I've run across a strange and frustrating bug with door/stair icons on a map I have created. Perhaps someone is familiar with the problem. The short version: If I put too many doors or door/stair icons on my map, all is fine when I enter the area for the first time. But when I go to the map a second time everything grinds to a virtual standstill. The icons are all gone, the PC is gone except for his blue circle, and the game cannot continue. More... After hours of trying many possible combinations, I can find no common thread other than the total number of static object in place. I add them one by one, and somewhere between 4 and 8 the bug begins, but it's no specific one that causes the problem. Each of the work just fine alone, but when too many of them are together the problem begins. I have removed all particles, all blocking and SVB flags, all clipping data, all mobs, and all other static objects so as to remove other possible causes for the problem. I have started from a fresh sector twice, and added only the icons one by one, and the problem again happens. No funny flags are set on any of the objects, just the X, Y, rotation, X-offset, and Y-offset. The jump points are working perfectly. If I have only the 3 icons on the map, without the doors, they're fine. But then I add a few doors and the bug starts. I've checked MapLimits.mes to see if something funny is going on there, and it looks OK. I am using area 5060, and all the static objects are in one sector named 569762055.sec. There is nothing else in any other sector. Everything else for the area is finished, and working wonderfully, and this problem has been lingering for a few weeks now and I'm finally caving in and asking for help, heh. I've included a screen shot of the map, and a list of the objects. (The blocking data was removed for testing) Thanks for even looking, and if you know of any solution let me know.
This is a sectoring issue that results from adding scenery objects (portals are actually scenery objects) to maps when you've already saved your game with data that does not include the scenery objects. Are you testing this map with a saved game? I used to struggle with the problem too, it's just somehow ToEE suffers what Agetian calls a "fatal memory leak" when non-native scenery objects are drawn over a unique save, resulting in repeated attempts to draw all the scenery objects that just loop and eventually consume so much system memory that the game bogs down. (Or something like that. It's the same thing that we see happen once in a while when players get the 'butterfly effect' - particle system graphics get drawn over and over and so on.) I think I just got around it by saving my test game on an adjacent map, modding the changes on the target map, and then testing by going from the base map to the target map each time, thus forcing the game to load all the target map's assets anew because you've never actually been there before with that save. (Make sure you never have been on the target map in the save.) WorldBuilder also has an attached utility called Sector Sort that is supposed to sort of flush sector data and may have the same effect, ultimately.
I finally found a solution to the problem this morning, but I'm not sure if it can be used consistently. It has to do with the order that the the static objects are in, which is what I think you were getting at with your last comment. If I order them very carefully I can get things to work properly. The bug seems to kick in when I embed an object that significantly jumps around the map in comparison to the other objects on the list. For example on my map, I added the 5 regular doors and everything was OK, then I added to 2 icons in the southern area and that was OK too, but the problem arose when I added another back near the original 5 doors. So what finally worked was: 1 Icon north 5 Doors north 2 Icons south I've experienced this "butterfly effect" with the particles you are referring to, with the fireplace buring a hole thru the screen. I do believe that IS what is happening here, but I'm not totally sure why in my case. I test most sector changes with a complete restart of the game and a new PC just to make sure I'm not getting old data in any way, although starting with a saved game from a different area and then traveling to the changed area as you advised is a time saver for intermediate changes. I'll check this out, thanks. This will probably fix my problem automatically without me having to find the secret magical order that works from trial and error.
Yep, the Sector Sort Tool automatically did what took me hours of painstaking experimentation to figure out, too funny. It put the objects in the correct order so there is no buggy behavior. Now I absolutely must dig thru the source code of that program to see what logic it uses to decide the proper order. I'm beyond curious. Once again Gaear thanks for the help, and I'll have to come up a few more issues so you can get to post 10,000. :notworthy
Cool. I really don't think order affects anything btw. More likely you just run into the problem when you enter an affected sector.
Sector sort 'sorts' them into the correct order Truly one of our most frustrating bugs. Glad to see you are making progress Marc. My latest mod is a macro to put Gaear back to 0 if he passes 9999.
