So, out of sheer boredom, I started to work on my own little model, pretty much a hand-crafted version of Hang 'em High. I lack inspiration to make my own map entirely from scratch, with my own ideas. However, I did model the map entirely on my own, which is something I'm proud to say I've done for the first time; I've never been a good modeler, so it's pretty awesome I succeeded.

However, when I finally fixed every open edge first, UVW Mapped the textures properly, made sure everything was ready to go, and saved it... I tried to run Bluestreak (I use Max 9, so Blitzkrieg won't work), and export the .JMS file. ... Failed. It highlighted this line in the code:

					numFaces += getNumFaces geometry_objects[g]

What in the hell does that mean? I would really like this map to work. ;; It was so beautifully designed (even if I'm a copycat, and basically stole the idea from Bungie, just adding my own little twist to it).

There is no Blitzkreig exporter for max 9 and above, if it says that then it is incorrectly named.

Edit: Realized what you were saying.


Could my error be because of using the same .TIF file for two different Material ID's, maybe?
Edited by MF Boom on Mar 23, 2009 at 04:24 PM

Found out what it was. Several problems, actually. I didn't convert the water plane to an editable mesh, nor the frame; the water plane had a Diffuse color, but not an actual .TIF bitmap -- I mixed up that with the +sky material, I always get those two confused. But I went ahead and changed the two materials to use different .TIF files.
Edited by MF Boom on Mar 23, 2009 at 04:44 PM

New error.

Unable to structure this time... Attempted "tool structure levels\levelname levelname", and this error came up.

03.23.09 17:00:34  tool pc 01.00.00.0609 ----------------------------------------------
03.23.09 17:00:34  reference function: _write_to_error_file
03.23.09 17:00:34  reference address: 42ca20
03.23.09 17:00:34  Couldn't read map file './toolbeta.map'
03.23.09 17:00:35  EAX: 0xFFFFFFFE
03.23.09 17:00:35  EBX: 0x001EDA01
03.23.09 17:00:35  ECX: 0x0012F2D0
03.23.09 17:00:35  EDX: 0x000002CC
03.23.09 17:00:35  EDI: 0x0012F2D0
03.23.09 17:00:35  ESI: 0x00000000
03.23.09 17:00:35  EBP: 0x0012F1A8
03.23.09 17:00:35  ESP: 0x0012F198
03.23.09 17:00:35  EIP: 0x7C90EB94, C3 8D A4 24 ?????
03.23.09 17:00:35  EXCEPTION halt in .\intermediate_geometry.c,#444: triangle->material_index>=0 && triangle->material_index<old_material_count

Edited by MF Boom on Mar 23, 2009 at 05:05 PM

I dont use Bluestreak so i dont ever remember this one, but either use multimaterials or standard materials (whichever you are not using now) or something is untextured or something like that.

Your materials are out of order. Like:
1
3
4
2

Instead of :
1
2
3
4

Actually, that wasn't it. They were out of order, yes; I had to rearrange them 'cause I put them wrong, and they were in the order of 2-1-3... But I left that alone, and since fixed it.

This second error I encountered was because one of the material ID's somehow was targeting a .JPG file rather than the .TIF I was actually using; and, the water was done on a Standard material, rather than a Multi-Sub Object with 1 ID... On top of that, the water had an ID of 1; even though it was an object all on it's own with it's own material, it needed to have an ID of 4 (since 1-3 were used for the main map).

I left the order 2-1-3 still, and it compiled just fine. I tend to make that mistake a lot, and they end up out of sequence, but it still works just fine every time.

 

Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to get the map lighted properly without being really shadowed. I want it to have lighting, but not epic shadowing... Kind of like how Hang 'em High turned out; it had a ceiling in almost the whole map, but didn't end up majorly dark and shadowed. I had /more/ openings in the ceiling, but it still ended up really dark in the areas that were in the shade, rather than the light.

Also, I need to find some good textures. I wish there was a site that had textures that were suitable for use in Halo. I find that the best textures can be tiled and connect together perfectly... But it's hard to find good textures like that.

It does not matter what picture file you use. Exporting only reads the names of the materials. You could have no picture file and it would still work.

For your lighting problem. There are two ways you could fix this. You could cheap out and just make the whole map lit the same or to do it the right way, you would make a new sky tag and mess with the settings there.

To make your own lightmaps, just make a 512 x 512 texture that is all white and run it thought tool compressed as a lightmap. Then just change what lightmaps bitmap the level runs to that.

Alright; I wasn't sure about the picture. But, the Standard material was what crashed it. Which is still odd in itself, because I thought I'd used that once before, but I guess not. I did reorder the numbers now though because it just looks more organized.



The lightmaps feature will come in handy; I didn't know about that. Thanks... What I'd thought about doing was changing all the walls & ceiling to a +sky material, then compiling that, running lightmaps, and then changing it back and recompiling that model without running lightmaps again... That's worked in the past; but it's a very tedious task.


So basically you're saying to make a 512 x 512 .TIF file, solid white (just like you would for Water), then replace that .bitmap over the one the level's using?