[Mark]

Is it just me doing something wrong or have other mappers had this problem? This has happened in a few different maps over the last couple of years.

Every now and then I create a TROR extension into a floor but when I drop down into the lower extension I can't expand on it. Anything I do gets applied to the top section. Also greying out sectors doesn't work when I'm in this new lower section. So its like I'm still in the upper section.

The stranger part is this will happen only in seemingly random places in a map. I can use TROR in a different place and it works as it should.

[Forge]

Mark, on 22 October 2019 - 03:59 AM, said:

Is it just me

No

Mark, on 22 October 2019 - 03:59 AM, said:

this will happen only in seemingly random places in a map

and that's the problem.

my theory is that it has something to do with the shape or angles of the extension

[Mark]

For me it happens with a simple rectangle. IIRC the first time it happened was when I tried punching in a lower sector on the roof of E1L1 start.

[Forge]

Mark, on 22 October 2019 - 08:19 AM, said:

For me it happens with a simple rectangle.

same.
i was only making a tror pool.
I wanted to add an underwater passage, but it kept expanding off the upper section.

I don't recall everything I had to do to make it work, but I did have to build the passage separately with the desired floor & ceiling elevations & then attach it

[Perro Seco]

This also happens to me sometimes. To avoid it, I low the lower extension's floor with the white arrow on it and zmode set to gravity or to locked/sector, so it sticks to the floor's height until the other sectors become grey. Not a nice solution, but it works for me.

[Mark]

I just tested that. After creating and dropping down into the new extended section I have to lower floor z by 17 pagedown keypress to get the lower section recognized and for the grey out to happen. This is unacceptable.

Because of how long and randomly it has been going on and in so many different maps I wonder if we can ever trace down the cause.

The first time it happened to me that I remember was back in late 2016 to early 2017 when I was working on the HHR map. I'll try some Mapster revisions from before then to see if I can find when the problem started.

[Mark]

I used the map in my current project for testing. Mapster versions as far back as 2014 all have the same issue. So when it happens its because of some similar but unknown thing in our maps causing it. But what?

To test all of our different maps together to find a common thread seems impossible. Plus how many times did it fail for us and we just gave up attempting TROR in that area. Who remembers all of them. I don't. So its harder to compare why it happens.

[Mark]

I think I should stop looking for problems with TROR. I was looking closely at my map zoomed out to see the whole thing. I noticed when I press CNTL A to view greyed out sectors, a whole bunch of sprites scattered around the map disappear as though they are in another TROR layer which they are not supposed to be. Also some walls that should have nothing to do with TROR get greyed out. Sometimes just a wall or 2 of a plain sector get greyed out. Somehow the map got corrupted. Could be me or it could be Mapster. You other guys having a problem, can you check your TROR maps to see if you have any mysterious grey walls or disappearing sprites that are not in a TROR sector in 2d mode when pressing CNTL A

[TerminX]

Eh, I don't think you should stop looking for problems... just try and report them as concisely as possible, with reproduction steps, a description of what happens, and a description of what the expected behavior should be. We're interested in fixing what we can.

[Perro Seco]

Mark, on 22 October 2019 - 03:55 PM, said:

You other guys having a problem, can you check your TROR maps to see if you have any mysterious grey walls or disappearing sprites that are not in a TROR sector in 2d mode when pressing CNTL A

Yes, I have the same problem, but I got used to it. I only use grey walls for creating new TROR sectors, then I deactivate them, otherwise I can't edit some parts of the map, despite them being not TROR related.

[Paul B]

Mark, on 22 October 2019 - 03:59 AM, said:

Is it just me doing something wrong or have other mappers had this problem? This has happened in a few different maps over the last couple of years.

Every now and then I create a TROR extension into a floor but when I drop down into the lower extension I can't expand on it. Anything I do gets applied to the top section. Also greying out sectors doesn't work when I'm in this new lower section. So its like I'm still in the upper section.

The stranger part is this will happen only in seemingly random places in a map. I can use TROR in a different place and it works as it should.

I excessively use TROR and I can't say I've experienced those problems as far as I can remember. However, having said that, I have had to reset the Z axis before it picks up the layer I want it to work with. If the Extended sector floor is too close to the floor above it will have difficulty distinguishing between the layers. Same for the Ceiling height. It is not recommended to squish TROR extended sectors close to it's parent sector floor or ceiling height. I always like to make a decent vertical Z-Axis gap between my layers so it's easy to work with. When working with TROR it is important you are aware of your Z-Axis between layers. That way your not exploiting the SOS glitches and TROR won't get confused. TROR works great, but you pretty much should abandon the idea of using SOS on the same Z-Axis in TROR maps as a best practice.

In 2D Mode:
Ctrl + R reset Z-Axis
Ctrl + PgUp or PgDwn to select higher or lower extended sectors.
Ctrl + A to toggle on/off automatic grey out of sectors.

[Mark]

Thanks for the tips. I'm not raising the lower sector or lowering the upper sector. This glitch happens when using the default Z's after punching the sector in. I'll try the reset Z keypress. Is that any different than just moving the cursor inside the lower sector and falling down to the floor? Thats what I do. Also, the areas that don't work properly are not part of SOS.

EDIT: using those TROR key combos didn't help. That darned punched in lower sector refuses to be recognized as TROR unless I lower the floor of it by minimum of 17 PgDn presses. And that part is consistant no matter where the problem happens in a map.

[Paul B]

Mark, on 23 October 2019 - 04:46 AM, said:

Thanks for the tips. I'm not raising the lower sector or lowering the upper sector. This glitch happens when using the default Z's after punching the sector in. I'll try the reset Z keypress. Is that any different than just moving the cursor inside the lower sector and falling down to the floor? Thats what I do. Also, the areas that don't work properly are not part of SOS.

EDIT: using those TROR key combos didn't help. That darned punched in lower sector refuses to be recognized as TROR unless I lower the floor of it by minimum of 17 PgDn presses. And that part is consistant no matter where the problem happens in a map.

Ahh it's a punched TROR sector. Sorry, I never use that feature. Typically when I run into problems where it doesn't recognize the extended area of a TROR sector I just drop the floor or raise the ceiling make my modifications inside that sector then lower the ceiling or raise the floor as a final edit in that sector.

[Mark]

Maybe I used the wrong terminology. I'm talking about the normal everyday " highlight a sector, CNTL E, Z for floor " .
What is "punching" then?

OK. So you DO actually have the same problem as the rest of us. But still, it would be great to find out the common thread in our maps that causes it to happen in the first place. We shouldn't have to lower the floor further, add on to it and then select all those sectors and raise them as a whole to where you want them.

If its not too much trouble could you test to see if you also have to lower by a minimum of 17 PgDn presses?

[Paul B]

Mark, on 23 October 2019 - 07:31 AM, said:

Maybe I used the wrong terminology. I'm talking about the normal everyday " highlight a sector, CNTL E, Z for floor " .
What is "punching" then?

OK. So you DO actually have the same problem as the rest of us. But still, it would be great to find out the common thread in our maps that causes it to happen in the first place. We shouldn't have to lower the floor further, add on to it and then select all those sectors and raise them as a whole to where you want them.

If its not too much trouble could you test to see if you also have to lower by a minimum of 17 PgDn presses?

I recall Helix setting a gap like that intentionally. It also has to do with the way the character and the AI behave around the TROR sector. They needed to have that gap otherwise AI and the player could not pass through the TROR sector without glitches, which is probably why the grid doesn't pick up the focus on those TROR layers that are close together. This behavior was intentional & I remember discussing this with him while he was still inventing TROR. I'll see if I can locate our discussion, i'm pretty sure its still here in the threads somewhere as to why it doesn't take focus or grey out probably has to do with the limitation of the vertical spacing needed between layers. I am almost certain his response was to reset the Z axis which in some cases doesn't always help if the sectors are too close in height.

I was always under the impression that TROR punching was when you already have an extended TROR sector and you need to create an "Island" sector in that TROR canopy and punch that sector either up or down on the TROR texture.

As mentioned here:

It's also possible to easily create an island sector in the middle of a TROR sector. This is called sector punching, and mainly involves stamping a child sector into the sector below or above. Follow the example below.


1. Extend a sector downwards.

2. Create a child sector in the original sector.

3. Select the vertices of the child sector with [Right-Shift] or [R-Ctrl + R-Shift] and press [Ctrl-E] as though you're extending a sector.

4. It will prompt you whether to punch up or down, in this case, choose down and hit [Enter]. A sector identical in size, shape and position should now be in the bottom layer.

5. Point the mouse cursor at the child sector in the top layer and press [Ctrl-U]. It will prompt you whether you want to break the connection, and unless you press [Ctrl-U] accidentally, you usually do.

6. The child sector should now be a floating sector island.

[Mark]

I understand why the minimum Z is needed for TROR and thats why by default it creates the lower sector down by as much as it does. But I'm saying that I have to go down AN ADDITIONAL 17 PgDNs from that before it gets recognized as the lower sector. So not having enough player spacing doesn't enter into the issue for me.

After reading the description, I haven't tried punching yet.

edit: I just counted. By default the lower sector's floor gets created 32 PgDns from the upper layer. I have to go down another 17 for a total of 49 to get mapster to see it as the lower sector.

[Mark]

A test case for where it doesn't work no matter how far down you go. If you still have HHR on your drive, load the main map "E1L1test". Try creating a lower TROR sector on the flat roof of the map start. I went down as far as 50 or 60 PgDns and it would not be recognized as the lower sector. I noticed that map also has greyed walls where I did not expect them. These 2 issues seem to go hand in hand.

But...the same TROR test works fine on the vanilla version of the map. So the question remains. Are we bringing this on ourselves somehow or is Mapster silently adding these corruptions when we use TROR?

More testing in that same map. 2 of the unexpected greyed out sectors are supposed to be white walled sectors and part of the main map layer. No TROR involved there. Another greyed out sector is one I placed in front of the bank and tagged it as a 1 time sound effect of Barney Fife. Again, no reason it should be considered a TROR sector. As in the other map in my current project, walls and sprites around the map are coming and going that shouldn't be when pressing CNTL A

[Kyanos]

 tror-test.zip (891bytes)
Number of downloads: 157

It's working now the same way it always has for me. Autogrey ignores what bunch you're in, it just uses the z range (sometime z height in 3d mode) to sort of guess at what sectors to show. The problems usually start once you get multiple TROR sector heights (see sample map). IMO the feature is good at doing it's job which is actually very complex.

In the picture 2 of the small square sectors are tror layers, a tunnel connects them, the rest of the map is above them. I took 4 pictures of the 4 different autogreys I get by raising myself to the ceiling in 3d mode (top left) then 2d mode pgup -it says top in mapster now (top right) then 1 pg down in 2d mode -gave a z range value of 8192? (bottom left) then 1 last pg down in 2d mode - says bottom (bottom right)

[Kyanos]

Mark, on 23 October 2019 - 10:41 AM, said:

A test case for where it doesn't work no matter how far down you go. If you still have HHR on your drive, load the main map "E1L1test". Try creating a lower TROR sector on the flat roof of the map start. I went down as far as 50 or 60 PgDns and it would not be recognized as the lower sector. I noticed that map also has greyed walls where I did not expect them. These 2 issues seem to go hand in hand.

I played around here, I had to "get in" the extended sector then "carve walls" out past the top redwalls before the autogrey did finally kick on for that location. Perhaps it's dealing with the very high ceilings/low floors so close by in the parent sector that confounded the feature.

[Paul B]

Mark, on 23 October 2019 - 10:41 AM, said:

A test case for where it doesn't work no matter how far down you go. If you still have HHR on your drive, load the main map "E1L1test". Try creating a lower TROR sector on the flat roof of the map start. I went down as far as 50 or 60 PgDns and it would not be recognized as the lower sector. I noticed that map also has greyed walls where I did not expect them. These 2 issues seem to go hand in hand.

I find that positioning the player in the proper extended sector in 3D mode prior to switching to 2D mode to enable automatic grey outs helps in some cases.

[Mark]

Photonic. Yeah your right. Even though the lower section doesn't show as TROR I can build off of it but like you said, it has to overlap an upper wall boundry like your example. Otherwise the expansion gets applied to the upper layer

Its oddly humorous that we all have been using TROR with these glitches and never bothered to make an issue out of it. We all just found workarounds instead.

[Kyanos]

I went at it again, as long as I positiond the camera in the right spot in 3d mode it edited the proper layers for me. This time I couldn't get the autogrey to work there, I went out the other side, dropped the floor holding pgdwn for a while then went to the bottom and still nothing.

It definitely gets awkward. Maybe there is a possibility to code an option to toggle single sector only, the one the player is in? As in grey out everything but the one sector the camera is in.

[Mark]

This is enough to drive a guy to mapping for his first vanilla map after 10 years of modding and forget all that crazy custom mumbo jumbo stuff.

[quakis]

This problem can make working with TROR a frustrating experience. Made it my goal at the time to find a better method, reconstructing the skeleton of a map at least three times until something worked consistently without issues.

I'm not certain how others work with TROR, but these have been my findings. Since following these rules I've found mapping with TROR become a much smoother and consistent experience even while using the CTRL-A mode.
Perhaps it's not the most efficient working method, I wouldn't know. But it does involve less headaches.

My rule is that any Z axis of a floor or ceiling should never exceed beyond a segment where a bunch begins.
Any additional Z axis requirements that might exceed beyond another bunch I'd create as part of the lower or upper bunch instead.
Screenshots from two very different maps:




Where you see a blue line in the screens below represents a starting point of any singular bunch. The TROR segments are clearly defined.
Not a single ceiling or floor Z axis in a particular segment exceeds beyond these lines into another segment at any point.
These example shots from a side-view perspective.

[Paul B]

Well said quakis, the more you work with TROR the easier and more natural it becomes. Just takes a bit of practice but it is very effective and quick once you're familiar with the feature and its application.

My problem with TROR is over using it to pull off realistic structures. Sometimes TROR is better used on a smaller scale for specific application but it's so easy to over use. As you'll find out in my next map once again building exclusively with TROR.

Sometimes, because it's faster I'll build a multi tiered building only afterwards to realize I could pull off the same effect with carefully placed sprites. But for me it's much easier to visualize TROR then using Sprite and sector trickery.