dividing a map into sub"maps": prob with sky

(]UBC[ McNite) #1

Seems nobody asked this question before so I just bring it up:

How can i get 2 sub-maps in 1 huge terrain working without seeing what is behind the brush that separates the 2 submaps?
I have a large terrain, but with a range of hills the northern part is completely cut off the southern part. Skybox by EasyGen is horribly large and no good for FPS (dropping to 30 on a machine with a x800Pro :eek: so I need to divide the terrain into 2 separate submaps thus seriously reducing VIS (hopefully).

But if i cut the terrain by a brush applying the sky-texture on it i can see the cut in the hills from some spots in my map because the skybox-textured brush is not blocking the view.

So how did they do it in radar and Oasis and Fueldump with the multiple skyboxes? Or is the trick simply not to give the player in the map the opportunity to see those cuts which means the hills/buildings have to be highest where the skybox-brush divides them? (I don’t think I can do that trick with a single line of hills… only way to do it would be to make all hills exactly the same height with looks SUCKY) The hills are not that broad as i would need them to do 2 lines of hills (one for each side of the skybox)

(]UBC[ McNite) #2

Hmmm i m really desperate to improve the FPS in my map seriously…
can anybody plz tell me at which altar i got to pray or at which temple to donate to reach enlightenment (preferable by the way of SD) :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

(G0-Gerbil) #3

I’m confused - unless I’m very much mistaked oasis and goldrush don’t have seperate skyboxes?
Your best bet is to use something like Terragen to create a simple skybox and hence remove the skyportal.

(]UBC[ McNite) #4

Maybe i m wrong but if you look at goldrush the skybox has a lot of extrusions… take the minaret for example. Then the area around the bank is completely cut off from the area around the crates between first and second truck barrier. There s a gap in the skybox-parts between those 2 areas. So that s pretty much what I want to do but I don’t have the space to do a cut, it would destroy the mountain range.

What about caulk? It doesn’t add to BSP, but blocks VIS (same as structural brush with texture) and is invisible… can I use caulk as structural walls where I don’t have to bother about ppl running into invisible walls?

(G0-Gerbil) #5

Ah I think you are talking about the source.
You are just basically looking at ways of making the VIS stage more effective.
Search for caulk hull and hint brushes on this forum for ways of making that kinda stuff more efficient and getting a FPS boost.

(]UBC[ McNite) #6

Sure I talk about the source when I talk about having a look at the skyboxes…

Having searched for caulk hull I found out I did read the interesting posts already.
The problem is: players in the map CAN see the top of the hills and the parts of the hills where the caulk/sky cuts (i think sock gave advice on how to deal with hills)… seems like I m committing a no-no there :bash:

(Ifurita) #7

run blocks of structural caulk under your mountains then drop a hint and clip face at the level of the top of your caulk walls. Go to PCgamemods.com and download the source file for Vengeance to see how we handled it

(Ifurita) #8

BTW, semantics are important here. A skybox is literally a box with a sky texture that has a left, right, top, bottom, front, and back sides. It just provides the border scenery. When I first read your post, I had the same thought as Gerbil, that you were interested in different skybox textures in different parts of your map.

What you are talking about is cutting your map into smaller, stand alone arenas or submaps to reduce vis, e.g., radar where the inner base is cut off completely from the chateau area and only connected by 2 tunnels/gates.

(]UBC[ McNite) #9

@ Ifurita: thx for the hint, i changed the title of the thread and a bit of text accordingly. Yepp I want to divide my map into submaps.

If you take radar i m pretty sure you theoretically could use a different sky-texture in the radar-arena than in the villa-arena because those areas are completely cut off from each other, only connected by tunnels.
That s pretty much what I need… only prob is I don’t have much space where the cutting brushes need to be installed. Have a look here: http://www.ubcclan.com/site/pages/mapping/map_terrain.htm, first pic after the command maps, the top of the mountain range behind the station is only 128 units wide (1 terrain-triangle) so I cant make 2 ranges with a small valley in between where I can let the brush cut in and nobody sees it.

My prob is that a brush with a skybox-texture doesn’t block the players view while cutting into the terrain in a way that you can see a gap. I will upload a pic or 2 when i m back from work this afternoon.

(Ifurita) #10

Can players actually get high enough to see the blank caulk or only spectators? If only specs, then clip off the map with a clip brush to prevent people from getting that high. if players, then I don’t know what you can do. What did the original mapper do?

(]UBC[ McNite) #11

Players can see the spots from their spawns… that s y I m in trouble :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:
The original map didnt feature a first stage of the map so Tanya Cheex didn’t have to worry about this… but I think its a general prob with small mountain ranges. I had it 4x128 units broader at the start but I wanted to safe about 2 secs of running time, and I didn’t want lots of tunnel-fighting so I cut it out of the map in an early stage.

(G0-Gerbil) #12

Well, your best bet is to fill the hills with as much structural (preferably axial aligned) caulk brushes, and dump a huge hint brush over the whole map that matches the top of the caulk brushes. When below this hint brush you’ll get the culling, but when above, you won’t. But then again, when above it there’s bugger all you can do anyway really.

If it was an area players could never see above I’d have probably suggested an anti-portal surface, but for bits where the whole area can be seen, you are limiited in possibilities.

(]UBC[ McNite) #13

So here s the pic with explanation:

The blue spot is allies spawn and from there you can see what s in the blue frame. With the arrows I indicate which parts of the mountainrange u can see that are critical.
Same counts for the orange spot and frame (its a sniping point in the mountain path.
So if I use a brush with the sky texture that cuts the small mountain range (2x128 units) you can see the cut clearly from both spots.

(G0-Gerbil) #14

Oh gotcha - fortunately it is kinda what we thought it was earlier :slight_smile:

Stick a big caulk brush the entire width of the mountain range / map width. Make it as thin as is reasonable (16 units maybe) and make it as tall as it can be without coming out of the mountain. Make sure it’s structural.
Then, create a big brush that covers the entire map (!), and align it’s bottom face to the top of the caulk brush you just made. Paint this brush with the common/hint texture. It doesn’t matter if this is structural or detail (the hint shader overrides it to structural).

It should work, as long as players are below the bottom face of the hint brush - you won’t see the other side.

(]UBC[ McNite) #15

Damn u r faster with the answer than I m with the posting…

anyway thx for that idea (figured that one out very early) but I was wondering whether the brush all way up to the top brush of the skybox would be more efficient for FPS optimizing and I found only problems when I tried that with sky-texturing it or using pure caulk…

(G0-Gerbil) #16

The caulk brush has to remain hidden within the mountain,s don’t poke it above :slight_smile:

(]UBC[ McNite) #17

I just tried with letting it poke all way up to the top brush of the skybox… didn’t do any harm as far as i can see… there wasn’t even the notorious gap in the mountain range. What’s yer reason for saying don’t do it (which are the evil things happening later on)?

(Chruker) #18

Try decompiling the fueldump map, and see how the two sections are seperated from each other. Even each section has so funkey sky brushes which covers the top of the hills. All of which helps to lower the amount of stuff in the PVS.

(G0-Gerbil) #19

Structural caulk ‘eats’ into your detail terrain, meaning you’d see less. I thought your original point was that the terrain in the middle was so thin you didn’t want to lose any.
If it’s fine stretched up, then change it from all caulk to all skybox shader and make sure it’s structural.