CJO Games

Yes as described and any material it doesn't really matter - I use and reuse materials consistently across versions and haven't seen this error before I can assure you that its not incompatible materials though.

This is a new one introduced with 0.9.5 and as the title suggests is caused when applying materials or creating materials from textures. This error will result in a preview.exe hang which is only recoverable by force close through the task - manager. This is a new map and has only one material.

I can confirm that this is the case for me too (when I can even run the editor without continuous crashes to desktops) when it does run the editor is very much slower than it was before. The more assets that are added to the map/terrain then the more unstable the editor appears to become the more likely it is to crash the more likely it is that FPS count reduces etc.

It was already destroyed Josh, so that point is somewhat moot... The point was the missing braces - not the contents - if the braces are missing in the map that won't open but not from those that do then that suggests a problem writing to the JSON file - hence the fact that it wouldn't open in the editor. The editing of the JSON file was, instead, to prove to myself that editing it couldn't make a difference. I hope that makes sense and isn't distracting from the original issue I raised at the top of the page as I think that is the more important part of this chain - namely, that the Preview.exe is still causing a hang and its rebuild hasn't solved anything - in fact it would have appeared to have made matters worse.

I opened up the JSON and found that some of the braces were incorrect - or at least the closing braces were missing. Unfortunately, fixing these errors didn't allow the map to open. I think the crash to desktop is obviously causing some alteration to the JSON file which prevents it from actually loading.

It should load with or without the assets and only load what is available to the engine as a default ( the CSG built boxes) of which there are quite a few because of the way I build maps. The assets aren't necessary and I can't attach as my assets are proprietary. Like you though, I get nothing - its as though the JSON is being ignored by the engine.

Sorry Josh but it has made no difference to me - I am still getting the crash to desktop and preview hang and it still appears to be corrupting maps - this is in the 0.9.5 version. Attached is a map I worked on yesterday which, although opens would appear to be corrupt as there is nothing there at all. The hang is caused when creating materials or working with materials in other ways (such as for instance applying them to a model or opening a model that has previously been wrapped). WoodenFort.zip

Hi Pleca, thanks for your comments. In this map the assets are all from Synty. They are available from Humble Bundle. I paid £0.79 for four sets and, having paid so little was intrigued to see what I could put together with them - this is my first mini-map - there are more to follow. At the moment this is more for show than any serious attempt to make anything available with these assets - I'm waiting for some more work on the engine to be completed before I start making maps available. I like the challenge of taking ready made assets and seeing what can be created with them. As to creating my own art - my focus for the moment isn't on that, rather creating intricate maps/levels with ready made and freely available assets from various sources.

And now something a little bit different to whet a low-poly appetite...

Some more screenshots with work on two different maps to showcase - the first set is the map above with an extended area to the town above the rail tracks and the second set is a newer map which could be used alone or together with the one above - both are built without using the terrain tool so have modularity in mind...

I've found that using the Autodesk FBX converter to change everything to 2013 standard first can help with this issue too. Also, this isn't confined to Ultra any other editor I've used in the past is capable of this problem including Godot; Game Guru Max and even Unity. I've attached the program but its available from here in case it doesn't attach for any reason: FBX Converter 2013 for Windows 64 : autodesk : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Often, the most reliable way to convert to glTF is to convert from a different model format such as .OBJ or .MDL - this seems to have a more stable conversion than from FBX which is unreliable (not in Ultra, everywhere). fbx20133_converter_win_x64.zip

I know this is (hopefully - fingers crossed) going to be helped by the upcoming update but I thought it would be useful to let you know that I have narrowed down the cause of this to creating materials from textures. It's not something that happens all the time and it isn't contingent on a specific set of textures (as far as I can tell it doesn't matter where they come from). To reproduce try (for instance) the Modbuilder pack from the Leadwerks workshop or the Port pack from the Leadwerks workshop and choose any of the textures and create a material from one of them. The chances are it'll work fine but if you work with the engine for long enough it will crash to desktop but preview.exe will remain open in the background and will need to be force-closed. Hopefully that is a little more clear...

I saw this yesterday too when I was messing about with a water shader - I assumed however that the output you have above was the way it was supposed to work i.e. the engine loads in the shader to compile it and then deletes it once it has become compiled. I notice this is how other game engines appear to work (see X Plane Vulkan processing). I'd be interested to know if this is wrong...

to better illustrate this point the picture below is the tool working (as expected) in the stable branch 0.9.3. Note the orange highlighted area which allows the accurate application of materials to specific sides of a model. Hopefully this is clear but do let me know if more information or explanation is required.

Previously it was possible to select individual faces within the 3d editor and apply materials directly to the selected face but which would not affect the other faces of the model. This seems not to be working within 0.9.4 dev channel - instead the whole model is textured no matter which face is selected; either directly or through the face selection menu on the right-hand side.

Here is the map pictured above with all the textures and mats attached also. You'll have to set up the mats as required to reproduce but it was the only way I could get it across to you within file size limits. 2016046418_MountainsandTarnsMap.zip

Yes from my perspective it would appear to be. I will put a map together to send to you anyway so that you can see what I'm seeing if that helps?

I knew there was something I had forgotten to do... :-) I actually thought this had been solved through an earlier update so had decided not to supply a map I can confirm that I haven't come across this in the last few weeks. Here is a screenshot of a similar scene taken today which shows that the grid-lines are not visible:

I'm not sure how its related but I'm relatively certain that preview.exe shouldn't be running that many times(x4) when one instance of the client and one instance of the editor are running. What I can tell you is that this occurs when (as explained above) the editor crashes to desktop when adding materials to models or textures to materials or adding models to a map or adding textures or materials to maps or anything that seems to involve the preview.exe is invoked. Does that help?

Please see attached for an example of this issue at its worst - note the high cpu useage and number of open preview.exe

I'm on the dev channel so which ever version that is.

Hi Josh, it is an MSI GTX 1650 4gb (ddr6) please see attached the Nvidia driver system information: NVIDIA System Information 02-14-2024 09-12-50.txt

The engine is still continually crashing to desktop with an associated Preview.exe hang that is gobbling up resources on the CPU and RAM. This is usually as a result of adding textures to a material or adding material to a model and can occur on various types of texture and model formats. The preview.exe hang is particularly problematic as it is acting like a resource drain and has been causing my PC to hang even after the editor and/or client are closed - the only way to stop preview.exe after a crash to desktop is to force close through windows Task Manager. The crash to desktop is frustrating as any work up to that point is lost and is causing corruption of my maps meaning they will no longer open in the editor so hours of work are going missing or are lost. Cutting.zip Mountains and tarns 2048.zip

Thank you for your comments they are much appreciated! :-)

I suppose the point that was perhaps not clear is that all of these settings are stored in a JSON file and this could. presumably, be edited and added to to accomplish the look and feel that you require so I would, if I were you, start there...