.Map :: MoHAA Mapping

So I have the hall of mirrors effect! I have searched and found a few other people had problems. There is an areaportal correctly made in the func rotatingdoor. When you lean right around this corner you get the effect. When you take a couple of steps more so that your body is completely in the hall, everything is fine. This is exactly the same thing that happens on V2 when you come out of T1 and look at T3





My theory is that the game engine is calculating you location from your body center and not your head center. When you lean the areaportal does not open because your body is still around the corner. However a few steps more and your body is around the corner and the portal opens.

Is this whats happening? Or is it something else? I know you can block VIS, but can you force VIS?

Any ideas?

I've seen effects like this when there is no skybox on some peoples maps. Perhaps there is a tear in the brushwork, ever so small, that when you lean you can see it or see through it. ( from outside the map to the inside )
Vis brushes wouldn't cause this. You would see "nothing" so to speak. All textures would disappear.
I never saw this with port brushes but doesn't mean it might not happen. Let you know if it ever happens to me.

is this druckermern ? and where are you standing.... give big picture.

neillomax wrote:I've seen effects like this when there is no skybox on some peoples maps. Perhaps there is a tear in the brushwork, ever so small, that when you lean you can see it or see through it. ( from outside the map to the inside )

I do have a skybox without leaks. As far as the tear. When I get home I will go behind the door and check with rtris-2 to see if visibility is contained to just that room.

neillomax wrote: Vis brushes wouldn't cause this. You would see "nothing" so to speak. All textures would disappear.

I do not have any VIS brushes. What I was eluding to is if I could force the bsp to think I am in the hallway when I am actually around the corner, I might not have the problem. Yes it might be ineffient because more is being draw, but the FPS are ok in that part of the map so it's ok.

neillomax wrote:is this druckermern ? and where are you standing.... give big picture.

Map is unreleased and called Mountainbase. The screenshot is taken from a stairwell leaning into a hall. There is a hint brush that I am leaning through as I took the screenshot. <-- Maybe I should try taking the hint brush out.

Funny you should stay leaning through a hint brush.... thought it was an area portal.... the clear blue brush....

Instead of removing it, the hint brush only needs to be one unit thick. try resizing it..... but I truly never found a need for using them. You could also move it a little bit.

An area portal brush will help increase FPS if you put them in the right places. Again, doesn't need to be thick but needs to be put slightly inside ( all 4 sides ) into a doorway or whatnot.

here's a quote from Blair14... don't know if you know him but here's a guru mapper....

"You are not understanding the purpose of hint brushes. They cause extra vis
breaks to occur. In many complex structures, vis may calculate polygons
wrong, resulting in visible rendering errors. You will see things like
openings in objects, streaks of color that appear to be endless, shapes
sticking out where they shouldn't, etc. Hint brushes force extra vis breaks
to occur, to correct rendering errors. You aren't seeing them have any
effect because you haven't got a rending error that needs fixing.


IF I were you I'd actively seek areas to install real VIS brushwork and drop the hint. You may find it works more to your appeal.

I don't think I explained it well. The screenshot is taken from the stairwell leaning through a hint brush and looking down a hall at a door with an areaportal.

If all your brushwork is snapped to grid and the port is encased entirely into the door frame, i don't know. Is the port brush also touching the red trigger brush for the hinge ?... not sure if that would make a difference though. And did you try moving the port brush inside the door and behind the door and did you delete and try another brush ? Did you do a leak test for your map........ and fix them all. I find it hard to believe there won't be at least one. Stuff happens.

The plot thickens !!!

I decided to recreate the hall in a new map, and I did get the same hall of mirrors. My hint brush was 8 units thick. After making them 1 unit like you suggested, presto everything worked fine. When I went to my mountainbase map and changed the hint bush to 1 unit, there was no change. Still broken

pointfile was clean and tris2 showed no leaks from inside the room



I'll keep messin' with it.

For thought....... I think there's a brush error somewhere, but, If you would send me your map I could take a look at it and mess with it for a while... ???? urmap@rcn.com...

Also, for the heck of it...... open your map. Grab the caulk brush and completely encase your map. Hit the hollow button. Deselect and save/save-as. Recompile. Does it still do it ?

Sent

I look at it harder tomorrow as time dictates. It's now near the end of my day. I did load it into radiant though. That big skybox you have encasing everything.... you should look at the released map files so you can better manage the box. You loose performance and run into problems with excessive wasted space. You also have it textured on both sides..... you should be texturing only one side of brushes that will only be seen.... to do this.... cntl/shift/click on wall... after you have your texture highlighted. This will texture only one side of a brush.
You can also hit the "S" key when you texture something. With the texture still highlighted you can resize it and you can rotate it.... rotating would have helped you on the fronts of the wooden stairs. 3rd floor i think it was.

verticle and horizontal shift for movement.... scale to resize. rotation to your set degrees.... 90-180, etc.
Not bad work and don't worry. it's safe.
don't remember what the doors looked like but after texturing.... cntl/F will fit the texture to the door.... and other things.

okay, so i couldn't wait. I'm trying to duplicate your problem but can't do it. Wish you would have left the brushwork the way it was instead of deleting them. I'll fiddle with it a little next day and maybe trim the skybox a little and send it back. getting a minimum of 262 FPS and I think if you add VIS leaf groups you could pick up more.

Okay, so I got it to happen but not from your point of view. I had the brush inside the door and into the door jams about 8 units and made the brush itself 2 units thicK. Had no problems that way. I made the brush 16 units thick and when i opened the door i got the effect. my assumption has to be the placement of the brush and how thick you made it. Work with it a little and see.

So your telling me that the BSP that I sent you was not acting funny when leaning right from the stairs and looking down the hall at the door? Thats strange because I just tried it and it's still happening.

The only difference with the areaportal removed is instead of the hall of mirrors effect, the door just looks invisible.

This is a known bug in moh. It's not an engine bug but an error in the game's use of the engine, probably the game is using the wrong eye coordinates for leaning players as you suggested earlier.

Hint brushes should not normally be 1 unit thick, at least not if all sides of the brush are textured with the 'hint' texture. It's much better to align the remaining faces to an existing wall, or give them the 'nodraw' texture.

The bug you are experiencing can be fixed by either removing the hint brush (at the cost of some fps), or move it to a less optimal location (move it 'into the wall' a little bit).

Not but

j.v., I replaced the hint brush he removed. I also replaced the area portal which he had in the door. The area portal was the problem from my aspect. It only happened for me ( glitch ) when the port was too thick and the door was opened. Right now the portal is 2units thick and extends 8units into surrounding walls/floor and there is no problem. Placement of the hint brush had no effect that I could make the glitch appear. Hint brush was a minimum of 8units thick at all times.
The area portal is also not needed there because the door open into a small room ... no other door or any windows.
And no, I packed up the bsp, messed around and the glitch did not appear for me.

neilomax, could you send the map and bsp back to me so I can take a peek. I had the areaportal 2 units thick but onlt 2 units into the frame. Lets just see if it still happens to me with your version. Maybe its my vid card?

Just because it's not needed there doesn't mean it shouldn't work. As I said in my email, I removed the hint and the portal and was still having an issue with the door.

Thanks for taking the time to help me with this