Rant on experience with "Access Den Created 8 years ago2016-03-13 21:36:58 UTC by FriesNburger

I've had an itch to get back to mapping and to stick with it recently. I wanted to dissect Half-life maps and see how certain things worked so i could hopefully be a more competent mapper among other things. I decided to use the steam Half-Life SDK with Hammer Editor 3.4 that it comes with for reasons I might get to later in this post. I also went to Botman's site and picked up a couple of tools I found convenient for my purposes.

In the config I set up my directories and build programs directories, wad file paths, and so on. For the build programs I used the valve proprietary compile tools. During the mapping process I used custom 1024x1024 (~1mb) textures made with bsp_slicer.exe to rebuild the basic map geometry (perfect practice for mapping) cause, you know... decompilers don't do a very great job they like to carve the whole map from a single brush block and is a huge mess.

I couldn't use the textures at first cause I could not simply select it from the browser and then press apply in the texture tool. Instead I had to awkwardly replace the gaben trigger texture with the 1024x1024 ones. Then I could use them normally... weird... I also had to have the whole brush selected as well because how the replace feature worked differently when a single face was selected(don't remember the exact details).

So the math is a 1024x1024 texture applied to 6 sides of a brush is 6 megabytes, which is 3 times over the texture memory limit (~2mb). This is the best I can figure as to why I was getting the compile error MAX_MAP_MIPTEX. Looked up this error and it said that I was using to many textures which exceeded the alotted memory limit. Well that didn't make any sense because I had the minimal amout of brushes to create a working map and not that many textures.
That's when I realized, of course, it had to be the massive texture size I was using.

I didn't want to break them down because I thought it would take to much time (later on I found you can do it really
quickly with photoshop cs3). So I had also read you can pass the command option -texdata 4020 to qcsg.exe to increase the memory limit to ~4mb. When I tried to compile again I got a diferrent error which was: Windows gave the error "Access Denied". Orignally I thought windows didn't like me modifying a tool set to read only or didn't have
Administrative rights, or UAC was causing this, or my configuration paths were somehow wrong.

Come to find out when running an elevated console and compiling my .rmf file directly with qcsg.exe plus the command
option -texdata that qcsg.exe doesnt recognize that command and I later find out that command was for Zoner's version of the compile tools. So naturally decided to use Zoner's tools, but to make a already long story short, the tools made bsp files that GoldSrc Steam Half-Life didn't like because it would crash with a fatal read error.

So I've decided to stick with the tools that came with Hammer Editor. I see it as a challenge and dicipline to make
these maps with the quake compile tools(I'm a bit of purist anyway). The whole point of this post really is to talk about the Access Deinied error because there isn't much information on it at all. So I hope that this gives a little
more light on this error.

Purist or not, there's no disadvantages to using the new compile tools... or even Hammer 3.5b or Sledge.

Also if you want to learn how to make something just ask us
No shame to using modern tools or techniques

But of course there is no disadvantage. However I guess I'm a glutton for pain because I feel that I learn more the more I have problems to fix and issues to work around. Maybe after a bit quake compile tool use I may have earned the right (in my mind) to use tools like Zoners

Something that might cause the "Access Denied" error is when your Hammer/Half-Life is on different partitions on your hard drive.

I remember in the past people having problem with this, they had their Hammer and compilers in C: and their Half-Life in D: and when they migrated their Hammer and compilers in D:, everything work fine.

If this is the case for you, try the above, otherwise, Google/Yahoo/Bing is your friend.

Sorry for the long post, but I know what the problem is. In the case you described is not what happened to me. What was happening is that it was giving me the access denied error cause of a command option I was trying to pass was not recognized. I have cut up my 1024X1024 textures into 16 pieces at 256x256 size to get around texture memory limit instead of passing a command that isn't recognized.

EDIT: The maximum texture size for Goldsrc is 512x512 right?? I cut my texture into 4 pieces of that size and I get a checkered pattern.. using
The steam version of half-life

EDIT: Apparently it's 256x256 but im confused about texture pixels to hammer units 1 px = 0.25 units so 256x256 = 64 x 64 units but it isnt the right size!!! sigh... Ill figure it out eventually

Textures map 1:1. 64x64pixels = 64x64 units

Textures map 1:1. 64x64pixels = 64x64 units

are you sure? thats 4,906 units. I did 256 x 256 = 65,536 x 0.25 =

16,384sqrt= 128x128 units

Positive. If you make a 64x64 texture and apply it to a 64x64 face and then center it. It fits perfect (if your texture scale is 1)

Textures map 1:1. 64x64pixels = 64x64 units

I got my problem figured out finally! my textures are not 1:1 scale i forgot that I passed the -s2 command option BSP_slicer which halved the original scale

EDIT: Since I couldn't seem figure pixels -> units and have the result be a brush of the right size I instead used the decompiled map geometry as a guide for making a brush the exact size of the level then divided that into sixteenths and lo and behold the textures mapped perfectly!

EDIT: Is there a limit to how long someone can keep a thread going?

Threads go dead after 3 months and can only be revived by mods. Else, there's no limit on post count within a thread, but double posts are not recommended because you can edit the last post in the thread if it's yours.

I still don't get why you're decompiling the map though. Are you trying to do a map modification or looking at entity setups?

both. map modification and looking at entities + to get the hang of mapping. I'm planning, over time, to do all 90 single player maps. Like everyone has played the normal game in sven coop so I want to shake it up a bit

I'm planning, over time, to do all 90 single player maps

Have fun with that haha. That's quite an ambitious undertaking - best of luck.

hence over time lol. I have other ambitious things that I want to do like finish learning to program in C++ first and foremost.