Getting Sick of This Created 18 years ago2005-08-08 13:47:24 UTC by HeAdCrAb KILLA

Alright, I've just about had it with mapping lately. My latest map just won't fuckin' compile. Firstly, I had a problem with the VIS and the map compiling all together. Now, I'm getting another error stating that there are too many direct lights on a god damn face. Or something like that. Anyways, the program gives me no location to the problem and acts likes a friggan retard. It just gives a little (?,?,?) thing. Sorry for the language but I'm getting tired of this sh**!

Since you posted to the HL Design Questions forum, your question is what?

The problem is too many different switchable/flashing lights in one area. If you have more than 2 different lights in one area of your map, remove some. The problem is wherever theres a lot of lights, sir.

And check Tommy14's.

If you have too many direct lights on a face its because you either have more then 4 lights with seperate names on a single solid. To fix this remove their names

I thought it was different styles of light, not their names...

No, its their names. I had the same problem once when i had 6 seperate light_spot entitys with different name being triggered by a button. Thanks to jaardsi i solved it by giving them one name

EDIT: which reminds me, make sure your lights have the same name if oyou want them to be switchable

It's a combination, Mephs: if they switch on and off together, they're one lightmap.

Yah, I read up on it to be sure

I thought it was different styles of light, not their names...

It's a combination, Mephs: if they switch on and off together, they're one lightmap.

It may help if you think about what the lighting engine does during complilation to figure out how your textures will look when the map is played.

In general..

1. For speed's sake, there is no actual lighting that's calculated during the map-play itself, with only a few exceptions (your flashlight, rocket flame as it travels along and, I think, the power-up light the alien slave does before it fires. Stuff like that). The various brightnesses of each brush (or texture leaf - just an educated guess there) from "fixed" lights are calculated during compilation.

2. As lights are turned on and off during map-play, those various precalculated texture brightnesses are rendered.

3. So, during compilation, each combination of brightness from the various on-or-off lights that fall on a brush is calculated to store for display during the play.

4. If a bunch of lights all have the same name, the lighting engine knows they will all be on at once, or off at once. It only has to calculate the brightness at a brush for that one bunch as on or off.

5. The lighting engine then calculates the various combinations of brightnesses for all the "bunches" of lights that may illuminate a brush. The map is capable of storing only a limited number of brightnesses for each brush.

6. It's apparent the lighting engine doesn't evaluate the switch logic to determine how lights are turned on and off, it just assumes each light with a different name may be switched on or off independently and counts that toward the total (limited) number of ways a brush may be lit.

7. If you have a lot of lights with different names, whether they're switched on and off as a group, each light counts as a separate contribution to the total number of combinations allowed.