The never ending series of HELP, I'M STUCK

[getodac]

Hi, folks!
I'm the novice type of SE mapper, reading tutorial after tutorial, browsing the forums, experiment a lot and putting stupid questions. In fact, 85% of this mapping forum (as far as I have read) is basic questions and too short answers. Anyway, I've got a question in the same series:

I start my world adding a room and then another one connected to the first and so on so forth (of course, adding columns, stairs, boxes, as different layers).
Finally, my beautiful level crashes and parts of wall are missing. It may be old news for everyone here, but I noticed that adding too much primitives (rooms) to the same layer turns everything into trash.

* Could it be a zoning problem ? (but when I switch to zoning perspective, I notice every room forms a different green sector).

** Maybe serious mapping requires you to start from a bigger perspective (the 'macro-level' of the whole terrain and then creating the lanscape, the bigger rooms and only then zooming into the smaller rooms)?

I'm clueless and I'm sorry if my words don't make any sens. Looking for help...

[LSD]

try patching sam to version 1.04. it sounds like a bug

[pompey]

ive had this b4, try rightclicking and select reoptimize brushes. u may need to do it s few times, and sometimes even this wont work.

if u notice it happening and can undo till b4 u added the primitive u can add it to a new layer (L) and then select the layer's polys, then right click, triangulize selected polys and then add it to the layer u origannally wanted it to be part of.

hope this helps!

[getodac]

These kind of 'holes' in the walls seem to appear whenever I add new brushes to my worldbase. But 'adding (+) ' is the only operation I know to connect my various 'rooms' into one connected world, isn't it?

Finally, my only way to succeed (after desperate efforts!) was to ZONE every room (let's say 32*64*15 room) into a different zone. Is this the way of dealing things with SE? Every new room should form a different zone? Am I doing something right here, guys?

[pompey]

did u try my suggestions?

[getodac]

Yes, Pompey, I tried, but none worked. Then I remembered the same thing appeared to UnrealEd, so I tried zoning my little world and, finally, it worked. And my question is: do I really have to zone every single room? How many brushes do normally form a zone?

[pompey]

u shouldnt have to rezone each room, the only other reason i can think of for ur prob is ur graphx card, but even then i havnt heard of anyone else with same prob,

one other thing, if u are adding a solid primitive to a room with lots of polys, e.g. stairs, add them to a new layer (l) and leave them (dont add them to ur original worldbase) this means the original room wobnt get broken up, + u can do mips and other tricks to reduce polycounts!

[getodac]

Thanks, P. My video card is ok (MSI GeForce2 Pro 64Mb). I know, stairs, columns, should be layered as diferent layers (L not +). Still, shit happens. Zoning and redoing the broken walls is all I can do to make things work.

[SuperMang!]

holes or cracks can appear when you wield too many things to one polygon. the polygon will become too complicated and will have a lot of lines and vertices. try adding a staircase right next to a wall to see what i mean. when you highlight it, press '0' on the numpad and you will see the the polygon has lots of lines in it trying to hold all the angles from the stairs together on the polygon. if you simply layer it, it will not join anything and thus leave everything alone.

    hope that explains the holes,
                      -McG