Wheel of time has great node builder

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

It's a bypass of the serialization crash in unrealed, it doesn't crash just gives an "ok" box. I tried to hex the first 256 box to work, since it was only "missing" 1 byte, but I assume now that WoT uses a different datatype in MyLevel that's purposely 1 byte smaller, so unless I figure out which datatype that's changed it has to be fixed in a crash bypass. It's not implemented in g yet, it's a temp Core.dll.

Is this the approximate settings that you used in WoT?

http://www.klankaos.com/buildsettings.png

I don't know what the Portals slider is default on unrealed 1, but this produces a lower node count than when imported. 4890 built like this, and 5021 directly from WoT.. I would not be surprised if Legend came up with a similar fix that we did for bsp building.

Speaking of that, where were the BSP holes so I can see if they're fixed on g builder as well?

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Yeah except there is no Portal slider in WoT as it uses Unrealed1.

And the bsp holes were many, well at my latest stable build, which is this based on, there was invisible block at the area with the fog and also hom if you looked at certain direction and another hom at one side of rock, not visible unless you have jumpboots or something, I will screenshot these.

I placed a boulder at the place of the invisible block though, so you can see, it is bypassable but only if player will jump or walk around it.

I attached the screenshots so you can see. Btw it might produce less bsp holes if the waterfalls are positioned differently but I found out this way it looks best, because in the original versions the waterfalls either floated in air or were too much stuck in the rock.

 

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

http://www.klankaos.com/E1L1WOTfix.unr

Should load in gold editor, I don't have the levelsummary fix application.

I could get lower node results on 227g editor with those settings, but there were zone leaks. After an hour of poking around, I decided that the second slider must be the problem, but I don't know the hardcoded setting that WoT uses. All I know is moving either slider has huge problems, and they're isolated to the second waterfall and the first waterzone's brushes. I moved the second waterfall and fixed a huge error, but there was one tiny sliver of HOM at the end of the map. The file linked above is the direct import of the WoT map, fixed to work on gold/227.

All in all, a very interesting experience. I didn't realize the sliders were that finicky.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Thanks. Well the best results could be with portals cut all on 100 there perhaps.

 

[GreatEmerald]

Again, no, the results won't be the best on 100, it will be the best on 0, which is probably what it's put on WoT because it's the natural setting - treat zone portals as ordinary brushes. But if that makes zones leak, then you have to set it to something higher - it's a kind of a hack to set their priority higher. 100% means a whole lot of nodes needed to compensate for the paramount zone portal importance, and that is what creates BSP holes.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Again, no, the results won't be the best on 100, it will be the best on 0, which is probably what it's put on WoT because it's the natural setting - treat zone portals as ordinary brushes. But if that makes zones leak, then you have to set it to something higher - it's a kind of a hack to set their priority higher. 100% means a whole lot of nodes needed to compensate for the paramount zone portal importance, and that is what creates BSP holes.

On this one I found the best results with 100, anything else pretty much failed. You can try it yourself, just download the map and try rebuilding.

Also I have problems with other map, with it set to 0 it makes it without homs and bsp holes, but there's a problem, there is a lavazone that doesn't work suddenly, any idea hopw to fix that or make it think it was placed there before?

 

[GreatEmerald]

Well, I'm missing dependencies and such, it seems... But generally what you want to do in order to solve problems like that is put each and every zone portal that you can to last. Just select them and Order -> To Last. But be careful with things like giant water sheets that you need to be clipped, for instance, if you need to go below the sea level in a map. But those are rare, so usually all of zone portals can be sent to last, thus bringing them up in the priority list for the rebuilder naturally. Then set the slider to a lower setting and see if that helps.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Yeah or it can **** up everything more, I wish there were number options for setting the order to a certain number or even setting align number, the pan, instead of moving it manually or by those buttons. Anyway missing depedancies? that map is raw, the only custom thing it uses is Upb-skybox.
Get this map:
UPB-E3L6D.zip
It has the needed packages in it.

EDIT: The lava zone still won't work on that.

EDIT2: Now the lava is in entire room, fantastic.

 

[GreatEmerald]

Yea, indeed, the order is really one of the weakest points of UnrealEd. I wish there was a way to make a keybind that would increase/decrease the order by one or such...

Yeap, UBP-Skybox is what I needed.

I tried rebuilding it, moved all portals to front and replaced the ridiculously complex river brush with a sheet. Optimal Cuts position is 9%. When the portals slider is at 39%, only one air zone leaks. Ratio is 2.13:1 with a single pass, only the cut in the last portion of the cave is seen. Two-pass building brings the ratio down to 2.10:1, the cut is still there, though. Three-pass building brings it down to 2.03:1. Manually fixed the BSP hole by setting the surface to be ForceViewZone. However, multiple passes made zones leak again...

This is interesting: it seems that the cuts slider directly influences the portal slider. The more towards Balance Tree you go, the less Portal you need. So if you have 0% portals, you need 50% cuts to get the map working fine once again. But that makes the ratio 3.24:1. Second pass actually increases the ratio to 3.33:1.

To ensure that nothing leaks anywhere, you need 10% cuts and 100% portals to get the least amount of nodes - 2.53:1. Multiple passes only make it leak more zones, unfortunately.

If searching for an equilibrium from the portals side, it would be 40% - 40%, with a node ratio of 2.94:1, multiple passes harm it. Again I found no leaking zones or BSP holes.

So, here are the two versions, the 10%-100% version and the 40%-40% version. Compare them and see what is different, if anything:
http://www.mediafire.com/?g6kcytd06yeg3bm

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I am not gonna take you seriously again, those builds are terrible, in the first there's one zone leak and there is a HOM covering your entire screen in the fog area and the waterfall is broken downside too. The second build has two zone leaks instead and has broken waterfall midside..

Did you actually run it ingame? How could you not see those holes is beyond me. All I see you spewing numbers like calculator, but the actual builds are full of holes.

 

[GreatEmerald]

No, I didn't have time to test them after rebuilding this thing like 50 times and it being really late, but it seemed fine in the zone/portal view. But I forgot that the waterfalls had zones of their own - that's why the thing's flooded (I assumed that happened because of the water sheets). So that changes things. I transformed the brushes permanently and removed zone portal flags from the waterfalls, but I can't get a decent build on any settings. I have a statistical file with information about different builds and they all boil down to either the air zone leaking or the water zone leaking.

So, this kinda-sorta works (ignore the misaligned textures on the waterfalls):
http://www.mediafire.com/?988wtddc35vt32h

But it actually has two leaking air zones. I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that they are put where two huge brushes connect. If you add a separate zone a little to the side, it works fine, but not just one sheet separating the two brushes for some reason. In fact, you can see the two zones leaking in the WoTFIX version as well.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

The air zones usually leak because there isn't other zoneinfo in other one etc, due to different method of zoning. The water zones not leaking is more important imo, I mean you can't really notice any difference in the air ones. And on 227 I had best results with 0-100, but still it produced the holes I screenshotted earlier.

EDIT: That latest build is better but why are the waterfalls aligned like that? You didn't explain that.

Anyway you should know that I changed some things since the 220 builds (if you have the raw upsx stuff you could try building those and experimenting) those, also my previous build from the last one I have was built under 220 (failed under any later build, always produced more bugs), even with moved waterfalls, but some people complained about the small homs and invisible block so I changed it again, that time to build it with 227 instead, although that wasn't perfect either. I will just use the wotbuild one I think, just copy the full actors in it again and perhaps rebuild lighting and place something to cover the small hom in the end area.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Ok what the hell, when I readded actors to the WOT build map, when rebuild lighting every actor is pitch black and it crashes soon too. wtf Or is that beacsue of zoneinfos? Should I not delete them when readding stuff?

AH it's the lights, they should stay in the level apparently, I shouldnt delete them.

 

[GreatEmerald]

Oh wow, you're right, I never noticed that... No wonder it couldn't build it without leaking air zones - they are supposed to do that! And here I spent hours trying to rebuild something that didn't exist in the first place...

The slider on 0 cuts usually ends pretty badly, since it builds way too many nodes than putting it at ~10, which results in holes. The odd part about 0 cuts is that it takes forever to build compared to everything else.

I have observed that in this scenario, if you have the Cuts slider around 10, the Portals slider, when moved towards 0, will tend to leak the water zone. When it leaks it, the node ratio drops sharply. Going to the left from that point, the ratio decreases up to a point, then increases again, forming a sort of a valley with a low ratio. Fascinating.

Anyway, I can rebuild it fine with all the zones intact, but for some reason there is a BSP hole that just doesn't go away over at the end. That polygon for some really odd reason just doesn't work right - it shows that it's assigned to two zones - first and 63rd. The issue with the first zone is solved by setting it to Force View Zone, but you can't solve the 63rd zone problem for some reason. I'm out of ideas here.
Earlier it worked fine because that part was unzoned, thus in the 63rd zone to begin with...

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

How is it now in two zones? I don't get it. Anyway I managed to build it based on the wot build version, there was small block in the cave when player was facing the wall so I added blockalls there so player can't get stuck while hugging the wall and I added non solid brush to cover the small triangular hom in the end cave. And also nali was blocked sometimes when facing wrong direction, but I fixed that by moving alarmpoint a little.

So here is the latest build. Also it has the temporary boulder at the place where was the bsp block, forgot to remove it.

UPB-E1L1Ax.rar

 

[GreatEmerald]

You can see it in Zone/Portal view when you're in the last part of the cave:

The zone that the polygons are supposed to be in is in blue. However, that surface there belongs to two entirely different zones. The purple zone is the 63rd zone, where all zones without a ZoneInfo are placed. The green zone is another zone in the level. When there is no ZoneInfo there, the whole zone is put into the 63rd zone, so when you enter it, you don't see the hole that's marked with purple since it then belongs to the same zone. The green polygon can be fixed by setting the surface to ForceViewZone - it forces the polygon to appear even if it is from a zone that is supposed to be invisible and thus unrendered.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

That reminds me some ****ery one can make in doom engine while asigning a linedef to another sector etc. This seems to be siilar issue, only thee is no way asigning it manually.