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Common map glitches


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MichaBen

Sat Jun 28 2008

Registered Member #1336

Joined: Tue Jul 25 2006
Location: Netherlands (Rotterdam)
Posts: 267

Since some of these things caused lots of trouble for me until I fixed it, I decided to write it down in case others have the same problem. Map making is a pain, specially when it comes to problems that do not generate an error message but just make your map behave incorrectly.

Invisible PSPs
When you are using lots of objects, sometimes it happens that your PSPs are no longer showing up in the map, and they will also be missing in the list of spawn points. But you can still take over them and spawn there, if you know the letter of it.
The problem happens a lot when you are using lots of walls in order to make a building. The spinmap is not be able to render so many buildings, that some will not be visible any more. You don't have to cut out any objects however, all you need to do is make some objects invisible in the map. If you select all the walls (or most of them) and make them invisible, most likely the PSPs will show again.

No collision or mounted weapons on vehicles
Now this is a nasty one. When you have to many enemies around the map, vehicles will lose collision and mounted weapons are no longer available for AIs. As a player you can still use the weapons, but you can notice in the small picture of the vehicle that the weapons have no seat number assigned any more and you cannot use the hotkeys to switch to that weapon while attached. This first happens on boats, later also on other objects and finally also on players. The problem can appear and disappear at any time during the map, it does not have to be there at the start.
Fixing this can be a pain, specially when it happens during the map. You need to reduce the number of enemies for this, but there is no fixed limit. In some maps you can have up to 230 enemies, while in others 100 is the limit. Using objects like the concrete dock pieces seems to make the problem worse. And that is also why the problem can happen during the map: if you teleport enemies or they walk onto a concrete dock, the problems start. Once they are dead or walked away from the dock piece, everything works fine again.
When you have the problem in combination with the concrete dock pieces, make sure not to many enemies are on them at the same time. Teleport the enemies when you need them, or make a hidden passage and let them walk in when it's time. As long as they are off the dock pieces, you can safely have over 200 bad guys in the map.

Teleporting enemies doing nothing
A way to reuse enemies is teleporting them after their death. But sometimes the enemy ends up as a zombie, doing nothing. That is mostly because you teleport them to soon after their death. Wait as long as possible with teleporting them. A dead enemy is removed after around 30 seconds, the last time to teleport them is 29 seconds. That gives them enough time to reset and come back attacking you instead of as a zombie.

Nasty helicopters not showing up
When you use helicopters with a different AI textfile (like those little rocket helis that use flares and chase the player), it might be possible that they don't show up where you waned them to. These helicopters have their own AI and can move freely around the whole map. However, they will not just attack the player, they will attack anything that belongs to the blue team.
When you have a vehicle supply way back at the insertion, and one of the players walked over one of the cars and then stepped in another one, it is possible that there is a blue team vehicle way back there. The helicopter might have went all the way back to X in order to attack that instead. Or you might have a blackhawk for the extraction waiting outside the mission zone to fly the team out after the mission. If it is assigned to the blue team, the helicopter will go attack if when he sees it. Make sure the helicopter isn't getting distracted by anything that belong to your team, cause unlike normal bots they will chase everything your team owns and they will not stop until they have it (an example of this is the Hms Get The Crew II map, where the apaches that should attack the player go attacking the HmS crew heli at the other side of the map when nobody is in the server).


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