Black holes? WTF??

Ok..I'm making this map for a project. Now, I created a room(subtract), put a bunch of walls in it(add), and then realized that I needed to make the walls not actually touch anything. So I erased the room, created a bigger brush and re-subtracted the room.

Now this didn't work, as the subtract was after the adds for the walls, so I reordered the subtract for the room to be first. Everything seemed to be fine, until I re-built the level. There were two areas in the room that where pitch black. When I did a test run through it, and I walked over those areas, it immediatly said I "fell a long way", and I died. So there were these black holes in my level.

I tried rebuilding again, and they stayed there. So I figured it had to do with me doing wierd stuff with my brush order and whatnot, so I erased the entire room and started over. Did everything in the correct order, rebuilt, everything looked fine. Played the level, and again I saw a large unlit area. When I walked into it, poof, "you fell a long way", splat. WTF??

So I go back into the editor, re-build geom, and bsp, no light. Everything looks fine. Rebuild all, black holes again!! WTF??

Has anyone else experienced this or a similar problem? I'm going to try to move the room to another location in the editor, maybe there's something wierd with that part of the "world block". I don't see how, but I'm at a total loss here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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-[CMi]Soul-Crusher
www.cosmicmonstersinc.com

Sounds strange /~unreal/ubb/html/frown.gif These things usually disappear when you rebuild all again.
You could try moving the slider on the BSP build tab to the right some (towards 'balance tree'), but this is generally only needed for very complex/detailed maps, which yours doesn't sound like.
Also, I've heard of strange world bits where this happens and the only way to get round them is to move your whole map, as you suggested.

Thanks guys. I'll give it a shot.

As for it not being "complex", the room is a 1024x1024 room divided up into a maze consisting of many 256x8x112 brushes that are all invisible. Hows that for complex /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif

I'll give the BSP slider a wack, and if that doesn't fix it, I'll move the whole map.


-[CMi]Soul-Crusher
www.cosmicmonstersinc.com

If I've got you right, you're saying you created a larger brush that encompassed the whole room you wanted to get rid of, and subtracted it to make it go away?

If that's what you did, you're pretty much screwed. I did that with my map, and ended up having to build around that area for the rest of the process. basically what you've done is removed some, but not all of the room... unfortunately it's all gone from your 2-d views, so the sections that are still there are not going to show up until you do a rebuild. You're never ever going to get rid of those holes. You can only patch over them.

My advice is to start with a fresh map.

Cap'n

Specifically, here's what I did, step by step.

I built a large room attached to the rest of my level, 1024x1024x256 in size(256 height). This was a subtraction operation from the rest of the world.

I then built a brush that was 128 long, 8 wide and 256 in height. I did a series of continuous adds to the room in order to create a maze(doing occasional intersects so that the brushes wouldn't overlap.)

The wall brush had an odd texture, so I could select all w/that texture and set the attribute to invisible.

Now, at this point, you're probably saying I'm a freak, and why the hell am I doing this, and I'm going to get BSP errors up the wazoo, and my framerate's going to suck. Your right...but this is intentional...don't ask /~unreal/ubb/html/wink.gif

So I went and did a walk through and noticed that wherever the internal walls came in contact with the large room, you could see through them(ie. infinite mirror effect a la doom.) Sh*t. I needed to make the internal walls not touch the floor.

So I go back into UEd, and delete the large room, leaving the internall "adds" in place.
I construct a brush that is 1024x1024x256+8, thereby making is slightly taller than the internal walls, and do a subtract. Rebuild and, damn, it takes precedence over the "adds" of the wall. DOH! Ok...fine...select the new Subtract, and order it to front. Rebuild...voila...it gets processed first.

Now do another walkthrough...get to the room...crap..forgot to make it slightly wider too, still seeing "mirrors" on the walls of the large room where the small invisible walls touch it. Wander around anyway...why is this area dark? Poof! black hole.

Spend some time rebuilding...nothing works...figure I screwed it up by kluging the whole thing. Fine...erase the subtract and all the little adds. Now there's nothing where the room was.

Start all over doing it right this time. One big subtract, internal walls slightly smaller this time so they never touch. Get all done, rebuild, play...AAARGH!!! Black holes in the same spot.

Fooey...haven't opened up UEd to take the suggestions offered yet. I will do so this weekend and let ya know what I find out.


-[CMi]Soul-Crusher
www.cosmicmonstersinc.com

Woo hoo! Cranking up the optimize setting and the slider value underneath it solved the problem! Thanks for the help guys!



-[CMi]Soul-Crusher
www.cosmicmonstersinc.com