Final issues....

[ChaosBringer577]

Hey guys, sf_castles is about ready for beta, all is needed is a bit of fine-tuning on the displacement, which i can't seem to get to work the way I want it to at ALL. Everything is just kinda jagged and i need it to be smooth and bumpy. Any suggestions on that? Also, my water refuses to work, it never shows up when I play the map, which is extremely annoying. Should I place my env_cubemap entity closer to the water? Cuz right now it's in my skybox....lol. I have a nodraw textured brush blocking the void, so there aren't any leaks with the water I don't think. It DOES go into a displaced surface, but the bottom is, as I said, blocked off by the nodraw texture which seals the map. As far as I can tell, there aren't any exposed areas of nodraw on the top of the water, so I don't know what's going on there. What happens is when I put my water in, I look at it, and it doesnt show up, but when I shoot/jump in it, I go to water mode and it's as if it's really there, but the top face doesnt show any signs of water....I have one info_decal entity leaked I believe, but thats it. Could that be screwing over my water?

[Murkrow]

cubemap should be 16-72 units away from all brushes. Get it closer to water and pick the texture.

[WillyDavidK]

the cubemap needs to be specifically assigned to the water, it can't just be close to it. Go into properties, and under the parameter for brush face (can't remember the name) click "pick" and then click your water face.

EDIT: however it still should be close otherwise your water refractions (for sub-dx9 people) will be from way up in the sky!

Also don't seal the map of with your water, it should be where if you delted the entire the block the level would still be sealed. It sounds like you only used one face with the water texture (with the rest as nodraw) so that's good.

For the displacements, yo umight try using a higher power, or just raising the other vertices close to the one that is jagged to make a more gradual drop.

[ChaosBringer577]

did that with the water, and it still doesnt work...I'm gonna have to release beta without the water, then redo the ground and try it all over again with both displacement, and water. Right now I can't because deleting the ground would cause major problems, so I'd have to wait until the beta was all tested out and i can put in all the things I want in one flat out final version. I'll let you know if I keep having problems with the water, but displacement is going to take some getting used to for me....ALSO....blending textures is NOT working at all for me right now, and my ambience refuses to loop...I don't have any ambient/weather sounds either, which confuses me because in all the tutorials i have read there has been a whole section on that.....i have my sound browser set to raw, but it still doesnt show any ambient/weather files....any ideas?

[WillyDavidK]

Are you sure you are running vis (for water) AND rad (for blend textures)?? Make sure you dont have a leak as well. Read your compile logs, there might be something causing vis and rad not to work correctly.

Also you may just simply have a bad texture assigned to your water. Generally canals03 is a good water texture (that's what I use).

[Stinger]

I strongly suggest you use a cheap water texture in multiplayer maps.