Disappearing Decals

[Kiliax]

Using the original Supcom Map Editor - Wondering if anyone else has come across the same issues I have with decals disappearing when you tilt camera in certain positions? I have tried a few things to remedy this or to figure out what causes this with no luck. I used to layer my decals (for detailing a mex location for example) and then copy and paste them all at same time over other mex locations and not only did this seem to make the disappearing decals issue worse, it would also paste decals out of layer order - placing a bottom level decal on top of the stack. I tried placing all decals according to layer order without copying pasting and this did not solve the issue either. I thought maybe it was because I was placing decals on edges of heightmap changes but decals were also disappearing on flat terrain.

[Morax]

The engine has a pretty noticeable limit to how many decals it will render at one time. It is really low in my opinion, but remember this game is quite old...

My suggestion is to look at Lionhardt's hexagonian drylands. He has an absurd amount, but the reason he gets away with it is because he enters values for each "cutoff" distance. He even has some "near cutoff" decals so that when you zoom out it shows some detail while disabling rendering of the minor details - very good map making!!

Try that and hopefully it works out for you.

[Kiliax]

Well shit, now I am more frustrated than ever! LOL. Took a look at Hexagonal Dryands. I still still dont see how he is using so many decals and not getting the glitches I do unless it has something to do with him using almost entirely Normal Decals and I end up using a LOT of albedo decals also overlapped with normals. I do not notice any Albedo decals on his map, they seemed to be pretty much normals. And his LOD settings are the same or higher than mine as I use 300 for some and like him 500 for most.....er wait, maybe it as 600. Argh. Will have to do some playing around and see if I can figure it out. Thanks for link to his map. Helped give me some clues. You have any ideas what is up with the pasting of multiple decals and them pasting out of order? Was thinking of trying FAF editor but thought i read somewhere the two were not compatible with eachother. Would have liked to use FAF editor to mirror reclaim (since orginal only rotates and makes it a nightmare to blance mirrored maps) and to do decals if it works better for those two things. But if they are not compatible kinda hard to do. Although I really only use editor for....hmmm, decaling I guess. I use photoshop for everything else - heightmap, stratums and terrain files. On pandemonium 17km x 13km I was having issues with using albedo decals to do the cliffs and they would disappear and I hadnt used very many decals. was guessing it was because decals were placed ina way were they were on to sharp of terrain changes or something. It's frustrating but it is what it is.

[Morax]

Oh man, that is a bit much to answer in my cell phone haha.

Okay, I'll get ya with that later, but for now do know that with the FAF editor you can change the version from v59 to v60 and vice versa. It's in the map tab and should be on the left side of the screen. Save you map as v59, open it in the gpg editor, do whatever you want, save, open in FAF editor, then save as v60 so you can use features like the skybox.

Hope that helps and feel free to ask me questions in discord or the client.

Keep at it! You will improve.

[Morax]

Killax, here is the setting you want to change: