Constructor Exporting Bugfix Test

#21 Andrew,

I found the "bug" that I believe was causing your problems (partially something Constructor was doing and partially bad assumptions on TGEA's part).

You can grab a new test executable from here:

www.rustycode.com/matt/Constructor.exe (yeah...I just replaced the old one)

Let me know how that works for you =)

Btw, you have a pair of portals back-to-back in the scene you sent me...that could potentially cause a lot of problems (like weird glitches when you walk through them).

#22 @ Matt -

Yea, I realized the double portal after I had sent it to you; sorry about that.


OK, I just replaced the other exe with this new one, opened a .map and exported it using the legacy TGEA version. Loaded it up and it was error free. I am to tired tonight to test it further, but I will tommorrow. So far, seams to be doing great! I'll post tommorrow with further results. Thanks again Matt.


LK

#23 @ Matt -

I tested further today some, I exported a very large interior (with lighting done in contructor) and all portaled areas worked great. The 2 or 3 instances of missing/flipped sections of brush faces still remain's (I know that wasnt your focus here). So far it seams, whatever you found out Matt, fixed the issue.

In reference to light leaks/missing faces.. I have been using exterior walls built one unit thick on a 8 grid system (thus they are 8 units thick). This seams to be possibily a cause? I am now making each exterior wall 16 units thick to see if this helps with the situation. If my thinking is off, please correct me. Either way, I will post back with what I find.

Thanks again Matt!


LK

#24 I'm still having some problems with some faces not showing up using the TGEA legacy export. It's improved a lot, though.

EDIT: Will post my file soon, just wanna make 100% sure it's not an user error.

#25 Are entire faces missing, or pieces of faces (when the faces are split, some faces show while others do not)?

#26 Entire faces (if I understand you correctly).

See my scene file here.

#27 You have entire faces as well as sections after they have been split missing, though yours aren't missing, but flipped. (at least the ones I checked). I have the same problem, and still looking for the answer.

#28 I replaced my Constructor EXE with yours, and my Legacy Export is bugless. Collisions work, all faces show up, lighting looks beautiful.

I'll let you know when it stops making my day.

#29 I finally got a chance to play with the export and I have to say quit a bit of the bug have been fixed.. I was just wondering if any one has come across the portals rendering purple like the NULL texture in TGEA and I still get that ghosting in TGE on the portals..

Thanks. for the major bug fixs..

#32 I agree with Temask on that last post. ^^

#33 Matt,

It seems that the use of detail brushes is no longer possible with the last build of the exe. This doesn't hinder things to much, but I wanted you to be aware.

Upon attempting an export using the legacy TGEA when detail brushes are used.. constructor crashes.

Thanks again,

LK


edited: Added when detail brushes are used

#34 So I guess I'm not insane and the missing faces deal is still existent. Light still passes through them, but at least there's some sort of collision going on.

Lot's of great effort going into this. Constructor is definitely the best BSP editor available, regardless of price.

I hope you get the kinks worked out soon.

#35 Matt,

Thanks again for all of your hard work. This new build is going to be great for our production pipeline. We really do appreciate your efforts here. I agree with Bryce... Constructor IS the best program out there that I've tried... and if I didn't believe in it so much, I would have given up a long time ago. I'm glad to have stuck it out, because it makes editing very nice and very easy. I know this isn't what was being addressed, but a couple of comments that I've seen.

"Export to DIF" and "Export to Legacy DIF" still have the portal issues with the X axis from Constructor. I originally built a straight tunnel with portals on each end, and when you stand in front of it and move the mouse around, the inside of the portaled off zone disappear and you can see through the walls. From inside, you get the 'ghosting' / 'hall of mirrors' effect. Because of other posts saying that the portals can't lie on each other in any orthographic view, I grabbed all of the verts and moved them up (making a large slope in my tunnel) and it still had the problem. Incidently, the problem ONLY occurs in the X axis, as I have the same tunnel in the Y axis and it is fine.

Also, note that when I export using the "Export > TGE (maptodif plus)" exporter, the portals are all fine. The difference there is that the 'rounded' corners that I've made do not smooth and quite noticable, unless our light is directly on the wall's rounded corner.

Like I said, I know that wasn't something you were addressing yet, but just wanted to let you know what I've seen thus far.

Keep up the great work!!! We truly do appreciate it!!!

#36 Matt, if you're there ....

I have had major exporting problems and have narrowed it down to the following. Somehow when saving the .csx/.map file, at some point I had 3 portal sections (as seen in the .MAP file), but only 2 actual portal brushes. Those two look fine, and have the brush information within the 'portal' section/function of the .MAP text file. However, this pesky 3rd 'portal' section was causing the exporter (maptodif plus) to crash:

{
   "classname" "portal"
   "ambient_light" "0"
}

I'm not sure at what point that was being introduced, but it's in multiple files that I've created. My best guess is it happened when I was pulling verts on some wedges that overlapped the portal brush.

Anyway, I'm not sure what's wrong but thought you may want to know that when I delete it, the exporter doesn't crash anymore.

Also, and maybe related, is that I used to be able to rotate the portal brush to fix the following problem, but that no longer works. It seems that portals use 1 side of the portal brush to determine where the portal starts from. I have a tunnel with 2 portal brushes, one on each side. However, on one side (always the positive X or Y side), it leaves the section where my portal brush is un-portaled, leaving my 1-piece tunnel with 2 zones instead of one. You can see from the screenshot below that the part where the portal brush is has ambient lighting from the sun and the other zone (between the 2 portals) works perfectly.


I would greatly appreciate any help on this from anyone. Again, I'm using the export with maptodif plus because the normal 'export to dif' doesn't work and doesn't respect my portals at all for some reason.

Thanks all/Matt

[edit: added part about deleting that code]

#37 Bump for easy finding.

#38 So the moral of the story is: If at first you don't succeed, try and try again.

We're having some issues with missing faces as well as missing collision on our larger models. We've noticed it's much less likely to have a problem with smaller models, so our solution thus far has been to create modules and piece the larger objects together with smaller parts. However we have a Labyrinth that doesn't really lend itself well to modularization, and it renders the faces well, but with missing collision. Then we have a giant hippodrome that renders with missing faces. We're addressing the hippodrome issue by creating smaller modules. But it's an arduous process for my artists.

My question is, have these .EXE fixes been integrated into any current updates of Constructor? I notice these posts date back several months, so I'm wondering if this is integrated already and we're still having the problem anyway, or if it is neccessary for us to integrate this patch into our installations of Constructor?

My other question would be, do you still need models to test? We're happy to help advance the improvement of Constructor by profiding .CSX files to experiment with.

Thanks for all that you do for all of us.
God bless you,
-Sparkling

#39 Are you using 1.0.4? Jaimi has done a number of fixes.

#40 Hi,
I ran the patch to update 1.0.3 and I am still having missing faces and collisions.
My question: Is there a 1.0.4 around that I can download?
Thank you