Dmapedit problem

[LUCKY MUD]

I know this is very old-school, but I seem to have a problem with sectors in one of my levels. I can only have 510 sectors. If I put in one more, when I save it, Dmapedit locks up when it tries to generate the reject bitmap. Is there a limit to the number of sectors in Dmapedit? If there is, is there away to get around it? Or have I over looked something? Please, don't tell me to get DoomBuilder or Deepsea. I would really like an answer to my question.

[GreyGhost]

I recall one shareware editor having a sector limit in the unregistered version but I don't think it's Dmapedit. Only suggestion I can offer is to load DMAPEDIT.INI into a text editor and delete everything below the following lines -

*If you are having problems with DMapEdit crashing due to the last .wad
*you had in the editor. Delete everything below this line.

[LUCKY MUD]

I've tried that. Didn't work.

[GreyGhost]

If that's the same map you were having trouble with two years ago, maybe it's time someone else had a look at it.

[LUCKY MUD]

Not the same map, but kind of. I don't know anybody around here who would know what I'm talking about.

[GreyGhost]

Heh - you're probably our resident Dmapedit guru. What sort of environment are you running the program in - DOS under Windows or DOSBox, and which version of Windows? I might be curious/crazy enough to try replicating the problem.

[LUCKY MUD]

I'm running it under DosBox 0.73 on Windows XP Pro (SP 2).

[GreyGhost]

I've replicated the problem and it does appear to be limitation of the built-in nodebuilder. Being lazy, I merged a couple of IWAD maps in Doom Builder then proceeded to add sectors in Dmapedit until it's nodebuilder locked up at sector 511. Best suggestion I can offer (apart from changing editors) is to use an external nodebuilder - like ZenNode - unfortunately I can't see any way of calling it from within the editor.

[LUCKY MUD]

I think you're right GreyGhost. Thanks for the time and trouble you put in to this. Why there is a limit doesn't make any since to me. I went back over the level and deleted some sectors so I could finish it. I guess I'll keep an eye on how many sectors I use, or change level editors. Thanks again.

[GreyGhost]

You're welcome.

It's either a bug or the author decided 512 was a reasonable sector limit, considering that Strife is the only supported IWAD to exceed that limit. If you're willing to get your hands dirty and try fixing that, or add support for external nodebuilders - here's the source, though I don't know if it's complete.

[boris]

Just tell DOSBox to give more RAM to the programs. The default 16 MB is too few for big maps. You can change this in the config file. Start menu -> DOSBox x.xx -> Options -> DOSBox x.xx Options.

[edit] Oh, and get Doom Builder 2 ;)

[GreyGhost]

Thanks for the tip, though memory doesn't seem to be the issue. Even with 64MB available the nodebuilder locks up when I reach or exceed the 512 sector mark.

My test setup is similar to LUCKY MUDs - DOSBox 0.74 and XP Home (SP3).

[boris]

Hmm, I tried it earlier today and it saved Vrack3 fine after I increased the RAM to 64 MB. Now I tried it again and it crashed (i.e. doesn't lock up), error message is "Failed on read buffer1 from WAD file". According to the source you linked that's in the function remake_wad from wad.c, where it tries to read 16kb of data from the wad and fails doing so.

[LUCKY MUD]

boris,
I tried upping the memory in DosBox and it didn't work.

GreyGost,
Thanks for the link to the source. I'll take a look at it, but I know nothing about coding.

[GreyGhost]

I'm not a programmer either, but it's nice to know the code's available.

boris said:

Hmm, I tried it earlier today and it saved Vrack3 fine after I increased the RAM to 64 MB. Now I tried it again and it crashed (i.e. doesn't lock up), error message is "Failed on read buffer1 from WAD file".

We might be arguing at cross-purposes. Saving hasn't been an issue (until now it seems) since Dmapedit doesn't automatically rebuild the nodes when doing so, it's the Compile option that's giving me grief.