dm_spoorloos

dm_spoorloos

Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Wed Jul 19th 2006 at 11:20pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-07-19 11:20pm
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First, let me introduce myself:

I am CrazyPunk, located in the Netherlands in the city of Emmen.

I live in a pretty cool place. It's a squatted storage building with a little office part, located on a bus / train station.

I've been interested in map making since I started playing computer games. The first maps I've made were for an old 3drealms game called Shadow Warrior. These maps have never been published and were lost when my harddisk died.

A few years later, a friend of mine introduced me to Half-Life. I asked if I could also make maps for that game and he supplied me the tools. I did not had an internet connection back then so I had to help myself most of the time.

I made three initial maps for half-life 1 and one for counterstrike & the specialist. These maps barely compiled due to the way I managed to get over the engine limits time after time and were sort of heavy on the framerate, but the few people who've played those found them pretty cool.

Then my interest for mapping was brutally raped by my mother & my stepfather. They told me I was wasting my time and should go find some real hobby. I told them this was my hobby and could become a serious job in the future but they kept saying I was just wasting my time and didn't even bother to look at what I created. I went trough some pretty crazy situations and then got busy again with a new year of school.

Things went in such ways that I ended up here, in a squatted storage. I've found myself being able to map without feeling some unexplainable hesitation against it in the time I lived here and I actually enjoy it again. I've started building on a map of our house for the specialist, but then got Half-Life 2 and the sdk tools...I converted the map to the new engine and got stuck on the enviroment for a few weeks...then I decided to draw how the enviroment looks and started working on the map a few days ago...with satisfying results!

Here's a link to screenshots of the map. Enjoy!

http://bassie85.spaces.msn.com/photos/
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Gwil on Thu Jul 20th 2006 at 12:51am
Gwil
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Posted 2006-07-20 12:51am
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Can I suggest you post screenshots that people can see in this topic
without having to click external links? It seems a silly idea, but
you'll get a lot more responses :smile:
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Juim on Thu Jul 20th 2006 at 3:12am
Juim
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Posted 2006-07-20 3:12am
Juim
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Well, first off, I would like to say that I have never read such a detailed back story about a mapper in one of these posts, so congrats on that being a first.

I also took look at the screenies and my first impressions are all good so far. Nice lines, with attention to detail. Initially, i would say that the screens you posted are crying for a 3d skybox(something I must research on my own current project). I would recommend some lighting other than the env_sun above. The map has too many dark recesses in critical viewing areas. Other than that it's too early to comment much further. Keep up the good work.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Jul 20th 2006 at 11:09am
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-07-20 11:09am
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
<html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/standard.css" type="text/css"></head><body topmargin=2 leftmargin=2>OOps...double post :S
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Jul 20th 2006 at 11:11am
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-07-20 11:11am
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
True, I am going to experiment with 3d skyboxes soon and much of the enviroment is to be put in a skybox in the near future.

The lightning sucks indeed, but I'm experimenting with that on-the-fly...the plan is to make the light come is such a way it creates sunlight on the terrain and hopefully a full vis+rad process will make the ambient lightning such way that it also lights up the insides of the storage complex.

I was also thinking on making the light setting more nightly due to the huge visible areas of the map, with a gloomy blue night sky lightning and maybe some fog on the terrain as well, and then put lights inside the storage and on the still-to-be planted light posts.

And for screenshots - the map is still in such a state that altough the screenshots look nice, those area's are not even close to finished yet. When I got more finished areas I shall post some decent screenies.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Captain P on Thu Jul 20th 2006 at 6:22pm
Captain P
1370 posts
Posted 2006-07-20 6:22pm
1370 posts 1995 snarkmarks Registered: Nov 6th 2003 Occupation: Game-programmer Location: Netherlands
Looks pretty accurate for a real-life recreation. And it's nice to see yet another Dutch mapper, too. :smile:

While the map looks good so far, I'm a bit worried about the performance. The map looks very open and you're probably still going to add a lot of detail. How does the map run so far?

// Also, msn photo stuff is slow... :razz:
Create-ivity - a game development blog
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Jul 20th 2006 at 6:51pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-07-20 6:51pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Well - I haven't dared to run the vis process on the map yet but performance is becoming a bit sluggy on the far ends of the map...I was planning to use a 3d skybox but I think I am also going to use a night setting with some fog, if possible - night settings saved me from much framerate issues in the past, and if done right it looks really cool

Does anyone know how much different lights can be placed alongside eachother? I might need to make a row of yellow/green lights but I do remember that the hl1 rad process kept bugging me with "too many light styles on a face" messages for hours while compiling one of my previous maps...
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Captain P on Thu Jul 20th 2006 at 8:54pm
Captain P
1370 posts
Posted 2006-07-20 8:54pm
1370 posts 1995 snarkmarks Registered: Nov 6th 2003 Occupation: Game-programmer Location: Netherlands
The number of lights isn't a problem, the number of different light styles can be. More lights only change the way the lightmap looks, it's still the same size. An animated light however, one that changes intensity, means a different version of the lightmap has to be built for every different intensity of that light (of course, only for the faces that are affected). When two animated lights are animated the same, the same amount of lightmaps would be generated than for one animated light. But imagine the two lights behave differently: the number of intensity combinations radically increases. That's why the number of light styles that hits the same face is so limited, filesize (and also memory) issues.

So it's not the color or brightness or such that makes you hit this limit, it's the animation. I think you don't need many animated lights there anyway so I wouldn't worry too much about it. :smile:
Create-ivity - a game development blog
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Jul 20th 2006 at 10:21pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-07-20 10:21pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
yay, then I got nothing to fear :razz:

I've been experimenting with 3d skyboxes a bit...and I was wondering, could I make the skybox "connect" to the level? So that the surrounding architecture would be easy on the engine yet still looks like a part of the map?
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by G.Ballblue on Fri Jul 21st 2006 at 3:36am
G.Ballblue
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Posted 2006-07-21 3:36am
1511 posts 211 snarkmarks Registered: May 16th 2004 Occupation: Student Location: A secret Nuclear Bunker on Mars
I am absolutely digging that train track.

In screen 3, those trees seem to be rather... awkward, as though they're not quite connected to any grass. That also look like the same exact tree, just rotated :razz: Don't know if anyone pointed that out yet; I haven't read the whole thread.
Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Fri Jul 21st 2006 at 7:24am
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-07-21 7:24am
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
I know about the trees, I just put them in for a quick detail fix for test runs...they'll get better on the way :wink:
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Fri Jul 21st 2006 at 7:30am
midkay
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Posted 2006-07-21 7:30am
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I checked out the screens and "read more" screenshot gallery. The brushwork looks quite nice, but it's a bit hard to tell - the map is so dark! :smile:

I'd suggest adding (or increasing) ambient lighting (via light_environment) as well as overall lighting. Outside looks quite dark considering the sun, and most of the inside shots are like 50-75% black/very dark pixels.

From what I can see, though, it looks good so far. :smile:
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Orpheus on Sat Jul 22nd 2006 at 2:17am
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Posted 2006-07-22 2:17am
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I guess that because we have no traincars that look like the HL2 ones around here that I am basically tired of maps that have them. However, we definitely have areas that look like screen #3 and somehow it reminds me of home.

Can't say much about screen #2.. It looks like walls made from mattresses. :lol:

I'd like to see a possible screen of the trees with leaves. Is that possible?

The best things in life, aren't things.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Sat Jul 22nd 2006 at 12:35pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-07-22 12:35pm
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uhm...is it possible to make leafs on the trees then? or are those also models?
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by G.Ballblue on Sat Jul 22nd 2006 at 5:48pm
G.Ballblue
1511 posts
Posted 2006-07-22 5:48pm
1511 posts 211 snarkmarks Registered: May 16th 2004 Occupation: Student Location: A secret Nuclear Bunker on Mars
I think leaves on trees are generally 2D textures with alphamaps that look like leaves. Or something.
Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Sun Jul 23rd 2006 at 5:14am
Posted 2006-07-23 5:14am
3012 posts 529 snarkmarks Registered: Feb 15th 2005
Change the skin of the tree model from 0 to 1 in the model properties in hammer.

It should go from being bare to having some leaves.

Edit: Typo
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Sun Jul 23rd 2006 at 5:24am
midkay
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Posted 2006-07-23 5:24am
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Right, where some == as close to "none" as possible while not being "none" per se. :wink:
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Sun Jul 23rd 2006 at 5:40am
Posted 2006-07-23 5:40am
3012 posts 529 snarkmarks Registered: Feb 15th 2005
Haha, yeah you got that right. There are about 12 leaves on each tree. :smile:
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Sun Jul 23rd 2006 at 8:29am
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-07-23 8:29am
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lol....12 whole leafs

does increasing the skin number also affect the amount of leaves? hmmm....

runs off to hammer
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Tue Aug 15th 2006 at 3:53pm
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-08-15 3:53pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
I didn't made much progress with the map, I picked it up again today after two weeks of rest or something... :razz:

there is a bug somewhere and I've nearly tracked it down, and I've also done some minor improvements, mostly grouping together the func_details where possible.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Tue Aug 15th 2006 at 6:49pm
Posted 2006-08-15 6:49pm
3012 posts 529 snarkmarks Registered: Feb 15th 2005
What's going on with all the matresses in shot #2?
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Stadric on Tue Aug 15th 2006 at 7:28pm
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Posted 2006-08-15 7:28pm
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I'm looking at those screenshots, and it looks like you ahve no cubemaps. Is that right? If so, you're going to need them.
Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Wed Aug 16th 2006 at 10:25am
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-08-16 10:25am
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
The matresses in shot 2 are hanging from the roof, we have a whole wall of them because last winter was really cold and we needed something to enclose our acoustic session area...thus it's surrounded by matresses :razz:

And for the cubemaps....some way source keeps going bad on "cubemap used without rebuilding world" stuff, could be because I deleted the cubemaps yesterday in the bug tracking process (I found the source of the bug and am fixing it)

I might also consider not to use cubemaps at all for this map since it's rather...big. I know, I will miss all kinds of cool effects but sometimes one has to make sacrifices.

I was wondering...if I were to make the map play in a foggy night setting (dark and limited visibility outside ) could that increase the framerate a bit?

The map still runs pretty fast without vis & light performed but I realized the outside area is one big renderfest so I am looking for ways to keep performance to the max while making things still look good.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by ReNo on Wed Aug 16th 2006 at 1:19pm
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Posted 2006-08-16 1:19pm
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Your map being big is no reason not to use cubemaps. Cubemaps will have only the tiniest of influences on performance (tiny as in, not noticeable whatsoever) provided you don't have tons of them packed around the level needlessly. Not sure what the issue you are having with that error is - you are using the "buildcubemaps" command once you launch the map in game right?

By using fog you could indeed help performance. You could tighten in the fade distance on props so that they stop being rendered after a certain distance, and the fog would hide the fact you were doing it. I think there's also an option to stop rendering ANYTHING after a certain distance, so even BSP brushes wouldn't get rendered. That said, fog isn't really the ideal answer to performance woes - if you are looking at needing fog, then its possible your performance issues stem from other issues and could be better addressed through other means.
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Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by Mr.INSANE on Wed Aug 16th 2006 at 9:01pm
Mr.INSANE
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Posted 2006-08-16 9:01pm
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those mattresses are probally part of the problem if all of them have physics turned on
Why Do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Wed Aug 16th 2006 at 9:19pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-08-16 9:19pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
the matresses are okay...they'll get "simplified" automaticly in DM anyway

the hanging matresses are all physics, all the standing ones 'xcept the ones around the entrance are static

Does anybody know if it is possible to make a skybox thats connected to the level in such way that the architecture lines up correctly? As in, making a building line up with a street that lies next to it, while in reality there is a sky brush next to that street?

I do understand that it is not possible to walk around in the skybox geometry but thats exactly what I want.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Aug 17th 2006 at 11:28pm
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-08-17 11:28pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Err lol....

I just reread my last comment and realized a stupid, stupid mistake...

"I do understand that it is not possible to walk around in the skybox geometry but thats exactly what I want."

What I meant to say with this is that I do not want players to walk around in the skybox geometry and also know that it's not possible anyways.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Thu Aug 17th 2006 at 11:33pm
midkay
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Posted 2006-08-17 11:33pm
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Yeah, you can do that. Pretty much any 3D skybox tutorial will tell you to scale down some reference geometry and build around that. In this case, scale down the road or sidewalks in question, and start to build houses right along there.
-- midkay
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Fri Aug 18th 2006 at 12:39pm
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-08-18 12:39pm
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hmm, I tried it last night but some way it doesn't want to connect with level geometry...could this be because the skybox is parralax?

In that case I'll just have to built a smart skybox, as in, buildings in the skybox that are blocked from the lower part by a wall or something.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Fri Aug 18th 2006 at 10:11pm
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-08-18 10:11pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Allright...I got some news on the progress of the map:

First of all, I put 5 new screenshots on that slow msn space of mine...oh wait, it's "Windows Live Spaces" nowadays, right?

I've done some major func_detailling today. There was a raised "sidewalk" block that had many curves. I made one big func_detail of that bastard and my map ran quite smooth again.

My pc could not even run the single player of halflife 2 without heavy stuttering, so whenever I just have a very minor stutter with a big unvised map like this, I'm considering myself just happy that it even actually runs.

There was a minor bug somewhere in the windows in the living compartement that made the map crash upon loading. I tracked them down to the last 6 brushes that could potentionally be the erronic brush. Imagine my case of cold sweat when it just suddenly refused to run...good thing I've found a quick way to bugtrack.

There was going to be a construction yard visible in the map. I decided to not do that at all, instead I made a wooden wall around the perimeter and am going to put the construction yard inside a future skybox.

The skybox is also going to contain some random buildings that'll make the place look more correct and the row of houses on the other side of the street next to the trainstation. The street was supposed to be a walkable area too but with performance in mind, I decided to cut that idea.

Did a big job on retexturing and modifying buildings. I nearly am finished with the little bus station office and the trainstation complex has come a long way too. I moved a particular player block decoy to the other side of the level and modified the existing ones.
Where the train rides off into the distance would normally be a long road with more houses. I decided to cap the level where the trainstation parking lot ends. I made a nice decoy building and changed a potentional leak situation.

There was a minor issue with not having cubemaps for a while, turned out I deleted them during my error-tracking process. After throwing a quick and dirty env_cubemap in the middle of the map the problem was solved.

There is some issue with a "WorldTwoTextureBlend on non-displacement surface" but I got the co?rdinates n stuff from the console so I am going to track that one down tommorow.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Sep 14th 2006 at 2:07pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-09-14 2:07pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
I got some news for you concerning this map.

First of all, I've been putting on some new screenshots on my space.

Since google maps decided to finally put better images of the Netherlands online, I was able to make a really neat overview of my map. Go check it out. It rocks.

Second of all, I didn't made that much progress with the map lately, I am nearing the full "enclosure" of my map now so I can finally get rid of that huge block skybox then and save a hellofalot free faces & stuff.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Sun Sep 17th 2006 at 3:04am
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-09-17 3:04am
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
After some time fiddling with one particular corner of the map, I've come to the point of being able to seek for leakage and building a skybox within the next two days.

I uploaded one measly screenshot to my space...well...measly...it shows the work I've done today, and it looks good :wink:

For your pleasure I've also updated the three screenshots that have been forever on the snark.

People started changing the layout of stuff in the storage again...not a bad progress this time, considering they're building a wall now. I've pre-built the wall in the editor already but I am afraid the hanging matresses will be gone after this little home improvement. Oh well, at least it leaves me with another great vis blocker :wink:
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Sun Sep 17th 2006 at 12:11pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-09-17 12:11pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Some hot news here.

I managed to enclose the map perimiter with sky and structure now and I tested it.

First off, the bsp process goes smooth. There seem to be no leaks in my map, which I am really happy about considering its size. There are a bunch of findportalside errors but they are just caused by the huge brushes I used here and there for the time being. I'll have them out in a jiffy :razz:

Thus for the time being I will mainly improve things in the inside of the map, curing the bugs, setting up the cubemaps, detailling, messing with the lightning etc.

Still can't decide weither to make it a daylight map or a nightime map. Altough the map looks cool in daylight, it also is big, and I am not sure how this might affect the performance on network games. Nighttime would mean I have to put a lot of additional lightning in the map, but nighttime light effects still look cool and a lessened visibility will increase performance anyhow.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Sep 21st 2006 at 7:56pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-09-21 7:56pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Allright.

The map is rocking balls now. It took me four long days to get the skybox and the lightning, fog and night effects right but it's nearly done now. At his point I got 294 vrad lights, compiling takes a bit long but it's worth it! I set the fog to clip at 6144 units, far enough to make the clipping not very apparant unless you really want to see it ofcourse. I've also been experimenting with model fade distances and am having an idea on how to use that feature in this map.

I need to make some improvements on texturing, aligning stuff and so on. Also, I am going to final-detail the areas and improve geometry where neccesery.

All in all, the map is nearing bug-test phase. I need some people to check the map for bugs for a while, I assume people here would be interested? :wink:

I also uploaded a bunch of new screenshots on both my space and here. Enjoy!
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Fri Sep 22nd 2006 at 4:54am
midkay
398 posts
Posted 2006-09-22 4:54am
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398 posts 120 snarkmarks Registered: Apr 15th 2005 Location: United States
Hey CrazyPunk,

Just looking at these Snarkpit screenshots and had a few thoughts.

First screen: The invisible red light is weird. Where is it coming from? Why is it just here? This area looks pretty nice. The fireplace exhaust stands out a lot.

Second screen: Are those brush based streetlights? You do know HL2 comes with a model for a nice looking one and should be even less performance intensive than brushes, right? I like the lighting in this area.

Third screen: Okay, I'd say, toss that fog, or make some that actually seams with the skybox. It happens a lot where people add this white fog to their map with a dark sky and so you just see these white outlines against the sky. It looks unprofessional, so I'd suggest changing the fog color to like a dark blue that fits the sky or just not have it. I like the bus stops, are those stock models or brushes?

As far as your comment - you say you set the fog clip to 6944 units. You should only set this if the fog will obscure the clipping.. considering the huge distance that is, it will really not help performance at all and it'll just look ugly to see buildings cut off for no reason, so I strongly suggest disabling that.

Also - 294 lights? How? That's, in my experience, quite excessive and will probably hurt performance, at least a little bit. DM_residential has only around 80 now and I've really gone pretty overboard with illumination in the halls and stuff (3 lights per wall fixture, 3 lights per overhead flourescent light, etc). That's a huge number and I'm really wondering how you ended up with so many. I suggest you stick with "real life illumination", that is only place lights where there are light sources (don't light up hallways subtly with a bunch of dark lights, instead try a light fixture) etc. Either way that's a high-ass number.

Shaping up, though. :smile:
-- midkay
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Fri Sep 22nd 2006 at 9:37am
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-09-22 9:37am
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
The red light is indeed a bit freaky. Its coming from the tl armature, or at least it's supposed to look like that. Also note that these screenshots are from non-vis compiles, since running vis on this map will require two days or something as it seems now. I am currently running a full vis compile on the map, it's been working from 01:00 last night up to this time and still not finished.

All the maps coming from tl lights are single lights. Then there are the streetlights, the high lamp posts are indeed models and mostly use 1 light_spot but the light posts shown in screen 2 and 3 are brush-bases, since the game didn't offer such a lamp post model...The round ones have 4 lights, 1 on each side, this is really needed to light both the lamp post and huge surround areas correctly, such as visible in screen 2. Removing one would result in a badly lit lampost side, making the bright yellow appear not-so-bright and less light in the area. The flat lampposts (screen 2) use 1 light.

There are a lot of lights in this map because there are lots of lights around the place where I live, where the map is based on. I am personally very happy with that since thataway I could make the map night style without having to worry where to place lights - the layout was already predefined....while placing them in the map I noticed that they have really thought about where to place those lights, since the map was lighted just as it would have been in real life and everything that needs to be lit up is lightened up.

All the lights I used are non-dynamic, thus free on the in-game engine but not on the vrad process :razz: that currently takes about one hour to complete in fast bounce2 noextra mode...but it's worth it.

When I first put the fog in I was indeed blasted away by it's white assed uglyness. I set it to a very dark gray right after that and that is what these screenshots were made with. The fog start is 1536, fog end is 5120 and fog zclip is 6144 so the clip is not really noticeable unless you ofcourse start looking for it. I will check if a blue fog looks better, if it does it goes and in each case you are thanked for your comment, I find the information given here very usefull and everybody is happy to help :smile: so this maps gets better every time.

And why would the forced clip not increase performance? The outside area is a bit high on models and it takes two minutes to walk from one side to the other side of the map, so something has to give. I have started to use model fade distances too, but they only seem to be usefull inside or on edges of the map, everything in the middle has to be visible most of the time since thats how far you can look if you're standing in some corner of the map. When one stands in the middle of the map the whole enviroment is visible, you can see to both edges if you turn around.

The bus stops are not models. I made them using brushes and func_breakable_surfs and converted the steel structure & roofs to func_detail.
All the curved geometry that lies on the road in my map is func_detailed, thataway I saved a hell of a lot on polycounts outside.

By the way, I was wondering, do func_breakable_surfs take more power & entdata then func_breakables?

And how about the visibility of func_details...if you would turn one big piece of geometry thats not entirely visible from all points into a func_detail, would it be entirely drawn even when you look at a small part of it?
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Sat Sep 23rd 2006 at 7:57am
midkay
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Posted 2006-09-23 7:57am
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tl armature? What do you mean?

And.. a 2-day vvis? That's absolutely the highest I've ever heard, you need to work on optimization because it's crucial. I once had around 7 hours and just adding one brush brought it down to around 1 and a half hours.. after a few hours of work I got vvis down to 1 minute and 30 seconds. This is on a partially-outdoor-partially-indoor map so it's not exactly enclosed spaces. Be very gratuitous with func_detail and glview will help you a lot. Make sure many-sided brushes are func_detailed, and even smaller ones that don't block much visibility at all.

Why do streetlights have four lights, am I missing something? In real life the streetlamp wouldn't be lit all-round like that. One light_spot shining down will light it up plenty just how it should be. Also it sounds like maybe you don't have a light_environment with some ambient lighting set up which is pretty important for outdoor maps and provides lighting all around which is important so you don't have to manually light every single area and stuff.

Even static lights aren't 100% "performance impact free". Dynamic ones will really hurt performance but even static ones have to be accounted for, as far as lighting props and the viewmodel. One hour isn't too bad, I had around that at one point and optimized it down to about 20 minutes.

As far as the clip being "not noticeable unless you look for it" - see, that's what I mean by the clipping being pointless. It doesn't look like the buildings are obscured by the fog entirely and so if they're clipped off you'll be able to tell. If you can't really tell then very little is being clipped and it's pointless, like gaining 1FPS for a huge visual quality degradation of seeing these missing polygons. Hard to tell without a build to check out, I'd be glad to tell you what I think as soon as one is available.

The bus stops look good, anything that isn't func_breakable_surf should be func_detailed as it sounds you have done already. func_breakable_surfs should not have a noticeable performance difference in the least (as in, deleting one model from the map would create a larger difference).

As for your last func_detail question, that's a good one I wonder about myself.. I'm pretty sure it's still broken down visibilitywise into all the seperate brushes (e.g. same effect as func_detailing all the brushes individually, just "wrapped" into one entity).
-- midkay
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by ReNo on Sat Sep 23rd 2006 at 8:38am
ReNo
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Posted 2006-09-23 8:38am
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On the topic of the multi-brush func_details - pretty sure that if you can see part of it, all of it gets rendered. Easy enough thing to test to be sure though :smile:
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Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Sat Sep 23rd 2006 at 8:59am
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-09-23 8:59am
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
uhm...tl armature...the lamp in screenshot 1, with the red light n stuff, mostly used to light up large spaces, generates very little heat, takes 30% less energy against a 20000 hour life span, I believe.

the game calls em Fluorescent lights.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Sat Sep 23rd 2006 at 4:11pm
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Posted 2006-09-23 4:11pm
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Fluorescent lights, aha. :smile: Never heard the name "tl armature".

The problem is that it's clearly a dark (unlit) white bulb in there. Yet there's this bright red spot on the ceiling. There's no clear source of it and thus it looks weird. You ought to replace the red light with a white one (and use the other skin on the light model because it's brighter as if the light is on), or delete these fluorescent fixtures and replace it with a red lamp (I've only seen one before, those metal-grated utility/industrial ones).

Honestly, this looks like a living room or something (is it?) - there's no reason there'd be a bright red light shining in the middle of a living room anyways.
-- midkay
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Sat Sep 23rd 2006 at 4:26pm
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-09-23 4:26pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Lol no there wouldn't be a reason, but then again, this is not a normal house. This is a squatted storage / office complex run by a bunch of kids. We really have a red light in our living room (yes, that's our living room :biggrin: ) and it looks cool. I should indeed make it a lamp then.

I was planning on releasing a demo of the map after I am complete with furnituring & detailling the inside of the buildings, which will be soon. I am done with all the small rooms anyway, the only thing that needs to be furnitured a bit is the storage area.

For as far as fog goes, I tried a darkblue setting, but it sucked, honestly. Everything appeared...well...blue. Real life fog isn't blue, it's usually a greyish hazy colour at night, so I stay with my first fog setting.

Please do not be angry about me using such a rude clip :biggrin:
The map really needs it, there are loads, and I mean loads of models around the area. I'm finished setting fades on them and it helped a lot on increasing performance on the unvised map, so I am not really worried about the full compile's performance. The clip just makes sure that the entire map isn't drawn in it's whole at once, or in too large sections at once.

Would it be safe to upload the vmf here? People could see how the map is built n stuff, could be usefull or something.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Sat Sep 23rd 2006 at 11:00pm
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Posted 2006-09-23 11:00pm
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398 posts 120 snarkmarks Registered: Apr 15th 2005 Location: United States
1) Well I strongly suggest getting a red light. White lights don't cast blood red light.. plain and simple. :smile: Also, the red doesn't really light the room at all. It makes a spot on the ceiling but it contributes little to the overall room lighting. You should use a light_spot to cover the room in red light and then a very dark (like 10-20 brightness) red light under the model to illuminate the ceiling area.

2) Release away. :smile:

3) Oh, feel free to keep the old setting - to get it looking right you'd really need to tweak it a few times to get it to seam with the skybox (see here and look at the screenshots).

4) Clip if you want, I'm just saying that having a huge, obvious cutoff will look very ugly and says to the player that you didn't spend enough time optimizing the correct way (which would do something like bring vvis down to a few minutes and performance way way up) and decided to just not draw stuff that's pretty far away - the lazy way out. Fog should always completely obscure the clip plane if the clip plane is used. Otherwise, it looks bad and unprofessional.. that's simply that. Also, if it runs well without VIS you can most definitely make the clip plane much farther because without vis, EVERYTHING is drawn - that will kill performance.

5) Sure, safe as anything to put up the VMF - I really respect the very few people that do, for helping out beginners to see how some things were done, and letting the world see what they've done and how they did it. If you did that I'd be happy to poke into it and see if I can give you some better optimization tips.
-- midkay
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Sat Sep 23rd 2006 at 11:26pm
CrazyPunk
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Posted 2006-09-23 11:26pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Ok....so I've uploaded the vmf of the 23rd...that's yesterday by now here :razz:

Here's the link:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GQ1MLCI1

Maybe others know better ways of getting performance to the max... :smile: feel free to send me vmf's with examples of how stuff could be improved and have fun checking out my home.

The map is a single player map for now, and you will start in my room.

Yes, I noticed, there's a bug with the keyboards and some matresses. I converted func_physics to the cheaper func_physics multiplayer for performance reasons but it seems that not all models work under this. As far as I found, the sawblade and the road signs just fall down to the ground and seem entirely static.

The map is supposed to be a multiplayer map anyway so why not spare the engine from the conversions it apparently makes when loading a map in DM?
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Sun Sep 24th 2006 at 2:52am
midkay
398 posts
Posted 2006-09-24 2:52am
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398 posts 120 snarkmarks Registered: Apr 15th 2005 Location: United States
The thing about prop_physics multiplayer is that some props that are quite small simply don't interact with the gravity gun or other props. The solution is to convert any props that work weirdly with prop_physics_multiplayer (should be mostly small, detail-like ones, e.g. books/binders, road signs as you mentioned etc.) to prop_physics.

snags the VMF :smile:

-- [edit] --

Okay, so I just had a quick poke around and this map is huge! :biggrin:

There is no way to stress enough how much you need to get using glview. Look at this - that's all the leaves surrounding the house. That's incomprehensibly complicated; the whole house could go func_detailed, and most CERTAINLY all the little brushes outside it that make up the little lawn area.

Func_detail a bunch of stuff, keep referring to glview, and repeating until there are no places like this. Everything should be smooth, there should be no tiny leaves and no huge tangles of leaves like this. This is one of what I'm sure are quite a number of things that are absolutely killing your compile times. The huge roof on top of the.. er.. bus station thing with all the glass on top, is another one of those things.

Spend a couple hours func_detailing and glviewing and I promise you won't be disappointed. Your compile time should drop to an hour or less if you use that time wisely.
-- midkay
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Sun Sep 24th 2006 at 8:59am
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-09-24 8:59am
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Yay - I got glview to work...but it sure jurts me a bit to see how ugly the game cuts up stuff at the trainstation complex roof (the building with the big glass roof) - I thought this kind of architecture would only cut up the brushes it was directly connected to?

I'm going to work on func_detailling all that cuts up like you shown, I found that there aren't that incredible much spots where situations like these happen so I figure I could get that all fixed up today...I may even be able to finish up the inside detailling, I am trying to maintain a balance between usefullness and visual appearance, putting in just enough models to make an area like it's supposed to but also limiting the number of models as much as possible, creating detail brush geometry to save some much-needed entdata...entdata was at 86% last night :sad:

You said you could also make all func_breakable_surfs into a big entity? Wouldn't it also crack all the windows when you would damage just one?

Edit:

I've played around with glview a bit more and I'm starting to see how things work. At first it appeared to me that the white lines around the whole place were created by the way things cut up, but upon a closer look they appeared to be boxes...are these boxes the visportals?

If they are, then I can seriously increase performance with just a few little bit things....never thought it would be so easy

Edit 2: I have gone trough the glview and cut-ups a bit now. Most of the horribly cut ups and visbox constructions have been fixed. It's not top-of-the-notch yet but it's getting somewhere.

The portalcluster count has been lowered from 3500 something to 1881, and the numportals count dipped from 10000 something to 5639. I am running a full vis on the map now and its going somewhat faster then before. It may even compile within a day now! :razz:

Final Edit of the Day: Vis portalcounts were lowered again a bit.
I've been messing around with the fog again and decided to remove the clip again since the map has been pretty optimized already. Without the clip the fog looks much better, stuff goes up in the fog nicely now, I decreased model fade distances too and everything works just fine :smile:

I am getting a very high entdata amount (over 80% last time), does anyone know how to decrease the entdata without sacrificing too much models?

The VMF of today is available at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6NO2PBZS

I did not complete the inside detailling yet, I did however checked out the models carefully and put an example of useable ones in the map, they're not visible in the compiled map tho :biggrin: they're just there for future selection purposes and for me to check out what kind of models there exactly are available.

That's all for today - I am going to run a vis compile overnight to see how far it comes in the time that I sleep this time. Last time it was just around 65% after 15 hours of contigous compiling and this afternoon the compile just ran easily to 50% on lower then normal priority and winamp + hammer running & consuming cpu, so I'm not that worried anymore.

I want to thank midk for helping me with this map - first of all, yes, you were right about the clip :wink: and second, that tip on the glview thing really helped me with making the map viscompile a lot faster and to understand how the visportal & cutup processes work a bit. I knew about the cutup process but the visportals I never really understood - now that I saw them I could.
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by midkay on Mon Sep 25th 2006 at 2:42pm
midkay
398 posts
Posted 2006-09-25 2:42pm
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398 posts 120 snarkmarks Registered: Apr 15th 2005 Location: United States
You said you could also make all func_breakable_surfs into a big entity? Wouldn't it also crack all the windows when you would damage just one?
Don't recall saying that.. :smile: That's exactly what'd happen if you tried.
I've played around with glview a bit more and I'm starting to see how things work. At first it appeared to me that the white lines around the whole place were created by the way things cut up, but upon a closer look they appeared to be boxes...are these boxes the visportals?
Exactly, they must add up to cover any and all "empty space" in a level and when weirdly shaped world geometry comes into play, vis really has to fight to cover all the blank space with convex shapes (mostly boxes) - and when it gets really bad, you end up with a lot of tiny leaves in weird shapes. Func_detailing stuff tells vis to not consider it at all and so doing that to complex geometry really simplifies things so you have clean leaves and no tiny ones, etc.
Edit 2: I have gone trough the glview and cut-ups a bit now. Most of the horribly cut ups and visbox constructions have been fixed. It's not top-of-the-notch yet but it's getting somewhere.
Great. :smile:
The portalcluster count has been lowered from 3500 something to 1881, and the numportals count dipped from 10000 something to 5639.
Very good, you've basically halved the VIS complexity of the map and a lot of that is probably tiny little leaves nobody will ever enter. That'll help a lot.
I've been messing around with the fog again and decided to remove the clip again since the map has been pretty optimized already. Without the clip the fog looks much better, stuff goes up in the fog nicely now, I decreased model fade distances too and everything works just fine
That's good to hear, I honestly don't think it'd have helped very much to keep it :smile:
I am getting a very high entdata amount (over 80% last time), does anyone know how to decrease the entdata without sacrificing too much models?
Hmm, I don't know.. your map is really huge so there's probably not much you can do.
The VMF of today is available at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6NO2PBZS
Cool, I'll check it out when I get home and give you any more thoughts I can about VIS performace first and foremost.
I want to thank midk for helping me with this map - first of all, yes, you were right about the clip and second, that tip on the glview thing really helped me with making the map viscompile a lot faster and to understand how the visportal & cutup processes work a bit. I knew about the cutup process but the visportals I never really understood - now that I saw them I could.
No problem - glad I could help! :biggrin: Hope it all works out for you.. I'll post again soon on the new VMF.
-- midkay
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by ReNo on Mon Sep 25th 2006 at 2:57pm
ReNo
5457 posts
Posted 2006-09-25 2:57pm
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5457 posts 1991 snarkmarks Registered: Aug 22nd 2001 Occupation: Level Designer Location: Scotland
I am getting a very high entdata amount (over 80% last time), does anyone know how to decrease the entdata without sacrificing too much models?
I wouldn't worry too much about the entdata - the percentage given seems to be odd in that everything still works fine at well over 100%. I heard from one of the guys at work that Valve told him it was safe to go to around 200%. Higher that then could cause some issues when playing the map, as entities such as bullets, players, weapons, etc... that are created during the game could cause you to breach whatever the actual limit is.

Suffice to say, 80% shouldn't be any sort of problem.
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Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by CrazyPunk on Mon Sep 25th 2006 at 3:06pm
CrazyPunk
29 posts
Posted 2006-09-25 3:06pm
29 posts 13 snarkmarks Registered: Jul 19th 2006
Lol, ok, thank for you letting that know ReNo, now I don't have to endure cold sweats anymore whenever running a compile after having placed some more models :smile:
Re: dm_spoorloos Posted by reaper47 on Tue Sep 26th 2006 at 1:09am
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Posted 2006-09-26 1:09am
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I could have sworn I already made a few comments on this map but it seems this is my first. I remember the map to have a daylight setting and I think the night change was a good decision. Not so much because it's night but because the more foggy, cloudy day setting is getting a bit old with HL2 maps. Be careful with the darkness levels. Especially when making a night map you should try to make the map as bright as possible. Even if it looks a bit worse, people can't play dark maps when light is mirroring on the monitor (or when they have very bad brightness settings) which results in people rejecting these maps before even getting to play them.

I see some brush-based details that should be models/props (handrails, pipes, street laterns...). Would look a bit nicer and help performance (brush based details like this can easily make 20-50% of FPS).

Everything else looks very OK so far. Especially the parts of the skybox with the fog and darkness. Just make sure the low-res skybox models don't get too close to the player!