[fixed]Warping floor oddness 1.0.01

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 15:53

Another test level of mine: this one has all the animations, both walls and floors, from my mod in it.

Most of the time the level looks as it should. However, sometimes, from a certain angle in a certain area, the floor and ceiling in one sector show an oddness. It flashes between looking normal and using one of the warped flats in place of the regular one. At least it is on the floor, I'm not sure which flat is getting used on the ceiling - it's hard to tell. This continues alternating with each "state" being shown for about 8 tics.

If I move to a different angle or position, the effect goes away. If I switch off shader warping, again the effect goes away - switching it back on restores the problem. It's not always repeatable either. Sometimes it happens, but quitting and restarting may or may not allow it to happen again.

The screenshots were taken without me moving, to try and demonstrate the alternating nature of the effect.

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 15:58

Hmmm, that's interesting. I never noticed this before. The effect isn't, as I thought, a straight substitution of wrong textures for the correct ones. There seems to be some sort of overlay effect going on. You can still see the floor-tile pattern through the lava on the floor and the nukage looks like a combination of lava and nukage too. The lava texture does not look like this. It is a proper tiling, with no seams, lava-like, orangey texture.

lemonzest · Post by **lemonzest** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 19:29

I'm getting the same problem in doom2 with the splash wad, this is outside in the secret area in map01

happens when the imp balls causing the dynamic lights to mess up.

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 19:44

I wonder if splashes are relevant? My liquid floors all have splashes defined for them and I'd certainly caused a few splashes before noticing the effect.

lemonzest · Post by **lemonzest** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 19:55

well i have not caused any splashes, just nocliped into the area

Post by **Enjay** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 0:22

I just got the effect again on the same level, but in a different area. This time it was a bit more interesting too because as I moved around, the effect was using different flats in the wrong place. I've captured a short video of it (size and quality reduced) so if you want to see the effect in action.

http://www.zen64060.zen.co.uk/warpfactor10.wmv

Zeg-Vok · Post by **Zeg-Vok** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 0:36

THATS AWESOME! This is one bug I have to say is pretty cool looking.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 0:52

I really need something to produce this bug.

Post by **Enjay** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:09

I've been trying to make something that I can send that will produce the bug, and failed. I really don't know why either.

I made a simple map with 4 pools of warping flats, with a simple 4 line animdefs. No problem was visible when I played the level.

I copied my bigger animdefs (from my mod) into the WAD and GZdoom refused to start because of missing textures.

I copied all the flats and TXs from my mod into the test WAD and commented out all the definitions for wall animations in animdefs. Tada! I got the problem.

I weeded out all the flats/TXs that were not mentioned in animdefs and... the effect stopped again.

I put all the flats and TXs back and the effect returned.

I decided to check whether something in my skins directory was involved, so I renamed the skins directory and... the effect went away.

One by one, I copied the files from my skins directory and loaded them with the test file. I could not get the error to happen.

I set my skins directory back to its original name and... the effect came back.

The files in my skins directory are: BBA.WAD (bloodbath announcer sounds for DM), BLUD.WAD (A skin of Caleb from Blood), flashlight.wad (a doom3-like flashlight using dynamic lights), Keen.wad (commander keen skin), lights.wad (dynamic lights), njblk01.wad (Blake Stone skins), njsplash.wad (my splash wad: defining splashes and footfall sounds for all the default floors), scope.wad (some crosshairs and a sound to support a sniper scope alias), variants.wad (my doomguy skin variants) and Xhairs.wad - some extra crosshairs.

So, the problem is, I can't seem to get the effect in an easily portable format. With everything set up, I can get the effect to happen almost every time. If I change almost anything, the effect goes away. Complicating this is, of course, the fact that it doesn't happen every time. So where I have said above that there was no effect, it could just have been a time when the effect wasn't going to happen anyway and nothing to do with what I changed.

Other things I have noticed - the effect can be "switched on" and off by shooting. I would find that the level looked fine until I went to a specific point on in the level and shot at one of the pools and the effect would start. I could wander around the level shooting different places and either change the texture that was leaking all over the level or switch the effect off completely. Sometimes the texture would flash between normal and messed up as originally described and sometimes there would be no flashing (ie the effect was constant - and quite pretty actually). The flat leaking all over the place was not necessarily the same one as being shot and it happened with flats that were defined in my splash wad and ones that were not. I also noticed that some, but not all, walls would be affected like lemonzest's screenshot. ie the flat could leak onto the walls and show the effect there too, as well as the floor.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:20

I suspect the dynamic lights. Can you start the map again until the error shows and then disable them? If that doesn't help try to temporarily remove each WAD from your skins directory until you find the one that's causing it.

Post by **Enjay** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:09

Graf Zahl wrote:I suspect the dynamic lights. Can you start the map again until the error shows and then disable them?

I suspect you're right. I started up the map, got the effect and then went into the options. As soon as the dynamic lights were switched off, I could see the paused game in the background return to normal. Switching them back on did not immediately restore the effect but it was easy to bring it back by firing the pistol again.

As a side issue, once this gets sorted out, would it be possible to actually have a system where the effect was actually usable and definable? A lot of the impact is lost in the attached screeny, but this floor looked really cool with translucent lava warping over the rocky floor. The only problem was it was very dark. The light level in all secotors in this level is set at 176 but the lava/rock combination makes it seem darker. I know the effect can be done with 3D floors too, I just thought it might be worthwhile having a definable system.

The screenshot also shows the effect happening on one or two sidedefs.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:55

Fixed. The warp shader wasn't disabled for texture-less rendering passes and the regular settings have no effect inside a shader.

YouTube · Post by **Nash** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 23:58

I imagine if the bug was added as an intended feature, it would require shader support which means my computer won't be able to produce the effect. :/

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 0:07

If it was done as a feature it could also be done with multitexturing.

SlayeR · Post by **SlayeR** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 0:18

Yeah looks like something zdoomgl's shaders could do

I wonder if timmie will ever get around to adding them to gzdoom like he said he would.