can you please help me?


(Storm) #1

Hello, glad I got your attention.

I would really be thankfull if you took time away from your life/job and look over my .map file. All I need is to increase fps, I know it may not be possible with the way my map if build, but I would hate for this map to be know as the map with bad fps. I don’t expect anything special, just a quick review. If you got fueldump looking as good as it does with that kinda fps! I need your help!! I will be sure to let everyone know whos the daddy of fps, you!!

EDIT: More appropriate title. Sock


(damocles) #2

I may not be sock, but I could take a look at your map if you like and give you some pointers. If it’s less then 5MB, send it to dave88@ntlworld.com, if it’s more you’ll have to host it somewhere.


(BXpress) #3

there are still other mappers in this forum. :banghead:


(damocles) #4

Ok, I had a look around. I would have preferred the .map file to get a better idea of the real problems, but here’s what Ihave for you:

  1. Your terrain is way more complex than it needs to be. You have used very small divisions, which can make for some very nice looking terrain, but you could easily halve the number of peices without affecting the feel of the terrain.

  2. You have a line of sight throughout the entire map (this is your real problem). It’s possible to stand on the beach, look through the doors, see through the sand barricade and on into the rear depot. Because of this, the engine is drawing 2/3 of your map the whole time. To fix this, I recopmmend two things…

First, at the beach doors, consider extending those grey bunkers behind the wall so that they cover the doors (make the doors routes into the interior of the bunkers instead of the courtyard).

Second, do a similar thing behind the sand barricade. It’s al arge entity and so (remembering that entities cannot block vis) allows a lot of both sides of the depot to be visible from a lot of angles. Try makingf one side of it blocked by some form of structure to help reduce visibility.

Damocles final thought for the day: :smiley:
You should add caulk walls under the terrain where it meets the middle building (you know, where the two slopes of terrain connect to the sides of the building with the sand barricade). Make the caulk walls as high as you can without them being visible through the terrain.

PS - try lowering your skybox. If you do /r_showtris 1 you can see that the sky gets divided into a lot of smaller triangles. You don’t need the sky to be very high (thank you tracemap inventor! :smiley: ) so you could easily lower it and reduce the number of sky triangles being drawn.


(Storm) #5

Alright my brother!

that helps, but I have placed quite a few culk blocks in the terrain. It hasn’t show much change since thoguht. But the ideas of a structure behind sandbarriced and lower triangle count have been hanging around my head fro a while…

I’m thinking of a reworking of the landscape altogether outter beach and inner beach bother being made of same land chunk wth much larger triangels, is there any way to take the brushes in my map that make up the land and get a caculation that interpolates the the math and makes a low brush count land? hehe tricky to type when on a train to dallas…


(damocles) #6

The caulk should help as long as they make a solid block of caulk from the outer walls to the edge of the centre structure. You may also want to consider make large hintbrushes that run from the top of these caulk blocks out across the map. This will slow your vis compile times a lot, but will lower the amount that can be seen, especiaqlly as most of your map is played below rooftop height.


(Storm) #7

thats good advice but, man I could really benefit from handing this map off to you to work with

can I e-mail it to you in a zip file?

thanks for you time and effort all this map needs is better fps and I’ts done!


(damocles) #8

Yeah sure, email me the map file and I’ll add some caulk and hint brushes like I suggested. It should only take about 5-10 minutes :slight_smile:


(Doc) #9

Way to pawn your own work onto somebody else… :disgust:


(Storm) #10

just working togeather, plus he dosen’t go unmentioned.

we’ll all play this map soon…


(sock) #11

Is this really necessary? He asked for help and someone helped.

Sock
:moo:


(damocles) #12

Exactly sock - there are too many negative people on this forum. I’m not doing his work for him, I’m going to show him how to hint a level. I think he’ll learn a lot more from this than if he was to spend hours trying to hint an entire level for the first time. Once I have hinted it I can explain to him why I hinted it that way and he will learn a lot more that he can use in the design of his next map.


(Doc) #13

I wasn’t trying to be negative. I guess I just interpreted it differently to you guys. I wouldn’t want to see him send his map off to someone else to fix it up - I’d much rather he learn how to do it himself, and if you’re willing to teach him (rather than just do it for him) more power to you.

:drink: