Bad Lights? Created 13 years ago2011-02-22 23:20:10 UTC by winds

Sorry for all the help topics guys haha, but I just find I get the most odd errors.
Right now I am trying to make a light that is initially dark, and is turned on by a multi_manager which is activated by a func_breakable. Now whenever I try to compile before, it would always give me about 10, 000 errors of something like Bad Face Lights on Face <?, ?, ?> or something like that. Now that error stopped but towards the end of my compile the compilator just freezes and windows says "hlrad.exe has crashed". This also happens when I try to add a light entity with the flicker A setting.
Anyone know what would cause this?
Thanks!

have you tried just targetting the light directly instead of through the multimanager?

Targeting it directly with the func_breakable?
Well it wasn't ideal as the multi_manager also activates a few other entities too. But I just tried it and it still crashed hlrad

Are you sure hlrad has crashed, do you get and actual error message?

Compiling a map can take a long time and sometime Windows erroneously reports the compile tools as "not responding".

Compiling a map can take a long time and sometime Windows erroneously reports the compile tools as "not responding".

This happens a LOT! It is very, very annoying.

windows says "hlrad.exe has crashed"

He's sure.

The "Too many light styles on face" error is caused when you have numerous light entities either with non-standard appearance settings (flicker etc) or even regular lights which are triggered on or off all touching one face. RAD can't handle the amount of light information it has to calculate for each possible "configuration" of lights which will be touching the face at any given time.

As far as I know, there is no fix for this error other than removing the offending lights and coming up with a work-around.
Perhaps toggled textures with glow sprites rather than actual lights?

Oh wow, okay thanks Huntey. I had a hunch it was something like that but wasn't sure!
Will it work if I just lower the brightness down on the lights very minimal? Not sure lol.
Thanks!

Unlikely. Try reducing the number of lights until it compiles successfully, then add on more lights at lower brightness until it breaks again so that you can see where the limit is.

In Goldsource, even just 3 lights with different appearance settings can cause this issue, though.

It's ok if you only get a handful of the "Too many light styles on a face" message, but if you get a huge amount of them, enough to spam the top part of the compile log off the window, you want to cut down on dynamic lights.

I think Atom and I handled this problem in another thread. Not going to look for it.

A surface may only be lit by up to 4 lights with different targetnames. This means a face can be lit by unlimited different light styles as long as they share up to 4 names.

And I read somewhere that if the styles are the same, meaning the light values are the same, then it doesn't count either if they are named something different.