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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by Kampy on Mon Aug 28th at 10:08am 2006

I see. Well so much for the texture magic. x(
arent the trees taking a lot of polygones?
like if you remove one of the three trees you
might be able to use the saved polygones on
details? Im just guessing - I have no clue of
the HL2 engine yet.. no yet!! xD



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by Gwil on Mon Aug 28th at 10:30am 2006

Kampy, those trees will be models. The HL2 engine can handle a lot more detail in the form of "props", which can be static or moveable/responsive to the physics engine. If anything, the scene could probably use a few more props, pieces of rubbish scattered around and so on.

<img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">




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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by Crono on Mon Aug 28th at 10:33am 2006

? quote:
I see. Well so much for the texture magic. x(
arent the trees taking a lot of polygones?
like if you remove one of the three trees you
might be able to use the saved polygones on
details? Im just guessing - I have no clue of
the HL2 engine yet.. no yet!! xD


Source engine is leaps and bounds in compairson when it comes to "abilities". In most situations models are prefered since they are less complex for the engine to deal with. Something else I think I should point out right now, in case you don't already know ... R_Speeds are nonsense now. There's a showbudget command that is much more specific and helpful.

Take a look around on the valve wiki, it'll get you very comfortable with 'source'.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Mon Aug 28th at 10:47am 2006

I haven't much to say to these last few comments except you're right. image Kind of back on topic for a moment:

The playtest lasted maybe an hour and a half, with several server crashes at random points. image 5 players were present throughout and I had a lot of fun. Finger joined us and gave me his thoughts. The one that really motivated me was that the map was just needlessly large, for two reasons: performance, if I shrink the map I can certainly improve that and get more details; and gameplay.

I've been working on this tonight. I shrunk the parking lot to about half its original size and moved the building with the restaurant/cafe over to match (so now the two front doors of that building are exactly inline with the center of the road leading up the hill. I tossed the alleyway area and am currently trying to come up with a way to cut this area off right along the street, preferably blocking plenty of visibility. So far I've tried (roughly):

- Combine fences (tall metal barriers with shields on top).
- A pileup of three or four combine trains.
- A crashed combine helicopter.
- A crashed, large pickup truck.

None work right. Anybody have any ideas? The annoying thing about this is that you can see down the road from the rooftop of the far-off building and so visibility blocking is important but not exactly necessary.

*thinks, frustrated*

[edit]

How about this.. the road ENDS right after the destroyed building and splits off in two directions (90-degree angles off the main road the map follows). This allows major visibility blocking (a building right at the end of the road) and an easy way to "end" the map down here (even some simple concrete barriers work).


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by reaper47 on Mon Aug 28th at 11:05am 2006

I'm afraid the playtest was about 4 am at my place, I would have joined otherwise. I'll download the map and look at it, though.



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Mon Aug 28th at 11:15am 2006

Cool, thanks.. it's already undergoing a huge revamp though, keep that in mind. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by reaper47 on Mon Aug 28th at 12:06pm 2006

Alright, I had a quick look and liked what I see. But I'm fully convinced now that the map would benefit from the cuttings you mentioned. Some areas seem to be added only to connect parts of the map and they're too big and prominent for only this purpose. This also includes some indoor corridors.

Except for that my only other complaint is optimization. The fireladders are... pure polygon horrors. Look at them with "mat_wireframe 1" and you'll see almost a solid pink color because there are so many triangles! Make the poles plain rectangles, consider replacing the stairs by ramps (no matter how realistic this would be). Try to recreate the construction with simpler polygons with a masked (transparent) texture rather than building every part with a seperate brush.

The destroyed buildings need some optimization, too. You could cut the polygons by half while keeping the general look and feel. Also put a wall behind every part that's high poly and connected to the middle area. The underground parking lot for example, is always rendered completely. Even if I can hardly make it out and only see the hole in the floor. Turn mat_wireframe on and look at it from the treehouse area. You'll see the whole undergorund part rendered. Put a wall in the underground section between the parking lot and the hole to block it off from the outside more. The building with a hole in the first floor lets vvis see inside from the whole map also. Make sure to block the inside there too!

HL2 doesn't like brush polygons. The prop models don't matter but ideally if you turn mat_wireframe on, you should see a rather simple structure of pink (brush) polygons. You should able to make out every single polygon easily.

Optimization should be your next priority and if you do it smart, I think the layout will also benefit from the simpler structure.

Oh, did I mention I love the lighting? <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif">



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Mon Aug 28th at 12:22pm 2006

Thanks for your collection of suggestions and comments, reaper47.

About some areas being too big for their meager purpose: the main thing that comes to mind is the parking garage which is certainly going to be reduced in size or at least prevent the player from going very far into it.

Optimization is absolutely key right now. I've spent countless hours per NIGHT on optimization and trust me, I think you'd be hard pressed to find another map with so many performance-related optimizations. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif"> Quite literally every face that isn't seen is nodrawed, I spent a lot of time on that. Performance should honestly double by the time the final is out, cutting the area down both gameplaywise and "air space" wise (skybox "roof" should be lowered, and edges brought in some more). Thanks for your comment on the scaffolding - I had not looked at that in wireframe at all. I'll go check it out right now, after this.

Yes, polies can and will be cut from the destroyed building if necessary. When I began doing some destruction I did a lot of fine detailing on the crumbling walls/floors etc, and you might be able to tell that as I went on I got more and more coarse with the brushwork. I will go back and tweak some of the earlier work so that it's not so detailed. I've also set up fade scales for static props inside this building and others, because as you mentioned, vvis says you can always see into here, so it's important that whatever is in there is faded out when you're far off and as low-res as possible. Some func_areaportalwindows might be useful in a few places like this as well, and/or occluders. I'll look into these methods soon. I think the parking garage could benefit from an areaportalwindow for sure.

Looking forward to optimizing, shrinking and improving this over the next week or so. Thanks a lot again for all your thoughts. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by reaper47 on Mon Aug 28th at 1:27pm 2006

I'm afraid areaportals don't work in multiplayer (or just occluders?). I'd really look at where you could put in walls or building structures to cut of visibility. The holes in the buildings are a good example for that. Put a wall right behind the hole, make sure it seals off the inside from the high poly parts of the inside completely. It even has to "overlap" a bit so vvis is absolutely sure it can't be seen form the outside which isn't always logical. Like this (replace stairs by debris, ramp, doorway ect): 




##############

#        #   #

#   "stairs" #

#        #   #

# detail #   *hole     <---- can't see detail from here

#        #   #

### ^ ########

    |    ^

 way in  |

         blocking wall



#=wall




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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Mon Aug 28th at 2:07pm 2006

Areaportals don't, but areaportalwindows do (that's like a fade-scale for blocking visibility.. if you're nearby, you can see into e.g. a debris hole; far off, it fades out to a certain texture or something, hiding everything behind it).

I see what you mean with your crude illustration. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_lol.gif"> That's something else to consider if it comes to that, thank you.


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by reaper47 on Mon Aug 28th at 3:05pm 2006

I wonder why it doubles the line space... That thing was supposed to be clearer, lol



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by ReNo on Mon Aug 28th at 7:15pm 2006

Area Portals do work in multiplayer actually, they just aren't quite so useful as they would be in single player. You can still get a lot of benefit from their use however, as while you won't likely get much benefit from linking them up with doors (in multiplayer doors are rarely used and if they are used, are normally gonna be left open), they have another very useful trait - they clip the rendering of the area on the other side of the portal to what you can see through the portal. So if you are in a house and you can only see out through the front door, there are probably a whole lot of props and polys you can't see off to the sides of the door that are still being rendered due to the way the leafs are split up. Put an area portal in that doorway and only props whose bounding boxes have a direct line of site to the actual player through the area portal will be rendered. The more visual openings between areas the less useful they will be, as you will need to fill all the holes up with area portals and each one you place incurs extra computational costs, but I've found them to be effective in a great deal of places. Easiest way to check whether you are getting benefits is to make two compiles of your map after placing them - one with the area portals vis group turned on, and one with them turned off <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">



Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Tue Aug 29th at 12:17am 2006

ReNo: Ah, interesting.. I'd known that areaportals have to be either on or off for *everyone* at the same time in multiplayer which rendered them quite useless, but I never fully understood what they did anyways. They're just like occluders, from your description. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">

So anyways - I did a lot of work on shrinking the map last night. On the end with the restaurant and destroyed building, the restaurant building is much closer to the corner one with the hallways, as a result of the parking lot being about half its old width. Now there's a turn at the end (the main road turns to the left). I then "fit" the skybox texture down to exactly where it needed to go - just along the buildings and roads, to prevent unnecessary leaves. This should be a major performance improvement because there's much less draw distance. When I do it to the other side as well it should help a lot.

So guess what, I compiled it last night and the shrinking of map size as well as the skybox-fitting reduced vvis from.. 1 hour and 30 minutes approximately, to under 20 minutes. Hell yes. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif">

I'll post up a few screens later today or maybe in a day or two if I want to keep working on it. It's very WIP.


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Tue Aug 29th at 4:33am 2006

Yeah, not only was Vvis helped majorly by the size reduction but FPS went up about 10 in visually-intense areas (at the farthest ends of the street, and atop the hill overlooking *everything*).

I'm not yet ready to post screens, 'cause I need to start extending the environment out (3D skybox time). I'm looking forward to doing the same to the other end of the map as well. Very soon...


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by 7dk2h4md720ih on Tue Aug 29th at 2:09pm 2006

Could you upload the map to somewhere else please? I'm recieving a 'forbidden' error when I click on the above link.



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Tue Aug 29th at 10:35pm 2006

Working for me. But yeah, I'll try and maybe get it up at Filefront or something.

Quick update: Completely cut down the level to the playable environment, and began extending the environment out with a 3D skybox. Liking the way it looks, just need to add more. Also I hate working with 3D skyboxes because of the scale, it's hard to get textures scaled right and stuff.


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Tue Aug 29th at 11:03pm 2006

Haha, so I just spent like 20 minutes writing up an email/description/whatever to email the filefront guys to post it up, submitted it, then went back to filefront. The file was already there and uploaded like yesterday, someone else did it for me I guess <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">

Here's the URL. *updating the one in the profile too*
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_DM_Residential_Map;68579


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Mon Sep 4th at 4:25am 2006

Alright.

I haven't written any updates in.. quite a while. I've been doing a lot of work since Beta 1; revising, retweaking, resizing. Just before I take a huge turn with the map I thought I'd show you a few screenshots of how it's looking at the moment (i.e. the last few screenshots where the map is rather recognizable!). <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">

I've reduced the parking lot by about half, widthwise. This allowed space to move the restaurant/cafe building over quite a bit, and the one next to it as well. The map's farthest end has been capped off as a result, meaning a smaller gameplay area (better IMO, though still not optimal). Vvis has been slowly *decreasing* in time, I'm now at an 8-minute Vvis and a 25-minute Vrad. This follows several hours of optimization, hintbrushing, and geometry tweaking. The entire cafe building has been rebuilt and retextured from the interiors up. I like the design of it a lot more now. I've also created a rudimentary yet surprisingly sufficient skybox which follows the road along a ways until it turns off to the right, allowing me to cap the player's view with several buildings.

Thus, screens:

Screen 1, a *very* preliminary version of the direction I'm headed in with the bottom of the destroyed building. More interior, less rubble.
Screen 2, more WIP of how I'm doing the lower sniping spot.. with a chunk of debris held on by rebar. Yeah, it's definitely too "supported". <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">
Screen 3, redone destruction upstairs.. now including the windows being removed.. I'll do this elsewhere as well.
Screen 4, looking out the upstairs hole.. note the apartment building having been rebuilt and moved over. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">
Screen 5, now *really* note the moved buildings and (a bit) smaller playing area.
Screen 6, halved parking lot..
Screen 7, 3D skybox environment extension.

I'm excited where the map is headed and I don't think the next set of screens will be very much recognizable as Residential, other than maybe the lighting.. yeah, that will give it away. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif"> I don't want to give it away but *think smaller*... <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">

I'd like to get out a beta2 release or a final within 4 days or so... don't really plan on the final, but a beta is possible.. it will probably be either beta 2 in a few days, or final in around a week.


-- midkay



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by Naklajat on Mon Sep 4th at 5:56am 2006

Screen 1: It's "*very* preliminary" so I won't look too hard at it. I think it'll work better than the massive pile of debris that was there before.
Screen 2: I like the look of that. The minor issue I have is there needs to be rebar sticking out in other parts of that floor so it looks consistant. I know it's still WIP so if that was planned just disregard this. That's a great way to do that spot though, IMHO.
Screen 6: The neatness and angularity(is this even a word?) of that hole in the asphault bothers me, it has since I first saw it. The sides of the hole would most likely be sagging and the edge where stuff broke off would be crumbly. I know there's a finite amount of detail you can have with brushes, so I don't know how you could fix it without a lot of modelling. How were you envisioning that hole was made?

I've also noticed there are some places that look like they've have been shelled or bombed, but most of the area is untouched. This is a matter of thematic continuity and immersion, picking a theme and taking it as far as it will go. I don't want to tell you how to develop the theme of your map, but I think it would be neat to have it at the edge of an area that got heavily bombed, and have one side of the 3D skybox look something like this, while the other side has buildings with little or no damage. I really like how this map is shaping up in any case.

EDIT:

? quote:
*think smaller*
Turn it into a RATS map!!! :P


=o



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 Re: dm_residential
Posted by midkay on Mon Sep 4th at 6:17am 2006

Thanks for your breakdown, Baron.

Screen 1 and 2: Right, extremely WIP.. I've been actually trying to lower detail in some areas for performance reasons, so I want to get performance all straightened out and stuff before I decide how detailed I can get with all that stuff.
Screen 6: Right, it's pretty.. hmm.. "regular". I don't really have any thoughts as to how this was made (in contrast to most of the other damage in the map) - but take this as a hint, you probably won't see it in the next batch of screens. image

I really love that shot from EP1, Valve did a great job on it. I'm so incredibly performance-worried right now, I mean it's not particularly bad but it's like I'm aware of every little polygon I add. I'm really starting to think that maybe there's like "one thing" that's killing the performance on this map that I'm overlooking. I mean, it's not a very large map... not particularly detailed... I've truly optimized the crap out of it.. I feel like there's just gotta be something I'll stumble on in a few days and go "damnit, of COURSE". Though I can't think what that could possibly be.

Back to the theme ideas.. yeah, I'd really like to take this farther.. I have some cool ideas I'd like to implement (purely visual and thematic) like for example I've wanted to have this headcrab canister plowed (like at full speed) straight into the corner of the building with all the extrusions on the edges for over a month now.. I imagine these huge chunks of wall and debris littering the ground, a huge column of smoke unfurling out of the top, rebar and plaster sticking out all over... but see above about performance. I just can't deal with adding much detail right now until I feel "in the green" about that. It's much better than in the beta but something's still killing it and I'm out to find out what it is.

Anyways, thanks a lot for your thoughts, once I do a big size-reduction I think I should be greenlit for more detail and theme...


-- midkay




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