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illuknisaa

Odd holes in map?

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Unclosed sectors or overlapping linedefs are two possibilities that spring to mind, could you post the map for examination?

If you're using DoomBuilder v1.68, its 3D editing mode sometimes does strange things.

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This is OP's screenshot. It doesn't display in his post for me, but it's there, just posted wrongly (he probably put the picture's preview page in img tags instead of a direct link, hard to tell, because the new quoting system replaces img tags with url tags automatically when I quote his post).

http://postimg.org/image/vvue8ah37/

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Looks strange, whatever it is. I wonder if the fog is deliberate or a side-effect of the problem.

Might be overlapping sectors, but with only a screenshot to go by we're just playing a variant of 20 Questions.

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Did you delete any 2-sided linedefs between 2 different sectors? You should never do this. Always Join or Merge sectors before deleting any linedefs between them.

Did you drag any vertexes or linedefs or sectors over each other / over a linedef / into a different sector? That's another thing you should not do.

Did you explicitly delete any 1-sided linedefs while in Linedef mode? That's also wrong, even if you want to erase an entire sector this way, don't do it. It's only acceptable when deleting pillars of void that are completely contained inside 1 sector, otherwise not.

Did you delete any vertexes on a boundary of (at least 2) sectors? Another wrong thing you should always avoid.

Now you can try to fix the problem by redrawing the sector and its surrounding sectors. Try clicking the sectors while in Make Sector mode. If it doesn't help, better delete all sectors in the area (the proper way is to go to Sector mode, manually pick or block-select sectors, and delete them) and then redraw them. If you find out that the problem is caused by certain linedefs, then delete these linedefs (safely, in accordance to my recommendations above) and redraw them, maybe it will help.

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GreyGhost said:

with only a screenshot to go by we're just playing a variant of 20 Questions.

scifista42 said:

Did you delete any 2-sided linedefs between 2 different sectors? <...>

Did you drag any vertexes or linedefs or sectors over each other / over a linedef / into a different sector? <...>

Did you explicitly delete any 1-sided linedefs while in Linedef mode? <...>

Did you delete any vertexes on a boundary of (at least 2) sectors? <...>


Good job, scifi, only 16 more to go.

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The most important missing info:

What port was this screenshot made in? It's clearly a hardware renderer but which one? Each of the active GL ports uses a different method to create geometry for flats so each one will show different effects.

Oh, and posting the map may help. As it stands it's all wild guesses.

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scifista42 said:

Did you delete any 2-sided linedefs between 2 different sectors? You should never do this. Always Join or Merge sectors before deleting any linedefs between them.

Did you drag any vertexes or linedefs or sectors over each other / over a linedef / into a different sector? That's another thing you should not do.

Did you explicitly delete any 1-sided linedefs while in Linedef mode? That's also wrong, even if you want to erase an entire sector this way, don't do it. It's only acceptable when deleting pillars of void that are completely contained inside 1 sector, otherwise not.

Did you delete any vertexes on a boundary of (at least 2) sectors? Another wrong thing you should always avoid.


I'm fairly sure I did not do any of those

I'm using udmf in gzdoom and gzdoom builder (latest version). I don't get any error messages and in the visual mode everything looks fine but when I test the map this problem appears.
EDIT: Now that I test the map, the hole is gone.
EDIT#2: The hole returns and in the same spot. I looked the hole with nodes viewer and I noticed that there was a hole there.
It seems there is some sort of problem with nodes not drawing properly. Rebuilding doesn't help.

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illuknisaa said:

Rebuilding doesn't help.

Not even when you try a different node builder? (You can change node builder via "Tools -> Game Configuration -> Nodebuilding")

Post the map, please.

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scifista42 said:

Not even when you try a different node builder? (You can change node builder via "Tools -> Game Configuration -> Nodebuilding")

Post the map, please.

illuknisaa said the map format is UDMF, so there is only one nodebuilder that will work at all.

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It's probably a nodebuilder error. Nodebuilder doesn't handle its job properly, because of unfortunate positions of wildly angled linedefs. The almost horizontal row of 3 lines + surrounding sectors eastern from the hole appear to be the worst offender. I've tinkered with vertices and changed these sectors into orthogonal rectangles, then I rebuilt nodes and the hole was away. I guess tinkering with vertices is your only hope, other than waiting for an improved version of a nodebuilder to be released.

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Well I guess I just ignore this issue for now.

I was wondering what does that "balance" mean in the node builder window?

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These holes, it seems, are a rift in the DOOM firmament, eg:

I encountered something like this after looking at the automap



Moving the void sector a tat to the right



resulted in this



no more hom, or whatever that was.

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illuknisaa said:

I was wondering what does that "balance" mean in the node builder window?

// Calculate the tree balance. The balance is 100% when all leafs are equal depth and
// 0% when 1 leaf equals peakdepth and the others are at level 1.
int balance = (int)(((float)mindepth / maxdepth) * 100f);
treebalance.Text = balance + "%";

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MaxED said:

// Calculate the tree balance. The balance is 100% when all leafs are equal depth and
// 0% when 1 leaf equals peakdepth and the others are at level 1.
int balance = (int)(((float)mindepth / maxdepth) * 100f);
treebalance.Text = balance + "%";


That makes no sense. Node builder says that I have 40% balance but

a) I don't have a single tree in the map
b) Doom trees dont leaves so they are always equal aka nonexistent.
c) map01 doesn't have trees either (bushes yes but no trees)

@Kappes Buur
I like how your screenshots are from a completely different spot than mine.

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illuknisaa said:

I don't have a single tree in the map

There is a tree of sorts in the NODES lump, a BSP Tree, which is a data structure created by the nodebuilder so the game engine knows what to render and where.


DAMN! Ninja'd!

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Both sectors with holes have several vertices that don't even snap to the 1x1 grid. I manually dragged them to their nearest grid points and the nodes built nicely after that.

My initial idea was to split sector #46 with a line between vertices #792 and #270. Trying to do so reliably crashed SLADE until after my PC suffered a BSOD and I rebooted. Go figure. I finally tried that split and it fixed not only that sector, but the other one too.

Sounds like this version of your in-progress map should become a standard node builder test case. :D

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Aliotroph? said:

Both sectors with holes have several vertices that don't even snap to the 1x1 grid. I manually dragged them to their nearest grid points and the nodes built nicely after that.

Something really should be done about the fact that UDMF and zdbsp can't agree on vertex precision. Either modify GZDoom Builder so that it cannot output bad vertex coordinates, or modify zdbsp so that it generates a sane BSP regardless (there must be some sensible way to compensate for this). I know quite a few mappers who have been severely bothered by this issue.

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Aliotroph? mentioning that some vertices were not even aligned to the 1x1 grid
jogged my poor old memory. GZDoom Builder has a feature to help with that.

Go into Vertices Mode, select a 1 mp grid and select the whole map.
Then go to and click on Edit - Snap Selection to Grid, which eliminates the necessity to realign the vertices by hand.



And save the map.

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illuknisaa said:

That makes no sense. Node builder says that I have 40% balance but

a) I don't have a single tree in the map
b) Doom trees dont leaves so they are always equal aka nonexistent.
c) map01 doesn't have trees either (bushes yes but no trees)

The most adorable post. :)

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Adorable, indeed. "I don't have a single tree in my map" should make for a neat custom title, too.

So, the eponymous holes are the same issue that NoisyVelvet had in the original version of his abyspe16 map. That case also involved DB2, 1x1 grid and presumably ZDBSP. A rebuild with Zennode fixed it then. The obvious solution seems to be to make 2x2 the lowest user-configurable setting for the grid in GZDB.
Quasar makes a good point as well, and I will extend it by suggesting that something is pretty fscked-up with ZDBSP if it stumbles where an 11-year old node builder performs as expected.

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This sorta interests me. Is there any way to make these "holes" on purpose and in selected areas? I'm thinking this can be used in a future map I'm planning.

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Never_Again said:

So, the eponymous holes are the same issue that NoisyVelvet had in the original version of his abyspe16 map. That case also involved DB2, 1x1 grid and presumably ZDBSP. A rebuild with Zennode fixed it then. The obvious solution seems to be to make 2x2 the lowest user-configurable setting for the grid in GZDB.
Quasar makes a good point as well, and I will extend it by suggesting that something is pretty fscked-up with ZDBSP if it stumbles where an 11-year old node builder performs as expected.


Do you know for sure that these two cases are exactly the same, or are you just using this platform to dump onto ZDBSP?

In this case, for example, rebuilding the nodes with any of the available nodebuilders did not fix the 'holes". The only thing that did fix it was to realign some vertices with GZDoom Builder as outlined in the post above.

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