How to solve this problem if you ever come accross it

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Bot_40

Go in drains
Nov 3, 2001
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York, UK
There seems to be a glitch with ued where it duplicates actors in a map. This is the first time I've had it in a year of mapping so it must be quite rare. You can tell if it's made a duplicate actor by selecting it, normally. Right click on it and it will say '2 selected' even though you only selected 1. If you try to delete it, then it will appear not to go away but if you right click on it again it will only say '1 selected'. So you think fine, I'll save now I've got rid of that, but when you next load the map, the actor will be gone completely and you'll have lost your work. VERY annoying if it was something like a mover or a large terrain brush that took you a long wime to do.
It isn't normally a problem with regular brushes, you can just ignore them. The problems start when it occours with triggers, pathnodes, lights, coronas etc. You will get weird effects, in the case of triggers or dispatchers, you may find events are occouring twice, or out of time with the event times in the dispatcher(s).
Duplicate pathnodes cause the editor to lock up completly when it gets to the 'cleaning up' stage of a path rebuild.
Duplicate lights will just mean that the light gives off twice the normal light, or in the case of a corona, the corona will be twice as bright as normal.

This problem seems to strike 1 single map. All the other maps I've worked on recently and in the past have never had this error before. Only this one of two maps I'm working on at the moment.

Here's how to fix it:

DO NOT try to delete the actor, this will result in it dissapearing next time you load. Firstly, try to locate all the actors that have become 'corupt'. They tend to occour in clusters. eg. a torch flame, it's light, and it's corona and maybe the brush that it's placed on may all become corupt. This make the problem actors easier to find.
Do not do anything to these actors, just go on file->export and save the t3d file. Now start a new map and import the t3d file.
It may take a long time depending on the size of the map.
Now look for one of the actors that was corupt and select it. It sould say 1 selected.
But it's not fixed yet. Move this actor a few units, and you'll see that it's duplicate is still there, only now it appears as a seperate actor instead of just showing up as there being 2 selected. Now you can delete the duplicate actor and move the origional back into place. You then have to repeat this with all the other corrupt actors. This is why you must remember where all the corrupt actors were.

Save (as a new version in case something goes wrong) and do a rebuild. The map should function properly now. If you close the editor and reload it again, then load the (new) map all the actors should still be there and there should not be any corupt ones.

I'm not sure that this stops your map being the target of more corupt actors, but I know it fixes the ones that are currently there. I only discovered this technique this morning so I'll let you know if this gets rid of the problem for good :)
 

Akuma

Deacon Massif
Mar 4, 2000
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quite why unrealed archives things I dont know

I think it's related to a 'freeze' command in an ancient pre-release version of the ed where you could lock your selections into place
 

Bot_40

Go in drains
Nov 3, 2001
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York, UK
I've had to abandon it, every 5 mins a new duplicate would show up, then another. There is almost twice as many brushes as there wer before and I'm not spending all day searching and deleting them when they are just going to be duplicated again :hmm:
 

Varpu

Novice Nali City Reviewer
May 21, 2001
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One thing is sure: If You use copy->paste to duplicate actors, You will eventually have a problem just like this in Your hands.
This is because the pasteboard system in UED is not completely guarded against false pastes. You could, for example paste ascii text onto Your map. Try it, but be warned, the results are inpredictable and they often spoil the map completely, not just a few actors.
Another anomaly is to copy several pathnodes with copy-paste . The resulting actors have very often duplicate names especially if You had gaps in the numbering.
ALWAYS use the right-klick->Duplicate instead of copy-paste. That thing seems to be flawless which the copy-paste functionality is NOT.

I was forced to redo CTF-Aurinko from scratch because I pasted one zone name on the map (was copying zone location names) instead of the text field in the zone properties dialog ..... Didn't notice the thing until it mystically appeared - after inspecting the damaged map, I found out that the zone name had spread itself all over the map =O) ....
 

Call me Erdrik

Arch Mage
Nov 24, 1999
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Originally posted by Bot_40

....

Here's how to fix it:
....DO NOT try to delete the actor....
....Do not do anything to these actors, just go on file->export and save the t3d file. ....

....


I had this problem on my lame noob-ish map DM-StarShiped]V :p

Tho I just used the search actor command and looked for an actor with a duplicate name and immidiatly deleted the duplicate.... seemed to work....
 

Bot_40

Go in drains
Nov 3, 2001
2,914
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York, UK
Yeah, I always use Duplicate to copy everything. The only exception is when I'm doing ctf, I use copy-paste to copy the bases, otherwise if there are any tight areas, the pathnodes are not copied.
Anyways, back on topic :) The only time I've used Copy-Paste in this map is becuase I had to copy a large area from one of my previous maps, maybe this was the cause...
 

Vendetta

bNasal Implant=True
Dec 6, 1999
224
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the real world.
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i had that happen to one of my maps. i cant even remember how i noticed it, but by the time i went thru and got rid of everything duplicated i lost a third of my map. even some brushes were duplicated. very weird.
 

Doc_EDo

LEFT
Jan 10, 2002
755
0
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Been there, done that.
Errors appeared without any reason, while I duplicated few actors. I never copy 'n' paste only duplicate.
So NEVER ever duplicate brushes, actors, weapons or what ever.

Ued is like a girl's private part: really stinks sometimes, but I'm still addicted to it.
Feel free to quote me. :cool:
 

Bot_40

Go in drains
Nov 3, 2001
2,914
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York, UK
Like I said, I HAD to use copy past, I was taking a large part of another map. (It was going to be a flyby map for Darkmagic). I guess that's what must've started the problem.
I could have used export/import to copy the bits I wanted now I think about it lol
 
Duplication problems are weird, and luckily (at least for me) not that common. One thing I have noticed very frequently is that you know that camera icon in ued that represents you as you build your level? Ive found that theres very often two of them in the level, and although I havent noticed any problems related to it, its strange because they behave differently from eachother.

The strangest thing I ever had happen in a map was when all the movers in the level dissapeared out of ued. They were still there in the game, but not in ued. I tried everything I could think of, made sure they were unhidden, etc, but I never could get them back. I even tried making a new mover (which was visible) and clicking on it then selecting 'select all movers', but still couldnt access them. Very strange.
 

Doc_EDo

LEFT
Jan 10, 2002
755
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LOL! I once duplicated 3-4 brushes and didn't notice that I selected the build brush also. When I deleted the original brushes and wanted to keep the copies, I found that I managed to delete the build brush too...Hahah.
No need to say that the map was ruined.
Luckily I had a backup...;)...and a coply of the build brush. It was grey. :D
 

Zarkazm

<img src="http://forums.beyondunreal.com/images/sm
Jan 29, 2002
4,683
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Agony
Originally posted by Bot_40
Like I said, I HAD to use copy past, I was taking a large part of another map. (It was going to be a flyby map for Darkmagic). I guess that's what must've started the problem.
I could have used export/import to copy the bits I wanted now I think about it lol

not too late to try again... surely you got an old stage saved...
 

Bot_40

Go in drains
Nov 3, 2001
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York, UK
I don't have a version saved before I copied Cryptic][ into it so I'm gonna have to start from scratch it seems.
I've gone off the idea of having just a map flyby of different maps now anyways. I'm thinking more like the ut flyby, just one map. Maybe a journey through a realm or something. Not sure yet.
 

Zarkazm

<img src="http://forums.beyondunreal.com/images/sm
Jan 29, 2002
4,683
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Agony
Originally posted by Bot_40
I don't have a version saved before I copied Cryptic][ into it so I'm gonna have to start from scratch it seems.
I've gone off the idea of having just a map flyby of different maps now anyways. I'm thinking more like the ut flyby, just one map. Maybe a journey through a realm or something. Not sure yet.

Maybe you can export the rest to a new map tho...

or maybe the bug goes away after deleting the cause.
 

Bot_40

Go in drains
Nov 3, 2001
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York, UK
OK, I really did solve the problem this time :)
Select any parts of the map that you have copied & pasted and delete them. Then save. Then select all actors and delete them.
Go on view -> Actor properties, if it says 'Brush 1 selected' then you are in the clear (tha's the builder brush that's selected).
If however, it says that there are more than 1 actors selected, go on display and set drawscale to 20 so that you can find where they are. Any that you find are corrupt, take note of as many as you can.
Now press undo untill all your actors are back again. Select the corrupt ones (now that you know which ones are) and delete them. They won't appear to go away, just save, close ued, then load the map up again and they should be gone.
To check that you've got them all, select all, delete everything and see if anything wasn't deleted by going on actor properties again. If any haven't been deleted, locate them by setting the drawscale and take note of them again. Then press undo till all the actors are back, delete them, save and load the map again. Check for more corrupt actors as above. Repeat untill when you try deleting everything, no actors remain (apart from the builder brush).
If the builder brush is corrupt and it says '2 selected' when you select it, make sure you've got rid of all other corrupt actors first, then export the map. Re-import into a new map and save. Everything should be fine now :)

And NEVER EVER copy paste :p