I'm in the final stages (I hope) of a new map. The map can be described as two large rooms separated by a porous wall. Thee is a base in each room (it's mainly a CTF map). The walls, floors, and ceilings of these maps are very detailed - lots of sniper ledges, hiding places, and generic bumpy stuff. There are a couple of places where one can see from one end of the map to the other through the bases and the wall.

How should the hint brushes be placed to have the best effect?

An advanced tutorial on how to use hint brushes can be found here: http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3620

But from your descritption it doesn't really sound like hint brushes would increase fps a lot on your map. Maybe a bit though See for yourself.

I can confirm this tutorial. You may also want to look at capturecity's hinting, which tells you what you can do with high towers and complex models.

Thanks for the link to the hint tutorial. I don't think hints will help. Looks like I've made an unplayable map (fps in the thirties when you're alone on the map is not playable)..

Oh well. Maybe I'll be able to salvage parts of it in a future map.

Any chance you can post the pk3 so others may try and contribute to make it playable?

[-z-] wrote:Any chance you can post the pk3 so others may try and contribute to make it playable?

By all means. Here:


http://www.notam02.no/~clund/nexuiz/Caverna.pk3

There should be a .map file in there as well. And yes, there are bugs..

Just in case somebody stumbles into this thread and finds a map: THIS IS NOT A PLAYABLE MAP! DO NOT PUT IT ON YOUR SERVER!

I just played your map, and I don't see what you are talking about... the map runs for me on average about 150-180 fps... Maybe it's a problem with your machine, and not the map? Try it out on a different comp.

But please don't give up on it! I actually think it's really, really cool. The way you used brushes to simulate rock is very artistic, and the lighting in the map is spectacular. Keep it up!

torus wrote:I just played your map, and I don't see what you are talking about... the map runs for me on average about 150-180 fps...

On average, I also get 150-180 fps. But in reality it varies from 200+ in some areas to 30-40 when I'm in the far corners facing towards the bases. And 30-40 fps when I'm alone probably means half that when in a game. I think.

Maybe it's a problem with your machine, and not the map? Try it out on a different comp.

My other mac is over six years old and barely runs Nexuiz at all. I don't think that would help. Besides, the mac I'm on now runs most Nex maps at 150-200 fps or even better. The specs are in my sig.

But please don't give up on it! I actually think it's really, really cool. The way you used brushes to simulate rock is very artistic, and the lighting in the map is spectacular. Keep it up!

Glad you like the way it looks.

I doubt that hinting can do much for this type of open map. Thorough caulking may help if you haven't done so already (ensure all non-visible surfaces are caulked).

It's a good looking map overall, I look forward to playing it!

FYI my system runs this map at just-playable performance at 1280*1024 on Intel G965 graphics with bloom, HDR and all RT lights off.

Hi there newb, this map is really nice, more power to the random :E
A lot of work to do, but i like it a lot, how are you generating the rock shapes? in radiant or somewhere else?
It looks like you might have some overlapping issues but I've not looked at the .map so feel free to tell me shut up fool !
And I ain't fallin for no milk this time ( BA Baracus, The A-Team )

ehem well, also this reminds me of a level in an xbox game but I can't remember which, mines... hmm.

I find with this mapping lark that the early stages are the most fun then you have to spend ages getting it so that people can actually play it, basically going and cleaning up all the sloppy work you did before, well at any rate I'm trying to work more tidily, but there always some place that you forgot to turn clip to grid back on

I think Nex needs more of these types of map, right angles boo hiss, random rock features for president.
W00tZ
(moves away from whiskey jar)

Preformane of the map is indeed hurt bu the design. You could try to make all those iregular shaped into detail brushes and then hide straight chaulk slabs inside them to create the vis blocking needed. Iregular chanped bruches like this generaly does not produce good vis data anyways. lower blocksize and hinting could help too.

Other then that its a interesting map, and the preformance are not bad enougth to give up i think.. it stays in the green most of the time (over 60 on normal.cfg with 10 bots) so a few of the right changed could bring it back. id recomend to model the rockes in blender or sutch insted if nexuiz dident have this iritating problem with autocliped models

tZork wrote:Preformane of the map is indeed hurt bu the design. You could try to make all those iregular shaped into detail brushes and then hide straight chaulk slabs inside them to create the vis blocking needed. Iregular chanped bruches like this generaly does not produce good vis data anyways. lower blocksize and hinting could help too.

Ok. I'll give it a shot. Shouldn't be too much work either.

tZork wrote:Preformane of the map is indeed hurt bu the design. You could try to make all those iregular shaped into detail brushes and then hide straight chaulk slabs inside them to create the vis blocking needed.

Hey, that worked!
I've changed pretty much everything but the base walls (and the level's outer shell) to detail brushes, made a chaulk wall, and added some more hinting. That bumped the minimum fps on the map from 33 to 48 (or thereabouts). I think that'll make the map playable for most - even in the worst parts of the map (and it should be easy to stay out of those areas once one figures out where they are).

Iregular chanped bruches like this generaly does not produce good vis data anyways. lower blocksize and hinting could help too.

Haven't tried the lower blocksize yet. Next build, maybe.

Glad it worked =)

lower blocksize can do alot for preformance too, however it also adds alot to the comiletime (vis stage)

tZork wrote:Glad it worked =)

lower blocksize can do alot for preformance too, however it also adds alot to the comiletime (vis stage)

Is the blocksize set with the -subdivisions switch? (default = 8 )

to set the blocksize you need to add a key "_blocksize" to your worldspawn entity.

Code: Select all

_blocksize : q3map always splits the BSP tree along the planes X=_blocksize*n and Y=_blocksize*n. Default _blocksize value is 1024. Increase the blocksize using larger powers of 2 to reduce compile times on very large maps with a low structural brush density.

Strahlemann wrote:to set the blocksize you need to add a key "_blocksize" to your worldspawn entity.

I changed it to 512. That brought the worst framerate f the map up to the high fifties. Easily playable, IOW.

The vis phase had to compile overnight though..