Forest Editor in T3D (MIT) 3.0
by Dan Webb · in Technical Issues · 08/26/2013 (1:14 am) · 5 replies
I'm starting this thread in the hopes it can become a one-stop-shop for dealing with the evil forest editor. I should start by saying that I have never, in any version of Torque 3D, been able to implement a forest properly, and the reasons seem so varied that I don't even know how to begin to address it. It's my number one source of frustration, hands down. Honestly, I can hardly believe anyone ever manages to get this system working. I can't post my console log, because it didn't write anything due to a forced close after freezing.
Is there, anywhere, a working pipeline for getting this bloody thing to work consistently?
Is there, anywhere, a working pipeline for getting this bloody thing to work consistently?
About the author
I do terrains. Lots of other stuff too, but mostly terrains. I die in games more often than not because I'm admiring the view.
#2
I think the problem lies in the unreadable .forest format, the other forest item data seem like normal Torque-Datablocks that can be edited and fixed by hand.
I wonder if we can find someone who can explain what is going on in there.
My suggestion for a half-way-solution already was to bind each forest to each mission, meaning copying the forest item data into the .forest file, so your levels forest is a closed system, so once you got your levels forest done it cannot break all the other levels forest or your whole game anymore if some bug happens with it.
At least I hope so, since I experienced in the start the forest works well, you add some forest items, paint them into your level and it works, but when you add more items and make more levels and remove and add items from time to time, on some point you will have corrupted data and Torque will delete your brushes.cs each time and will crash very often.
08/26/2013 (5:39 am)
The forest is known of causing problems, for me it works, but only for some time, then various file corruptions and bugs occur, making it hard to impossible keep on.I think the problem lies in the unreadable .forest format, the other forest item data seem like normal Torque-Datablocks that can be edited and fixed by hand.
I wonder if we can find someone who can explain what is going on in there.
My suggestion for a half-way-solution already was to bind each forest to each mission, meaning copying the forest item data into the .forest file, so your levels forest is a closed system, so once you got your levels forest done it cannot break all the other levels forest or your whole game anymore if some bug happens with it.
At least I hope so, since I experienced in the start the forest works well, you add some forest items, paint them into your level and it works, but when you add more items and make more levels and remove and add items from time to time, on some point you will have corrupted data and Torque will delete your brushes.cs each time and will crash very often.
#3
08/26/2013 (6:04 pm)
Oh, I forgot about that thread Duion. Sorry mate. Still, after my apparent success last night I loaded up my level, and guess what? NO BLOODY FOREST! Gah! 
#4
Alas, just guessing but, you guys are right, perhaps we need a 'standards' document to help with this issue.
Ron
08/26/2013 (7:27 pm)
Ya know.... I use forest ALL the time (obviously) and I have NEVER had an issue with using it. Then again, I might be the 'lucky one'. Come to think of it, I have never 'mixed' forest assets, I have always used just my stuff to make my forests and such, so maybe that is an issue? I am thinking maybe things like non-unique texture names or non-unique object names will break it? I am guessing of course but, I know I have seen more than one pack or asset that uses 'default' texture name and object names. Another issue I can think of would be LOD. For example. If you name a series of models.... LOD00/LOD01/LOD02.... your objects are NOT allowed to have spaces or special characters within the name convention. So.... TreeOne300 works but, TreeOne_300 does not. Might be a combo of things that breaks the forest tool. Another MAJOR issue would be file structure, 90% of the 'bug' emails I get are because the texture and material files all read to a set file location. Change that and BAM.... errors. Oh yeah, and one more thing... Forum post VANISH so fast. Perhaps this would be better served as a blog topic? Just saying it's a good topic and I would hate for any solutions to vanish in the ether.Alas, just guessing but, you guys are right, perhaps we need a 'standards' document to help with this issue.
Ron
#5
-forest makes Torque crash completely, so you have to restart, when it crashes, someimtes the brushes.cs gets deleted, even sometimes console.log is empty, so you need to keep backups all the time, annoying
-some even reported that it deletes the whole forest, but I did not have this so far
-I had the issue, that I was no longer able to select single entries in the forest editor, every time I selected one item in the list, the item 10 entries down got selected also and when I pressed "delete" for example these two itemdata got deleted, so I was no longer able to edit item data in the editor correctly
-another Issue I had was when I painted some rocks that they would disappear when I zoom out, much more early then the original nulldetail, found no way to fix this, you can find this in my latest pack in the last level, the previous issue is also there
So for me the workflow in Torque with the forest issue results in needing me to have backups of the forest files all the time, save more in Torque editor, since forest will crash it completely pretty much, having to use source code editor on the forest itemdata instead of the ingame editor and leaving me with issues I can never fix, because once the issue occurs it stays in the forest, it only goes away if you delete everything and start new.
@Ron
Yes, if you just load your itemdatas in into the editor, paint the forest and then leave it that way everything works fine, but when you start to delete/add things again and make more and more, sometimes issues tend to occur, with just one job for me almost never an issue occurred, but if you keep the same setup all the time in your project and work on that for month using always the same forest setup, then you likely will have crashes and so on.
08/27/2013 (1:00 am)
Issues I had so far are-forest makes Torque crash completely, so you have to restart, when it crashes, someimtes the brushes.cs gets deleted, even sometimes console.log is empty, so you need to keep backups all the time, annoying
-some even reported that it deletes the whole forest, but I did not have this so far
-I had the issue, that I was no longer able to select single entries in the forest editor, every time I selected one item in the list, the item 10 entries down got selected also and when I pressed "delete" for example these two itemdata got deleted, so I was no longer able to edit item data in the editor correctly
-another Issue I had was when I painted some rocks that they would disappear when I zoom out, much more early then the original nulldetail, found no way to fix this, you can find this in my latest pack in the last level, the previous issue is also there
So for me the workflow in Torque with the forest issue results in needing me to have backups of the forest files all the time, save more in Torque editor, since forest will crash it completely pretty much, having to use source code editor on the forest itemdata instead of the ingame editor and leaving me with issues I can never fix, because once the issue occurs it stays in the forest, it only goes away if you delete everything and start new.
@Ron
Yes, if you just load your itemdatas in into the editor, paint the forest and then leave it that way everything works fine, but when you start to delete/add things again and make more and more, sometimes issues tend to occur, with just one job for me almost never an issue occurred, but if you keep the same setup all the time in your project and work on that for month using always the same forest setup, then you likely will have crashes and so on.
Torque Owner Dan Webb
PsyCandy Games