a few questions...

[SiLeNt_NiGhT]

here's a few questions to run past anyone who might be able to assist:

1) Recently I've discovered something I can't define as a BSP Hole or HOM effect because it behaves differently than either - there's a place on my map where I can walk off a tall building and I fall a few feet but not to the ground,... and I keep walking in mid-air almost halfway across my map!!? There's no extra large collision hull or anything like that, and there aren't any BSP's or Hom effects on my map, at least that I've noticed so far ( though they've been coming and going ever since I started... , this invisible walking in midair effect is something new) Also, the area in question has a 'walking sound' like I was walking on the ground. AND, when I look into the area I'm walking over it seems to activate the 'white door' symbol...as if it were some invisible giant th-door hovering in the air laying flat and parallel to the ground...even my lockpicks come out?! - (no, they don't try to unlock anything...) Any ideas?

2) Here's the deal. I want to create a situation where jumping from a high building or land mass into a body of water will result in a small loss of health because of the height, speed and impact against the water. But I dont want a player who is at 'sea level or water level' and jumps in the water, to get any loss of health. Any ideas on how I can do this without coding?

3) Someone in a previous post eons ago had explained that creating a 'see through' or masked grate or gate could result in the space between the grate bars becoming black when played online.( in other words the players couldn't see through the bars) There was a solution to this problem mentioned but I cant remember who it was or how long ago this was discussed. Any help would be appreciated.

4) I've also recently discovered that a portion of my map has somehow come 'off the grid'. Meaning that when I scale down to '1' (thats from 16 to 8 to 4 to 1 Ued unit.) Some of my structures are off grid by half a Ued unit or so... So when I try to, say, for example, evenly align a wall to the surface or 'ground' I find I'm out by about a half or so Ued units off grid - and yet it will still snap to grid as if it were on grid?! I may have accidentally 'shifted' some of my structures without being aware of it. So needless to say some of my map is on grid and some is not....but theres so much done at this point that it would be quite an undertaking to delete all thats off grid and rebuild.... Is there a way I can select all off-grid structures and shift them to snap-on-grid with the rest of the map in perfect alignment?

Thanks for your patience.

[Nachimir]

4 ) If all the brushes that are off grid are positioned correctly relatively to each other, select them all, then select one vertex of one brush (It should then be highlighted by the red crosshair that defaults to the pivot point). Then, making sure grid-snapping is on, right click on the vertex and it will snap to the nearest grid intersection, keeping all the other brushes at the same relative position.

1 ) A couple of possibilities: Sometimes a BSP isn't visible, but is where the editor creates collision information improperly, which can result in phantom walls/floors, or non-solid walls and floors. The only ways around that are to build cleanly, and change your brush order (Snapping everything to the grid might get rid of the error).

A second possibility is if you used a scaled brush to make a mover: You must Transform Permanently if you've been scaling a brush and want to make a mover, because otherwise a brush retains its old collision information, and this is used by movers.

Transform Permanently is a good thing to do to any brushes that you have rotated, scaled, etc. Try scaling a brush then rotating it, and you'll see why. If you scale the red builder brush, then input new values, those values will be modified by the scaling you applied.

Another way is to Reset > All on the red builder brush, then input values so it encompasses the scaled brush, and Intersect. That way your red builder conforms to the scaled shape, but it keeps its own scaling information.

[SiLeNt_NiGhT]

Nachimir wrote:

If all the brushes that are off grid are positioned correctly relatively to each other, select them all...,

well,... ops: , there's the tricky part. The off-gridness of some of my structures was something I thought I was going to have to 'put up with' and therefore I haven't done anything about it for quite some time. I've been 'forcing' brushes to cooperate by adding/subtracting and then clipping them to size. Needless to say the brushes are not positioned correctly relative to each other... if I were to implement what you've suggested I'd have them all snap to grid but become dislodged from each other, with overlappings or disconnections in many different directions and ways (if that made any sense). It seems major surgery is unavoidable. Anyhow, in the meantime I've taken a previous build of my map from just prior to the point where I started "walking in mid-air" and am readjusting my approach. ( I save a copy of every build of my map and date it) My troubles seemed to have started at the exact point I began to add TH-Doors/movers to my map....Also, I may have accidentally (I have to be more careful) fiddled with the scaling of a mover in properties as I discovered my 'drawscale' was set at 0.5 instaed of just 1 on my builder brush....weird....
So I'm putting off the doors/windows right now until I've got all other major structures complete.....so far so good....no problems.....yet... Have added alot since my post and nothings wrong; so I suspect it was something to do with the TH-Doors which triggered off the problem, perhaps I did something wrong that I'm not aware of.
I'm going to experiment a little with what you've explained, off map, just to understand more clearly. Thanks for the help; am in the habit of recording all your posts on mapping - I find them very helpful.

[Nachimir]

Thanks, I haven't a clue about 2 and 3

Drawscale shouldn't affect brushes, it's the scaling button near the top of the toolbar that does that.

Ack... glad to hear it's cleaning up a bit, but strive to build clean. I found it a hard habit to get into, but that's because my first UTDM was done without grid snapping (I was so clueless I thought it was inconvenient), and after that I spent a year or so growling at the editor and saying "You will do curves, BITCH!".

You might be able to vertex edit the clipped brushes back into some kind of order, but it will mean re-doing any texture alignment also.

[LegalAssassin]

2) Here's the deal. I want to create a situation where jumping from a high building or land mass into a body of water will result in a small loss of health because of the height, speed and impact against the water. But I dont want a player who is at 'sea level or water level' and jumps in the water, to get any loss of health. Any ideas on how I can do this without coding?

How about adding a trigger about 256 uu over the water and have it timed? The trigger triggers (no, really?!) a SpecialEvent with the proper damage.

3) Someone in a previous post eons ago had explained that creating a 'see through' or masked grate or gate could result in the space between the grate bars becoming black when played online.( in other words the players couldn't see through the bars) There was a solution to this problem mentioned but I cant remember who it was or how long ago this was discussed. Any help would be appreciated.

This is us D3D users. When you import a masked texture, sometimes what is meant to be masked shows.

To avoid this you should check Masked when importing.
(FYI, look in Asylum, the dinnertable's chairs - D3D mode)