So I finally decided to try to make a full game for the retro contest but I can not for the life of me create a decent level with blocks. Every attempt leaves me with seams in-between the blocks.



I searched the forums and used every suggestion I came across but Im still not having any luck.

I am doing the Atari ame Marble Madness, the levels are simple grids which make the issue very pronounced.

I used 'snap to grid' the entire time, ALWAYS using 8, 16 or 32 units. Never used rotate OR copy & paste, created every block by hand, moved every vertice by hand, still get gaps.


I went back through the entire level tweaking every vertice, some gaps disappear, others appear. Im playing a terrible game of whack a mole with WED. This only helped in creating a ton of errors while compiling(region leaking, portal out of place etc)

GStudio Commercial 7.80/WED 6.93
ALWAYS used snap.
Tweaked EVERY vertice by hand (with snap on).
Never used rotate.
Never used copy/paste.
All blocks are grouped.
Merge across leafs - checked.
Create meshes - checked.
Don't snap vertices - unchecked.

Can anyone give any more pointers on a possible fix or suggestions on where I may be doing something wrong?

I have completed all 6 levels of the game (Including 3 diff versions of level 1) so if a retro-active fix would be great, if not, I can re-create them all again.


I would even be willing to give up the use of blocks all together if I could learn how to apply multiple textures to a mesh for level use. (Would FBX as blocks allow this?)

I will provide sshots of the issue if necessary and can make the levels available if necessary.

Why are you trying to do a BSP Level? Thats not for beginners because you must follow certain design rules and you dont have A7 Pro anyway. So, why not just place your blocks without all that tweaking and adjusting and make a normal level?

I would not say I am a beginner, previously employed as a contract artist for SEGA.

My concerns are not regarding the bsp but the visuals, I just dont want shimmering 'holes' across the seams of the blocks.

I did "just place the blocks" and I ended up with seams all over the place, including between flat square blocks.

My compile efforts lead me to using the bsp options in the hopes the blocks would snap together better then they had without.

This is very... Weird. Nothing like this has ever happened to me.

Screenshots would be useful, I'd like to see exactly what your problem is.

Edited my original post to add images.

I have not used 3DGS in a while, could a recent change to WED be causing this?
It has never been easy to avoid these issues but I do not remember it being this bad.

How to quickly reproduce the problem:

Create a cross pattern with 5 blocks,
Raise the outside edges of two blocks, lower the outside edgers of the other two blocks leaving the middle block flat (imagine two ramps going down and two ramps going up to a flat plane),
Now fill in the cross pattern so you have 3 rows of 3 blocks.
With snap ON (32) I can not avoid having seams (very tiny gaps).

The other levels:

I made some progress...

By selecting 'Single Mesh' on the group properties tab alot of the seams have gone but now I get Block - duplicate planes errors, the same error I get when importing a level version from Max.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!