I will start about FPS with the command that you will all want to get used to knowing... r_speeds 1 this turns on the polygon counter of quake, this is very important in seeing how 'busy' you are making your map when you do turn on r_speeds you will get a string of numbers... like this... 32.3 MS 514/396/289 POLY 0 Surf the first number is the amount of time it take quake to do a complete draw of what is on the screen the group of numbers are total polygons, the first number is total surfaces in view, the second total drawn the third everything that are not drawn, and last number being the lit surfaces... This is your tool used to check out your FPS, the higher the numbers the more lag you are going to cause to the people using your map. Currently the accepted safe number is about 450. The new scourge of armagon (sp?) went up to about 600, I guess they are counting on people with slightly more powerful computers... Okay now techniques on how to keep your FPS down.... The first is, deciding on what details are needed. Do you really need to have that second bar in your hand rail. It is only one polygon, but then if you have 15 places where your handrail is, that is 15 extra polygons. 15 is not a large number, but say if your hand rail is comprise of 10 brushes, you will then have 150 polygons in just your railing... This is where you have to decide, what details you include over what you want to get rid of to speed up the game, as after all we know that speed is essentail in the game, quake is fast, we are map designers we are making maps that people will use... Anyquestions? :) so far? not yet :) OKay :) I shall move on then... My favorite :) Pillars... You want to build a large room, with pillars along the walls... you go to your box tool, select a cyl, then you decide... you have a choice now, that can really affect your level. You are putting about 20 pillars in this room.. You are putting about 5 pillars in this room.. it makes a difference... This is where I would like everyone to look at my map if you can... I built this map as a 'secret' for my CTF level. my goal was to get about 400 in the r_speed area... I managed to miss my goal, I ended up with about 1300 which is why I want you guys to look at it... I made a choice, I decided that I wanted 16 sided pillars, to get that "looking round" feel... 16 is what I consider the place where things start to look round in quake... everything less than that looks square.. I wanted round... I also wanted to put a little fancy decorations around the tops and bottoms of the pillars... so I put two thin, and slightly wider cyl's on the top and bottom of each of the pillars for effect... I was very impressed with the way the map looked when I first viewed it.. then I check out my r_speeds after putting in around 2/3rd of the detail I wanted I was at over 900... I decided to stick with it, and use this map as an example of what not to do :) I have many pillars in this map.... I beleive I have 10 pillars all at 16 sides.. with 4 smaller pillars also at 16 sides on the ends.. this is NOT something to do... I could probably cut my polygon count in half by doing a few simple steps... this is what I would do to cut down my polygons.... I would delete all the pillars first, replace them with 8 sided pillars 8 is the number that I use for lowdetail, high low r_speeds oops - high :) I would then also replace all the tops and bottoms of the pillars with squares, again cutting drastically down the count... two simple steps on my map that I bet would cut the polygon count down in half.. Im going to continue talking abotu rooms for the next speal about r_speeds... In large rooms you have to be VERY carefull about what you put in it. Even if you build yourself one large cube brush, quake will break it down into smaller polygons.. So where you think you have one object, in quake you might have 10... the best way to check out how quake breaks up your maps is with the r_drawflat 1 this takes away all the textures and just lets you see your brushes... check out your ID software levels with this.. just run around, they really have it down on how to keep poly's down.. check out r_speeds while you are at it.. explore the levels you like.. see how they were built... But back to the large room :) You have a large room, with a large object in the middle, and a walkway around the edge. In theory this should not cause all that amount of pain to the lower end computer user or the modem player... But then it depends on what you put in the room... if you put a quad power, red armor, and a rocket launcher, everyone single player, and their dog (if they play with the cujo bot :) will be in there... all firing rockets... player poly's, nail poly's and rocket poly's all cause lag... so a simple room that once was at 300 in the r_speeds jumps to 1000+ when the battling starts... you want to make large, high traffic rooms, very simple, or you will make some people suffer... Now we are going to leave this large room that we just made... through a corridor... corridors in general will be a saving grace in between rooms. Quake's VIS engine is not the best at guessing what you might be able to see... Corridors really help break up the VISable groups... if you have a large room, a corridor, then a bend in the corridor, you block VIS right there... Stopping VIS from looking down that corridor seeing what you might see... which is what you want.. You want to limit at all times what you MIGHT see... this at times can be more important than what you do see... A GREAT example of this is in DM3... There is a large open room, with a mount, and a 100 health.. right next to it, a large open room with water and bridges.... This is HELL on r_speeds to large rooms right next to each other.. bad news.. BUT :) they put a wall, you know that silly thing you have to dodge around there, that was not put there Id be willing to bet untill someone checked their r-speeds... I now often use these kinds of walls myself, you enter a large room from a large room there will be a wall, making you turn left or right, but you will get to the same place... aslong as your wall is wide enough ( and high enough if it doesnt go to the ceiling ) it will work great for blocking VIS's curious eyes... VIS does not look around corridors... Another good way to block vis is with great elevation changes in corridors... If you change the corridor floor to great than its lower counterparts ceiling, you should also block vis this way... a command to test to see how far VIS looking in your map is r_draworder 1 what this does is draws what is "cached" for you to see last... so you can get a rough estimate just how far out of the current "area" you are in VIS thinks you might be able to see.. pause for questions? :) questions ? ask now :) one at a time please :) me I got one nod ask I have one too Do illusionary walls (func_illusionary I think) block VIS?? No, they do not .. and thanks for bringing this up.. Doors do not block vis either... water I suppose does not Doors are open sometimes, closed others, vis assumes that they are open all the time... water does though... You can not see through water.. water is another great way to break up the visable area.. again in DM3... What about in GLQuake? Water is transparent.. large complex room, 1/2 of it is in water though... That is something specific... I really dont have much experience with that does SKY? but if you have GL card, you are worried about fps :) Oh ya, Sky is not broken up into smaller brushes either, is it? I will talk about sky later :) that is a little topic on its own.. oh heh thanks on with the show :) okay... SKy :) Sky is one of the saviors of level editors... remember how I mentioned how quake breaks up brushes into smaller brushes.. SKY is an exception.. you can get away with have large areas of skies... I cringe when I say this... you can get away with large skies.. be carefull of what you put below the skies.. to me, a large sky means a large room, and a large room means lots of lag.. Becarefull and think about what youa re putting in your levels will help... Again with doors, I want to stress that you CAN NOT block VIS with a door.. no matter how hard you try, want it to, sacrifice toasters, no matter what you do you will not block vis with them solid brushes are what does it.. WALLS.. OKay one last topic before I open up for questions again.. itsd about r-speeds... r_speeds rule, they are your savior, they are most hated enemy... but they will only give you a true answer if you run vis full.. this can be a pain in the ass when your level gets large.. and complex, specially if you are on a slow computer... the best thing I can suggest is that build your rooms one at a time... r_speeds the room... so you know how much is in the room.. and be smart when you connect the rooms together.. put elevation changes, twists, blocking walls.. never doors :) remember that ;) OKay questions again ... :) In QuakeC is says "if Rocket hits Sky, kill the rocket" (so it doesn't explode...).. Sometimes they do, though, while other times they just dissapear that's not a question... nod :) <|SG|DoGBeRT> somb- what about func_trains Why is it that I need to full VIS or the thing on twisting hallways make no difference? It is an entity, it will not block vis... What if the room is big and is made up of all sky? heehee <|SG|DoGBeRT> dang. okay people :) one at a time :) is it better to make a sky in a room trhough a sky roof then in the outdoorsish area? Full vis will give you the accurate r_speeds, you dont need to do it, again I cringe, just build your level thinking ahead... limiting yourself... The more time you spend thinking about building your level, hopefully the less mistakes you will make... or "errors"... or commit a quake sin... and..... what it comes down to wolfen, the more brushes you use, the more chunk you make.. less is better.. but then it looks worse.. its a hand off.. OKay :) tell somb he did a good job! Now from behind door #2... ELM i found that rooms look better if its 8 sided we have a special guest.... hey guys hehe oops Welcome Ben Morris :) hi Ben!!! everyone's favorite quake editor author :) afk You're the best man! I used DCK for 2 years! coffee :) * Harvester starts to cry <|SG|DoGBeRT> and all around nice guy (if he would ever get the FAQ from Paradox) pajo: glad you liked it hehe I did! dogbert: he has to finish it first :) hehe sorry I gotta go :( Doom level making was too hard for me pajo: later! <|SG|DoGBeRT> o yeah.. that would put a dent in the progress wouldnt it dogbert: it's a little tough without it ya Ben when is vertice control or whatever gonna be on WC? So.... Ben.. now would be a great time to tell us what we can expect from WC in the next while :) haha hmmmm.. let's see i am working on vertex stuff right now. spiffy it should be done for the next release i really hope so anyway What exactly is vertice control anyways <|SG|DoGBeRT> it alows for concave single brushes vertex control would rock COOL That would rock ben: You know what i hate is that if switch windows while using the process window you cant go back untill it switches to another operation of compiling. <|SG|DoGBeRT> like you can click and drag one corner of a block and make it implode on the block concave single brushes.. hmm Spiffy neeto Ben your a genius wolfen: yeah, i'm not sure what to do about that.. that redirection stuff is really weird in windows I'm just a 14 - year old with a pea sized brain wolfen: i don't know why the window isn't updated asap MuuMuu .... who can make really cool chairs and tables ben: Sok its just sumthing annoying...its the editor that counts. As long as the job gets done im happy Ben: In 1.1 my 3D View is screwed when I use flat mapping and texture mapping.. katarn: what kind of video card do you have? <|SG|DoGBeRT> "mapping" that sounds funny Ustep what do you maen ATI 3D Xpression.. katarn: and how's it screwed up exactly? BTW how do you send message to one person katarn: ahh .. have you tried turning off 3d hardware acceleration? ben: it doesn't draw some of the polys and cuts out pieces of some of them.. /msg (name) <|SG|DoGBeRT> like in fastvis.. :) I'll try shutting it off now.. <_Suitcase> kataran: 16 bit color on? ah thanks cool auto Ustep told me to say something or whatever I have my colour at 16-bit.. <_Suitcase> kat: thats what i heard happens when 16bit or higher isint set <|SG|DoGBeRT> well guy i am leaving <|SG|DoGBeRT> buhbye later doggie Bye <|SG|DoGBeRT> cya *** ELM-Somberfire changes topic to "http://underramp.com/~brian/ (Shamless plug for my webpage! ) Quake! Beautiful" * USteppin fwaps |SG|DoGBeRT katarn: most of the current 3d cards have pretty bad direct3d support.. their drivers don't work very well *** ELM-Somberfire changes topic to "http://underramp.com/~brian/ (Shamless plug for my webpage! ) " Ben I got a Monster 3d and a Matrox Thanx ben.. It works perfect now.. =) *** Loki changes topic to "Stay tuned next for our special guest *Levelord* of Hipnotic Software!" <_Suitcase> 3dfx based cards are great! and the hardware accelarate still doesnt work but they don't accelerate in window katarn: hey, great! 3dfx doesn't accelerate in window only in full screen Auto I made a glass that you can walk on muumuu: yeah, the matrox cards just don't work very well for direct3d.. it's something microsoft and matrox have to resolve and see thru if you have any WC questions.. dont hesiate to email.... worldcraft@acdsystems.com ben is a freak =) * ben freaks out Auto? what? Greetings. gotta run guys.. great class.. thanks for stopping by ben... see you next week... with Levelord :) heh I just said that I improved on your glass thing * USteppin fwaps WolfeN[N2] seeya loki <_Suitcase> ben: any plans for an Unreal editor? so that now you can walk on it :) um, no you didnt * WolfeN[N2] thwaps USteppin right back. and not slide like the original would suitcase: haha .. used to have, before i learned more about unreal's map formats.. now i regret saying anythin' about it :) auto LOL ? <_Suitcase> ben: whats the problem? No I just did <_Suitcase> from what ive seen in pix its going to be a blast MuuMuu, how'd u do it? Oh REAL SIMPLE put a clip texture on it Just put the normal REALGLASS which slips ya ya exacto man so when is the next class? hehe suitcase: it's just entirely different from quake.. i guess it's still a possibility but i'd have to really go through the info i have.. it'd definitely be a major rewrite to add all the functiona oh well Its weird tho Next Class is next Sunday prolly hmmm The ogres chainsaw hackd thru it same time? weird possibly/ ? <_Suitcase> ben: so you are always going to use the worldcraft base and add extentions to make it compatible with a wide range of games right? know what the topic will be next week? next class is more up to levelord, but im shooting for sunday, 4pm EST hmm i gotta call in sick to work that day Hehe heh great =) cant pass up the levellord we got peole calliong in sick to work to come to WCU suitcase: that's the plan, yah .. for hexen2 and quake2 it shouldn't be aproblem at all Wow Levelord is coming? well, cool Spiff -E Ustep hehe <_Suitcase> ben: hexen 2 is going to be the quake killer, trust me :) Its fun to telefrag Hell Knights but hexen 2 is using the Quake engine isnt it? I think they tweeked it a littl <_Suitcase> wolfe: yeah, with a huge load of mods. suitcase: :) i haven't seen much of it. i think it will rock for single player.. but i think quake will still be the deathmatch game of choice oh <_Suitcase> lots of traps, better scripting and events well yeah that might make a diff I agree with ben about hexen2 and quake what will UNREAL sounds like a Tim Allen thing. "its just been 'tweaked'" heh quake is the DM game, hexen might be the single player game Hexen 2 will suck for inet cause it has so much stuff lag city