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mapping mistakes?
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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Naklajat on Wed Dec 1st at 4:45pm 2004

what are your thoughts on some mapping habits/gameplay elements people should stay away from?

upon orpheus' pointing out the fact that criticizing people's work in less than constructive ways tends to make them less than happy, i thought it best to remove my original post and change the subject to mapping mistakes/bad gameplay elements. but still, fy_iceworld_css is very poorly made. no ifs, ands, or buts about it. when people still fall through the floor, work needs to be done on the map before its release.
also, collapsing walkways = bad cs gameplay imo.
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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 1st at 4:47pm 2004

i for one do not think discussing the worse maps are a good idea. the authors tend to not see it exactly the same way.

/ 2 cents.

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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Naklajat on Wed Dec 1st at 4:50pm 2004

good point, didnt think of that... sorry [addsig]



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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 1st at 4:54pm 2004

? quoting Baron von Snickers
good point, didnt think of that... sorry

don't apologize, i agree with you totally.. problem is, we all know who makes, them or which ones they are. no one actually agrees which are worse, but each of us knows them for what ever reason they qualify for. (although i may have a specific person in mind, this comment includes all maps and authors)

this ground has been covered numerous times though. it cannot even be qualified as a "delicate subject" because invariably tempers rise.

its been quiet for a long time, i'd rather not see that go.

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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Naklajat on Wed Dec 1st at 5:06pm 2004

fixed it so its a little more constructive.
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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by 7dk2h4md720ih on Wed Dec 1st at 6:50pm 2004

Overlapping world brushes and levels encased in skyboxes are two big no-no's.




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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Pericolos0 on Wed Dec 1st at 7:06pm 2004

any useless thing that gets in your way.




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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 1st at 7:14pm 2004

? quoting Pericolos0
any useless thing that gets in your way.

RPG rounds? yeah, gotta hate those useless items

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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Naklajat on Wed Dec 1st at 7:21pm 2004

? quote:
any useless thing that gets in your way.
such as? i would just like to know what you would consider useless. i cant think of anything that would logically be put in a map that would be useless. as for things getting in the way, i am currently working on a level that has lots of long arches, so i have to constantly add/edit visgroups in order to keep things tidy.

another: building a source engine map like a hl1 engine map...
yet another: making a ladder out of brushes then grouping them and making them a func_ladder.

i have never overlapped a two world brushes to my knowledge, what does it do?

/edit
making a map without a theme/plan
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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Gwil on Wed Dec 1st at 7:22pm 2004

Over/underscaled maps. Played a TFC map last night that was absolutely enormous, I swear it must have used half of the hammer grid just for the "main hall" area. So ridiculously large that even organised and frequent attacking was unable to capture a single flag (for both sides).

No fun when it takes 30seconds to a minute to get to the enemy base, at all


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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 1st at 7:27pm 2004

? quoting Baron von Snickers
/edit
making a map without a theme/plan

then you must hate mine as most have no theme. they have a plan of sorts, but i usually avoid themes as a map with a poorly adhered to theme will fare worse than a map with no theme at all.

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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Naklajat on Wed Dec 1st at 7:31pm 2004

imo its fine not to have a theme, but no plan is not a good idea

/me thinks of first attempt at map: cs_office2... there's the worst map ever

/edit
i like no_patience! i decided im going to dl a bunch of maps made by members of the snarkpit a while back, i just havent gotten around to it.
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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by KungFuSquirrel on Wed Dec 1st at 7:50pm 2004

? quoting Baron von Snickers
i have never overlapped a two world brushes to my knowledge, what does it do?


If two rendered faces occupy the same plane, you get z-fighting errors. Otherwise, it does nothing. [addsig]



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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 1st at 7:55pm 2004

? quoting Baron von Snickers
/edit
i like no_patience! i decided im going to dl a bunch of maps made by members of the snarkpit a while back, i just havent gotten around to it.

i wish, people would remember to come back and comment on maps they have dloaded. it is almost my worse pet peeve around here. (after unoptimized images of course )

i hate seeing 300 dloads and zero comments

another small complaint, which can be funny is, when someone slobbers all over the map about how wonderful it is, but they fail to score it.. sometimes i roll when i see that

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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Naklajat on Wed Dec 1st at 8:03pm 2004

the snarks are the shizzle-dizzle. i laughed out loud when i saw that.
btw, why did snoop have an umbrella?









for drizzle.
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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by ReNo on Wed Dec 1st at 8:08pm 2004

? quote:
? quoting Baron von Snickers
i have never overlapped a two world brushes to my knowledge, what does it do?


If two rendered faces occupy the same plane, you get z-fighting errors. Otherwise, it does nothing.


I started a "tutorial" of sorts on the effects of overlapping, but never got around to publishing it here. I did a study by building the same object in various different ways and copied this object many times in order to lengthen compile times. I then compiled each of these identical scenes (built in different ways) to see what sort of effect on compile times it had. The object was fairly trivial, just a simple box that had another box passing through it, and the three different cases were that both were world brushes, the smaller object being a func_wall, and the larger object being "cut up" into 4 brushes to surround the small brush. The func_wall case was far and away the quickest in all situations, but that was obvious due to that cutting out a large amount of calculations in both VIS (entity brushes not blocking VIS) and RAD (entity brushes not casting shadows). The overlapping world brushes case was quicker in both CSG and BSP than the surrounding method due to using less brushes, but in VIS is was significantly slower. RAD times were negligable between the two.

So in short, overlapping world brushes can cause z-buffer flickering as andrew said, but that isn't its ONLY effect, as it can also increase VIS times it would seem.
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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 1st at 8:14pm 2004

i did multiple experiments with overlapping world brushes.. all had a noticeable increase in r_speeds.

course, one would question, what is noticeable.. IMO any increase that can be avoided, is noticeable. course i am a prick, so that theory may not be widely acknowledged as "educated"

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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by ReNo on Wed Dec 1st at 8:17pm 2004

I didn't have any increase in r_speeds, as the only increase there would be is that caused by face splitting, and that occurs even if the objects are just touching.
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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 1st at 8:24pm 2004

? quoting ReNo
I didn't have any increase in r_speeds, as the only increase there would be is that caused by face splitting, and that occurs even if the objects are just touching.

which in many cases, can be avoided

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 Re: mapping mistakes?
Posted by satchmo on Thu Dec 2nd at 5:31am 2004

When I experimented on the face-splitting effect on r_speeds, the result is usually trivial (meaning, when I run the map, there is no discernable difference in lag). This is true even for a large amount of face-splitting (whatever lag is present didn't seem worse with face-splitting). And I don't even have a fast computer.

And as for the big skybox surrounding the map, there are a few exceptions to that rule. There are cases when a big skybox is the only way to build certain types of maps. But I agree, those are the exceptions rather than the rules.
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