Higly annoying texture (portal_nodraw) problem [Solved]

[roxsman]

Hello everyone,

I've got a problem in radiant.. Whenever I set the portal_nodraw texture on a brush/face, that brush/face disappears from Radiant. This only happens with portal_nodraw. Because it's hard to explain in words, I just made a video of it and put it up on Youtube.
If anyone has just the slightest idea why this is happening I would be happy to hear.
I also copied a "clean" version of COD4 to a different map, reinstalled the modtools from scratch and it's still happening!
If I copy the COD4 folder with the modtools installed to another computer, it works correctly. So I'd say it's fair to assume it has something to do with the configuration of this computer but I can't understand what external configuration would make Radiant display such specific behaviour. I've tried using ProcessMonitor to capture some information but nothing happens when I click portal_nodraw (process-wise).
Anyone know what dependancies Radiant has, what I could reinstall to stop this from happening (aside from Windows ), registry keys I could look into? Anything??

[Drofder2004]

Press F to bring up Filter settings and tick everything.
Make sure you have removed all IWD files and mods.

Maybe a corrupt def file?

[roxsman]

def file is included witht the modtools which I reinstalled.. filter settings aren't the problem either.
Brings us to the IWD files.. Does Radiant use IWD's? Thought it only used the contents of the raw dirs.. And if so, it does so only from the Main folder I presume.. It can't really know which mods are installed.. But just to check it out (cuz now I'm curious) I'll check procmon again and see what it loads during startup of radiant.. That's gonna be a helluva capture

[roxsman]

Ok, i figured it out even though I can't point out EXACTLY what caused it.. After launching cod4radiant.exe with procmon running I soon found out something I overlooked.. The registry. A fresh install of COD4 with fresh modtools will still use the old registry values (from the previous version) as those remain after reinstall. I deleted the HKCU/Software/IW folder from my registry and imported it from a computer on which radiant was running fine & dandy and now it's working again. I tried to compare the two registry files to see which setting could be the culprit but I don't see any discrepancies that could have something to do with it.. Just toolbar location stuff and colors and so on.. So, still a bit of a mystery but I don't care.. SOLVED

And thanks for thinking along Drofder!

[Drofder2004]

Grats, Registry was the next culprit on my list

[roxsman]

Just wanted to expand this topic with the solution to this problem (in case anyone else ever runs into it)..
This problem has to do with the Toggle drawing of draw toggle surfs button (whoever came up with that name? )..


This toggle can (for one) be used to see if your portals are lining up exactly by removing all the portal_nodraw textures and thereby making it a bit easier to check if one portal texture lines up exactly to another portal texture. But, as it removes the faces that have the portal_nodraw texture, it was the source of my problem.

Now that I know what it's for, my portaling jobs will get easier as well.. I never saw this explanation posted on modsrepository, modsonline, etc because they mostly just state: Unsure what this does...

So at least this is one function it performs, don't know of another but if anyone else does, feel free to enlighten me/us..

I found out this behaviour of the button while watching the advanced portaling vids on youtube by BlackJackJonnyy in case anyone is interested.

Cheers!!

[Rezil]

Wow, I was unaware of that, thanks for taking your time and sharing this with us!

(Moved to tutorials in case someone else encounters this problem, so they know what this button does)