Cordon Tool Destroyed My Map Created 15 years ago2008-12-31 20:49:42 UTC by Warrior

Yeah, that's right: cordon tool deleted most of my map. It's weird that I had never noticed that cordon tool can be actually used to annihilate your map, except the area you defined in the cordon area...

Only thing I did was selecting the area I specifically wanted to compile. Then I saved, started compiling but it failed because of a invalid object in the map (I used cordon to debug my map). Then Hammer crashed and when I got back, the whole map was gone.

I'm here just to warn people but if someone actually got an idea how to retrieve my map except by decompiling or digging it up from the RAM (too late now, I'm pretty sure) I would be gratious.

what probably happened is it didn't actuall save and you lost it after the crash... i dunno think the cordon tool was the culprit imo.

as far as retrieving your map, i would just say rebuild it as horrible as it sounds (you'd be surprised how much better you rebuild it ;)). did you make any backups of the map at all?

Don't use the cordon tool full stop. The error you got was probably caused by the cordon tool as it is terribly buggy.

That's funny, I've used the cordon tool many times before without any problems. Glad I never had my map destroyed.

You might want to try finding the RMX backup and renaming it as RMF, it might still be intact.

I never use the cordon tool. If I have a problem, I just use visgroups to isolate it.

Visgroups don't do anything in-game. The cordon tool lets you designate a little section of your map to compile in, and I believe it blocks off any leaks as well.

Visgroups don't do anything in-game. The cordon tool lets you designate a little section of your map to compile in, and I believe it blocks off any leaks as well.

If you deselect (hide) a visgroup, it won't compile, and therefore won't be included in-game. It works great for bad brushes and problem entities. As for leaks, I prefer to use entity placement and the compiler log file to isolate it.

There's a cordon tool?

Hammer converts .rmf's to .map before compile. Check it.

This will surely help you :

Wiki thing

f you deselect (hide) a visgroup, it won't compile, and therefore won't be included in-game.

I don't think that's true. If i hide the sky visgroup in my map the sky still compiles... I do think this is true in source mapping though?

I don't think that's true. If i hide the sky visgroup in my map the sky still compiles... I do think this is true in source mapping though?

My bad, I am thinking of Source. Haven't done much in GldSrc for a while.

Hammer converts .rmf's to .map before compile. Check it.

Yeah, i was gonna say that until i realized that Hammer would export everything within the cordon bounds to the map file, lol, so he would still have the same map.

WAIT! is that it? are you not saving as an RMF instead are you saving as the map? That might be the problem. Hammer overwrote the map with the cordon bound version, hence the crash and when you reload, guess what you get!?!

Yeah, i was gonna say that until i realized that Hammer would export everything within the cordon bounds to the map file, lol, so he would still have the same map.

Well yeah, but maybe it crashed before exporting the map?

I find the cordon tool incredibly useful at times.
Like if i'm compiling a huge map, and i just added on another part, i'll just cordon off the new part and run a fast compile.

I always forget about the cordon tool until I've been sitting through painfully long test compiles for a week or two. Then it works like a charm. Of course, it essentially just places a big black box around the volume you select; if you're trying to compile a major portion of the map this is much like enclosing your map in the dreaded skybox, and can actually hurt your compile... Also, occasionally, I've had it cause an invalid entity (no doubt depending on where you place the cut...)

Never lost a level though. You MUST be working ONLY with your MAP file and not saving as RMF.

I've never had much success using the cordon tool but i was probably just using it wrong.

I instead use the "big box" method where you just enclose any area you don't want compiled inside a big world brush. Nothing inside the big block will be compiled.

I use this method to just compile small parts of a map for a quick compile, and to isolate errors such as leaks and leaf-saws... Highly useful.

Er.. the cordon tool isn't a big 'black box'. It actually removes the brushes outside of its area temporarily when the tool is on. In any case, it should never extend your compile time.

True it omits everything outside of its extents ... but if you enclose a large section of void, that gets included into your BSP file -- along with all the exterior surfaces which would not ordinarily be compiled, thrown into the mix because they are now INTERIOR surfaces...

So yes, it throws out everything outside of the cordon, but includes EVERYTHING inside the cordon. It WILL extend your compile time of you use it unwisely!

(And while I'm fairly sure that I ran into this limitation while developing my latest level, I have just done a test on a tiny one-room level. Adding a cordon that is too large (cutting off some of the level but extending out into the void) increased the BSP from 87kb to 299kb! The BSP viewer clearly shows the extra "skybox-like" room around the original...)

Edit: Admittedly that MAY have been because the top of my room was sky; I'll do another test later to see if the same thing happens without sky involved... But then, it's not like sky is completely unheard of...

Further Edit: Replaced the sky with a light-emitting texture and it produced a large "outside" room and had to do all the lighting calcs. Definite slowdown.