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[map] Titanic
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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Thu Mar 29th at 11:17pm 2012

The responses I've gotten from VDC have mostly been unanimous, so I'm going to continue working on splitting the levels. Im finishing up the Boat Deck now, going through a full compile.

I plan on having the following levels:

- Boat Deck
- A Deck
- B Deck
- C Deck
- D Deck
- E Deck
- F Deck and G Deck
- Orlop Deck and Tank Top

I think I should be pretty safe that way.

The upper decks will be the more difficult ones to make, especially the Boat Deck, A Deck, and B Deck, as each can see a lot of each other, along with the Forecastle and Poop Decks, although those will only be accessible on the B Deck level.

Its a bit of a pain.. but at least this is progress smiley



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Orpheus on Thu Mar 29th at 11:52pm 2012

To retain the vertical feel, you're gonna chop it up "up/down" right? Surely not horizontally.



The best things in life, aren't things.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Fri Mar 30th at 12:39am 2012

To keep the vertical feel, Im keeping some areas of other decks. For instance, on the Boat Deck map, fore and aft, I've retained all the external structure of A, B, and C Deck. At the Grand Staircase, I've kept the surrounding layout for all decks.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by haymaker on Fri Mar 30th at 4:40pm 2012

hmm it would take a fair amount of work but have you thought of converting whole sections into models? I don't think there is a major restriction on model size in Source ( there is an entire coastline model in the HL2 GCF )... you could maintain your runtime engine efficiency by planning where to begin and end these models, and use nodraw / areaportal / render trigger brushwork accordingly. You mentioned that there are fractional differences in sizes sfter conversion, but this is easily hidden by any number of workarounds, props don't necessarily need to sit exactly flush to brushwork etc.

The major downside is going to be compile times under -staticproplighting and -staticproppolys, but you are in for a loooong wait regardless I'd say. As for textures, I'm not 100% sure, but can you not edit your model textures and have the changes show up on game reload? I know you can for brushwork, just applying lazy logic is all.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Fri Mar 30th at 9:25pm 2012

One of the problems with doing that is that models cannot seal the map. And practically all of my hallway brushes, especially once you get to the lower decks.. seal the map.

That slight size difference it also an annoyance.

I've got the Boat Deck map completed with the exception of putting in noclip brushes (to prevent the player from jumping to lower decks which arent in the level) and the changelevel entities. Im doing A Deck now, then I'll noclip and changelevel both levels and take them for a spin.

So far, the Boat Deck level has 2099 brushes and 12,990 faces. I've been able to do a full VVIS and VRAD compile, although there is no lighting yet.

I havent been able to get 'mat_wireframe 1' to work in game though. Am I missing something for that?



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by haymaker on Fri Mar 30th at 10:08pm 2012

mat_wireframe 1,2,3 can only run under sv_cheats 0.

I was kind of thinking of portaling / sealing / visblocking / what have you by way of thin brushes inside the modelwork. This way you can probably divide each deck into quarter pieces and still have good framerates. If you're really on top of it you could aim for the 1024 auto-cut lines. Individual rooms need not be solids as you can propfade any small modelwork to fade out past the doors kind of thing. So you wouldn't end up with multiplayer-fast visleaves but they would certainly be manageable, and brush count would be reduced drastically.

Of course this is all in my head XD it's your time and sweat.

Don't forget your 3d skybox as you keep planning too



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Orpheus on Fri Mar 30th at 10:34pm 2012

You gotta turn cheats off to enter developmenter mode?



The best things in life, aren't things.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by haymaker on Fri Mar 30th at 11:12pm 2012

Quoting "Orpheus"
You gotta turn cheats off to enter developmenter mode?


Oops duh sv_cheats 1 my bad



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Sat Mar 31st at 3:55am 2012

Well I got the Boat Deck and A Deck levels pretty well done and I have one (albeit ugly) changelevel in between the two at the Fore Grand Staircase. Both maps compile quickly on FULL compile, which is really nice. And the changelevel works perfectly also.

I'll of course need to add changelevels for every area (all staircases) that go between levels, as well as noclip the areas I dont want the player to go (such as jumping over railings to areas that arent accessible in a particular map)

I'm noticing Im getting a lot of degenerate faces though. Log shows 3 on the Boat Deck map and 5 on the A Deck map. Previously, I had I think only about 5 or so in the entire ship. I did notice an artifact on the roof of the bridge on the A Deck map. Despite the brush being a simple rectangle, in game there was a triangle cut shape in the middle of it that I could see through.

Gonna figure that out.

Boat Deck, A Deck, and B Deck will be the more difficult maps to level transition as they all have exterior layout and can see a lot of each other's areas. The lower levels will be easier.

Once the ship is rebuilt in individual levels, I'll be able to continue actually working on the ship.

w00t!



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Thu Apr 5th at 4:17am 2012

Haven't had a lot of time the last week to work on Titanic. Put in about a half hour tonight on the B Deck map.

Friday is a holiday and then its the weekend so Im hoping to have practically everything finished - in terms of splitting levels - over the weekend.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Fri Apr 6th at 3:32am 2012

Got B Deck map completed at roughly 2665 brushes, next up will be C Deck.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Fri Apr 6th at 7:02pm 2012

I got C Deck finished.

But then I tried something. I opened up my original full Titanic map and did a select all -> apply nodraw texture. It still failed a test compile on error of too many func_detail touching world brushes (I think):

Too many t-junctions to fix up! (2972 prims, max 32768 :: 65547 indices, max 65536)

But it did go through. Wonder if thats an indication I could do something with that of if its not. Meh.

Its probably for the best to split in multi levels anyways.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Mon Apr 16th at 3:38am 2012

I haven't been able to work on Titanic the last week or so. I did get started on D Deck but not by much. Spent the weekend catching up on rest and today watching various shows on Titanic. As one would do smiley

I'll try to find time this week to keep cracking.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Sat Apr 21st at 1:47am 2012

Finally got D Deck done with the exception of some of the level changes.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Wed Apr 25th at 12:52am 2012

I'm wondering if I should go back to my original full map. I took the last copy of the full map and nodraw'ed everything, and now Im going back over and re-texturing only those faces that are visible. I think in theory the compiler does exclude any faces that arent visible by the player, but nodrawing should be a surefire way to do that.

Its also allowed me to review my brushes, and I've found areas where I could eliminate some brushes that were side-by-side by using only one. Doing that removed about 40 brushes thus far. Also fixed a few overlapping brushes.

Im away on business this week and didnt bring a copy of the map with me. But Im hoping to spend a few hours next week continuing to re-texture and fix any further brushwork I find, and that will hopefully allow me to do a compile. I'll try to work some more with models too..

Maybe this is the right way, maybe not. I dont know anymore.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by omegaslayer on Tue May 1st at 4:25am 2012

No-draw surfaces only tell the engine not to draw that particular polygon. However the brush is still there. It still counts against hull, vis, etc, so therefore it counts against your brush number still.

I haven't been able to get the bsp compiler to work on another machine. After doing some digging it seems its a problem with converting the orange box compiler over to the older compiler. Without some extensive work I don't think I could get it to work again. It'll have to be a side project, but work has me swamped lately. I think a more worthy road would be converting your detailed brushes to models. Here is a tool that can help with that:

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Propper

I haven't used it yet, but according to the wiki page it automatically compiles your brush work into a model and skins everything automatically.




Posting And You



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Wed May 2nd at 9:02pm 2012

I kind of assumed nodrawing a face would still have the brush as counted, but my goal is to reduce the amount of vertices that are generated. I assumed nodrawing a face would not generate verts and that at the same time, doing that might also optomize things too.

Right now the main thing Im doing is mitering all my corners like a mofo. And re-texturing all the inside brushes that shouldnt be nodrawn. Then hopefully, that'll fix me up.

I've been using Propper for a while now. Its not perfect, but it certainly helps.



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Sat May 5th at 2:56am 2012

Somewhat successful evening. I've gotten almost all of the re-texturing and fixed cornering completed on the full Titanic map, and although there's still a lot of faces with nodraw on, I tried a test compile. I didnt get my max verts error (instead got another that I can resolve easily).

I also noticed this line in the compile log:

Total triangle count: 10995

Im not quite sure what consists of a triangle, or if it has any relationship to vertices... but I dug out a previous log from back at the beginning of March, before I was getting my max verts errors, and the value was:

Total triangle count: 79991



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Sat May 5th at 3:33am 2012

Finally got a completely successful compile on the full Titanic map! W00t!

Although some portions are still nodrawed. But those will be fixed up.

Here's the log, I've highlighted the interesting bits:

Show spoiler



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 Re: [map] Titanic
Posted by Wild Card on Sat May 5th at 4:45am 2012

Here's a pic, you can see a lot of nodraw faces that are outside the map, but a few inside that I haven't gotten to yet.

Also, notice the new new roof over the bridge, wheelhouse, and officer's quarters, all around the number 1 funnel <3



Compare that to the old one: http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/7590/titanic48.png




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