Black spot with start.lit

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Baker
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Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2006 5:15 am

Black spot with start.lit

Post by Baker »

I have discovered the start.lit that has been around for ages shows a black square near the Episode 1 teleporter in FitzQuake 0.85.

How likely is it that this is a flaw in the start.lit file versus the engine?

I ask because MH has some notes about corrupt lit files in his engine and I just don't see anything in the lightmap loader that could be wrong.

If it in the engine issue category, would this be doing all the lightmaps except 1 or any suggestions from anyone on how to narrow down what could be doing this?

a) Could this be a dlights issue (nope, checked) or a lightstyle change issue? (This 2nd one sounds like something MH talked about. Something about the default lightstyle and the new one being the same not triggering a refresh of something or rather .... I don't recall the details of it obviously)
The night is young. How else can I annoy the world before sunsrise? 8) Inquisitive minds want to know ! And if they don't -- well like that ever has stopped me before ..
Baker
Posts: 3666
Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2006 5:15 am

Re: Black spot with start.lit

Post by Baker »

Must be an engine bug of some sort. :(

Tried FTE and it looks absolutely fine.
The night is young. How else can I annoy the world before sunsrise? 8) Inquisitive minds want to know ! And if they don't -- well like that ever has stopped me before ..
Spike
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Re: Black spot with start.lit

Post by Spike »

fte, fuhquake, and presumably also ezquake+fodquake normalize light intensities to match the bsp's original lighting.
this does two things:
1: 'fixes' the dodgy lit files that were around in the qw scene at the time (you can still get strange colours, just the intensity is consistant with how the map always was).
2: ensures that you cannot make the map fullbright by just filling up the lit file with the value 255, and for this reason there is no setting to disable lit normalisation (although a value of 32 or so would mean players and fullbright skins would be *really* visible).

replacement .lit files that have a subtle lighting algorithm difference between the bsp's light and the relight process can result in surfaces which should receive light in the lit file, but where that lightstyle does not affect that surface. The relight tool will apply light to the neighbouring surfaces that can receive light, but the surface which doesn't have that lightstyle allocated to it cannot receive ANY light... either the relight tool allocates it to the wrong lightstyle or just drops that light entirely.
Baker
Posts: 3666
Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2006 5:15 am

Re: Black spot with start.lit

Post by Baker »

Spike wrote:fte, fuhquake, and presumably also ezquake+fodquake normalize light intensities to match the bsp's original lighting.
this does two things:
1: 'fixes' the dodgy lit files that were around in the qw scene at the time (you can still get strange colours, just the intensity is consistant with how the map always was).
2: ensures that you cannot make the map fullbright by just filling up the lit file with the value 255, and for this reason there is no setting to disable lit normalisation (although a value of 32 or so would mean players and fullbright skins would be *really* visible).

replacement .lit files that have a subtle lighting algorithm difference between the bsp's light and the relight process can result in surfaces which should receive light in the lit file, but where that lightstyle does not affect that surface. The relight tool will apply light to the neighbouring surfaces that can receive light, but the surface which doesn't have that lightstyle allocated to it cannot receive ANY light... either the relight tool allocates it to the wrong lightstyle or just drops that light entirely.
Ok, well in some engines the texture is too bright. Not by much, but guessing it got averaged from 0 ----> 128 isn't far fetched. Which leads me to believe the .lit file could be messed up. But why would the lighting look fine in FTE?

These things drive me crazy and I tried 6 different things to shed light on the issue inside the engine [all failed to even affect the surface] ... so I have to reach the conclusion the lit file is at fault.

I can easily believe the early replacement content files were "dodgy", considering often really bad texture alignment (and missing ones) etc etc. I just find this annoying, but really it shouldn't surprise either ...
The night is young. How else can I annoy the world before sunsrise? 8) Inquisitive minds want to know ! And if they don't -- well like that ever has stopped me before ..
Baker
Posts: 3666
Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2006 5:15 am

Re: Black spot with start.lit

Post by Baker »

I've put in "averaging" against the in bsp light data and it limits the issue. Maybe I'll fix start.lit, but at least I know what issue is now. The .lit file.

Drives me a bit crazy that a 10 year old file would have such an issue go unnoticed, but I guess it happens ...
The night is young. How else can I annoy the world before sunsrise? 8) Inquisitive minds want to know ! And if they don't -- well like that ever has stopped me before ..
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