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Portal Problems with Constructor 1.0.3?

by Woody · in Constructor · 08/05/2007 (6:26 pm) · 13 replies

Please help. I've created a very simple shape (the inside of a box truck) and put a portal over the openning. No problem, right? Wrong. In the Constructor editor, the portal looks magenta. But if you go over to the texturing and look under the "Lift" pulldown, I see there is no magenta, only the NULL object (which is correct) that was automatically applied, but with the 4-checkered yellow/blue Error texture instead.

In the engine TGE 1.5.2, the sunlight is not being blocked then.

Are portals broken again? I tried to manually apply the NULL texture to the portal cube and that didn't seem to help either.

Thanks in advance.
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Torque Owner Woody
#1
08/05/2007 (6:56 pm)
Okay, so I created a even more simple box shape, with one open end. I thru in a portal ... WOW, it works! So maybe I have some leaking going on... I will check on that. However, construct doesn't disappoint ... I realize that you can walk right through all of the walls, floor, and ceiling. What's up?

Torque Owner Woody
#2
08/05/2007 (8:55 pm)
MORE PORTAL PROBLEMS

Okay ... so I completely recreated the back of my truck (box truck) in Constructor (before I had imported a MAP file from another program). The second I create a Portal, it crashes upon export. It goes so quickly that I'm not sure, but it seems to crash while saying "Exporting DIF" on the popup.

Things I've tried:
* delete portal, keep truck/chassis: exports fine, but in the engine the sunlight still seeps through
* with portal: crash
* sized portal exact size of opening: crash
* sized portal slightly skinnier than openning in thickness, but slightly bigger in other 4 directions: crash
* keep portal, but delete truck cab/chassis: exports okay, AND portal works!

So can I not have DTS shapes and portals both in the scene???????

Torque Owner Woody
#3
08/05/2007 (9:16 pm)
I should note that my DTS (truck) object was OUTSIDE of the DIF object. It exported fine without portals in place, but crashes constructor when the DTS is NOT INSIDE of the DIF (with portal).

If I take the "testcube.dte" that came with constructor, and put that outside of the DIF w/ portal, it exports fine. It also exported fine when intersecting with the DIF... thinking that it may have been the truck's bounding box causing a problem.

Going with that, I've found that other objects that have a larger-than-the-geometry bounding box (another vehicle, an animated chain), when intersected with the DIF box, also cause it to crash.

Hope someone from GG has been reading. Here's another bug that slipped by QA that I've wasted my time trying to track down.

Torque Owner Woody
#4
08/08/2007 (9:54 am)
Anyone out there????

Torque Owner Woody
#5
08/17/2007 (8:45 am)
Hello? GG? Anyone still working there? As much as I enjoy talking with myself, I don't have the answers, or I wouldn't be here.

Adam Wilson
#6
08/17/2007 (9:13 am)
I am out here but don't have any answerers for you as I wait for help from GG as well.. Just don't want you to fill alone.

Associate Matt Fairfax
PopCap
#7
08/17/2007 (2:31 pm)
I am looking into it but I have a lot on my plate right now so I can't give any realistic timeline.

Torque Owner Jeff Gran
#8
10/01/2007 (9:40 pm)
I have also had a portal cause constructor to crash on export. There were no DTSs involved though. I think you may be right about intersecting things causing problems. I think my problem was a badly modeled building with lots of overlapping brushes.

Torque 3D Owner Andrew Brady
#9
10/01/2007 (10:28 pm)
Only time I have portals cause a crash is when I create portals that share the same plane (line up perfectly in one of the fields of view in constructor). In anycase, portals are being looked at.

Associate Matt Fairfax
PopCap
#10
10/04/2007 (4:31 pm)
I have also had reports of the occaissional crash when you have a portal embedded into a detail brush rather than a structural brush (which is a no-no).

Torque 3D Owner J.C. Smith
#11
10/08/2007 (11:52 am)
I've seen this happen from time to time, and it happens in certain areas. Maybe if a leak or something in that interior, I never figured it out. I have a city map here with quite a few open bars, shops, hotel entrances etc. I can place portals on 90% of those and they will work fine. The other 10% if I add a portal will crash on export. It's always at the same places.

Torque Owner Woody
#12
10/18/2007 (6:27 am)
I have an extremely simple tunnel, which crashes whenever I have 2 portal brushes in (one at each end). This tunnel happens to be constructed with the tunnel running in the X direction (I have a Y-direction tunnel working fine). Of course, the obvious answer is to rotate it in-engine and build in the Y direction... which would probably be fine for this, but I also have an 'intersection' piece with 4 open sides (and 4 portal brushes) that crashes. I will likely try to rotate the model 45 degrees to see if that works, but this is something that definitely needs addressing.

Thanks.

edit: I should add that I can export using the Export > Export TGE (map2dif plus) option, but it doesn't smooth some rounded corners as nicely.

MC Szeto
#13
12/12/2007 (10:36 am)
There seems to be a problem with the grid snapping function in constructor. Vertex inst snapping correctly. No matter what you do, there is a small space between each vertex. That was the problem i came across when i was working on potalization. -frustrated right now...