This images never loaded fully for me. They took forever for the bit I saw as well. They must have been huge since my DSL is pretty snappy.
As for the map parts I saw, you seem to have fallen into the same rut most new mappers do which is an out of proportion scale.
The areas are over large and need to be scaled down a bit. I do however like the architecture and have no complaints about anything I saw in the 1/2 pictures that downloaded.
If you could scale this map down and keep the style, I feel you'd have a winner.
However, some of the details aren't coming together as nicely as they could.
For instance: The stairs seem to end far too close together. Try, instead, to have them curve out and end right before the opening in the wall (meaning extend the curve up towards the entrance), most likely, adding stairs, but it will move both start points on the stairs farther away from each other. This will give more room in the middle of the floor, while still leaving that little space behind the stairs. To make that accessible, something that would look nice, is if the underside of the stairs were opened up with some nice architecture. This could also be an excuse to put some water in, if you're not going for the overly parched desert look. That way the back is still accessible, the stairs look proper, and you have some less boring architecture in your map. The wood in certain areas also makes no sense. Why would the ceiling and railing be wood, then a set of stairs solid stone?
The only other complaint is: What's with the crates? I know they're for cover, but get more imaginative. Why are they there, in regards to the setting and not a map? Did someone just move in or something? Try something else for cover points. And ditch those stone crates in the room with the stairs.
I'd then suggest going through and fancying up the architecture. You can add statues, beautifully shaped stones, all sorts of things that will make this map pop out.
I think, in one of the higher traffic areas, put some vases and porcelain statues, which can all be shattered. It'd be a nice touch.
Screens don't load for me :-/ I don't know much polish, which is whats on the page I get when I try to visit them, but I do know it says you've exceeded your bandwidth :razz:
Thats EXACTLY what I was referring to when I said I wasn't going to mention them until after seeing if this step helped :biggrin:
Posted by Junkyard God on
Thu Aug 4th 2005 at 4:19pm
to make your map faster you should also ( if you haven't yet done this) consider using alot of hint brushes ( use em correctly though ) as this has drastically improved fps in some of my work.
What is the step you don't run fully; VIS? If so its typically quite
easy to reduce the amount of time it will take to run. One step is to
make any non-signficant brushwork into func_detail entities. Taking a
look at your screenshots there are certainly candidates for this - the
handrails on the balconys are made up of very small brushes, so by
turning these into one or more func_detail entities they will be
ignored by VIS and simplify its calculations significantly. Another
opportunity to reduce its running time would be to turn those stairs
into a func_detail, as the curving nature of them won't make things
easy for VIS. Just be careful not to turn anything on the outside hull
of the level (anything that plugs off the inside of the map from the
outside) into an entity, as this will cause a leak.#
Do this and see how it goes. If it still looks like it is going to take
huge amounts of time (over an hour or so) then there are more steps you
can take to reduce it, but I don't want to confuse you going over them
all now when that may be enough.
Well when you play the game, the screen resolution is normally of the
aspect ratio 4:3 (eg. 800x600, 1024,x768, etc...). Your screenshots
aren't using that aspect ratio, in fact some of them are even TALLER
than they are wide, which is just completely wierd. Look at the text on
the images, its distorted because you have resized the screenshots and
not kept the same aspect ratio.
The map doesn't look to be anywhere near complex enough to be causing
FPS issues, so that probably means its either got some problems with
its construction, it isn't fully compiled, or you've made things too
open (not using enough "vis blocking" as it is commonly called -
blocking the views from one big area to another, thereby reducing the
amount the game has to render). I'll maybe take a look a bit later on
and try to decide which :smile:
Sorry to sound all negative by the way. Your map looks to have quite a
bit of character to it, but only by pointing out problems can they be
narrowed down and fixed.
Reno : Background is small, cuz map takes really much fps :/ I've cut many things to make map more fast, with less requirements. Yeah - it's 3d skybox.
