QBSP3.EXE Problems & Solutions
 
FloatPlane Error; Bad Normal This can result from doing agressive carving (CSG) and/or clipping. Be careful! I've found that once a map gets this error, no amount of deleting new work will save the map. The trick is to copy and paste the new work you've done into an older version of the map. This should work ok and minimize any losses. Obviously, if you haven't been saving incrementally, you're screwed. The error pops up almost immediately after starting QBSP3. This was all discovered and dealt with under QERadiant on a P166/64. 


I have found out a few things about this error, this may prove useful. Here are 2 things that I have personally dealt with: 

1)  If you take any object and try to "merge" vertices DON'T do that, this will cause that error, for example trying to make a square into a triangle by moving one vertex over another. 

2)  No 180 degree angles allowed from one face to another, for example making a square into a triangle my taking one corner and dragging it tot the center of the square, thus making it look like a triangle. 

3) Copying and pasting may not be necessary, and deleting brushes here and there CAN help you solve the problem, just don't forget to make a backup copy of your level BEFORE you do this, as Qbsp3 will SAVE your map when you use it.  (I found this out the hard way, and lost half of my level) 

- Eric Brough 


I was recently editing in QERadiant and ran into a prob while trying to compile my map.   
  
The error said "FloatPlane: bad normal" 
                     "GetLastError[] = 3" 
  
I checked on your site and it had this error.  Good news!  What you have posted isn't what causes it (at least in my case) and it is fixable.  What I did to cause it was to build a poly and then 
choose to make it 8 sided.  I then tried to move the edges to make a shape I wanted.  While doing this the brush just disappeared from the editor?? What I did next was to open Wordpad and take a look at the text version of the map. I could be wrong but all brushes in Quake 2 have 6 sides regardless.  I then noticed that several only had 5 and one had like 8.  I deleted just those brushes.  Saved as a different file.  Loaded that back into QERadient and checked to see what was missing.  Several brushes were gone in the area where the 8 sided poly disappeared from.  I replaced those and compiled.  Worked just fine.  
  
- John Epp 



I believe I know specifically what causes this error. First of all, I use Worldcraft 1.6. I had a simple block brush, six faces. I was performing vertex manipulation on it when I decided that I would rather have a wedge instead of a block. So I put two of the sides in a straight line, that is, three vertexes all in a perfect line. This caused the error. Then I went back and experimented. This was the only thing that caused the error, and when I changed the shape or put in a wedge there was no problem whatsoever. 

The odd thing is that this problem occurred on the outside of the map, that is, the vertexes were facing the void. The brush was still convex. 

I believe it could be summed up like this: "This error is caused when at least three coplanar vertexes in a brush are 
also colinear." 

- The Snowman 



I got the dreaded FloatPlane: bad normal error, but it wasn't 
caused by carving or clipping.  I eventually tracked it down to a 16x16 cylinder with 16 sides that I had accidentally created.  (I meant to create a 16x16 square)  From the zoomed out view I couldn't tell it wasn't a square, but once I found it and zoomed in it was obviously a bad brush.  I guess making cylinders that small with that many faces is bad for qbsp3.  I found the error by deleting portions of my map until it qbsp'd, so that CAN work, contrary to your earlier posting. 

- Unknown Soldier

QBSP3.EXE using Q2Tool 
Error message while running, even without any parameters. 

Error Message: 

Mutual exclusion prohibits this

The solution or explanation goes here.
When trying to compile a map for Quake2 in Qoole ver. 3.20: 

Messages in Qbsp: 

1. entity 0, brush xx (the num. of the brush) : mirrored plane 
2. entity 0, brush xx (the num. of the brush) : bounds out of range 

The result is that there are some polygons missing in the compiled map.

The solution or explanation goes here.
C:\MAPS>qbsp3 q2room.map 
---- qbsp3 ---- 

************ ERROR ************ 
SetQdirFromPath: no 'quake2' in C:\MAPS\q2room.map

You need to have the map being compiled in the QUAKE2 directory, this is a pretty self explanatory error (if you think
about it.) If you are running QBSP3 manually, put it into the baseq2/maps directory and then run it.

-Eric Brough 

************ ERROR ************ 
SubdivideFace: didn't split the polygon
QBSP goes through a level and creates a BSP tree of the level. In doing so, it splits the polygons in order to create a convex leaf for each node of the BSP tree. Often, a large polygon is split many times. I'd guess that this error occurs either because:  

A) A very small, or long and narrow polygon needs to be split, and the resulting polygons are too small for the program to handle  

B) the splitting algorithm is failing due to the complexity of the polygon which is being split.  

-taken from QuakeLab1 QBSP Problems

When running QBSP on my level, it gives me an error:

"Node with unbounded volume"

It repeats this message many times and then continues the compile. The level seems to run
OK and I can't find anything that looks out of place or wrong. What is this error and how do I get rid of it? 

The solution or explanation goes here.
Your QBSP problem goes here. The solution or explanation goes here.
Your QBSP problem goes here. The solution or explanation goes here.
 
 and on and on...