Common Problems
- This page features common problems with HeroBlade installation and usage, and how to fix them.
It's not letting me Connect and I know the Servers are Up!
- If you normally use a VPN, ensure that it is configured correctly.
- Sometimes, even though openvpn seems to start correctly, something's not right with it. Try restarting your VPN connection:
- If you have the openvpn service starting automatically, click on Start, then Right-Click on My Computer, Click on Manage, open up Services and Applications and then click on Services.
- Go down the list and then stop and then start the openvpn service (right-click to start / stop the service). If you're using the special program sent with the HeroBlade disc to start and stop the VPN services, use that to stop and restart the service. If you are running on windows Vista you may have to download the new version of open vpn at Open VPN Also you will have to turn off your user account controls on your computer.
- Sometimes, even though openvpn seems to start correctly, something's not right with it. Try restarting your VPN connection:
- Check your Master Control to verify that the service directories are up
- Try to ping the physical machine that your service directories are on. The name/IP of this machine can be obtained from your own staff.
It's not accepting my command!
If you keep trying to do something like moving an asset, deleting an instance, or creating something new, and your changes don't seem to "take", this is usually a result of having lost connection to the server. Check your Errors panel for a disconnection message. Also, try closing HeroBlade and reconnecting.
I can't seem to move an asset
If you're using one of the Transform Toolbar tools such as "Select and Translate", 
ensure that you're highlighting one of the Gizmo axes to a yellow color, before clicking and dragging.
If the object still doesn't move, it may be because the "Snap to grid" is turned on, and you're not dragging it far enough to the next grid location.
- (1) Try using large mouse movements, rather than small, to see if it moves large distances
- (2) Check the Assets panel and ensure that "Snap to Grid" is turned off.
I can't find the instance I just placed
To get the Instance to pop up, go to the Assets Panel, find the asset you added in the upper section where they are sorted by type, select it, and then look down in the "Instances" section and select the instance you're looking for. A highlighting box will appear around the instance once you select it (if you are facing in the correct direction), which should make it easier to spot.
If the above doesn't work, try one of the following:
- Select the instance in the Assets panel
- Click on "Instances menu" and then "Go to Position"
Or:
- Ensure that you are in Camera mode
- Select the instance in the Assets panel
- Press Ctrl+G to "go to" the instance. This can also be done with the "Back" button on the mouse
Another option is:
- Select the instance in the Assets panel
- Open the Properties panel
- Manually set its position to 0,0,0 or to some other location where you know you can find it.
Lastly, if nothing else works:
- Select the instance in the Assets panel
- In the Instances Menu, choose "Remove instance" to delete it and start over
Note: The instance may also have seemingly disappeared because you may be in a different Room. Click on "All" in the Rooms Toolbar to turn on all rooms and see if that makes it pop up. Be aware that in the Assets Panel, it will only display instances in your current room, regardless of whether or not "All" is selected in the Rooms Toolbar.
My character appears floating in the middle of the sky
Usually this can be fixed by using the Fly Mode camera to fly to a floor somewhere, and then switch back to Character Mode. Note that the Fly Mode viewpoint has to get close enough to a floor for this to work, otherwise the character may stay floating.
If that doesn't work, check that your character's "snap" setting is set to TRUE. See Character Behave Commands for more. For example, in the Console panel, if your character's ID were 186925453434, you might need to type:
behave 186925453434 snap true
If the snap were set to FALSE, then that would explain why the character did not "snap" to the floor.
I can't move!
See "If you get stuck" in the Starting HeroBlade section.
One of my HeroBlade panels is broken/missing/buggy
- First, go up to the Panels menu and ensure that it is selected.
- Check to see if the panel is Docked and therefore possibly hidden. Look for the docked panel icons along the edges of the Viewport, and click on them.
- Check to see if the panel is connected to another panel. For example, it may be an extra tab along the bottom of another panel's window
- Go up to the Panels menu, and turn off all panels, including the one that you are looking for.
- Next, turn on your panel, and keep a sharp eye on the viewport to see if anything changes as you toggle it on and off, to see where it might be appearing.
- Maximize the HeroBlade, to see if the panel might be hiding somewhere. Also, if you are using a two-monitor setup, check to see if the panel might have been placed on a different monitor.
If none of the above steps don't work, you may have a corrupted configuration, so delete your HeroBlade Interface files:
- Close HeroBlade
- Open the Window directory containing your user settings:
- Windows Vista/7
c:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local\HEROBLADE<deploy name>
- Delete the
HeroBladeUI.xmlandHeroBladeUI-lastKnownGood.xmlfiles. - Re-open HeroBlade and your panels will reset to their default settings.
For more information, such as how to backup a particular configuration of panels (for example if you wish to copy the configuration to another computer), see HeroBlade Interface.
How do I purge my Repository Cache?
- Note: The location of the Local Repository Cache is defined by a client configuration, in the CacheFilePath variable. To see the appropriate path for your configuration, use the Master Control console. See Editing client configuration values.
To purge the cache:
- Navigate to the appropriate directory on your hard-drive.
- In the Repository, there will be a folder for each of the worlds that you may have logged on to. The folders are numbered with the Game ID.
- Delete whichever folder relates to the cache you want to delete. For example, if you wish to purge the cache for world # 1001, the cache will (probably) be at:
Windows Vista/7 (Example path, the actual path may vary)
C:\ProgramData\HeroEngine\Repository\1001\
Depending on when your HeroCloud world was setup your path may look something more like:
C:\ProgramData\"Your World Name"\Repository
There is also an ASSETS folder that holds the actual assets. The numbered folders is the SQLite map into the ASSETS folder. To completely delete the local cache, you must also delete the ASSETS folder. If the ASSETS folder is deleted, all other numbered folders must be deleted as well.
Note: After purging the LRC, HeroBlade might run very slowly when next started up, as it has to re-download the things that it needs. On a slow connection, this could take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. To observe the process of requests going from HeroBlade to the Repository Server, open the Repository Requests panel.
When I run HeroBlade, everything else on my computer slows down!
HeroBlade, like any high-end 3D engine, is going to stress your CPU and GPU. If you want to work with other applications at the same time, but your computer runs unacceptably slow, there are various things you can do to speed things up:
- Minimize HeroBlade
- When HeroBlade is minimized, it uses a lot less CPU and GPU resources, which will give your other applications more.
- Check RAM
- HeroBlade is a large application, and requires much more memory than the end-user client. Make sure you have at least 2G RAM.
- Set HeroBlade as a lower priority application in Windows:
- Open your Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift-Escape)
- Click on the Processes tab
- Find the HeroBlade.exe process
- Right-click on it
- Choose "Set Priority" and set it to a lower priority.
- Note: This needs to be done each time you run HeroBlade. To have it done automatically at HeroBlade startup:
- Open the Console Panel and type:
- Note: This needs to be done each time you run HeroBlade. To have it done automatically at HeroBlade startup:
- Choose "Set Priority" and set it to a lower priority.
- call settings setbooltrue;belownormalpriority
- This will make HeroBlade, on startup, set its process priority in Windows to a low priority. To set the HeroBlade priority back to normal, type the following into the Console panel:
- call settings setboolfalse;belownormalpriority
- To see the current setting, check the Windows Task Manager. Whichever value shows up when HeroBlade is first launched, is its current default.
When I run HeroBlade, it runs really slowly
During development, HeroBlade can occasionally get quite slow, especially when trying to draw several things at once, such as when several developers are working on the same area. To speed up game performance in these situations, try the following:
- In the Room Toolbar, click on "Dim Other". This will stop other rooms from being drawn in the current area
- Turn off options in the Filters menu.
- For example, if you turn off Character viewing, the computer won't be trying to draw all the other characters and NPCs, and you'll only see their names floating in the air around you. To turn those off as well, toggle the GUI category in the Filters menu.
- One recommended configuration is to turn off all filters except GUI, Model, and Heightmap.
- Check also what other applications are running on your system. For example, if a virus scanner is running at the same time as HeroBlade, this could cause speed problems as the different applications fight for resources.
What's this weird flashing checkerboard texture on some objects?
A flashing texture is an alert that HeroEngine is not finding one of the textures that is needed for that particular object. For details on how to fix this, see Flashing textures.
My screen is red (or cyan or some other solid color) when I look certain directions!
So far, this has been caused by interactions between the dynamic gamma system and older video card drivers. Make sure you have the absolute latest from your manufacturer. If you still have problems, contact your HeroEngine representative.
It is also possible that you may be in Room Visibility mode, which renders objects outside your Current Room with a reddish tinge. Press F7 to try toggling out of "Dim Other" mode, or click on the yellow box in the Rooms Toolbar to see if this might be the case.
When I unlock my machine, polygons in HeroBlade are all over the place, and then I usually blue screen!
If your monitor is in power save mode when you go to unlock it, try disabling the power save feature. Set Control panel -> Display properties -> Screen Saver Tab -> Power... -> Turn off monitor to Never. Power save mode has been known to interact poorly with applications on certain video cards.
When installing an update I get an error message saying that one of the files is not a valid previous version!
If this happens with HeroBlade the work around is to go to the directory you have installed HeroBlade into such as C:\Program Files\Play.Net\Tools\HeroBlade and delete HeroBlade.exe. Then launch HeroBlade again. This will force a full install.
Error messages
- "Exceeded 10 calls from C++ to HeroScript without returning". See HeroMachine Stack
- "HeroMachine count: 6". See HeroMachine Stack
All my stuff disappeared!
The first thing to consider is whether your work in your last session was being done in a Play instance and not in an Edit instance. If you were not in an edit instance when you made changes, then some of your work was probably unfortunately lost. To go to an edit instance version of the area to continue your work, click on the area name at bottom right in the HeroBlade Status Bar and choose "Go Edit Instance".
If you're sure that you were in an edit instance, and you still can't find any of the items that you previously created, it's possible that they're there, but you're just not seeing them. Try one of the following:
- Ensure that the Filters menu has those asset types set to visible.
- Check in the Area Panel, that you are in the same room where you created the items.
- If you are accidentally in the Everywhere Room, it may look like everything has disappeared. Try choosing a different room.
- Check the Area Panel to ensure that the proper rooms are visible.
- Open the Paths panel and look for your Arrival path, to see if your character may have appeared in a different location than expected.
- Check the Assets menu and look for instances of what you created (note that they still may not show up if you're in the wrong Room).
- If you can find the instance number in the Assets Panel, select it, go into Camera mode, move the mouse pointer over the viewport, and press Ctrl+G to "goto" the selected instance.
My heightmap changes disappeared
This would usually be from one of two reasons:
- That your work was being done in a Play instance instead of an Edit instance.
- That the area that you were working in was Locked. When working on a locked area, your tools will only work for you on your client, but the changes will not show up to anyone else, and will not be saved to the server.
- To see if the area is currently locked, open the Chat panel and type /HEEDIT LOCK CHECK
I can't change the heightmap!
If you are trying to use tools from the Terrain panel, but the heightmap is not changing, check the following:
- Ensure that the heightmap is selected
- Turn off all Limiters
- Ensure that the Brush intensity is above zero
More details below:
- Is the heightmap selected? There should be a green bounding box around it.
- If there is no bounding box at all, select the heightmap.
- If the bounding box is yellow, it probably means either that the intensity of a terrain tool is set to 0, or that the mouse is not positioned directly over the heightmap.
- If there is no bounding box at all, select the heightmap.
- Re-select a terrain tool, such as Edit Height.
When you hover the tool over the heightmap, white polygons should be highlighted, showing which parts of the heightmap will be affected by the tool.
- If no white polygons are visible:
- Check the intensity (strength) setting of the terrain tool. If it is set at a too-low setting, no changes will occur. Use Ctrl+mouse wheel to increase the intensity, or drag the vertical slider on the terrain panel upwards.
- If there are still no white polygons, check the Terrain limiters, since one of them may be turned on and preventing the modification that you are trying. Tools exist on the terrain panel to limit modifications by height, slope, direction, or vertices. To turn all of them off:
- If no white polygons are visible:
- Right-click in the Slope limiter box to turn it all green.
- Check that both direction-limiter checkboxes are on
- Check that all four of the checkboxes in the Limiters section of the panel, such as Limit altitude are not selected.
What else should I try?
Try reviewing the tutorials such as:
You are also of course welcome to contact the Hero Engine team via the Forums.
