I tried to load the pointfile into trenchbroom but the whole map goes black and all I can see is a very very tiny line that goes on forever, when I try to "unload" the pointfile it doesn't work. It stays black. 

Untill you find the leak you can just box the map and use fastvis. 

btw sleepy: this is likely because my videocard is shit, but if I load point file, it blacks out my 3d view except for 2 yellow lines and I have to load a new map to get it back. 

Thanks, will keep that in mind for TyrQuake.

Hopefully will get a chance to help out with TB a bit more soon! 

When you load a point file, the camera snaps to the start of the line, maybe that's why it looks black? 

Ok, so I decided to load up my map in the latest trenchbroom build (was running version 1) and obviously it said there was a bunch of mishapen brushes etc so I rebuilt them or tidied them up. Did a whole bunch of messing about with stuff, removed the slime (I know it's a portal and I was getting some weird portal messages) and I managed to get it to compile. But it still wont vis...
Here's the pastebin -

http://pastebin.com/dxJu1g1q 

It should give the line # in the .map file where the error resides. So you can just go into a code editor and delete the faulty brush. 

 

you could have provided a link! :P

I found it anyway, managed to plug about 3 holes by setting it to -noents (this has required some serious google research!!) and I reckon there is a whole lot more.
One of the biggest headaches is I found a bunch of curved walls that I have made where I can shoot rockets clean through the wall, in the editor the vertices look perfect.

Oh and my lovely tri-soup rock terrain is also showing up as leaky (after I fixed a bunch of brushes I noticed the leaks were gone but now I can fall through some of the faces, it's like I fix one problem and it creates another!) 

Why not help others by adding to the Quake Wiki with your new found solutions to a problem that you encountered? Your progress with dealing with various issues is exactly what it's meant for. Be verbose and complete. If needed the issue will be boiled down and answers given in following edits. 

This is very likely my fault. It's a bit too complicated to explain right now, but basically, I thought I could get away with how I am treating vertices and plane points. I did a bit of cheating to make the vertex editing in TB easier, but I recently realized that it's not a good idea.

So I have been working on fixing these problems for the last two weeks, but sadly, this whole issue is just a rats nest of more problems. It'll take a bit longer - sorry. 

Some of these problems are definitely my fault, I had left a few holes around but since I am using a generic brown texture on the brushes in these areas I have made it very difficult to spot.
The solution in this instance may be to use a bright pink texture for all my brushes and then just texture the surface on the inside of the map (should make it easier).
As for the vertex problem, are the vertexes handled any differently in version 1 than version 1.05 (ver188)?

quaketree, I have intended on doing a bunch of professional videos for trenchbroom and a lot of plans were made and I sat down with the guy doing the recording/editing and it looked good but we supposed to record the first few tutorials this week and it just never happened.
Starting to think it may never happen. 

the more it breaks... Ok I thought that cleaning up the map I made in TB v1.0 using TB v1.05 would provide some kind of solution. But the more I fix the tri-soup the bigger and more numerous the holes become. I might go back to TB v1.0 and clean up the holes there instead.
It's becoming an issue to an extent where I may just release a buggy .bsp file and the .map src for people to mess around with.

SleepwalkR, I love the editor and I hope you manage to fix whatever the problem is. The real concern for me now is I may have to resort to Worldcraft again until it's fixed, which I really *dont* want to do. 

Tb is not magic, so the limitations of the map file format still apply. It would be interesting if you could post the map file and let me know which brushes are problematic. Then I can see where it's going wrong.

Vertex handling is different in 1.0.5, it will mask less errors. But it still suffers from problems related to floating point coordinates one the map file.

I would generally suggest to always seal your map even if it's work in progress. That way you'll see immediately if something breaks instead of getting overwhelmed by a sea of errors. 

No that's understandable and to be honest this was a test/learning map that got out of hand and became a real map. I think my best option may be to remove all the fancy terrain style geometry (and box it up), and then fill all the normal leaks first. And *then* I can retry making that geometry with a more robust approach (or even starting that part from scratch in 1.05). Basically I thought I was pretty much done with map but it looks like we have to spend a little more time together before we move on. 

did you mean to say mask or make? 

TrenchBroom generally tries to hide the fact that vertices often don't have integer coordinates, but that approach is flawed and I'm working on removing it. 

I noticed stuff like tetrahedrons or brushes with a lot of vertices lend themselves well to map corruption in TB. For rocks or terrain just mashing deformed cubes together is more work but seems more stable at the moment. 

my terrain is completely cube-based. I didn't consider making it any other way.

A lot of the problems have come from my work method of basically making the level in an open room-by-room fashion. I could have avoided a lot of problems if I had blocked the layout first and then added all the details second. Maybe... I dunno, I'm still learning. 

He has the most experience with mapping with TB. 

Ok, I chopped out *all* the terrain brushes, blocked in those areas to stop them leaking, fixed all the pointfile problems and got a build that vis'd... I have a couple of HOM's (that don't leak for some reason) and that's it.

So my todo is simply to try and remake the terrain without getting any leaks. I have a couple of ideas on how I might achieve this, I think the problem was the void-facing terrain were misshapen rather than nicely boxed and uniform.

It's a bit of a nightmare but I have definitely learned a lot in the last couple days. 

Quake is ooooold and rickety. Expect problems. :) But it's fun... 

If you can pull it off and learn some best practices, make sure to write them up on the QuakeWiki or here, please! 

The whole process has been a big ol' practice! That's what the map was about. I have keep a lot of the different stages of the map, so I can easily do a mapping retrospective.

As for the writing I don't really have a desire to write it up on the wiki, but I really want to have a go at making some youtube videos on the process I took, lessons learned etc.
I'll start pestering my film-maker friend until he caves in.

Pro-tips:-
-box out your map/layout
-use trenchbroom 1.05 from the start
-get your hands on TreeQBSP from http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/
-become best friends with the "pointfile" command and "r_showtris" 

*does* seem to have better vertex accuracy for more standard shaped geometry, after I did all my pointfile detective-work I selected all the brushes and did a correct vertices & snap vertices... seemed to sort out the last remaining HOM's on the map.

Only trouble now is I have no terrain in my map after I brutally removed them all. I'm going to do it bit-by-bit and *hopefully* the map will have it's finalised geometry! Then I can get back to the fun stuff, testing, item placement etc. :)