everything got screwed up

[VileSlay]

the wad I was building with wadauthor got screwed up. heights, sidedefs, lighting, everything. all I did was put in a table like structure in one room. has this happened to anyone else before? what can I do? AAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGHHHH!!!!!!!

[Liam]

Always make backup saves.

[magikal]

Yes!Sorry to be repetitive but always make back-up saves.Take a deep breath and be prepared for a lot of re-numbering.

[Kid Airbag]

Hmm, that's never happened to me...weird. What exactly did you do, so I know how to avoid it?

[999cop]

Always use 'check map' option to assure there is no fatal errors that would crash your map while you were going to run it. Never ever save a wad that you aren't sure if it has screwed, because once you do, you cannot undo whatever mistakes you have made. Like Liam said, always make a backup file just in case. If you screwed it up with Wintex, try to restore the wad back any way you can with it. There should be an option provided on the main menu of the program. Sorry about your mess :(

[Kid Airbag]

I know that WA automatically creates backup files, and I'm pretty sure WinTex does too (at least when you do the clean WAD option).

[VileSlay]

yeah, I never figured that some huge crazy screw up would happen so I never made backups (insert retard here). I'm just gonna go through and fix everything sector by sector. there is a bunch of stuff that stayed the same, so I have reference point to work with. all I did was make a little table. who knew adding a rectangle would make everthing go nutz.

on a side note, I'd like to thank all you guys who have been responding to my newbie posts and giving me good advice. this is one of the best forums I've ever joined.

[Use]

yes!
this happens to me all the time! with me wadauthor screws up everytime i try to run the error checker and then fix anything. after the fix, the wad is fine, but as soon as i save, the level becomes corrupted. the structure is all there but all the sector hieghts and textures and lights are bonked.

i never lost a whole map tho, i make .bsp saves with every .wad saved, so i have two copies at all times.

sorry!

[Biffy]

This is the thing I've noticed too with WA, which I think I understand. It's a bug, and has bit me about once a year over a three year period. If you delete a sector by deleting its lines only, there may be a sector book-keeping error which ends up shifting sector numbers and transfers the wrong lighting and floor/ceiling heights to many sectors. I don't know 100% but think this is it.

I've saved my work by resorting to the WA backup file, but once lost several hour's work. Now, if I am using WA, I save to a new file name if much work has been done, or check it at that time so the backup can be restored.

Some other editor(s) are apparently free of this problem.

Anyhow, if you want to use WA, hit the S key to go into sector mode, select the sector you want to delete and hit the delete key. Either the sector disappears entirely or it is turned into void space, depending on it's characteristics. You can safely delete one-sided lines to delete void space.

[magikal]

Oh yeah,now I always make a back-up on a floppy or a CD before I edit because one day.....one day that HD's gonna give it up.

[ReX]

VileSlay said:

the wad I was building with wadauthor got screwed up. heights, sidedefs, lighting, everything... has this happened to anyone else before? what can I do?

This occasionally happens, and the reason is that the sector-referencing of linedefs gets messed up (i.e., one linedef associated with a sector references that sector, but another linedef normally associated with that sector is referencing a different sector.) In-game, the heights, lighting, etc. look screwy, because the sector is taking on the attributes of the sector referenced by the messed-up linedef. I'm not sure why the sector referencing problem happens, but it is not pretty. Also, it causes a lot of wasted time. Resort to the the back-up copy that WadAuthor always makes upon saving a file. (It's got a .bak extension, which you can rename to a .wad extension.)

Error checking doesn't help, because the error seems to occur during the save. Therefore, your error-ckeck will come out fine, but after you've saved the file your error-checker will come up with all the errors.

Your best bet is to save frequently (and error-check before every save, even though it doesn't always work), so that even if you get the problem you wouldn't have wasted too much effort.

[stphrz]

Your best bet is to save frequently

and save it as a different name. (ie. you are working on wad29.wad, save it as wad30.wad)

[Kid Airbag]

So we're pretty sure that deleting sectors one line at a time is the cause of this, then? That's good, I always use the sector filter and delete the whole sector at once.

I usually only save under a different filename if I'm about to fuck around with things in WinTex.

[VileSlay]

okay then, line by line deleting bad. too bad there's no real fix for that.

[magikal]

Doesn't the latest version of DeepSea have something like 100 undos?Could be useful for this sort of situation.

[Kid Airbag]

VileSlay said:

okay then, line by line deleting bad. too bad there's no real fix for that.

Yes there is, just use sector filter and delete the whole sector.

Doesn't the latest version of DeepSea have something like 100 undos?Could be useful for this sort of situation.

WA has pretty much unlimited undos, as long as you don't save. But once you save, you can't undo things from before the save.

[magikal]

Archvile64 said:

WA has pretty much unlimited undos, as long as you don't save. But once you save, you can't undo things from before the save.

Hmm,true unfortunately.There should be some way around that though.Maybe there should be 2 bak files,one from much earlier.Starts to get complicated though doesn't it?

[deep]

magikal said:

Doesn't the latest version of DeepSea have something like 100 undos?Could be useful for this sort of situation.

Nothing can be "unlimited", unless of course you have unlimited memory:) Practically speaking, I'm lucky to remember the last 30, much less the last 100 times. IOW 100 is just real world - if I hear a complaint it's trivial to make it higher:)

However, there is one extra security blanket and that's the DeePsea quick save command - Ctrl+F2. Makes a file ending in BKP (same as auto-backup).

So it's easy to have 4 copies of a file: The original of course, .BAK (automatically made when you save), .BKP (quick save) and ~DEEP.WAD. The last is automatically made when nodes are built - just in case something goes wacko.

[Lüt]

VileSlay said:

the wad I was building with wadauthor got screwed up. heights, sidedefs, lighting, everything. all I did was put in a table like structure in one room. has this happened to anyone else before? what can I do?

Yep, and it tends to happen more often in large maps than small, which is why I stopped using WA altogether.

[Fredrik]

That has happened to me with Deepsea... but at least I always have backups then :P

[Big_al]

I use the incremental filename method for my wads.
I also get Zennode to output with a "z" at the end of the filename.

The undo option in DS is a real winner.
Adding new sectors to a complex level seems to mess up in most editors.

Good work around I found while using DETH is to create the new sector "outside" the current level.
Then drag it inside the sector you want it in and edit the linedefs settings manually.

[stphrz]

I have never had a map screw up on me in WA in the way others have described. I've deleted linedefs before, no problem. Of course you probably have to fix some sector references after you do that, but the same is true in any other editor as well.

[VileSlay]

it was rough, but after an hour or so I fixed it all. I'm getting the hang of it. I threw an incomplete version of my wad on /incoming, but am still working on the rest of it. should be done soon.