Lily Pads Camera Oddities

[Melth]

I recently noticed that several doodads present in the world editor don't appear in-game in one of my maps.

After a bit of experimentation, I found that the problem only seems to apply to the "Lily Pads" doodad (NOT to "Lily Pads Floating", those work perfectly). It applies to all "Lily Pads" regardless of location.

Moreover, it seems to be related in some way to the game's camera. This is locked to directly overhead, looking down. When I turned off the camera locking trigger and played the map with the default camera, the Lily Pads became visible.

Sure enough, the Lily Pads instantaneously flicker in and out of visibility if I turn the camera locking trigger back on and then try to jiggle the camera with the mouse wheel.

Does anyone know what might be causing this problem?

 

[Chaosy]

To me it seems like you have identified the problem yourself.
The camera is likely the problem, for example if the camera is very zoomed out the dooads far away will not be displayed. Change camera settings and see if that helps.

 

[Melth]

To me it seems like you have identified the problem yourself.
The camera is likely the problem, for example if the camera is very zoomed out the dooads far away will not be displayed. Change camera settings and see if that helps.

But if it were merely a problem of raw distance, why would only the Lily Pads not show up? Many smaller doodads look just fine. Is there perhaps a setting in the object editor that controls at what distance a particular doodad can be seen?

 

[Chaosy]

I've not seen such an option in the object editor at the very least.

Can you try just changing the model of the lily pads for testing? Take a model that you know is visible. If you can see it then, we know that it's some sort of model setting. If not, we know that it's the object itself.

 

[Melth]

I've not seen such an option in the object editor at the very least.

Can you try just changing the model of the lily pads for testing? Take a model that you know is visible. If you can see it then, we know that it's some sort of model setting. If not, we know that it's the object itself.

I changed their model to "Floating Plank" and they became visible as Floating Planks.

 

[Chaosy]

So it's a model thing then. I do not know s*it about models, better hope that someone who knows their stuff in that regard goes by the thread.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Make a screenshot of this. There could be a lot of reasons for odd graphical behaviour and we need some visual cues to find out which of them apply.

 

[Melth]

Here's a pair of screenshots of the affected area showing how the Lily Pads are invisible in some views.

With a bit more experimentation I found that what seems to matter is indeed how zoomed out the camera is. However, I can't just change the game's camera settings to be zoomed in a bit more because then several important areas would be cropped out of view. And I still have no idea why only the Lily Pad model is affected.

 

[PublishedShadow]

You should be able to change the Far Z of your camera to fix this. The Far Z setting can clip out objects sometimes if the distance is high.

 

[WaterKnight]

Are those standard resources? Have you tried recalculating the model's extents (with Magos for example)? Also the screen shows it's awfully close to fog of war. There are some flags in object editor for their display policy.

 

[Melth]

You should be able to change the Far Z of your camera to fix this. The Far Z setting can clip out objects sometimes if the distance is high.

Nah, I tried that first and it didn't fix the problem.

Are those standard resources? Have you tried recalculating the model's extents (with Magos for example)? Also the screen shows it's awfully close to fog of war. There are some flags in object editor for their display policy.

They're just standard World Editor Lily pads if that's what you mean. Proximity to fog of war (actually map boundaries here) doesn't actually seem to be relevant; the first thing I tried was moving them into the center and that didn't help.


Earlier today I finally solved the issue, but only after coming across another problem (which I also solved). I was in the middle of trying to adjust all my cameras to be just a little closer in order to make the Lily Pads show up without cropping anything important out, when suddenly all my Seaweed doodads vanished in a copy/pasted section of the map.

The invisible Seaweed behaved differently than invisible Lily Pads. Camera distance made absolutely no difference; they could be visible from tremendously far away or invisible from right on top of them.

Further, it was only a problem in some of the copy/pasted test areas, not all of them, even though they should have been identical.

What I did find though was that changing the camera angle of attack from 270 degrees (straight down) to 271 degrees (but NOT 269 degrees) would make them reappear and also make the Lily Pads reappear in the map areas where they had no responded to camera distance changes. It slightly screwed up the Lily Pad's appearance for some reason, making parts of them be blocked out by water. But by using Control + Page Up to raise them upwards slightly, I solved that problem too.

So everything is working now, after many experiments and tribulations.