All current ET mapping projects

(macbeth) #621

yes seems to be an awesome map

(Krischan) #622

Thanks. Still a lot work to do. But it’s making progress as I have some variations in the buildings now and created great textures for them which can be reused over the whole map.

(schnoog) #623

Very nice screenshots.
At this point I`m wondering about “pros” which decreased their graphical settings nearly to gameboy niveau.

(Mateos) #624

Very nice work… I guess it is over 20 MB? This part looks to be a great work, but I can’t see how you can optimize it with detail brushes and hint one o.o

(Krischan) #625

PK3 is now 15MB. You only see detail brushes in the previous screenshots with some structural brushes in the middle of the buildings. The VIS Blocking is very easy this way. It’s like a large bunker, lets see it in Radiant:

Structural+Detail brushes

Structural Brushes only

I didn’t implement VIS Blocking in the final map right now but I tested it already in my sandbox environment and there I get exiting values. I get constant 125FPS across the map - without limitfps about 200-600 FPS, values for a C2D@2,53GHz and a Geforce 9600MT. Here a wireframe shot with rspeeds, the buildings brushcounts are (including sides and backsides!) 574: 157, 50, 68, 89, 210. The are full detail - I could even leave some windows/beams/details away to save tris:

(Mateos) #626

OK, on my side I tried to see with 2Bit tut how I can try to increase the performances. The lowest FPS I have is 80, when I look over the map, with 4x AA and some other graphic card tweaks to increase the quality, but I still try to make things better… Mine isn’t as complicated as yours, but the tip to make a Caulk structural brush inside the unvisitable buidings, it’s good to know :wink: Thanks!

(Krischan) #627

> but the tip to make a Caulk structural brush inside the unvisitable buidings, it’s good to know :wink:

It’s not a tip, from my point of view its the holy grail, the revelation of VIS blocking in a large city map :smiley: You can even make one of these structural brushes hollow and work with area portals to walk through the “unvisitable” buildings.

Don’t forget the mapsize vertical hintskip brush (mine is at Z1024 while the buildings basements are at Z512) to meet the structural brushes “roofs” to seal the streets and set blocksize to 0 to have full control over your VIS blocking. Streets must be structural, too. After all buildings are placed you can start the VIS blocking - just hide all detail brushes and forget about them :wink:

My 125FPS are with 4xAA and 8xAF Full Texture Quality and all ET settings to maximum. I hope that I can keep them until the final version of the map - I hate to leave details away.

(Mateos) #628

Is there a tutorial concerning all these common textures (Hint, Skip)? I tried to put a Hint brush in a corner, in a tut the player don’t see the objects after the corner, when I did it I was able to see them… but this question goes offtopic :confused:

(shagileo) #629

I created a help document a while ago when I was struggling with hint brushes myself
Maybe it can help you as well

(Mateos) #630

Thanks, spend 2 days on all documentation, I have just to care what /r_showtris 1 shows? If yes, seems the map does not need Hint, if I use /r_showtris 2 even if Hint/Skip are placed everything is drawn…

(Avoc) #631

No - r_showtris 1 shows only the tris that are visible on your screen.
R_showtris 2 shows all tris that the engine renders in your view, as such it shows also the tris that might be behind a building.

You need to use r_showtris 2 to see how good your visblocking is. If the map seems to have no visblocking, then check to see if there are any gaps in your structural brushes. Even the tiniest gap will cause the engine to render the area. Also make sure that you are doing a proper vis compile.

(Mateos) #632

So mine is a fail x) I see everything. When I asked if it was important to fill the gaps inside the building with Caulk, I didn’t get an answer, but you gave me the reason of my troubles. I’ll do it when all stuff will be done, now I’m adding your snow foliage, some trees and I make the road with Patch Meshes…

Thanks!

(Krischan) #633

You should think about a proper VIS blocking first, before you start the map. In my FFM map, I have three very large areas I needed to divide from each other first. I started building the map roughly only using structural blocks all with the same height and seal the “ceiling” above these blocks with a single hint brush hitting the skybox walls - like a ceiling in a large room.

Then I filled the “streets” with a lot of cubes as detail brushes to simulate a lot of tris. Without additional hint brushes and blocksize=0, a basic VIS already worked there. Then you can go further tweaking with hint or even better hintskip brushes (a brush made of skip texture with only one side hint textured - the side where the map should split). Then - with r_showtris 2 you can see the cubes vanishing and this means the VIS blocking is working. Experiment with it. :wink:

The structural blocks inside of my buildings are the remains of this stage - and I can rearrange them later very easy before the finetuning. And my detail walls, windows, doors attached to it always move with the structural brush - no need to worry about them :cool:

(Justice) #634

[QUOTE=shagileo;308455]I created a help document a while ago when I was struggling with hint brushes myself
Maybe it can help you as well[/QUOTE]

Thanks mate, I’ll sure be needing this one time :stuck_out_tongue:

(Mateos) #635

To avoid more offtopic, I will put my questions in the related map thread:
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23880&page=2

Hope I’ll have something working >.>

(.Chris.) #636

Krischan, nice work but my main gripe with the map so far is that it’s all flat at street level judging for the screenshots.

(IndyJones) #637

colloseum was pretty flat as well, but it was pretty playable imo…

(Krischan) #638

Just wait for the final map. I’m not quite sure what you mean but you feel a lack of walkable houses, balconys, sniper towers, sewers? So the third tactical dimension? I already considered that, be surprised. :cool:

(.Chris.) #639

Was talking more about the road layout flatness, goldrush is a good example of nice hight variance.

(Avoc) #640

One more area to go, and I’m done!