Having trouble loading a map. Created 1 year ago2023-01-24 19:15:37 UTC by SirCobalt

So I created this map with a rather complex puzzle. You need to turn three valves all in different places and push a button in another room somewhere in order to open a door. It compiles fine but whenever I try to load the map using the console after launching my mod it fails and prints this error:

GAME SKILL LEVEL:1
Last 32 messages parsed.
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
0 0000 svc_bad
BAD: -1:svc_bad
Wrote erroneous message to buffer.dat
Host_Error: backwards mins/maxs

After some quick research I discovered the cause behind this error is kind of ambiguous apparently. It's speculated to be caused by entity overload whereby there are too many entities calling on each other in the map. So I recompiled the map with almost zero entities and even recreated a basic version of the puzzle in another map. The map still wouldn't load and the recreation worked perfectly so it can't be an entity problem.

Posting here is usually a last a resort so yeah I'm pretty stuck right now. I like what I've done with the map and I'm not keen on starting over. Thanks in advance for anything you can tell me.

Well, you can try using Spirit of Half-Life or Xash3D. They are capable of bigger maps with more complex stuff. I believe the Steam version of Sven-Coop has also modified limits, but i cant tell.

I don't think switching the mod over to a different modified version of the game is really the answer they're looking for here. If the complex puzzle can be recreated without issue and the base map still fails to load with the majority of the entities removed, it might be worth considering that there is an issue elsewhere in the map. I've checked and you're right in saying that there is little to no information about this online. The only threads I could find were with regards to online servers for CS1.6, with one exception which solved the issue by disabling HD models.

Otherwise, it looks to be a tricky issue to triage without seeing the files in some form.

In that case, I guess the only fix I can really think of is compiling regularly in between making changes or additions to maps. I could be mistaken but I seem to recall reading somewhere that you're supposed to do that anyway but I'm not sure.

Couldn't hurt. I guess it really depends on how you prefer to work. I used to work room by room and whenever I hit compile issues I could just cut the map a couple of rooms before and stick in a loading screen. In the last couple of years I've had to work in stages. Blockout > Texturing and detailing > Objects. I've not done that in Goldsource yet though and I imagine you could hit some limits if your blockout is already fairly huge before you start piling in the details and entity work.

Pros and cons to every method I suppose. Level design is fun, haha