Placeholder Textures/Models

[Johannes]

Sajber and I were talking on the IRC about how the source engine has a default texture and model it can fall back on when for some reason it cannot load a texture/model. For textures the source engine shows a pink and black checkerboard, and for models it shows Red flashing 'ERROR' text model.

I think that Phoenix should have similar emergency placeholder files.

There are several reasons why this would be beneficial:

- If someone has made a really complex map and somehow a filepath got messed up that they can still test it, and can see first-hand what's missing.
- It will make debugging alot easier and be far more helpful than a cryptic 'doesn't exist: _converted.dds' error.
- It will make the engine more robust and less likely to crash.
- As error handling stands right now, if you try to load -anything- with a missing file the engine crashes. this is extremely frustrating, and though I know error handling will be improved upon, this is one way to deal with it.

Instead of displaying a popup error message (which at least on a mac sometimes you can't even click for some reason and therefore have to force quit the program) Put the output text "texture 'blah' could not be found" into the console.



I put together a pack of such files that I would like phoenix to use in the future.

I figured a good texture would be the following design tiled:

square.png (285 Bytes) Viewed 2362 times

(made by Sajber to my specifications =) )

And for textures used in the terrain and the skymap a grid texture like this:

grid1.png (3.93 KiB) Viewed 2357 times

Because whaleman is legend, I feel he should be part of it too.

whaleman.png (12.02 KiB) Viewed 2355 times

the despair he symbolizes mirrors that of the developers when they can't get their textures to work.


Here are some screenshots:

I left the Tile texture out of the sky because it would be too disorienting. the grid texture alone is enough there.

Here are the files:
http://jo-shadow.com/Public/Johannes/Mo ... efault.zip (2.9MB)
it includes a readme that explains each file and how to quickly preview them.

Bonus:
While testing I found one of the oddest bugs i've ever had in OG:
http://jo-shadow.com/Public/Johannes/Mo ... m_bug.html

[tomascokis]

great idea

[Sajber]

*Points at the texture* I made this!

[Johannes]

*Points at the texture* I made this!

yup, gave you special mention in the readme =)

[Sajber]

*Points at the texture* I made this!

yup, gave you special mention in the readme =)

Thx

[Mykei]

Yeah.. Dev textures.. I don't see how they're needed though because we are working with meshes and not BSP brushwork.

[Johannes]

Yeah.. Dev textures.. I don't see how they're needed though because we are working with meshes and not BSP brushwork.

You don't think it's annoying when you try to load an object whose file-paths aren't correctly defined, and so the engine crashes and you loose all the work you've done since the last save?

[tomascokis]

I certainly find that irritating

[Mykei]

Yeah.. Dev textures.. I don't see how they're needed though because we are working with meshes and not BSP brushwork.

You don't think it's annoying when you try to load an object whose file-paths aren't correctly defined, and so the engine crashes and you loose all the work you've done since the last save?

Well of course, I should have read the OP better.

So pretty much a default 'error' model and texture to replace any missing asset? Sounds awesome. Overgrowth is slowly becoming like the source engine, i like that.

[Ac30]

I hate it when my models look stunning and then fail to load and crash my system >_<

[Phillip]

Just added some of these to the engine. Thanks for making them, Jo-Shadow!

[tomascokis]

awesome!

[Johannes]

Aw man, that's awesome. Having the engine not crash when users are being stupid is always a plus (remember, it's -always- the user's fault )

Sadly it does not seem to be in this week's alpha release. maybe next week.

[Phillip]

Yeah, sorry, didn't quite make it into this week's alpha. But it's in now and you guys will get it next week!

[Johannes]

And they're in! awesome!
"fail whale" is definitely the appropriate name