Red: you are having no luck with the terrain. Is this all by using the built-in terrain editor?

I haven't tried compiling a map after building the terrain and I should do that to help..... I will try something simple, brb.

- I made a simple terrain mesh with a few bumps.
- No stitching.
- textured with a single ground texture.
- surrounded with a box
- player spawn
- single light

no problems compiling. I don't have a disk here at work to test the map, but I don't think that was the issue.

Are you making the terrain by manipulating the verices or by using the built-in terrain editor? Moving those vertices (points) is not a good idea because you could stretch polygons out beyond the editors liking and that might be your problem.

with your terrain patch selected, hit the y key and play with that as outlined in the tutorial on this site.

I did try the COD Builder this morning early and compiled and ran the map. That is completely outside the editor though. One thing I need to know is what custom options to put inside the CODBuilder program for the optimum effect. Someone with good compiling skills might start a thread on that program. I just ran the basics that came with it and it seemed to work fine.

Here is a screenie of terrain, all stitched, texture capped etc. I am using this for fill. Also this map file was compiled with the CODBuilder program.

Does anyone know if you can add vertice points to a simple terrain mesh? Other than add rows or columns. Say you have an odd shaped area you want to put terrain in that is not exactly square or exactly rectangular.

I dont think you can do that. Instead, you can manipulate single points, but that's not recommended either.

I have read that messing with the terrain points can cause errors, although I never tried it out myself.

Can't you get away with oversizing your terrain and letting it run off the player's map area?

I have many trenches so far. It looks like I will have to make the terrain areas outside the trenches squares or rectangles. That is the only way I can get the vertices to line up. I will have to rethink the layout somewhat to get something similar to what I want to do. Another thing I have noticed is that when you apply the simple terrain mesh to a brush two sides shrink in at least one grid. Say you got a square box and put a simple terrain mesh inside it touching all four wall. When you apply the simple terrain mesh to it it shrinks, meaning it does not hold it's orginal form size or height. Still a learning on what I can do with it.
Another thing I was wondering can you have a normal brush/detail brush overlapping or sticking through the terrain without causing any problems. Or could you have a piece of the terrain out in the void. Just something else I need to look at. Anyway whatever happens I am having fun. You got to have fun. hehe

I have not seen any errors occur from putting terrain in odd places or even when mixing them up with other brushes and brush types.

As you described your trench/terrain problem, I am left wondering how it was done in the game. I know there are several places where trenches and terrain meet up.

How about this...

• have a rough idea of how you want your trench to look. If it helps, create a rough trench-like brush in your map that will be deleted later so you have a good idea of where things are going.
  
• now create your square terrain (or arbitrary sided terrain) that roughly fits the alloted area you are working in. Make the terrain match as closely as you can to the walls of the trench even if it slightly overlaps in some areas. you do this my moving the points around. Don't stretch points too far from the other points. It is better to move more points around so they are not so far apart.
  
• In some cases, you may want to go back and smooth out the hight of the terrain edges using the terrain editor so they are not so far off from the trench wall unless this is what you want for you map.
  
• now for the trench walls... delete your rough trench if you made one. ctrl+tab your window to the side that you are working with and create a new terrain. This is great.... because we are making a terrain that is vertical in stead of horizontal. I suggest adjusting the divisions of the trench walls (Terrain) so that you don't have a million divisions going horizontally (I used a division of 4).
  
• Now that these two pieces are done, let's line them up. move those trench points around to match up with the previous terrain. Get them as close as possible. You may have to switch views a few times to make sure they are close.
  
• Now stitch up the seem. By selecting two points at a time (that you want to join into a single point - I found this was easiest to do from the 3D window) hit ctrl+k to stitch them.
  
• continue your way down the line until you have what appears to be a single terrain mesh.
  
• you will want to do this with the trench floor and other wall as well.

NOW.... I did not complete this project that I outlined above so I don't know if the final result will be any good. I will leave the testing up to you for now so you may want to go as far as I have described and then run some playability tests.

I hope it works :P

Sounds good. I may have been going about it a**backwards.
I am going to take a fresh new map and build the terrain patches first then build the rest around the terrain patches compiling as I go. I can compile fine outside the editor right now but if I compile what I have in the editor right now it closes the editor completely. So a fresh new map file is in order. Thanks for the tips and hope others can get some benefit from this.

Here is something I have been seeing on about 7 different brushes when compiling. I am wondering if it has anything to do with (couldn't load shader 'textures/sky/mp_depot'). Also the more terrain mesh that I modify it seems the game is taking more time to get past the main loading screen at first launch. I want to tell you guys terrain building is going to cause a lot of nail biting so you better save very frequently.

Warning: entity 0 brush 31: tris with 2+ major axes; bad lighting likely