Return to City 17

[DaMaN]

Been trying to convert the maps into playable OC 1.3. They seem to work fine with just bsp and vis, but throw rad in and it doesn't seem to like it.

Anyone know what "Engine hunk overflow" means?

EDIT: Other sites on the net say that it's caused by big maps or big water. Anyone else know? How the heck am I supposed to shrink any of these maps down? They're all gigantic!

I dont know exactly what that error means, but on a forum i saw someone with the same problem, the only way he could get rid of it was to split the map, i also read somewhere that it happens on maps with a lot of water, but more i dont know.

Yea, that's pretty much what I got from my browsing. Unfortunately, the maps I've made are on too big a scale to split. Perhaps I can reduce the water a bit. Hopefully that'll make a difference...

EDIT: On the plus side, 05 and 06a compiled beautifully - one or two errors to fix then a final compile and release for those. 04 glytched up somewhere, so I'll have to try it again. 03 also worked fine. I think 01 and 02 are both too big for the engine to handle (some "update" that source update was, more like a... "down-date").

Another little bug I noticed is that the metrocops, if they're friendly to you they'll wander around - which is really annoying! I don't want him wandering around! Ack! I'll have to bind him to a specific set of hint-nodes...

Oh, one other bug, I've got a game_player_equip with the name "spawn_items_equip" but none of the items in it are being equipped when the player first spawns. What's the name that it needs to be to have it auto-equip players when they spawn?

[fug4life]

Are you compiling in Orange box? If not try...

Well before you start chopping things up, I'd give these ago, hide your hints and area portals compile or hide your water and compile. Also are you full compiling hdr the whole lot?

Whats you water indices percentage?

[Shana]

I think 01 and 02 are both too big for the engine to handle (some "update" that source update was, more like a... "down-date").

I agree, they brought back a lot of old limitations, remember how they said ep2 engine would handle wide, open maps much better? theres no real difference, except that the ep2 maps have hardcore optimizing and older hl2 and ep1 maps actually run slower in ep2 engine.

Another little bug I noticed is that the metrocops, if they're friendly to you they'll wander around - which is really annoying! I don't want him wandering around! Ack! I'll have to bind him to a specific set of hint-nodes...

Contact skidz about that, i had the same problem in the hl2 trainstation maps and he was able to fix it.

Oh, one other bug, I've got a game_player_equip with the name "spawn_items_equip" but none of the items in it are being equipped when the player first spawns. What's the name that it needs to be to have it auto-equip players when they spawn?

It never worked for me either that way, you have to give it the eguipactivator input or add the spawnweapons to the mapaddscript.

[DaMaN]

Are you compiling in Orange box? If not try...

Yea, the maps all compile with ep1 sdk, but orange box seems to screw up quite a bit.

Well before you start chopping things up, I'd give these ago, hide your hints and area portals compile or hide your water and compile. Also are you full compiling hdr the whole lot?

Full BSP, fast VIS, and full RAD, though no HDR (vidcard doesn't support hdr, so I've never done it).

Whats you water indices percentage?

No clue, where do I find this out?

I think 01 and 02 are both too big for the engine to handle (some "update" that source update was, more like a... "down-date").

I agree, they brought back a lot of old limitations, remember how they said ep2 engine would handle wide, open maps much better? theres no real difference, except that the ep2 maps have hardcore optimizing and older hl2 and ep1 maps actually run slower in ep2 engine.

Agreed, some of these maps seem laggier and worse in the ep2 engine. Handle wide open maps much better my ass. I was really looking forwards to that update, as most of my maps are wide and open. Ass-raped by Valve again... (not bitter at all mind you *twitch twitch*)

Oh, one other bug, I've got a game_player_equip with the name "spawn_items_equip" but none of the items in it are being equipped when the player first spawns. What's the name that it needs to be to have it auto-equip players when they spawn?

It never worked for me either that way, you have to give it the eguipactivator input or add the spawnweapons to the mapaddscript.

Gah. I thought it was set up to handle that in hammer! SKIDZ!!! MAKE IT WORK!! Is it just me, or does pakratting a map-add file seem a bit wrong?

[Shana]

Gah. I thought it was set up to handle that in hammer! SKIDZ!!! MAKE IT WORK!! Is it just me, or does pakratting a map-add file seem a bit wrong?

It would work, but its not a good idea, i gues people would then not be able to make a mapaddscript for the map to fix a bug, to adjust something or w/e.

EDIT:
The guy on the other forum posted that he got Engine Hunk Overflow again in another map, which he cant split, but this time he fixed it by setting the lightmapscale from <16 to >16.

[fug4life]

Yeah I read about changing light map scales helped some but not others.
water indicies is in the list of consumption in compile log, the list of percentages at the end.

Mapadd pakrated? W0rf0x had a point. Although I was planning on packing a modify into mine

[DaMaN]

Gah. I thought it was set up to handle that in hammer! SKIDZ!!! MAKE IT WORK!! Is it just me, or does pakratting a map-add file seem a bit wrong?

It would work, but its not a good idea, i gues people would then not be able to make a mapaddscript for the map to fix a bug, to adjust something or w/e.

Yea, I'd like people to have the option of doing map-add scripts of their own. Oh well, guess I've got to re-do all the spawns so they go through a teleporter and trigger the player_equip.

EDIT:
The guy on the other forum posted that he got Engine Hunk Overflow again in another map, which he cant split, but this time he fixed it by setting the lightmapscale from <16 to >16.

Lightmap scale eh? I'll have to try that out. Any particular textures to be greater than 16? or just the water?

Yeah I read about changing light map scales helped some but not others.
water indicies is in the list of consumption in compile log, the list of percentages at the end.

Yea, I'm a little confused about it. You'd think that lots of water indicies would be bad right? Well here's what I got...

Code: Select all

waterindices         18216/65536       36432/131072   (27.8%)

You'd think that less than 1/3 of the available indicies would be enough... *bitter bitter*

I'll try out the lightmapscale. See if that works.

[DaMaN]

And is it just me or are there absolutely NO blend grass textures that DONT have any auto-generated static prop things? I thought they existed before the update, but I very well could be wrong. Kinda pisses me off, because it won't compile if there's too many auto-generated static props, which I don't want!!! Plus I've got to re-invert the alphas of all my displacements because they FINALLY fixed the inverted alpha displacement bug!

AAAAAAAAAAAARG!!!

Sorry, just venting. I really really REALLY want to get this series RELEASED!!!! *cry*

Ugh. Mapping with Hammer just hasn't been the same lately... It's probably because I just finished up a term of learning Blender. It's got a great user interface (once you learn it) and it doesn't crash every few seconds, and when you program it to do something, IT DOES IT!! Wow! What a concept!

Bah. I got the pre-release blues. Cant seem to get the damn things working. Which is hextupply-compounded, as I have a grand total of 6 maps I'm trying to compile, cubemap, pakrat, and release. Except I'm stuck on the pre-compile phase.

EDIT: Ahh... went and ranted on my blog. It's nice to have a good long rant once in a while.
http://daman-amappersworld.blogspot.com ... -woes.html

[Blues]

You can change the type and amount of detailprops in the detail.vbsp, if you open it with notepad.

If you want your Texture to not to have any detail props or detail sprites, then extract the VMT from your GCF and put it into the folder where it was found in the GCF (e.g materials\nature).
Then just change the line "%detailtype" "x" by putting two slashes in front of it, like:

//"%detailtype" "x"

The VMT params with % are normally only used by hammer during compile, while the $ ones are also used by the game.

If you compile with a certain "%detailtype" set inside a VMT, hammer will look up the detailtype in the detail.vbsp and place props and sprites according to what is written in there...

Pretty easy to understand, I hope

[DaMaN]

Thanks Blues! I'll try fiddling around with those values to try and eliminate some of those detail props.

Also, I seem to be missing a texture for underwater:




(This is full-bsp fast-vis no-rad compile)


EDIT: Also, because I hate trying to fix all these errors (seriously, once you make a map it should STAY made, you shouldn't have to re-make it every time a new update comes along), I spent most of the night working on oc_return_c17_06b, so it's about 80% done. Need to cubemap, work through some scripted sequences, test for errors, etc. and add in player spawns and equipment. Then I'll have another map I'll have to figure out why it won't compile... (It'll probably compile, 06b is actually pretty small.)

As you know, 07 and 08 are done, 09 is mostly done, and 10 has most of its geometry done. So after more than a year I've managed to connect up the geometry of the maps. It's a bit of a humbling feeling. I mean, I opened up 07 for the first time in a half a year to copy the section to connect up with 06b. (By the way, I've already gone through and added all of fug4life's, W0rf0x's, and other beta tester's feedback to 07 and 08 (I hope) ). Which is exciting, because I really enjoyed the feedback I got from those two maps, and I'm looking forwards to releasing them.

So yea. Light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, there's a gigantic Hammer in the way...

[fug4life]

I thought to get water all correct etc, you needed rad?

[TheMoon]

nah, you need vis for water, not rad.

Apparently something is wrong with your "beneath" material, is the water material you use from the normal HL2 content or did you make a custom one?

The material which is missing in your case should normally be referenced to as $bottommaterial in your water's vmt, in most cases it is some material with a "_beneath" suffix.

[DaMaN]

nah, you need vis for water, not rad.

Apparently something is wrong with your "beneath" material, is the water material you use from the normal HL2 content or did you make a custom one?

The material which is missing in your case should normally be referenced to as $bottommaterial in your water's vmt, in most cases it is some material with a "_beneath" suffix.

Ok, found the materials, but something's screwed up...



It seems that most of the "_beneath" textures are screwed up, but the "_beneath_dx8" ones are fine. Huh. (Again, this wasn't a problem before the orange box sdk, but w/e). The only textures I could find that are not borked like that is dev water and canal water. Which is annoying because it's a coast map and the coast waters would be appropriate.

Anyone else have this bug?

EDIT: Also, check my previous post for a status update.

[DaMaN]

OK, can't seem to figure out the water - I'll have to verify half life 2 install and see if that works...

On the crashing and not compiling properly note, I've got all the maps to compile except 01. Still won't compile. I've tried lowering the lightmap scale of the water, but same error: "Engine hunk overflow".

I'll try compiling without hints or areaportals and see if that'll help, but I can't see it making much of a difference. Compile log isn't helping either. Hopefully I can get it compiled and re-released...

[fug4life]

want one of us to have ago at compiling it for you? Or you think it wont make slightest bit of deifference?
Prehaps try chopping some of the water brushes up into smaller or go the opposite way and make merge them to be larger?, make sure they are well trimmed at the edges under those displacements, dont let them shoot off to map edges if not nessercary etc, etc.