TROUBLE-SHOOTING
See also: Crash - Compile Errors - Poly Count Blues - R-Speeds -
Updated April 21, 2001 - 11:19 PM

Trouble-Shooting the Wild Half-Life Bug
and other tales of damnation and redemption from the front lines of combat game design

Long Pathnames - Don't Do It

Various compiler programs -- qrad, vis, qbsp2, qcsg -- do not recognize long file names (although WorldCraft does). This poses problems: see Compile Errors.

Disappearing Brushes: Things disappear from certain viewpoints, then re-appear when you move elsewhere

• Very thin entity brushes are prone to this problem
• Sky brushes seem particularly vulnerable
• Problem escalates with larger and more complex spaces
  • But can also happen in small, relatively simple spaces
• Might be exacerbated by overlapping brushes

Answer:

• Remove or simplify the problem brushes
• Remove or simplify other brushes in the area, to reduce load
• Replace Sky textures with simple textures

Player Stuck: move to some spot where you get stuck ... when you crouch, you can't un-crouch ...

• Players get caught in map pinch-points, where two or more brushes form a critical angle.
• Answer: re-work the map -- more space between key brushes, etc.
• Or: add clip brushes to keep players out of critical places
• If the player's spawn point overlaps a wall, even a little bit, then the player is spawned stuck at that point.

Slow ... play-speed lags, drags, stutters ....

Slowness factors might include --

• Map too complex for the computer
  • Answer: simpler maps
  • Or: more computer power
• Map not Vis-compiled
  • Answer: run full complete, including Vis
• Map corrupt
  • Answer: fix it or delete it
    
    
• One huge func_water brush that covers the whole level, overlapping one or more world-type brushes. (This can be true even in a simple map with low r-speeds.)
  • Answer: make an individual func_water for each water-filled area
  • (This requires extra effort, getting the entities in place and getting the textures right)
  • Thanks to Chris for this tip
  • Similar considerations apply to other entity brush types, e.g. func_wall, trigger_hurt, env_bubbles ... you can overlap these brushes, and often it's useful or necessary to do so in order to get desired effect ... but there's load on the system ....
    
    
• Overlapping world brushes -- always a bad idea -- !
  • No overlap -- ! Brushes should tesselate gracefully
  • Remove, re-shape, re-size brushes
  • Common causes of overlap:
    • Copy-and-paste, followed by an accidental paste
    • Resizing objects in groups ... resize is proportional -- be careful about the effect of resizing on vertex positions.
  • You can, to some extent, overlap entity brushes
    
    
• Stuck in Walk Mode ... sometimes my systems gets confused about keyboard states ... I can't run -- I'm reduced to Walking speed ... seems to be caused by high rate of keyboard input ...
  • ANSWER: press Escape key twice
  • SIMILAR PROBLEM -- stuck in Crouch mode
    
    
• Network Issues ... this is a big topic ... I'm no expert ... anyone want to volunteer their genius?