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Interior crashes TGEA

by Adam Beer · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 06/02/2007 (1:05 pm) · 16 replies

I'm having problems with one of my interiors. When it is put ingame, it crashes as soon as the player looks at it. This is when I export it using Constructor. When I use map2dif_plus, the program crashes as soon as it is finishing lightmaps. Im not sure exactly why this is happening, but the map file has 7427 brushes. I'm sure size has nothing to do with this. Any ideas?
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Torque Owner Adam Beer
Ignition Games Inc.
#1
06/02/2007 (2:08 pm)
Here is an image:

http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb303/blade1220/city.jpg?t=1180818476

Torque Owner PuG
#2
06/03/2007 (6:34 am)
Try exporting using "Export as Legacy TGEA Dif..." option instead

Normally it would crash on compiling rather than ingame if their was some fault in the geometry - so make sure your using detail brushes.

If it still doesn't work, try deleting areas of the map until it compiles with no errors, then you know which area might be causing the problem.

Good luck!

Torque Owner Adam Beer
Ignition Games Inc.
#3
06/04/2007 (5:47 am)
Ive been doing that. It compiles fine but it will crash ingame.

Torque Owner Bryce "Cogburn" Weiner
#4
06/04/2007 (8:37 am)
I've had this happen where brush coordinates become "inverted" and render inside out. While it passes the mathematical checks during compilation, the engine vomits when it attempts to render it.

Even if that isn't the specific problem, I'm still pretty convinced that there's a bad brush causing the issue. Split your DIF into smaller sections and test each section for failure. This will at least identify an area or structure that is giving you fits.

Torque 3D Owner Mark Dynna
#5
06/04/2007 (2:20 pm)
That's all one DIF? Yikes. Splitting each of those buildings into its own DIF sounds like a good idea to me.

Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
#6
06/04/2007 (2:49 pm)
Wouldn't that break all the portalling and thus remove one of the main points to fight against the DIF at all?

Torque Owner PuG
#7
06/04/2007 (11:57 pm)
Theirs no problem in having such a large interior, and no, you can portal each individual building (which I assume you've done) - I suspect the reason its not working is down to Constructor and the poor compiling tools that come with it (which version are you using?).

Torque Owner Adam Beer
Ignition Games Inc.
#8
06/05/2007 (10:20 am)
1.02 of constructor

Torque Owner Jesse McKinney
#9
06/05/2007 (5:36 pm)
Hmm that city scape is reminiscent of St. Lo, Normandy.

You will want to compile each building as its own dif. Yes TGEA can handle large interiors but its much happier with smaller ones. Besides, you cant LOD something that large if you wanted to (You can but it would be pointless as that's an entire city block being rendered as a single dif) Also compiling each building separate will help you track down the bad brush problem you are having.

Torque Owner Adam Beer
Ignition Games Inc.
#10
06/06/2007 (5:41 am)
Thats actually what the city it is, St. Lo. We found keeping it in 1 piece make the engine perform better because its all rendered and when the player looks in a different direction, it wont lag. I will try making everything into separate buildings. Thanks everyone.

Torque Owner ChenJian
#11
06/19/2007 (6:37 pm)
Hi Adam, I would be very glad to get some details from your statements "We found keeping it in 1 piece make the engine perform better because its all rendered and when the player looks in a different direction, it wont lag". Because I recently get a big problem that I have put many difs together, and when the player looks into the area where overlay more than four buildings, the TGEA goes very lag. So you mean that when put all buildings together and make a huge dif will fix this problem? I would appreciate sincerely if you can give me some advice.

Torque Owner Adam Beer
Ignition Games Inc.
#12
06/20/2007 (4:07 am)
It does fix the problem, because it is all the same dif so you don't have to render a new one. It works very effectively. Another one of my cites Caen, is in 1 piece and it exports fine. St Lo(the above map) is very complex and has around 63000 surfaces, so thats probably why it isn't working right.

Torque 3D Owner Danni
#13
06/20/2007 (5:44 pm)
If anyone has trouble replicating this, I took the Cathedral demo project from Constructor and compiled for TGEA Legacy, the resulting DIF crashes TGEA 1.01.

Torque Owner ChenJian
#14
06/20/2007 (6:00 pm)
To Adam: Thanks Adam, I have tried your idea, however it seems I have no luck. When I tried add more models in Constructor and made my dif, the dif file would crash my TGEA. I have reduced the model count one by one, and finally I can load the dif into TGEA, but it still stutters, and it brings another question: When the Orc walk into a specific area, the TGEA crashes, which also crashes me :(.
I would be grateful if you can help me check this thread at your convenience :
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=63645
To Danni: I consider if you have met the same situation with me, if someday you have solved this issue, could you please give me some hints, and I would be very glad to share my findings:)

Torque 3D Owner Danni
#15
06/23/2007 (9:30 am)
I have the same issue, i have a few large HalfLife maps i am trying to convert over. They work fine in Constructor as soon as i import to TGEA it crashes.

I am hoping TGEA 1.02 will fix this.

Associate Matt Fairfax
PopCap
#16
06/27/2007 (11:41 am)
The Cathedral has too many brushes/surfaces to work with a Legacy export. It was provided as a sample of some of the extremes you can go to with the newer DIF formats.

Hopefully TGEA 1.0.2 will be able to load the Cathedral without crashing but it may have some rendering issues related to the 16 bit vertex indices that TGEA's Interior rendering uses.