"EGYPT" NEW PROJECT KAFOR_SVEN (etmap) Aplha Test

Looks interesting, but the large file size and really open killzones with no cover are going to be big deterrants to people playing the map. What kind of FPS are you getting and on what type of system?

carnage · 2005-01-06 19:03:15 UTC

there is a screenshot of two mg 42’s close together this may made problems with the players using them colide

Ifurita · 2005-01-06 19:20:01 UTC

Actually, I’d really like to see screenies showing what FPS you’re getting. From what i see, the map looks very open with little to block vis. Additionally, it looks like it’s build for large servers, the two in combination could lead to significant hits on FPS when a lot of arty and smoke is going off.

EB1 · 2005-01-06 20:28:56 UTC

Yes, listen to Ifurita!

Wils
Hand-Crimped Pasty, Splash Damage

Post Posted: Jun 26, 2003 - 12:28 PM Reply with quote Back to top
If you’re planning on a totally open map with fog to block visibility across the entirity of the map, you’ll need to do the same thing we did in Railgun, and have the compiler split the map up into blocks for vis.
Fog in ET doesn’t block visibility by default. Although it can cull polygons, this is probably too CPU intensive for your needs. To properly block visibility, you need to divide the map up into blocks and cull each based on its distance from the player (aka farplane culling).
To do this you’ll need to place the following keys/values in your worldspawn entities:

_fog <your fog shader>
_blocksize <integer value, defines the size of the vis blocks>
farplanedist <distance at which the farplane exists>
fogclip <distance at which a fully opaque fog bank is drawn, which takes values from your fog shader>
_blocksize should probably be a power of two (we used 512 in Railgun, you might find 1024 is enough). Bear in mind that the smaller you make this number, the more blocks your map gets split into.

More blocks leads to exponentially higher vis data sizes, which is a Bad Thing because your map will use too much memory and take ages to load. Not enough blocks means you end up drawing more than you need to and your FPS will suffer.
farplanedist and fogclip should be the same value, and should match the last value in the fogparms for your fog shader.
With this all set up, when you compile your level with the ET tools it should only draw the area you’re currently in, plus any areas in your view frustum that fall within the farplane distance.
Any areas beyond that will be culled, and any polys that fall within the spaces between the vis block and the farplane should be culled by the world fog.
On the subject of fog, you can add a global fog shader to ET maps and get similar world fog to RTCWs (except that it’s now compiled into the map and can’t be turned on or off with a cvar), so you don’t need to add fog brushes unless you’re trying to do something specific with them, such as low lying fog in a valley.
Hope that helps (and I’m sure one of the code monkeys will correct me if I’ve got any of this arse-backwards ).

Wils
:notworthy: Yes Wils

I just ran through the map, My fps kinda got a little kick…but not too bad. Fps dropped from 90 to 20’s in splits of split seconds in some places. ->Can you change the axis spawn in the templel so as it isn’t 5 miles down a longgggggggggg hall ? Otherwise, it looks pretty cool and I will be waiting for you to pick on my maps!!!hehehehehehe
The.bsp is only 1/4 of the file size!!! 15/ 60mb decompressed.

FireFly · 2005-01-06 21:48:55 UTC

First thing I noticed was the huge filesize of 20 Mb. I had a look in the egypt.pk3 to see what was causing it:

It seems that you have included the prt, srf and bak-file, you don’t need to include those in your pk3.and will save you almost 2MB.

The folder “models\mapobjects\mapcenter_1\egypt” is filled with rather large textures that, as far as I can see, aren’t used in the map.

All your textures are tga, converting them to jpg will also reduce your total filesize.

Ingame I got mixed fps. When you are on one end of the map and facing the other side, fps dramatically drop: I took some 3 screens of this

At the allied spawn r_speeds get as high as 75k. Imagine how high it will get with players running / shooting around, mortar-impacts,airstrikes…

You might want to add some fog, like EB suggested.

Near the objective (gold), still getting r_speed around 75k. It looks like your walls don’t block vis, therefore (pic3) the engine is drawing all kind of stuff that it really shouldn’t. Did you make those walls structural? if so you might wanto place some hintbrushes to block vis…

Minor thing I noticed: When the allies capture the flag, there is no allied flag displayed on the command map.

You also might wanto decrease your mapcoords so your commandmap will be a bit larger in the limbo menu…

Gameplay looks pretty good to me (although I havenÂ´t yet played it on a server) The allies have enough cover when they make their way to the river…

I think when you get rid of some of the r_speeds issues It will be a very fun map to play

etmap05 · 2005-01-08 10:27:57 UTC

That is a Big Problem ok thakns to all for help!!

carnage · 2005-01-08 11:14:23 UTC

just a small surgestion, make the fog look like a sand storm

FireFly · 2005-01-08 20:55:57 UTC

Because I was wondering why the r_speeds on this maps are so extremely high, I opened up the bak and prt files in radiant.

The main reason why r_speeds are so high is that the whole map is structural, There aren’t any detail brushes in the map. This will create far to many leaf-nodes so the engine will basically draw anything in the map (regardless if it’s visible to the player or not)

I also noticed allot of hint-brushes that really had no purpose only other than creating more leaf-nodes.(my guess is that you took them directly from the oasis map)

Now, instead of giving you a link to some of the tutorials that are out there I took the liberty to change some things to your map. ( I hope you don’t mind)

I kept all the brushwork/entities intact. ( infact as a player, you won’t detect any changes as for increased fps) I only changed the skybox brushes and made some brushes detail, some structural and sealed of the ‘temple building’ from the rest of the map.

I also wrote a fog shader (similar to railgun, battery)…

After I compiled the map the result, I must admit, is quite noticeable

Here are some before and after screens I took:

Again allies starting spawn, r_speeds was around 75k, now it’s 36k. Personally my main goal is always to stay beneath 25k, But in this case I was quite satisfied being able to get it to 36k, because it’s a large open area with allot of buildings and small details…

main objective (Gold) : r_speeds went from 75k to 13k!!! Also notice all the stuff in the background that the engine was drawing, but now isn’t. (explaining the r_speeds drop)

I also managed to decrease the bsp file from 15 Mb to 10 Mb. again when you convert all tga’s to jpg and exclude some unnecessary files I think you will end up with a total pk3 size of 10Mb or less instead of the 20MB you currently have…

To be honest: I really, really like this map. For a ‘first’ map it’s really good created with some nice details. It’s an excellent map for public servers. Therefore I think it would be a shame if the map would not be played on any server

BUT with the current r_speeds issues the map has at the moment no server administrator will dare to have it on rotation. That’s the reason why I tried to reduce the r_speeds (with success)

If you want to I could free up some space on my website and store the new map-file (and the shaders) there for you to download…If you want me to send the file to you instead just let me know, the map-file is about 5.6 Mb.

If you encounter any problems don’t hesitate to post a question here on the forum

EB1 · 2005-01-11 05:57:05 UTC

he doubled your fps…what a guy !!! Great!!! :drink: