Hi,
is there something else I should know about it?
the situation:
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I’m a well-experienced map edit noob! It means I’ve read all about it and I have no trouble to make simple maps with custom shaders working but now I’m in a “quirky behaviour” situation…
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I’m workin at a very large outdoor map (do you remember the VILLAGE of “the PRISONER” TV serie? I love it and want to re-create it for SOF2)
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6000+ brushes (at the moment 90% prj completed), custom skybox, lots of custom textures (4/5 mb total space on HD)
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using gtk 1.4.0, q3map2 and q3map2toolz
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HW P4 2,4 Ghz 512 Mb ram, VB radeon 9700 DH
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compiling time at final quality (no light bounce): about 10 hours
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project is set up as a unique structural box (the skybox) and all (terrain and buildings) is detail. This is necessary because everything in the scenario must be visible from one side to the other and a very long distance culling (about 36000 units).
Now what’s wrong:
- completing a final compile wothout errors, the awful NULL_polyshader error pops up running the engine and DEFAULT faulty grid-maps appears randomly in the map (but if affects mainly imported static_models)
… I know I know what you are thinking to suggest… NO WAY to solve it removing the shitty pk3 stuff dloaded while playing.
I know the answer about faulty shaders etc… I’ve done all the test I could imagine removing and checking my custom shaders, including to remove all of them and using textures without shaders modification… NO SOLUTION!
FYK:
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all the possible is caulked as the state of art
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the same shaders used in a little project built for test works perfectly
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very very few brush are intersecting and overlapping, I set up map and everything so wisely and caulked!
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I don’t care too much for THE HIGHEST FPS CONTEST, I’m targeting 60 FPS on P4 2.4 class and honest Video Board like Radeon 9x00 series… the problem is not the FPS but MISSING TEXTURES, FPS is ok!
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if I only BSP everything works well and I got a clean and fluid 60 FPS action with all my textures and models OK! I suppose the problem is in the LIGHT passage… could it be that such a lot of lightmaps saturate the VB memory?
Pushing to the limits the LIGHT parameters I get even player and interface replaced by the default grid… too bad! -
r_showtris 1 DOESN’T WORK AT ALL… no tris visible all the time!?
My supposition:
- probably such a lot of stuff (lightmaps) push the VB memory to the limits and beyond, so some piece of stuff is lost on the run and replaced by the DEFAULT GRIDDY TEXTURE… what about this? If the problem is textures memori amount, shouldn’t it be only a problem of low FPS and not a problem of missing textures!!!
Possible solutions:
How to optimize without loosing too much?
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Reducing brushes count or custom textures count or texture size?
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Hinting? Clipping? Caulking?
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Large blocks of structural CAULK to fill empty unreachable for the player?
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compiling switches magic?
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block size customizing
now the questions about the general rules for outdooring :D:
- what is the best (hint, blocksize, comiling switches) for optimizing large outdoor areas?
Sorry for my FANCY INGLISH 
TNX all for help!