SO MANY HINT BRUSHES IN GOLDRUSH

(TIHan) #1

i have found so many massive amounts of hint brushes in goldrush… i know how hard hint brushes are to use at times but in goldrush is just insane :eek2: !!! :eek3: sock, did u use a tool or plugin to were it makes the hint brushes for u?.. did u use a different way besides doing it brush by brush with ur mouse?

i mean i dont see how i’m going to get a map to where i can create hint brushes… i normally dont create detail brushes because i dont know which brushes need detail…if u could have a tool or something that would create hint brushes for u in ur map… man… :eek3: :eek3: :eek3: :eek3: … it would 100% help me and not have to worry about structural and detail brushes and framerates

:banana: + :blah: = :lol:

(evillair) #2

There’s no tool to create hint brushes for you (ie:placing them in a map for you).

http://www.wolfensteinx.com/surface/tutorials/hint_brushes.html

Structural = brushes that block VIS(ibility).
Detail = brushes that don’t.

(Fluffy_gIMp) #3

The majority of the Hint’ing work in GoldRush was done by hand by djbob, he’s the in house wearer of the daddy pants when it comes to such matters. :slight_smile:

As for when to use detail and when to use structural brushes and in the absence of Sock (as he’s on holiday) I will elaborate a little myself:

As evillair has already pointed out Structural brushes block VIS, obviously this is important to keep frame rate down and so you aren’t seeing more of the map at a certain point then you should be seeing. “r_showtris 1” is your friend when it comes to working out where the problem areas are in your map, as it’ll show you exactly what the engine is drawing from your current point of view. If you are seeing parts that you shouldn’t be able to see, then you need to invest in using some structural brushes in-between to block the view of the area.

It’s very good practice to build the core of your level in structural caulk brushes, and then slap detail brushes on top of them kind of like a skin. Everything you know won’t block VIS you really want to make as detail brushes.

Why do you not want to just build everything out of structural brushes? you may ask, because your map will take ages to compile.

Working this way will mean you’ll be able to stop the engine drawing polygons that no one is going to see in the position they are in, allowing you to add more brushwork to the current area than you’d normally be able to because of low FPS.

I hope I wasn’t repeating what you already know.

-Fluffy_gIMp

(G0-Gerbil) #4

Me thinks SD had a choice with Goldrush - either use tons of hint brushes done manually, or scrap the map cos of crap framerates.
GR already suffers from poo framerates in key areas, so god knows what it would be like without them. Actually I might try compiling with and without to see what difference it makes :slight_smile:

You can’t say SD weren’t ambitious with their maps :wink:

(TIHan) #5

i know a little about hint brushes… but… god its TOO HARD!!! i mean using a hint brush it has to be exactly in the right spot or it wont work and me… I HATE DETAIL BRUSHES!@!!! :bash:

but thanks for the tips on wut to do

Root Beer? :beer:

(TIHan) #6

forgot to ask… which brushes should be detail? i mean i can make detail on info_playerdeathmatch and hint brushes and anything… should i use filter where it only shows the normal brushes and then select them all, except the void edge brushes, and make them detail?

:drink: 2 Root Beers?

(cremator) #7

Er, did you not understand what they have posted? You need some structural brushes. To be more specific, you need something to block vis, which structural DOES. An example of when to use detail would be on actual detail brushes, like small lights, and specific trims. I highly suggest you don’t go making everything detail, because then the game draws everything from the edge of the map to the other and so on. Making terrain detail is a good idea, but do not forget to give it a caulk hull (do not copy it and clone it and make it structural, you need simple caulk hulls). I suggest you doing some research on this forum and other Quake 3 based engine games for tutorials on hints and detail / structural brushes.

(TIHan) #8

oh well… forget hint brushes… i’ll get on to this about hint brushes when i make a map and get bad fps… i have never gotten bad fps on a map anyway :clap:

(Loffy) #9

Hi!
I have seen the large amount of hintbrushes in the (excellent) map GoldRush. My question is: Why use hintbrushes with the hinttexture on all six sides? Wouldnt it be enough to make brushes and to apply “nodraw” texture to 3-4 of its sides, and to apply the hinttexture to the rest of the sides. That would make it easier to put the hintsplit (the bsp-split) exactly where you wanted it.
Or, perhaps it is not possible to apply hinttexture to just 1-2 sides of a brush, and use it for creating hint-splits/bsp-splits?
// Loffy

(Wils) #10

You can (and should, really) use common/skip for your hint brushes, and only texture the face you want the portal in with common/hint.

You can still get away with using 100% common/hint hint brushes, as long as you understand that any exposed faces (ie those which don’t butt up to structural geometry) will create a portal each.

This can be useful if you can arrange the brush into a position such that its two exposed faces lie where you want the two hint portals anyway, as you’ve saved yourself a bit of work creating and aligning an extra brush each time.

([flayBad]eR) #11

GoldRush is COOOOOOL!!! A ty jestes pieprzonum dupkiem!!!

(Loffy) #12

Thanks Wils, I had been thinking about that for some time now. Thanks!
I also wonder if you guys at SD map and compile on standard PCs, like my ordinary DELL machine (2,0 ghz, 512 RAM and geforce3 64 MB) or if you have superduperheavydutymachines. And how long did it take to make Goldrush (hours)? And to compile it? And… Well, you dont have to answer. I understand that the answer to questions like these are trade secrets (business secrets) in the hard and cruel monitary-governed world of gaming.
:rocker:
Still, I can’t help wondering.

// Loffy

(ETO) #13

Hehehe, my machine: Riva TNT 2, 320SDRAM, and Intel Celeron 600Mhz :disgust: :frowning: :frowning: :frowning: :bored:

(TIHan) #14

you all still havn’t answered my question… should i make entities, (info_plyaerdeathmatch, func_door) and hint, any clip brush be detail?

say if i have a map with 10,000 brushes… everything is structural… what is a good way to make some of them detail?

POKE :poke:

(G0-Gerbil) #15

It’s not really something that can be answered simply, but I’ll try to give some examples of where you might use structural VS detail.

You have a long corridor with some shelves / crates in it.

Make the corridor walls structural, and the crates / shelves detail.

The idea is that when calculating the potentially visable set (VIS stage of the compile), all detail brushes are ignored. This is why an all structural map vs a structural + detail map will take so much longer to compile.

So the basic shape of your map should be structural, and the smaller things (or details!) would be detail brushes :slight_smile:

If you look at the MML church source and hide all detail brushes (errr control+D ?) then all the chairs, minor barriers etc disappear, you are left with the general shape of the level.

As a test you could try timing it compiling through the vis stage, then converting it all to structural and compiling it again. I doubt you’d have the patience to let it finish :smiley:

(wudan) #16

r_showtris 1
Seems to show which triangles are in view, r_showtris 2 seems to show which triangles are being passed to the renderer …

I’m not sure of the technical terms, could somebody clear this up for me?

(SCDS_reyalP) #17

r_shotris 1 is z-buffered, just like normal geometry. r_shotris 2 is shows everything that goes to the renderer (like r_shotris 1 in other id games)

(TIHan) #18

you all still havn’t answered my question… should i make entities, (info_plyaerdeathmatch, func_door) and hint, any clip brush be detail?

(G0-Gerbil) #19

ah it doesn’t matter with entities - the engine does what it needs with them so you might as well leave them as they are.

(TIHan) #20

:smiley: Gerbil :smiley: