[TUTORIAL] How to avoid crashing after using Noggit SDL 1.3

[Skarn]

Introduction

I've noticed that a lot of people here are suffering from a client crash bug after using Noggit SDL 1.3 - 1.4 for editing Blizzard ADTs (modifying existing game content). I did not know about this bug when we worked on the new version, so we have not even looked at it yet. And yes, I plan to get back to it when / if we work on noggit again.

How to avoid or fix it.

The reason for this bug is actually quite simple. Blizzard's editor called WoWEdit does not always fill up all the chunks with all 4 texture layers. There is a mistake in Noggit's code that makes it save grouneffect data to the layer which does not even exist. The easiest solution for the problem is not to work on original game content and create your own custom maps with 4 layered adt templates from Steff's modding pack. However, I doubt that this solution will satisfy everyone because sometimes we do need to change some original maps. In order to make Noggit edit these maps properly you need to prepare the ADTs you edit for saving with Noggit. You simply need to pick up 2-3 textures that does not exist on this ADT, select a huge brush with no pressure and lowest transparency and paint your ADTs until they have all the chunks filled with 4 texture layers. I know that many of you tried doing it but it did not work. Here is another problem. For proper model saving Noggit has to save a bunch of adts around your real edited one. So, every time you fix bugged adt Noggit saves more and more corrupting them. I think that the solution is quite obvious. You just make a listfile (manually) of all the adts you really need + 1 row of adts per each side and remove everything else. Your map should work fine now. Here is a quick example.



P.S. Make this sticky please.

[Amaroth]

I just keep spamming guys with this problem by link to sticky with known WoW Errors #132, where this is included. It would be much more fruitful to add this to tutorial (which is still not read by enough of folks using noggit, sadly). Such things I plan to include in my tutorials, which tend to include a lot of my personal experience and some advices, but they aren't finished yet and all are in czech.

[Zebraka]

I understand what is saying here, but there's my question : why did the first time WoW loads custom ADT it doesn't crash and the second time he'll do that error again and again ? I believe that there's a real problem with the client.