Hardware & BSP Relations?

[widowmaker]

This is a hardware/ software/ game engine miscellanoues question.

Now I am finding that some people can build the most organic structures and show no signs of BSP holes in the map. That is nice and I am happy for them. I on the other hand build to the grid and using only five or six boxes can end up with a BSP hole.

So I got to thinking. Does my hardware have any kind of input or influence the editor / game engine such that it could affect the BSP and cause holes. I know my computer has been showing it's age and more and more I get these BSP holes even when I have done very little in the map.

Now if it is my hardware is the offending part the video card, the processor, or both?

For example I thought a space station type of map would be cool with a circular tube hull (like the 1970's ones). I use Tarquins brushes to create a hallow tube. Now the total brushes used were 3. One big subtracted box, one added circular tube and a second smaller negtive circular tube. In that still fairly simple form that concept was one gigantic BSP hole. To me I have endless otehr ideas I cannot work on because one or two hours into developement the map will develope an unresolvable BSP hole.

Note that I realize that the tarquin brush had a good many points off the grid but I get the same problem building a bunch of boxes.

I am hoping this is hardware related and will be fixed by upgrading does any one know?

[Switch]

The factors I've associated BSP holes with are:

- Brush geometry and stacking: if your brushes don't line up to other brushes and the grid (in eight or four) then you have problems. If you have brushes intersecting or protruding from one another alot, like a zipper or a cogwheel, the engine will complain.

- Brush complexity: if not bare-bones simple, brushes like curved stairs and terrains will cause problems. You get a big, ugly, high-poly, vertex-edited terrain with a curved BSP pipe and BANG! HOMs everywhere.

- Deleted brushes: an interresting effect is that the virtual memory a.k.a. page file will hold deleted brushes you build in the level, and not completely get rid of them when you rebuild. They'll sometimes leave ghosts where they were in the form of HOMs, sometimes in exactly their shape before they were deleted and the level rebuilt. So if you're making brushes, adding them, building, deleting the brushes, then rebuilding, they could still be hanging around in the form of HOMs in a really complex map. This is why I save seperate versions of my levels, but even that doesn't help.

- Sheets plus curved 2d shapes: if you have these two in a map, you've hugely increased your risk for HOMs.

Undoubtedly there are others, but I'm almost certain it's not your hardware, i.e. graphics card. If any hardware, it would be your RAM or hard drive, so check them. But, the thing that eliminates that possibility is that the HOMs are still there on other people's computers.

[Unicorn]

I have had alot of HOMs in my maps but almost always found out ways how to solve them. If you post a testmap, maybe as an attachment to this thread, with HOMs in it, I could try to solve them and then tell you where you go wrong in your mapbuilding as far as concerning BSP holes goes. It's hard to tell whats causing the holes to appear so to fully understand what is wrong I would have to take a look at the map myself.

[widowmaker]

Thanks but the question stemmed from a thought that was running through my head. I have no map to post with examples. Once I start to get the problems I back up a few saves and start from before the problem occured. I keep an insane number of backups.:D

[Unicorn]

I keep an insane number of backups.

;) Good idea. For my map Eagles Nest 2048 I have like 40-50 copies of it in different building moments. You can never save too many times hehehe. :D

[widowmaker]

Originally posted by Unicorn
;) Good idea. For my map Eagles Nest 2048 I have like 40-50 copies of it in different building moments. You can never save too many times hehehe. :D

No no. I said insane. 300+ back ups. I have maps that take up more than a gig with their back ups. Due to my twitchy old system it was something that I had to do or risk losing everything. Hopefully I am beyond that now. But probably not.

On a note based on the opening point of this thread with my upgrades I have yet to create any BSP / HOM holes despite trying. Figure that one out.

I hope it was one of those mentioned things by Switch (Ram or Harddrive). I aware of the other potential trouble makers and avoid them when ever possible.

Well at any rate back to mapping!

[Switch]

I thought I was paranoid!
:spank: