My first map for Nexuiz.
Because here is winter now, I wanted to make something snowy. That's the result:







Download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ym2yx02io2z

The map is a small box canyon, with snow and an icy lake. Performance is a problem, probably because the large amount of models. I tried everything I could (spamming the whole with hint brushes), but it's still bad. The Electro balls are falling trough the ground sometimes, probably the terrain patch is buggy. There aren't any bot waypoints, because I can't figure out how to make them. But anyway, I think it's good for DM and RL arena.

Looks like fun!!! Nice map.

About bots waypoints:
http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?p=7364#7364

Why did you use a patch for the terrain? That's not a good idea, ever- your terrain is much higher-poly than it could be, with brushes or even an imported misc_model terrain. Not a HUGE problem though.

Aside from that, there are several things you should do. First, get rid of the clipping on the trees- at least on the outer branches. It's not necessary, and it's irritating to hit those (and it slows the map down). Manually clipping the trunk would be enough.

2) There are some parts of the side-wall which are conspicuously free of rocks. You should add rocks to fill those areas.

3) Instead of that ugly snow texture, use my ice texture. I quickly did this myself, and it already looks better IMO.



That's with the ice texture, and one of Sock's terrain textures in the texture blend.

Download the map with the textures I modified here (they are already in place in the /textures directory, and work in the map).

http://torus.mkzelda.net/snowcrashbeta.pk3

4) Use the dotproduct shader on the rocks (same as you used on the terrain), so the top of the rocks is icy/snowy, but the rest is normal. It would make them more interesting.

5) If I were you, I would add some more eye candy, such as large trees around the outside, and maybe some fallen logs in the middle to provide obstacles and cover. This would just make it more interesting

6) Use FUNC_SNOW! Func_snow is done by making a brush in Radiant, right clicking for func_, then going to func_snow. It will snow appear inside the box , and would be perfect for this map.

Aside from those things, which are easy fixes/additions, it's a pretty cool fragbox, with a very distinct feel! The frozen pond is a great touch. Also, I get perfectly fine frame-rates.

You are obviously a better mapper than most people who are just starting (although I'm not the right person to tell you about item placement, etc), and I look forward to seeing what you make next!

Haven't had a chance to try this map yet, but I was able to work around the stuff-falling-through-patches bug in my maps by cloning the relevant patches and doing an invert matrix on the clones. This should leave you with the original patch facing up that the player can see, and an idental patch facing down (can't be seen, so feel free to just use calk on it). I like how the snow looks in the screen shot!

MRB 255 wrote:Haven't had a chance to try this map yet, but I was able to work around the stuff-falling-through-patches bug in my maps by cloning the relevant patches and doing an invert matrix on the clones. This should leave you with the original patch facing up that the player can see, and an idental patch facing down (can't be seen, so feel free to just use calk on it). I like how the snow looks in the screen shot!

No no no, cloning the patch will make it much slower, because the entire damn thing will be rendered twice.

Tried it myself with 2.4.2 on a GeForce FX 7300-if-it's-fast-on-this-one-it-will-be-on-everything-these-days, running openSUSE 10.3. The framerate is much lower than with most maps. It seems to be related to dynamic lighting but what really kills it is a few shots from the fap-rifl... the crylink (not sure why).

Also, could be my settings but if I don't turn off bloom I get eye cancer because of all the white .

Looking really good, but could sure use some optimization.

I'll post more tomorrow I think, after I test more and also add my settings here.

[edit]: I type like a moron. Fixed.

Well, thanks for the feedback! For some reason the search missed that waypoint thread.

Torus, this texture is awesome! It's indeed much better with this. I used patches because my netradiant can't open .map-s generated with ImgtoMap or Blender. And I don't like making terrain from brushes, it's a bit clumsy for me.
There were much more rocks before, but I deleted them hoping to increase performance. Adding more trees is a very good idea. But shaders and textures are my weak point , so making new rock textures is a task nearly impossible for me . About func_snow, I tought about that already. Maybe with a light fog it'll look very nice (and increase FPS). I will try it out. Thank you for the advice!

Agelith wrote:Torus, this texture is awesome! It's indeed much better with this. I used patches because my netradiant can't open .map-s generated with ImgtoMap or Blender. And I don't like making terrain from brushes, it's a bit clumsy for me.
There were much more rocks before, but I deleted them hoping to increase performance. Adding more trees is a very good idea. But shaders and textures are my weak point , so making new rock textures is a task nearly impossible for me . About func_snow, I tought about that already. Maybe with a light fog it'll look very nice (and increase FPS). I will try it out. Thank you for the advice!

I do NOT recommend using fog- it will actually DECREASE performance, unless it is really thick fog (then you can use a distance cull). Fog doesn't cull faces by itself. Also, most people turn it off anyway.

As for the terrain, the main reason this map is slow is because of the patch mesh. If you play your map, and enter 'r_showtris 1' you will see how high-poly those patch meshes are. Not only that, but patch meshes are buggy and movement is unpredictable on them.

I wasn't suggesting using the .map generator in Blender- I was suggesting making a terrain by sculpting it in Blender, polyreducing it (decimation), then exporting it as a Radiant-readable .ase model.

If you fix the terrain, adding a few rocks and some nice LARGE trees will have little impact on performance.

If you need help doing any of the stuff I mentioned, come on over to IRC on irc.quakenet.org, the channel being #nexuiz.editing

You will need an irc client like xchat2 (windows/linux) or colloquy (mac).


As for textures, I have a large collections of natural textures I've been making. If you need anything, just let me know. For the current rocks though, I was suggesting to simply use the same shader that's on the terrain.



PS- PLEASE REMOVE THOSE CLIPS ON THE CURRENT TREES!

torus wrote:
As for the terrain, the main reason this map is slow is because of the patch mesh. If you play your map, and enter 'r_showtris 1' you will see how high-poly those patch meshes are. Not only that, but patch meshes are buggy and movement is unpredictable on them.

Actually dense patch rendering is surprisingly fast. i did a test where i increased the patch density until i had 2.1mil patch tris on screen before frame rate dropped to intolerable levels.


One thing that can hurt performance on patch based maps are lack of vis blockers. And of course the dodgy movement is troublesome.

you could try -patchmeta on the bsp stage of your map compile to let q3map2 convert the patched to brushwork.

You can't turn off fog while playing online.

Alien wrote:You can't turn off fog while playing online.

Yes you can. Fog is clientside, just like other effects. If there is distance culling though, it will look strange (that you can not turn off).

No, server auto resets fog.

Is that new? Because I was playing Silvercity just yesterday, and the server most definitely did NOT reset fog.

It should (at least on svn). Maybe smth was changed.

Maybe next time, you should cite your argument before saying such a definite one liner so we don't waste threads over dilly dally.

Oh, mr.Stalker here again. Didn't know what to do on Wednesday evening, did you? Had to spam here? Thanks for your wisdom.

Allow FORCING fog by the server (sv_foginterval 5 makes it re-stuffcmd the fog every 5 seconds to each playing client)

http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/trunk/dat ... iew=markup

As I said, server can autoreset fog, so do not rely that you'll be able to remove it in client.

Alien wrote:As I said, server can autoreset fog, so do not rely that you'll be able to remove it in client.

I didn't see you say anything but a definite "it does this" without citing a source (as usual) but whatever.

Does sv_foginterval set to 0 mean the server doesn't force it?

It's probably made cvar that it could not be changed, wasn't it?

Alien wrote:It's probably made cvar that it could not be changed, wasn't it?

That just doesn't make sense.

In the original code you posted, the first line says:

Allow FORCING fog by the server (sv_foginterval 5 makes it re-stuffcmd the fog every 5 seconds to each playing client)

and the default nexuiz setting for this cvar is 0. That means, this cvar is changeable. 0 either infinitely re-stuffcmd the fog or doesn't do it at all. I'm guessing the later is more probable.

Can we stop derailing this thread now?

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?movwmnyomdj

Small update. I added more trees and rocks, changed the textures, and improved the fps a bit. The func_snow isn't working properly, when I tried it in the map the fps dropped to 1 so I removed it. I don't think I can improve anything further (maybe a different skybox should be better).

The .pk3/zip is fucked, it won't decompress. Can you repack it and re-upload?

Hmm.., odd. It extracts perfectly well for me. Maybe it's corrupted because I use Pakscape for real-time editing of pk3 files. It's much easier than messing with always extracting/compressing. I made this one with the traditional method:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?kiinjwweywe

Both packs works for me.