Radiant and TyrUtils Quirks and Observations

[MadGypsy]

I've been playing with these 2 together for a while and I keep finding little things that are either, not obvious, tricky or straight up wrong. I want these things to be all in one thread so, anyone using these can possibly troubleshoot quickly. Please do not post arbitrary comments here (like "good job", "thank you", etc). If you have a question feel free to post it. If you have info such as that which I am sharing, feel free to post that too. If I have provided misinformation in some way ABSOLUTELY post the correct information. Use the rep button for props. I want to try to keep this thread "information/questions only".

Thank you for your compliance.

[MadGypsy]

Brush Entities

Let's say you remake the standard base door and you want to duplicate it throughout your map.

1) DO NOT DUPLICATE or UNIQUE DUPLICATE IT - if you do this you are going to end up with what seems like 2 separate entities but, in reality they are 1. Change the values on 1 and it will change the values automatically to match on the other. They also won't work. You end up with some garbage double entity acting like a single entity and everything gets very screwed up.

2) DO NOT SELECT EACH DOOR AND UNGROUP - This is going to drop the brushes back into worldspawn and break your door. Whereas you CAN do it this way (ungroup, duplicate, then re-func_door) I have a better way.


The Best Way:

1) Select the entire door (in this case, both sides of the standard base door). Click file > save selection. Save it as (ex) "base_door_prefab.map".

2) Open base_door_prefab.map and move the entire door to '0 0 0'. If you don't, every time you import this door it is going to be in the exact same position as the door you selected and saved (ie... buried in the original door). While you are there click the angle key for both doors and delete them.

3) Open your original map. Click file > import and select base_door_prefab.map. Move it to the location that you need it and set the angle key for each door. If your map is dense and you can't find the door you just imported, it's at '0 0 0', or wherever you put it in the prefab.map. Any time you need a copy of this entity, from this point, you can simply import your saved prefab.

Of course this applies to all brush entities in the most generic sense. Button, Door, Plat, Train, Triggers... all of it. Any brush entity.

*Whereas this is true for triggers, I don't recommend prefabbing a Trigger. How lazy can you be? Just make a new trigger. That is of course unless the trigger is part of a more involved prefab. BUT, remember that you will have to strip stuff like target/targetname in the prefab and add unique values after import.

[MadGypsy]

TyrUtils_0.15.4 wait key

I haven't bothered to test other compilers but, the info on wait is completely backwards for this compiler. If other compilers do the same thing then the info on wait is backwards period.

Supposedly values less than 1 make the light fade quicker and values greater than 1 make it fade slower. That is the absolute opposite of my results. It does not matter if you use _surface lights or regular ol' lights. Wait behavior is backwards. Which is totally fine as long as you know that and never intend to use a different compiler for your 15.4 map.

EDIT: I did some double checking on this and found it is working properly. The docs that I originally copied the info from had a typo where greater than and less than were reversed.

[MadGypsy]

Attempting to use wait and delay together

According to my tests with this specific compiler. Do not waste your time trying to use wait and delay together unless you want garbage like this in your map.



Maybe everyone knows you don't use those together. Maybe they go great together if you know exactly what you are doing. I am not a pro. All I can tell you is, I ran numerous tests changing these values one way or another and every time I got really shitty results... like really hard and sharp shadows that can't be logically attributed to a light source.

[MadGypsy]

Don't Do This, Not Even By Accident

Never let anything even remotely similar to this happen in your map. By remotely similar I mean lava/sky, water/sky, slime/sky...etc. I also mean touching or overlapping.

*** WARNING 25: Mixed face contents (Sky, Water) near (-1456.00 1024.00 -192.00)
************ ERROR ************
Last mixed face contents was fatal

[MadGypsy]

FTE - TyrUtils_0.15.4 and Pointfile

Regular ole fteqw.exe will crash if you attempt to run a tyrUtils pointfile. I have not tested other engines. I haven't even tested other ports of FTE. My M.O. is to build sealed map chunks that represent a "room" of my map in separate .map files (I would do this anyway) and combine them later. This way I can compile small chunks often and easily determine, with decent accuracy, where my leak is. However, I also build on the grid religiously and never really have a leak.

[MadGypsy]

Don't Trick Yourself

If you have been playing with Radiant all day and decide to post a screenshot of something you are doing, don't expand your screenshot to fullscreen and stare at it. You will inevitably feel very stupid when you forget it's a picture and begin to wonder why none of the controls work, followed by the eventual realization that you are trying to build a map inside of a jpeg.