Some Questions

(RToiletman) #1

Hey all,

The latest and best version of Toiletman Trickjump is almost ready for release. All new funjumps, deadly jumps, secret jumps, teamwork jumps and more. All made by myself but the Original Jumps. Didn’t map for some months now so I had time to get some inspiration. But now I’ve got some questions. (I’ll post my new questions in the same topic :wink: )

-When I select a brush this ‘box’ that surrounds it with white lines is gone, the brush just colors red. How to get that white box back? I check preferences but didn’t find it, there has to be an easy answer for this.

-Almost every brush in my map start is made of caulk and painted after. But does this actually improve anything? Like fps…?

Many thanks in Advance.

-Toiletman-

(EB) #2

As for the red box-white lines …press ‘J’ to cycle through options.

FPS-wise ? Read up on:
Structural - Detail - Portals - Tris count - R_speeds - Verts ( that should give you the ‘jist’ of it )
I have a tutorial map at www.spyjuice.com “Tris_Vis_FPS.PK3”, that should be of help to you as well.

(RToiletman) #3

Ah thx mate.

Got another question,

The way I make a wall you can walk thru is this: I make a brush, give it the ‘nodraw’ texture and paint a side with a texture. Then you can walk thru it. Is this a good method? Because I heard that this works sometimes…and sometimes not (so you can’t walk thru it).

-Toiletman-

(EB) #4

http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&p=128433#128433

(SCDS_reyalP) #5

That is true. Normal q3map2 uses the first side in the brush to decide what content properties it uses. Which plane is first tends to change every time radiant saves the map. So if you have have a standard 6 sided brush with one normal textured side, and five with nodraw, you get 5:1 odds of it being nonsolid.

To be 100% sure you need to make sure all sides of the brush have the same content properties, by making a new shader for your texture with surfaceparam nonsolid. Or you can use the q3map2 I modified to support shader specified content priority: http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&t=11906

I would avoid using a script_mover entity, as that adds needless overhead.

(Floris) #6

Great a new toiletman map, I hope the big fun room will be even more fun? :stuck_out_tongue:

(RToiletman) #7

About the things you can walk thru…

Walls always seem to work with ‘nodraw’ and one side textured. But something strangs happens with floors, I also give them nodraw and the topside textured but the floor blocks spectators and it’s doesnt block me as a player… This happends sometimes.

(]UBC[ McNite) #8

@ EB: What do you think… i d say the caulking-everything is hugely overrated. When you do clean brushwork (means the sides of brushes you don’t see completely touch sides of other brushes) and a half decent VIS-blocking I don’t really think you ll get much FPS-improvement by caulking everything.

(kamikazee) #9

I’d say that if you try to reduce overdraw by making clean brushwork, why not further reduce it by making everything unseen caulked? It looks like a tiny effort if you just start from a caulked brush and paint only the sides seen.

Of course, it won’t lead to dramatic FPS improvement.

(RToiletman) #10

Everything you don’t see it caulked, don’t really care if it improves something or just nothing :banana:

(EB) #11

Here are some tests I ran…let them speak for themselves.

Tri-soup, DETAIL terrain, 2592 brushes + 6 for the skybox. ALL Screenshots were taken from the same place & facing the same exact spot.
Numbers correspond:
1. terrain caulked + the top textured
2. terrain caulked + the top shader'd (with a surfaceparm shader)
3. terrain brushes completely covered in a texture
4. terrain brushes completely covered in a shader (with a surfaceparm shader)
5. terrain completely covered in "CLIP"
6. terrain completely covered in "CAULK"

image=92kb

(SCDS_reyalP) #12

:banghead: No, walls do NOT always work. As stated above, q3map2 uses the ‘first’ side of the brush to decide if it is solid or not.

‘surfaceparams’ like nonsolid actually affect the content of the brush, despite the fact that they are specified for each side. Obviously, if different sides specify different content, q3map2 has to choose one of them. Unless you use my modified q3map2, which one is used is effectively random.

@EB:
FWIW, detail and structure are treated differently. In general, completely hidden structural faces will be eliminated, whether or not they are caulk. Detail will not.

@]UBC[ McNite:
It is also worth noting that failing to caulk can cause other visual artifacts (such as lighting errors or z-fighting.)

(EB) #13

They were detail…
However…I should’ve used a sorted shader rather than a surfaceparm’d one.
I composed the (above)picture from screenies taken during tests awhile ago.

(]UBC[ McNite) #14

Thx EB… gives my point a solid proof: #1 and #3 dont show any difference in tris-count.
Conclusion: clean brushwork = as good as caulking everything unseen = no need to build in caulk with regard to gameperformance.

@ Reyal: I know about that, but we were just discussing FPS i think.

@ Kami: Why put any effort in something that doesn’t give you anything? I go for effective mapping (= fast) and while doing TheRiver II Redux i got the impression that you can spend a lot of time on caulking while actually getting like 1-2 FPS from it… so that s wasted time imo. EB just proved my point. Also cleaning up brushwork with regard to t-junctions seems a wasted effort to me for the same reason.