Errors of invalid proportions

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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 3 minutes later
maybe you could upload the vmf so someone can look at it.
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Fracture
797 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 2 hours later
Have at it ._.

feel free to play, there's no blue dots and plenty of traps. Good luck >:D

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spongylover123
944 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 8 minutes later
I just downloaded your map, and all I can say, is this is one f**ked up map.
The fizzlers are not made correctly,
scaled textures,
I think it's a rollercoaster or a slide, but you cant expect the player to go into the tubes without and pushing or flinging. The map's props are very expensive.
There are too many misaligned textures.
AND YOU CARVED CIRCULAR BRUSHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OF COURSE THIS MAP DOESN"T WORK!!
and like lp, i'll try to update this post as I work.

EDIT: You carved over 3 times, now that's bad mapping, to make it worse they were doors and tractor beams.

EDIT: Irregular brushes. (abnormal size, not x2), stick to 8-64 grid size.

EDIT: I just remembered this isn't a decompiled map, have you heard about instances and prefabs?

EDIT: YOU USED VERTEX TEXTURES!

EDIT: they have frames for them in the instances folder.

EDIT: YOu can get stuck in the map by dissolving cubes.

EDIT: I compiled and loaded the portal file, and silence

EDIT: I gave up :notwant:

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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 4 minutes later
4.2mb vmf that's quite a lot;
looking at your map as we speak; I'll edit my updates.

EDIT 1: The error is not caused by world brushes
EDIT 2: The error is not caused by world details.
EDIT 3: As I hide everything in the map and just make a 32x32x32 block hollow it fails to load the portal file...

EDIT 4: Just re-started again:
Hiding the Tool brushes gives the same problem.
Hiding World details gives the same problem.
Hiding tool brushes AND world details gives the same problem.
Hiding entities skips this error and gets new ones.

EDIT 5: The problem is caused by a brush. Hiding everything but Brush entities gives the problem. Hiding only the brush entities fixes the problem. <--- working on a fix

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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 1 minutes later

spongylover123 wrote:
AND YOU CARVED CIRCULAR BRUSHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OF COURSE THIS MAP DOESN"T WORK!!
I'll try to fix it for you.

I didn't even notice yet but that's not a good idea.
Judging from what I've seen so far I think that the size of this map is just too big. Specially for your first or one of your first levels.

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Fracture
797 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 30 minutes later
:sad:

its.... my first map....ever

And just how do YOU work around the circumfrance of the excursion tunnel?

BTW i managed to get it to compile finally, I kinda already put it on the download page

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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 7 minutes later
I found the problem
there is a brush on -700.41 114.21 2899.54 that is 0,2px thick. that one causes your problem.

how do I work around the frames for the funnel:

Frames prefabs

&

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spongylover123
944 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 2 minutes later
Didn't Valve already make them?
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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Apr 04, 2012
Replied 2 minutes later

spongylover123 wrote:
Didn't Valve already make them?

There are instances for them as well I believe; but I prefered the prefabs so I could give them my own preference texture :wink:

spongylover123 wrote:
EDIT: I compiled and loaded the portal file, and silence

I saw it when I hid the world brushes and saw what was left...

spongylover123 wrote:
EDIT: I gave up :notwant:

I win :lol:

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drewdinie
40 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 10 minutes later

spongylover123 wrote:
I just downloaded your map, and all I can say, is this is one f**ked up map.
The fizzlers are not made correctly,
scaled textures,
I think it's a rollercoaster or a slide, but you cant expect the player to go into the tubes without and pushing or flinging. The map's props are very expensive.
There are too many misaligned textures.
AND YOU CARVED CIRCULAR BRUSHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OF COURSE THIS MAP DOESN"T WORK!!
and like lp, i'll try to update this post as I work.

EDIT: You carved over 3 times, now that's bad mapping, to make it worse they were doors and tractor beams.

EDIT: Irregular brushes. (abnormal size, not x2), stick to 8-64 grid size.

EDIT: I just remembered this isn't a decompiled map, have you heard about instances and prefabs?

EDIT: YOU USED VERTEX TEXTURES!

EDIT: they have frames for them in the instances folder.

EDIT: YOu can get stuck in the map by dissolving cubes.

EDIT: I compiled and loaded the portal file, and silence

Wow think you made him want to kill himself enough for his first map?

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spongylover123
944 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 7 minutes later

drewdinie wrote:

Wow think you made him want to kill himself enough for his first map?

I know, I know, but still, if you're going to map, start small and then big, not just start big, you don't know the basic. The OP is lucky that this is Portal 2, not hl2 or unreal mapping

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Fracture
797 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 4 minutes later
img
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drewdinie
40 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 8 minutes later
Fracture whats ur steam name?
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Fracture
797 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 3 minutes later
Clussterfuq
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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 20 minutes later

drewdinie wrote:
spongylover123 wrote:

EDIT: You carved over 3 times, now that's bad mapping, to make it worse they were doors and tractor beams.
EDIT: Irregular brushes. (abnormal size, not x2), stick to 8-64 grid size.
EDIT: I just remembered this isn't a decompiled map, have you heard about instances and prefabs?
EDIT: YOU USED VERTEX TEXTURES!
EDIT: they have frames for them in the instances folder.
EDIT: YOu can get stuck in the map by dissolving cubes.
EDIT: I compiled and loaded the portal file, and silence

Wow think you made him want to kill himself enough for his first map?

No: all the points spongy says are true and are common for new mappers.
Spongy's list:
* Carve tool: known to be ruin visleaves/performance. Highly discouraged.
* Irregular brushes: I made the very same mistake on my very first map: feel free to check it out, it's in my signature. Working on a grid has loads of advantages: easier to spot errors, no microbrushes, no overlapping textures, looks good.
* Vertex textures are strange and if you don't know about them they can be very confusing. They can flicker from very dark to very light. Use the texture replace tool to replace them by their non-vertex counterparts
* To prevent the dissolving problem it is a good idea to add cube dispensers for every cube.
* The portal file is a combination of the carving, the not-working on grid and a general lack of knowledge on optimization. Optimization is one of the hardest things in the source sdk and I highly recommend learning the basics first before going in to details here.

So spongy has a list of valid points and seeing:

Fracture wrote:
img

I think that fracture agrees he can still learn a lot :thumbup:

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Fracture
797 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 17 minutes later
well there goes another month ahead of my on editing =_=
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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 20 minutes later

Fracture wrote:
well there goes another month ahead of my on editing =_=

In this case I highly suggest you don't do that.

"Fixing" a map often takes way too much time if you need to make major changes to the technical part of a map. I tried this a couple of times with my first map. Even after I got a lot more experienced in hammer, spending a couple of hours in that map only fixed some of the most basic stuff. Re-creating the map from scratch with more experience and even adding more details took me less then two hours.

My point is: from the technical point of view I don't think fixing the map is worth all the effort. From a gameplay point of view this can be different. There are a couple of small fixes that can improve the gameplay: things like replacing the vertex textures by their normal counterparts.

If you want the technical point good I suggest fixing the gameplay things and then abandon the map, get more experienced in hammer and make a couple of small maps where you can gather feedback and after you are a lot more experienced start from scratch again. And make an environment that compliments the puzzles.

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ChickenMobile
2,460 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 28 minutes later

spongylover123 wrote:
drewdinie wrote:

Wow think you made him want to kill himself enough for his first map?

I know, I know, but still, if you're going to map, start small and then big, not just start big, you don't know the basic. The OP is lucky that this is Portal 2, not hl2 or unreal mapping

My first (source) map was made in HL2 and it doesn't sound nearly as bad as what he has. (though I did have past mapping experience in COD).

I agree with lpfreaky here; start again. That way you will make your map better by not doing the bad (terribly bad) things you did in your last map.

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Fracture
797 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 33 minutes later
well i guess some things can only be learned from mistakes. Plus i guess from the perspective of someone other than the creator, the map can be confusing. I however would like to make a video of this for anyone who couldn't finish it in play.

I at least got praise from one person on steam who thought the puzzle of it all was pretty clever, after i guided them through it. That's enough to make me happy.

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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Apr 05, 2012
Replied 5 minutes later

Fracture wrote:
well i guess some things can only be learned from mistakes. Plus i guess from the perspective of someone other than the creator, the map can be confusing

The perspective of the creator is always flawed. You have spent a lot of time on designing the puzzles; you can dream them, it's almost impossible for the creator to properly estimate the difficulty of a map.

The confusion in your map might come from the fact that there are a lot of test elements in one room and that they all have to be used and you can choose when you use what. Separating these different tests into different rooms would have made it easier to spot what elements were to be used in what puzzle. This problem is only there in the first part.