dm_residential is a map centered around a 3-way intersection in a residential neighborhood, with a hill and seven accessible buildings in the vicinity. It takes place around early morning (or late evening); most of the lighting in the level comes from streetlights and building illumination. All of the accessible buildings have their own interiors and several ways of entry and exit, providing many potential routes around and throughout the map.
Beta 3 was released on August 8, 2007. The final version, assuming all goes well, should be released in a few weeks (almost surely before September) with only some minor tweaks to the beta 2 design.
You can check out some discussion and work-in-progress screenshots in the forum thread (see below). Thanks for looking!
Sigh, so after seven hours of sleep I wake up, excited to test the compile I did overnight for the first time in a while with some larger changes and performance improvements, and I wake up to find that... vvis is still going.
Now vrad has started, I'm going to end-process it (that just cancels that portion of the compile, vvis' progress will still be there and well) and then have a look at why it went so slow. Maybe I forgot to func_detail some wreckage, or... shrugs and sighs.
This leads me to ask the question I've wanted to in a while.. anyone reading this thread, can you tell me as best you can remember how long vvis took on your final compile of your map called ______? Does 4 hours (last compile's time) seem right for this map? 2 hours? 7 hours?
I really don't think it should be this high... I'd like a second or third opinion. :smile: Thanks!
You return August 15th? Hmm.. sounds good.. I expected later. :biggrin:
Yeah, I think a "beta release" or "playtest event" might not warrant a news post seperately, but combined perhaps :smile:
Just created a hole from the corner building interior to the alleyway, and redid plenty of destruction in the destroyed building as well as threw out (well, "hid") all those props that you mentioned looked quite weird lightingwise and replaced it with a displacement textured with rubble which also allows you to walk around a bit, a bit more flow (not cut off by the debris props anymore). Small things...
I do think replacing the debris props will help towards performance though. I had just a ton of debris props all kind of jumbled together to create this mound of debris, and considering the holes in every side of the building these were pretty much always drawn.. replacing it with a simple displacement should really help. Also I have a lot of destruction props in there in random places and I was thinking about using the "fade scale" for these since although technically they're usually visible from outside, you can't see them at all unless you're really in there.
Some things to remember in case I need to resort to prop fading (seeming less likely as time goes on). :biggrin:
Yeah, I'd like to playtest it, and I think it would warrant a frontpage newspost. It'd have to be after August 15th though, otherwise I'm still in China and can't participate.
Yeah, in all probability sometime before the map comes out, and probably soonish; I just want some more time to try to get a bit more performance as well as get the layout finished (nearly there now), and some of the buildings looking nicer, etc.. just some general "work".
As I'm nearing the point where I'm ready to release a beta, I'll let everyone know.. I think it'd be nice to schedule a gameplay date where I could round up some members from here if possible as well as some friends, etc.. as well as open up the server for anyone else to join in, and give the map a nice playtest with a lot of people to see how it holds up. I know probably a lot of people don't read this thread or this section of the forums, so maybe I'll make a news post if that's still sounding good when the beta's nearly out, but for anyone who's reading this, does it sound interesting (a large playtest)?
Two things to say about performance. I guess I'll say this first since it's shorter and simpler: performance isn't all-that-bad. It seems to almost improve with each build for some reason and I don't know why. 40FPS as of the latest build looking down the street. It used to be 20.
Second, longer thing, which applies less now that the performance seems to be going up: I honestly hadn't and wouldn't expect such performance issues from this map considering some of, for example, other 3rd party maps and even some of Valve's areas in HL2. Some problems include leaves stretching to the top skybox boundary of the map, which can "see" everything outside the map. I'll have to fix this with more careful skybox-brush placement or some really annoying hintbrushing. Dunno which yet. Vvis isn't so happy with 4 hours for the last compile. Still plenty to do about that though. I just .. it feels like I really aren't asking much, I haven't loaded the map with props or brushes I don't feel, my map doesn't seem out of the ordinary as far as detail.. just gotta start hintbrushing I guess. I learned a few techniques from dm_island17's VMF file (thanks for posting that, mazemaster) including areaportalwindows and fade distances which I can "resort" to later if I must.
Bottom line: Performance seems to be getting better (been doing some tweaking) and through a lot of hintbrushing I can probably squeeze a few more FPS out of this, so.. yay. :smile:
Buildings are not only boxy and repetitive, but about 2 minutes of work each. :smile: I wish I wasn't so ab.. what's the word.. absurd.. abYSMAL, yes; abysmal at architecture and design. I'd love to detail these, but I just suck at it. I'll try regardless. I like your 5-in-a-row idea (as a rough estimate).
The ladder.. hm.. we'll see. This all is just getting laid out. I'll definitely go back and scout out little things like this to see if I can do anything about them (move it over or something, or replace it with like.. fire escapes..).
Light model. Hm. Dunno about this. Just a way for me to get lighting into this area ATM ("at the moment", not "addicted to morphine" :biggrin: ) - if these weren't here I'd get "where's all the light coming from?", if there was no light I'd get "why is it so dark down there?"... and so on.. vicious cycle. :biggrin: Maybe as soon as I finish the current modeling competition entry I'll try modeling some lights for this area, or come up with something else.
Don't worry about abandonment.. I'm not nearly to that point yet. :smile: Just semi-frustrated... I guess like a midlife crisis... mid-map crisis? :smile:
As per your performance worries, I'd say in general the best time to figure out what will work and what wont work performance wise would be in the planning stages, where you draw out your layout etc. But since you've done so much I think you have 2 choices now, either reshuffle the layout and make things less open and boxy, or just press on and hope that optimization can help as much as possible. Personally, I think you should press on, and even if the map chugs after a ton of optimization, I think it's been a valuable process of learning and mapping. If you personally want this map to be played a lot on DM servers then maybe you should reshuffle the layout to be more performance friendly, but otherwise I'd say just see this map through to the end to the best of your abilities. Maybe this performance worry will help you practice optimization skills.
Buildings are still boxy and repetative, and I especially don't like the huge ones serving as walls to your map. Like in Finger's drawovers, some height and texture variation would be awesome. I'm pretty sure the buildings I'm talking about aren't done, but I would love to see some changes (even with your performance worries). Instead of 2 big buildings bordering the alley corner, why not make 5 or so buildings that are connected and scrunched up together, but that are different heights and textured differently.
The ladder going over the windows seems kinda strange, but I think it can stay.
I don't really like the light model on the exterior of the building, but its more because I've never liked the way that propped looked (so heavy on top, with such a thin neck) so if you like it you should probably keep it.
I hope you don't abandon this map. I'd like to see you push yourself and work on this map to its fullest potential.
Posted by Elon Yariv on
Sat Aug 5th 2006 at 11:56pm
You should add fire escapes to some buildings, will look nice and will add another acpect to the flow-
You walk in a long alley but in the middle there is a fire escape or maybe on both buildings. This way the player can choose to go foward or climb up the ladder, and it's no longer just another tight corridor, but a crossroad with a spot you can be sniped on.
Edit:
In order to stop camping just don't place the guns and the ammo in the same area. I've been playing in a map where somebody just stood on a really tall building and kept killing everybody in the map. Maybe the crossbow and it's ammo wasn't clustered in one place but he could still find all he needs in pretty safe spots, since most of the action was in the streets. (after he got into position there was no danger at all in the roof tops)
Although I tried to kill him and made it up to the roof tops sevral times, I couldn't find him because I didn't know where he was.
In order to stop such beheivior the maker of that map needed to place the ammo for the crossbow only in lower and more dangerous areas.
Gah, I suppose.. it's just worrying that performance is worse than it should be whilst I'm generally doing as much as possible to optimize whilst I work (e.g. I can't just go on an optimization spree to fix performance; I might find a couple small things to tweak, but...). I don't feel quite so pressured now versus when I posted, I took some time off (yeah, a full, like, 1 hour) :smile: Still rather bothered about this, but certainly don't expect any abandonment. I'll just have to take it one step at a time...
I'm also quite tired. I'll have a good night's sleep soon and probably just map my way through tomorrow for the most part, frustration allowing. :wink:
Anyways, thanks for your words, reaper47.. we'll see where tomorrow brings us, eh? :smile:
midk, this phase comes with every map. Just move through it. Or make a pause but at the same time think of when to start working on it again. I'd hate to see this map abandoned.
