The 8 Wad Limit

taleden

<div class="IPBDescription">actually observed problems?</div> We're all familiar with that "more than 8 wads in use" message that hlcsg likes to spit out - namely:

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Warning: More than 8 wadfiles are in use. (12)
This may be harmless, and if no strange side effects are occurring, then
it can safely be ignored. However, if your map starts exhibiting strange
or obscure errors, consider this as suspect.
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But it's a pretty cryptic warning, and I'm curious what actual problems people have traced to this. I'm sure somebody's already prepping the torches so let me clarify, I am not saying "look at this bogus error message, I'm just going to ignore it because I am a l33t h@x0r mapper and I know better than the compile tools" - I'm saying, in practical experience, what sorts of problems have people actually been able to trace back to using more than 8 wads?

Even better, does anyone know, in a technical sense, why this is a problem? Just talking out of my ***, I'd guess it's something to do with a limited amount of space allocated in the BSP file format for wads-in-use, and using more than 8 means overwriting subsequent data with more wad data, or something, but of course, I'm just talking out of my ***. Does anyone know what the actual issue is? Cagey?

prsearle

I believe the problem is caused because the wad names are stored in the BSP as an attribute of the worldspawn entity. So the entity data in a BSP might start like this:<!--c1--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->{
"wad" "\sierra\half-life\valve\decals.wad;\sierra\half-life\valve\halflife.wad;\sierra\half-life\valve\liquids.wad;\program files\steam\steamapps\moria@talk21.com\half-life\nsp\ns.wad;\program files\steam\steamapps\moria@talk21.com\half-life\nsp\ns2.wad;"
"mapversion" "220"
"MaxRange" "4096"
"WaveHeight" "0.0"
"sounds" "1"
"classname" "worldspawn"
}<!--c2--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
The compile tools only allocate 1024 bytes for the value of the "wad" key (raised to 4096 bytes in Zoner's tools). I'm fairly certain it's the length of the wad string that causes problems, not the number of wads.

As for problems caused by this, I knew someone who lost their RMF and couldn't import from a .map file because Hammer choked on the massive wad string. If you're getting this problem and absolutely can't get rid of any wads, try moving the wad files into a shorter directory ("c:\wads\"?), which should cut down on all the "steamapps\user@name.her\half-life\nsp\" bulk.

Coblet

Well the thing is, more than 8 WADs can cause any kind of problems, I've had non-existant leaks, problems ingame with replaced textures across the board, fullbright maps even after correct RAD'ing. Then when I removed the 9th WAD, the problem disappeared.

Tequila

I'm using 11 wads, no problems here.

Alurcard2

I have had problems with that the map wouldnt load untill i removed the wad line with ripent