I HAVE to be missing something fundamental here!

this is a plee... Maybe Angry Beaver, Cpt Muppet or the other helpful ppl here can bail me out...

Though I am new to hammer, I understand 3D modeling. My first simple map went fine. But wait...

My second map used a 'rolling topography' with lots of vertex manipulation. I have been fighting a leak there all week using everything that I read and everything that was in the response to my post. I know if I box the edges, my leak goes away -> I just CANNOT FIND THE LEAK! The pts file is an explosion of red, so I don't know where to start there!

Today's attempt involved taking a third of the map and flattening the topography to make a simple shoebox. I thought for sure that was the simple beginning to reworking this thing. But I could not even get of the the gate and had a leak in my damn little shoebox.

To my plee.. I HAVE to be missing fundamental here! Can someone look at my map at tell me what I am missing. What is attached is only a third of the overall map with eveything else deleted so don't bother commenting about that part. If I skybox the map, to problem goes away! I have run over all vertices with a fine toothed comb and think I may be bordering on insanity.

Please help me before I check myself into a mental health facility.

http://www.hoggettfarm.com/files/dod_hoggett14.zip

welcome to mapping.

Try reading the Mapping FAQ.
The second page of the FAQ (http://www.dayofdefeat.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=100&perpage=15&pagenumber=2) goes deeply into this very issue.

Yeah that part of the FAQ was from the feedback to my original post a few days ago. I am just missing something obvious and hoping a pair of fresh eyes can show me someting I am not seeing...

Compile tools don't like vertex manipulation, which is why I cut brushes instead of morphing them. I still have to correct the sponge-in-water problem though, where the brushes expand past the mapsize limit.

Vertex manipulation is fine if you know what your doing. But try to use it only with triangles. If you manipulate squares, you'll most likely end up just cutting it inot a triangle anyway.

And yeah, read the FAQ and do a search before you have any questions like that.

I've found that clipping can sometimes cause microscopic leaks that are invisible to the naked eye. The only way I found to fix them was to delete the brushes in a certain area and rebuild.

i assure you that I read the FAQs before posting this - i even had '7 leaks methods' added to the FAQ as a result of an earlier post. What I have learned on this post, which is not in the forum elsewhere is that even you you do all the methods to detect a leak, it may appear perfect to the eye but fail when compiling due to vertex manipulation.

Lo and behold, I deleted all perimeter brushes (even though I know they were perfect at one unit by eye) and drew all new much more simplistic ones and now there are no leaks.

So what I have learned here is that you may troubleshoot to a point where you have to delete and redraw.

thanks for the tip, Andy...

Although I'm a fan of the faq, and it looks like things are already on the mend, I'll tell you what you most likely did. Vertex manipulation often maps a point that looks like it is right on top of the spot it should be. However, if you zoom in REALLY close you'll see that it is actually the tiniest (sp?) fraction off of the point it should be at. Because of this you'll get leaks and they are really nasty to find.

Using clipping and vertex manipulation is a skill that helps a lot but if done without care can lead to major headaches. So, the hint I leave with all this mess is this:

If you clip or manipulate make sure you use triangles and are sure you are placing those vertices on the spot you think you are.

I love using fun terrain so I had to get good at watching for things that caused problems. Now I rarely build something that leaks and then usually only when I'm tired. =) Anyhow, thought I'd write a dissertation. Glad you are fixing the bugs.

Monk

what you need to keep in mind is 3 things

1) use Alt+P after every time you use vertex editing. it should tell you if you did sometihng wrong.

2) when your split or cut a brush ALWAYS make the ends of your cut line on the sides/corners of the brush, AT AN INTEGER point. doing both of these splitting/cutting your brushes will never be a problem.

3) to compile your .rmf needs to become a .map. a .map dosn't allow non grid vertex positions (the vertex point has to be an integer). it also dosn't allow invalid brushes. both of these it will fix and kill your map.

Angry Beaver

your above #2 is were I shot myself in the foot - thanks...

Yeah, making terrain is a real pain. If you must do it, keep it simple, but if you can, use the MODEL terrain (you can find in your dod/mapmodels folder quite a few HILL models, eg ouitz_hill.mdl).

Terrain is also an r_speeds killer...