experience about maps and one thing I noticed about your map is the "Line of sight" issue while running through it. At times I could just see forever! (at least it seemed like it at times) Your lighting and transparency effects have a tendency to "bog" down the game play. Those are just some quick thoughts, I'll get back to it tomorrow.""""

Yes,hehe I always have built on large scales, Its my belief that players love to see elaborated and massive structures and I want this map to almost look like it was built for Unreal Tournament, almost ;)
I'm really not accustom to the limits that exist when mapping for doom because I've only been doing it for 3 months now. Ive done most my mapping in other games, I just hope I'm not pushing it here.