Help with relentless leaks...

[Himora]

I've been trying to learn mapping for awhile now, and, while it was very hard to start until I checked out a few tutorials, my "learn by doing" attitude kicked in and I started attempting actual maps a bit too early.

Now heres my actual problem, in just about every map attempt, even the relatively simple ones, I'll end up in what I call "Leak Hell". It starts with one simple leak, I fix that one, and another more complex one pops up, this goes on until my map resembles something demonic and unholy. Not to mention that, by that point I never want to look at the map again and I scrap it.

Heres an example of a very simple room that has an impossible (To me.) to fix leak, it somehow came out of a cube room.

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/9519/wtf1xb8.png
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/2426/wtf2ur8.png

And I just know, if I SOMEHOW manage to fix it, three more will pop up.

I know that it's probably happening because I'm doing a bunch of things the wrong way, and that I should read more tutorials and maybe the manual. I really plan on doing that, but at the moment before I do anything else I really need to know what I'm doing wrong so I can stop scrapping every map attempt.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[Teelos]

Is that light entity outside the box? If so that might be one cause of your leaks. Not sure why your infoplayerstart is saying its leaked.

[Himora]

Strangely enough, nope. None of the entities are in the void. The leak just seems to go right through the floor. And with some of my more complex attempts the leaks are even more ridiculous. I really hope I can pinpoint what's causing them because it's getting to be very annoying having to give up on all my maps...

Edit: Now I'm REALLY confused, I changed the texture on the floor, and the leak disappeared! When I changed it back, the leak was back as well...

How can the texture possibly be causing a leak?

[Teelos]

Looking at the screenshots some more it looks like the infoplayerstart is clashing with the bottom brush. Some z axis screenshots would be helpful.

[Himora]

Heres one, but it looks to me like it's actually a little above that brush. What troubles me more is that the leak goes away if I change the texture...

http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/4779/wtf3rl0.png

[Plasma]

Try making the brushes again.

[j3rk]

I feel yer pain dude... in addition to all of the other helpful comments here, one thing that helps me when checking for leaks is to toggle all detail brushes off (ctrl + D). Watch out for entities (lights, etc.) touching the void and make sure the bounding box for any models do not touch structural brushes. Hope that helps.

[DarthNormaN]

sure the brush isnt detailed?

[WorldsLargestIpod]

it definately has to do something with that brush you are working with. It could be because you set it as a detailed brush, but i am unsure. You're likely going to have to redo the entire brush, since your progress in that map seems some what begginers, i might recommend redoing the entire thing, repeat the process exactly as you did it before.

As for learning by doing, i highly discourage it, i'm not an expert mapper in any way shape or form, but when i tried to learn by trying to make a map, i became swamped in a series of bugs and questions i couldn't figure out. Definately go with the tutorials, for beginners, richdeisal's tutorials are good, the mbII wiki also has some good resources. [so I've heard] And never under any circumstances abandon the knowledge of a particular mapping topic until it is perfect.

[Himora]

Thanks for all the input guys, I'm still not completely sure what is causing them since I rarely use detail brushes, but I think that before I go any further I'm going to read a few more tutorials and see what I was doing wrong.