General Advice/ZE Tweaks?

[Epifire]

Hey fellas, I had some stuff to run by you all in an attempt to fix/tweak some stuff with my Zero Edit. Well first I'll start with the two things that are bugging me the most here and go from there...

1: ZE removes random objects... randomly! Just like that, I'll just be doing things (usually not even in the objects mode) and I'll find objects missing later for no apparent reason. This happens with any kind of object, usually most commonly with CPs or vehicle spawns. It seems to be consistent enough to be of an incredible annoyance, as I usually notice it when I reload a map. I'm pretty sure I can just do my whole objects detail pass in one shot at the end if I have to (just to avoid this during).

2: The awful white blinding Generic Specular shader... Yes, I'm sure anyone who's tried to use barriers with any kind of sophisticated layout will know the frustration. From a top down perspective (pretty much the only effective way of placing barriers) you get this horrible white overdraw of specular reflection on the meshes. So basically white on white with no distinction. I ask this because I feel somewhere in the ZE config, someone may have been able to finagle a way to disable/comment it out before. It's not design breaking, it's just a real bloody nuisance.

One fix I found out that manages to stop a critical visual error in ZE is running the thing on one core only. I'd really like to know how to set affinity preferences for certain applications to make the fix permanent. As this fix requires you to find ZE in the task manager each time you launch it. The visual error basically looks like a corrupted/outdated driver. But basically all the geometry triangles stretch from the center to the boarder of your screen making it impossible to use. The only other way to fix it was to restart the computer. This happened with every unit I'd ran the thing off of and made mapping impossible, until I found that nifty fix at least.

So besides my initial questions, I invite any other kinds of general ZE tips and tweaks if ya'll know of any. I seriously would love to get my hands on some kind of, "less broken" and updated version of ZE. Sadly I don't think there's any successful modified versions (at least none that I'd heard of?).

[Phobos]

I've only seen ZE randomly delete objects as I delete other objects. If you don't click the object a few times it will sometimes delete other objects at random selection. They might even appear to still be in the editor but when you save it will remove them from the WLD. The solution I've found is to always use multi-select when deleting objects, even if it's just one model. This seems to prevent the bug. Another way to remove objects by "type" or change the team assignment is to edit the WLD and search for the info.

Not sure about the 2nd issue but if you adjust the height of barriers to a low number like 0-10, it will look a lot better in the editor and you can see the objects easier so I recommend trying that.

[Epifire]

I've only seen ZE randomly delete objects as I delete other objects. If you don't click the object a few times it will sometimes delete other objects at random selection. They might even appear to still be in the editor but when you save it will remove them from the WLD. The solution I've found is to always use multi-select when deleting objects, even if it's just one model. This seems to prevent the bug. Another way to remove objects by "type" or change the team assignment is to edit the WLD and search for the info.

Not sure about the 2nd issue but if you adjust the height of barriers to a low number like 0-10, it will look a lot better in the editor and you can see the objects easier so I recommend trying that.

Well it's really not seeing the objects as much as just getting better contrast. I end up relying of the lack in anti aliasing to provide me some kind of edge to draw barriers on. I usually go way up above my buildings and since a lot of my larger buildings are underground (with no roof) I try and flatten out the perspective and go up a ways. When working on less precise areas it's not the end of the world, but my map is already dark. If I could change the color of the barriers that would help too since all I end up seeing is white essentially.

I wish there was a way I could find out how the editor's render system is built, because my guess is maybe I could then find out how to strip some of the needless things out. Either way at least I have a bit of an answer to my disappearing objects, so I gotta thank you for that.