r_speeds limit

Just added my 2 cents.

As for "buddy" I don't know of it as a homosexual reference unless you add the prefix "bum" then yes it is. To me it's just a hilarious reference as this crazy punjabi guy in my socials class last year would claim to my friend and I "Buddy, you're stupid, you don't know anything." As he somehow gave us a logic that by his failing he's doing well in grade 12. So my friends and I always get each others' attention by exclaiming "Buddy!" in a punjabi accent.

you never know gorb.. there are a bunch of Canadian truckers down here.. the version you mention, might have had its origins from the truckers.

there are a lot of cruel words to describe homo's, buddy, is one of the least offensive i have heard.

does Canada, have any obscure Canadian words???

Orpheus said:
the fact, that some dingbat (wonders if dingbat is another UK cussword :rolleyes: )wasted a vote, by selecting the 5000 option, tells me we have little real use for a polling system :wink:

seems to me, that if its that unimportant to someone, why bother :/

YES!!! Someone commented on that!!!

Actually, the whole r_speed issue really is too specific for gauging performance, like what's been said earlier, framerate is truly the "better" estimate. One reason that certain area can get away with higher w_polies can be acredited to many factors, here's some of the higher ones.

Context/Texture changes- Areas that have fewer amounts of textures in the region will definitely perform better because there's a bottleneck when the renderer has to change textures. This is actually a biggie, and it's one of the reasons why Q3 was able to get way with fairly detailed terrain maps Team Arena. Again, this is not specific to the HL engine, any engine worth anything this should definitely improve performance.

BSP Tree construction- This mainly has to deal with the leaf nodes created when the map compiles. It's kinda hard for mappers control this, although editors have given more and more control over this. Basically, the world divided into series of bounding boxes called vis portals, these create the Potential Visibility Set. These portals are stored in the leaf nodes of the tree. First the engine determines which portal the camera's in, then it determines what nodes are potentially visible from that node. From there, it gets a much smaller set of geometry and can remove a lot the unseen geometry from there. The less nodes made, the less paths the engine has to search for PV nodes, thus increasing performance.

Entity/Static Polygons- This one's pretty simple. BSP geometry is rather slow(but accurate for collision detection). The reason it's slow is because the engine has to send geometry to the video card one face/polygon at a time due to both texture coordinate difference and lightmap(textures that simulate light) coordinates. Entity and Static polies render much faster since they can send all polygons and texture coordinates to the video card at once. The video card likes things in batches, the more you give it at once honestly, the better, it reduces the amount of transfers going through the AGP(going from the vid card to CPU/RAM is even slower).

Those are probably the three major factors behind performance, and why r_speeds honestly never was a good measurement of performance, it was just used as a tool to where to start looking for improvements.

That's kinda why I did put 5000, because theoretically, the engine might perform great if you really know how to work within those bounds.

I always wondered, what tree structure does BSP use (BST, 234, AVL, etc...) ?

I've got to take me some linear albegra so I can jump in to this stuff at my school.

A Binary Tree. Another spliting plane's either in front of or behind it's parent node's spliting plane.

A Binary Tree. Another spliting plane's either in front of or behind it's parent node's spliting plane.

...wait, so you usually use a tree of trees for the bsp/face spliting??

I thought that some of the other algorithms for trees were more efficient ... hmm.

I guess a programmer would shoot themselves if they had to create the bsp structure using AVL or something like that (it would also run slow if the balancing was done durring runtime, however if it wasn't it might be more efficient and reliable in the speed area)

Orpheus said:
actually no, in truckers lingo, buddy is gay, but bud, was shortened to differentiate the two..

Don't tell me you bus drivers are wannabe-truckers

I put 1000 but I view r_speeds simpy as a guideline and not the final word on how smooth it will be. For example lets say you put a few high w_poly pillars in a very small room and give everything the same texture. Chances are it will still render fast because there isn't much to do besides draw the cylinders. Now imagine a huge area with lots and lots of cubes all with different textures. Even if the r_speeds are lower in the cube area it will render slower because of the wide open space and the many textures. And I've never heard of buddy meaning gay but thanks for the tip PAL!

Leperous said:

Orpheus said:
actually no, in truckers lingo, buddy is gay, but bud, was shortened to differentiate the two..

Don't tell me you bus drivers are wannabe-truckers

sometimes lep, you're worse than i am.

what do you think i was, before i started delivering busses silly.

my CDL's are still current.. i went to college (stop glaring asswipe), actually got credits and everything, just to learn how to drive semi-trucks.

was an 8 week course, but was fun.

JFry said:
I put 1000 but I view r_speeds simpy as a guideline and not the final word on how smooth it will be. For example lets say you put a few high w_poly pillars in a very small room and give everything the same texture. Chances are it will still render fast because there isn't much to do besides draw the cylinders. Now imagine a huge area with lots and lots of cubes all with different textures. Even if the r_speeds are lower in the cube area it will render slower because of the wide open space and the many textures.

ain't been mapping long have you? else, haven't released much.

I think in theory, if you built two complicated areas, using one texture, that both had the exact same wpoly in them (say 1500), but one had only square faces, and one had only triangle faces, the one with the triangle faces could be rendered at a higher framerate, because there would be only 75% of the data to process for each scene.

when i made double_trouble, i used both r_drawflat 1 and gl_wireframe 2 extensively.. i minutely stretched each texture sideways, till i got the least amount of squares possible, and still retained the best quality i could.

with some areas, it was the only way i could get the r's under 1000... the torches boosted the r's substantially , but were essential to the theme

Crono said:

A Binary Tree. Another spliting plane's either in front of or behind it's parent node's spliting plane.

...wait, so you usually use a tree of trees for the bsp/face spliting??

I thought that some of the other algorithms for trees were more efficient ... hmm.

I guess a programmer would shoot themselves if they had to create the bsp structure using AVL or something like that (it would also run slow if the balancing was done durring runtime, however if it wasn't it might be more efficient and reliable in the speed area)

It might help looking up the BSP FAQ, it's all over the Internet. You kinda have to reread each section several times to understand what's going on(some of it I still don't quite get).

Ive been mapping for 3 years and i still dont uderstand 100% the wonders of HINT brushes.

Ive been mapping for 3 years and i still dont uderstand 100% the wonders of HINT brushes.

Manual Visblocking, which no one has really explained how to use well. I don't think that the Terragen developers even know how to use them, since if you use HINT brushes in your terrain generation they're laid out as a Grid (meaning in Hammer the grid lines are also HINT brushes if you look in the 3D view). And do they work? No. I think Hint brushes can only REALLY be used around corners and in areas that have openings to where there is NO way you could see around the corner or such (like a trench) you'd use a HINT brush as the ceiling. But that's just a guess, since no one's really ever explained them.

Indeed. HINT brushes - do they work? Do they bollocks :biggrin:

Yet every novice mapper who lets his r_speeds go mad in a beta seems to say, "Yeah like I know my r_speeds are 5000 but im gonna use HINT brushes and stuff and then they'll be 800 yeah I rule."

Hint brushes work plenty well and in plenty of ways. They're most useful in optimizing VIS calculations, though. I did a re-creation of the test chamber a while back that took about 15 minutes on VIS. I added one cylindrical hint brush (none of this "skip" crap :razz: ) and cut it to mere seconds :smile:

Er, wouldn't that tell BSP to make splits on EVERY face of the cylindrical hint brush?

If I tossed a random cylinder into the middle, yes. But if you build a hint brush to fit complex architecture, it can greatly simplify VIS calculations and face splits around it, and you can even do it without creating any new face splits.

Orpheus said:

Leperous said:

Orpheus said:
actually no, in truckers lingo, buddy is gay, but bud, was shortened to differentiate the two..

Don't tell me you bus drivers are wannabe-truckers

sometimes lep, you're worse than i am.

what do you think i was, before i started delivering busses silly.

my CDL's are still current.. i went to college (stop glaring asswipe), actually got credits and everything, just to learn how to drive semi-trucks.

was an 8 week course, but was fun.

JFry said:
I put 1000 but I view r_speeds simpy as a guideline and not the final word on how smooth it will be. For example lets say you put a few high w_poly pillars in a very small room and give everything the same texture. Chances are it will still render fast because there isn't much to do besides draw the cylinders. Now imagine a huge area with lots and lots of cubes all with different textures. Even if the r_speeds are lower in the cube area it will render slower because of the wide open space and the many textures.

ain't been mapping long have you? else, haven't released much.

I find this comment rather arrogant. Are you disagreeing with me? if so be my guest and prove your point. Otherwise please keep your rude comments to yourself.

i am disagreeing, i don't need to be arrogant, and you may download any of my maps still with functional links..

my experience, is for you to judge i guess.

actually, yes, i was being rude, you comment was not very accurate.

and i find it rather arrogant of you to question me as well.. :wink:

theres plenty of words that im sure are fairly unique to West Australia, even compared with the Eastern States, let alone the rest of the world. one that comes (not sure if unique or waht) to mind is 'sped' (heard it way to many times on the bus this morning) means retard and is pretty old...

r_speeds? tried to understand them...didnt get far-now i just steer clear of open areas...

I never questioned your experience in the first place Orph. The subject at hand is r_speeds, and you have yet to prove my statement inaccurate. All you have provided is mere insults (which I would expect from the 12-15 year olds whom likely frequent this site, but not you).

Edge Damodred said:
Context/Texture changes- Areas that have fewer amounts of textures in the region will definitely perform better because there's a bottleneck when the renderer has to change textures. This is actually a biggie.........

this pic covers a large area with lots of different textures, and could apply to what you say there Edge. even though the world and entity r's are well within accepted limits, it still takes 7ms to draw. and thats with a new kick-ass card that i may have already mentioned elsewhere. :razz:



i released a concmap based on much the same theme, fishyconc3_r, and even though the r's stayed reasonably low, people still complained of unacceptable lag. :sad:

so like Edge says, there's more to it than poly's.

and something else got me thinking that HL was like a propeller, designed to have certain capabilities, and like a propeller, it wont pull any harder once it reaches it's limits, no matter how fast it turns. [/rabbling]

JFry said:
I never questioned your experience in the first place Orph. The subject at hand is r_speeds, and you have yet to prove my statement inaccurate. All you have provided is mere insults (which I would expect from the 12-15 year olds whom likely frequent this site, but not you).

dude, your 1st mistake was assuming i was being arrogant, arrogant would be "do you know who the hell you are talking to bucko?" thats arrogant.

secondly, i have been accused of being an r_speeds nazi, cause i hound so many about the needlessness of them in their maps, so believe me when i say, your comment is not completely wrong, but it is enuff to warrant my saying so.

thirdly, i don't have to prove it, its just basic r_speeds knowledge, the amount of textures you use in a given area will not influence the r_speeds at all... now their scales of each, yeah those will do it, but never the quantity.

lastly, excepting errors in construction, and assuming all was made correctly, a small room with lots of details, and 800 r_speeds, will draw just the same as a big open area with almost nothin in it and also at 800..

your comment was inaccurate... and my being rude,immature, or arrogant, has no baring on it at all.

so, you want rude? or honesty, cause bud, i am damned good at both.

my advice, dig back thru the mapping forums, and look at the dozens of critiques i have done, judge for yourself, if i know my r_speeds or not.

arrogant.. :rolleyes:

JFry said:
I never questioned your experience in the first place Orph. The subject at hand is r_speeds, and you have yet to prove my statement inaccurate. All you have provided is mere insults (which I would expect from the 12-15 year olds whom likely frequent this site, but not you).

Christ, why don't you cry. This is an internet forum, let's not take it too seriously now.

I will now disprove your statement as per your request. A wide open area will not necessarily make the map render slowly, it depends on the number of entities visible. Usually there's more in an open area, but that is something to design around. As for textures, I don't think that matters at all past the initial loading of the map. If you have 10megs of textures that need to be loaded it will take a bit for the map to load up, but there won't be a noticeable difference between a room with lots of textures and one with few as the textures have already been loaded when the map started.

man yak, i felt that all the way here :smile:

remind me, why you and i are such great friends again, i forget :biggrin:

seriously JFry, we are being straight with you.. not trying to run you off.

You're the best Orpheus thanks for pointing out those errors. But why are you so sensitive about your mapping knowledge lately? I think it's time you re-installed half-life. You know you miss it...

I think that r_speeds should be to the mapper's own honest standards - while it is disgusting to see a guy who releases a map with 5000 r_speeds and say that it's for 'high end computers only', if somebody honestly believes and finds that a 1200 r_speed limit works for the audience of the mod or community he's releasing for, then by all means, he should stick to it.

800 r_speeds is the 'gentleman's limit'. In all honesty, there are very few computers I've ever seen in my entire three-year experience with Half-Life, from start to present, that could not handle 900-950 without a hitch, but limiting yourself always adds a nice element to mapping.

And JFry, please, leave your comments about Orph's 'arrogance' in your ass where they came from.

Cassius said:
800 r_speeds is the 'gentleman's limit'. In all honesty, there are very few computers I've ever seen in my entire three-year experience with Half-Life, from start to present, that could not handle 900-950 without a hitch, but limiting yourself always adds a nice element to mapping.

Yeah, you get the right to brag to everyone about the impressive visuals you created that have low r_speeds. It gets you chicks. (well... not really.)

fishy said:

Oh, no!The r_speeds from HELL!!!We are doomed! :smile:

KungFuSquirrel said:
If I tossed a random cylinder into the middle, yes. But if you build a hint brush to fit complex architecture, it can greatly simplify VIS calculations and face splits around it, and you can even do it without creating any new face splits.

Neato :smile: I've known about this use of HINTS in theory but never had occasion to try it out in practice. However, it makes good sense. Although the BSP/VIS algorithms will generally find a more-or-less optimal zoning for the map, they won't be able to take the short-cuts that humans can (like, "that cylinder in the middle of the room isn't going to help VIS, so let's just take it out of the calculations").

Maybe you could write a tutorial on this some time nudge Andrew. prod poke

JFry said:
You're the best Orpheus thanks for pointing out those errors. But why are you so sensitive about your mapping knowledge lately? I think it's time you re-installed half-life. You know you miss it...

its not that i am sensitive, but of late it seems that some of our newer members, because i have no maps pending, either assume i am uninformed, or something worse.

i truly wonder if they research whom they are arguing with.

i may not have HL currently installed, but it was for almost 5 years. i do not know everything about HL mapping, but i do know a lions share of it. i do learn new stuff even today, but it is really annoying when someone throws words around like arrogant and rude, when all along all it started out was a little tease.

anywho's, it was rude of me, so lets pick up from there and proceed shall we :/

Yeah thats right orph, you tell that foo' who's boss rolls eyes

Oh and for what's worth i said 1000 because that is a nice round number, this isn't the dark ages any more, software mode should be illegal now.

Mr.Ben said:
Yeah thats right orph, you tell that foo' who's boss rolls eyes

am i to infer that you do not like the idea of lep running this site?

he can be a bit... touchy, but there is nothing a few years won't cure. but if it will make you feel better i suppose i can.

JFry, Leperus is running this site, he created it with a massive amount of feedback over the last few years to its present form. he has a few lieutenants to help him monitor the site as well.

look to the green names.

hope that helps.

am i to infer that you do not like the idea of lep running this site?

Bwahahahaa. I needed that laugh Orph. :smile:

Kage_Prototype said:

am i to infer that you do not like the idea of lep running this site?

Bwahahahaa. I needed that laugh Orph. :smile:

[color=pink]blushes[/color]

you are very welcome ol' man :smile:

seriously though, we have several shining stars among our member list, for many reasons, but other than our green names (which the current list of them truly deserve the titles) we have no real leaders among us.

i would look to wildcard, just as likely as KFS, i would seek out jeff, just as quickly as gollum or yak.. and thats just me.. i am sure everyone here has their opinion on whom to turn to on any given issue, and more than likely, the one they turn to today, may not be the right person for tomorrows problem.

i have my hero's here, most of them know whom they are, and some of them for no other reason, than they stood up to me on a debate, and stayed with it to its ending. i, can respect someone, more easily, than like them sometimes...

i think mr. ben was being as humorous as i was attempting to be :biggrin:

[color=orange][b][size=13]this topic = OLD![/b][/color][/size]

not even going to comment, it's been beat into the ground too many times.

Jinx said:
[color=orange][b][size=13]this topic = OLD![/b][/color][/size]

not even going to comment, it's been beat into the ground too many times.

its this topic, or we tell everyone you mom still dresses you funny.

/runs

Yes... yes i was.

runs

Mr.Ben said:
software mode should be illegal now.

Hey ! Software mode roxors your soxors ! (I played for about 2 years on software mode, lowest res ... argh, teh horror !)

Mr.Ben said:
Yeah thats right orph, you tell that foo' who's boss rolls eyes

Oh and for what's worth i said 1000 because that is a nice round number, this isn't the dark ages any more, software mode should be illegal now.

Tell that to Flayra and the NS team. When I ran in software mode worldmodels would constantly warp and look terrible, but they expect a mod that has tons and tons of models everywhere to run fine in software and enforce the official guidelines to that tune.

Software is not and never has been supported in NS.

What he said. ^^

Perhaps I should stop saying things that are incorrect.

I realize it must be hard dealing with those people all the time Orph but really I am not one of them. I have lurked here for quite some time and I knew exactly "who I was talking to". I know you have mucho experience and I would like nothing more than to benefit from that. Also I know Lep runs the site and I think he does a fine job. Sorry if I blew things out of proportion tho and I'm certainly glad to move on.

it was my bad JFry.. sometimes, i forget my own advice about handling relatively new members, lurking ones or not. its not like me to act that way.

and the light blue text is a joke, for Mr Ben.. it was to steer away from the direction it was trying to go.

a lesson learned, try hard to pay attention to the smilies.

Software mode is such a joke, it's brutal even on a map that it CAN handle. I'll map for slower computers in mind, but I won't go low enough as to map for software mode.

i wonder how many people play using software mode, simply because it is the default setting, and they dont want to tamper with things that they dont understand, just in case they 'break' something.

i'd be willing to bet thats its more than just a few.

fishy said:
i wonder how many people play using software mode, simply because it is the default setting, and they dont want to tamper with things that they dont understand, just in case they 'break' something.

i'd be willing to bet thats its more than just a few.

How could such people be let loose on a computer?!

Because computers are the modern world now, not just a mainstay of geeks and code whores!