"Bad Surface Extents" issues (QuArK)

[evoseven]

As the title says, im having problems with a bad surface extents error when i try to run a map ive made (Quake 1 Maps in gl quake).

I do put a giant hollow box around my maps to prevent holes(which i have no idea what they are or how to fix them without having boxes floating around my whole map) which ive heard is a bad thing to do.

anyone know how i can resolve this issue/ patch holes without putting blocks everywhere?

[=peg=]

read the mappers bible first .. then again and again and again till you know it by heart.. then start mapping

[Lardarse]

Learn how to map?

Ok, serious answer: The error is caused by the engine trying to do too much, usually along the lines of render the entire area outside of your map but inside that box.

Work out where the holes are, by boxing off sections of your map at a time, until you find a box that stops the map from compiling when it's removed. Now make that box smaller, and/or move it around, until you spot the leak. Then adjust the brushes in that area until the map compiles. Repeat until you have a map that doesn't leak any more.

Alternative method for finding leaks: Make that external box have a texture that's brightly coloured. Fullbright is even better. Otherwise use a texture that's a strongly different colour to anything you're using. If you can't use a fullbright texture, then compiling your map without running the light stage may help.

Boxed maps have multiple problems. They run slowly, as the engine is doing extra work, and they also take a lot longer to compile (the vis stage is the killer). I'm a little surprised that you're able to get the map to compile at all. Maybe you're only doing a fastvis (or no vis at all), which is why you haven't noticed that your map takes a dishearteningly long time to compile...

Small tip for preventing holes: Make sure that the vertices (corners) of all of your brushes are where gridlines cross, when your grid setting is at 1 unit per line.

[=peg=]

btw check your PM's for a guide on using QuArK with quake1..

[Spirit]

Ungf, Quark & newbie is a dangerous mixture.

Find some Quake mapping tutorials and learn the basics, you absolutely must close the map with "blocks".

[Scrama]

zhlt info

This is typically caused by having extremely large scales on faces, (typically far above 10, usually 100+). Otherwise it almost always shows up on a 'check for problems' in Worldcraft as a 'texture axis perpendicular to face' error.

or you REALY make texture axis perpendicular to face (Quark and Hammer can help =) )

[Zop]

Take out the surrounding box from the level, and when you compile a map with a hole in it, use the pointfile command (just type it into the console once you loaded the level in quake). Use noclip to get outside of the level, and look up and down for a line of white dots that trace the outside area through the hole to the inside area. (yourmap.bsp and yourmap.pts need to be in the same folder for this to work.)

[MH]

A tip with pointfiles - they use the particle engine in Quake to render the points, so you may find yourself running out of particles! Either use an engine that has no particles limit or use the -particles command-line option set to a stupidly high number when starting Quake.