WED - Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How can I assign an action or a material to an entity? I see no actions to choose from when I click on the Behavior tab.

A. WED looks for actions and materials in the script assigned in Map Properties. You can either write actions yourself, or include another script that already contains actions or materials f.i. from the templates. The standard shader materials are contained in mtlFX.c, which is included in the standard scripts, f.i. "Flythrough" or "lite-C Project".

Q. How can I make water?

A. Apply a standard water material to a terrain block, f.i. mtl_envWater.

Q: My level takes a long time to compile, and then gives an out of memory error.

A: Switch off radiosity bouncing until the final release compilation. Radiosity takes a long time to compile. It also stores the light emitted from any surface, and thus requires a large amount of memory on huge levels.

Q: I'm getting visible light seams across some blocks in the floor or ceiling.

A: The most frequent reason for light seams is splitting a block - f.i. by CSG Subtract - and setting the Smooth flag for the split parts of the block. This smoothes the lighting around the edges of the parts, thus generating seams of different brightness where the parts touch.

Q. I've imported high resolution models as geometry into my level, but they don't look as smooth as when I place them as entities. There are brightness seams along polygon edges.

A. You can see lightmap brightness differences when you import a model with polygons that are extremely small, leaving space for only one or a few lightmap pixels per polygon. The lightmaps have then not enough pixels to "smoothe out" between polygons. You must increase either the light sample and lightmap resolution, or the polygon size. Also, normals between adjacent polygons are only smoothed when you set the Smooth flag of the block - otherwise you normally get sharp edges on level geometry.

Q: The dynamic lighting in my level looks wrong, especially when I use shaders. Models seem not to react on all dynamic light sources.

A: Make sure that you haven't accidentally compiled the level in A6 mode (with Create Meshes switched off). Unlimited dynamic lights are only supported in A7 or A8 levels, and their number can be set up through max_lights. Even then, there's a limit of lights per mesh. Make sure that your level does not consist of only one single huge mesh - otherwise you'll never see more than 8 dynamic lights.

Q: I've placed a lot of dynamic lights, and I use shaders on all surfaces. Now I see sudden light changes on some surfaces when I move the camera.

A: You can place as many static or dynamic lights as you want, but you need to place and range dynamic lights cleverly. The limit by your graphics hardware is 8 dynamic lights per block, entity, or terrain chunk; the limit by a bumpmapping shader is 3 lights. If an object is in the ranges of too many dynamic lights, the engine will sort them due to their distances, and pass only the 3 closest lights to the shader. This can cause a sudden change of object brightness when far-away light sources - such as the sun - are much stronger than close lights. Thus, don't have objects in the ranges of too many too different dynamic lights, and especially don't place weak dynamic lights in areas that are exposed to full sunlight.

Q. Help! I'm getting all sorts of map compiler errors like "Region leaking" "Too many portals" or "Plane too Narrow".

A. Compile a normal level, not a BSP level. BSP levels must follow special design rules and are not for beginners. If you don't have a Pro Edition, you won't need a BSP level anyway. But if you want to do one, look into the Level Design Hints.

Q. I've imported animated models, and assigned template scripts to them, but the models behave strange. They can't move close to walls and seem to float slightly above the surface.

A. The default values of the bounding boxes as well as the standard template movement and camera functions assume that a human figure is about 50..150 units tall. Depending on the units you are using in your model editor, the size of your imported models can be quite different. For instance, your models can turn out to be dwarfs 0.1 units tall, or giants with a size of 1000 units. For using models of this size, you must adjust their bounding boxes and the view and collision parameters. Better scale your models before or after importing so that they get the standard size in the range of about 100 units for a human figure.

Q. I've imported level geometry from my favorite editor. It looks ok in WED, but produces strange color tints and depth sorting errors in the engine window. Some of my blocks are not even visible when I run the level in the engine.

A. Level blocks do not support transparency, so don't use transparent textures for level geometry. (If you don't know what transparency is, start with the beginners tutorial). Make sure that all textures are 24 bit except when you use the transparency channel for a shader, for instance for a specular map. When you assign a specular material to a transparent texture, it becomes visible again because the specular materials switch off transparency.

Q. I've placed a model entity in a dark room, but I still see the model in bright colors as if the room is well lit.

A. There are several possibilities. Either the model itself has wrong light settings in its flags, material, ambient, or color. Or its origin is at a wrong place, like underneath the floor or inside a wall. Or the model is illuminated by dynamic light - for instance, the sun. Unlike static light, dynamic light can penetrate the thickest walls, so make sure to disable sun light (set the sun color at 1,1,1 in Map Properties) in a dungeon level. For details, see lighting.

Q: I can not publish. The ".CD" folder is not created.

A. You are probably attempting to create a folder in the Gamestudio installation folder. For this you'd need access rights to the Programs section of your PC, or log in as administrator the whole time. A better solution is to create your projects not in the Programs section, but in the Documents or ProgramData section of your PC.

 

 

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