My Custom Map

[randall]

Well as a rule of thumb, any problems you experience in Quake will be duplicated in pocketQuake. pocketQuake is still in beta so it comes with it's own set of bugs as well as the original Quake bugs.<br><br>I haven't experienced any of the problems Matt describes. Sometimes doors will do weird things based on their construction- like if they are too thin. The grey walls could be a maxsurfs problem, but the fact that it is doing this in WinQuake doesn't make sense. Your map should be well below the default tolerance.<br><br>Maybe there is a VIS problem, but usually this would be characterized by an HOM effect instead of grey walls.<br><br>I don't know. You could send it out for debugging/testing.

[Matt Keys]

Well, I cant seem to figure it out so I think I will release my map along with the .map file for anyone who needs to take a look at that to help with this. So I opened it up to make some final corrections and it gives me a illegal operation everytime I open that map. So I used winBSP to convert it to a .bsp then back to a .map and that did the trick. Now it says that it can not build my map again. Urgg...I will just wait a day and see if it fixes itself;)

[Diego Cueva]

Hi everyone! I´m back from my looong~ 3 days trip....anyway, I have a question. What is the thing with the "group" tool? Will it speed up my map if I use it correctly to group some polygons?<br><br>Thanks,<br>Diego Cueva

[randall]

Group doesn't do anything at all for the finalized .BSP file. Group is used strictly by the editor (Worldcraft) to make selecting complex objects easier. I use it to select entire staircases or entire rooms.<br><br>Once the map is compiled, all the "group" information is thrown out.

[Diego Cueva]

Uhmm, so, to speed up the framerate more, what should I do? I will try to "clean" the map deleting some polygons and blablabla, but that is all I can do?

[randall]

It depends on the construction of the map. Sometimes MORE polygons will actually speed up the map because of the way VIS works.<br><br>Find the areas with the highest r_speeds and work on those first. I notice your ramps could get a couple lower polys if they were constructed different.<br><br>A single large wall doesn't mean less poly either. VIS will take large surfaces and break them into smaller VIS portals. Use r_drawflat to see how your walls are split.<br><br>For instance, if you have a wall that is 132x128, the wall will normally be split into 2 polys- 4x128 and 128x128.<br><br>Making the wall 128x128 (only 4 units shorter) will maintain a single poly of 128x128.<br><br>I am running some tests, because I think the textures have something to do with "slowness" too. My hunch is that one 128x128 texture runs slower than four 64x64 textures.

[Diego Cueva]

Thanks randall  ...but how should I construct the ramps? Isn´t it just a normal polygon?

[randall]

I'd draw an ascii diagram here, but they always end up screwed up.<br><br>But yeah, the ramp is a standard 6-sided polygon (a cube). When you are designing a map, try to think in terms of what will produce the least number of EXPOSED faces.<br><br>A wedge can be used as well. For the sake of consistency with the original Complex, you can stick with the 6-sided ramp.<br><br>Just use r_drawflat and walk around your map. Eventually you'll be able to spot problem areas and alter the brushes to reduce the polycount.<br><br><br>

[Diego Cueva]

Right, I will try to do that, and I know it´s not an easy work to "squeeze" the map to get a better framerate... Anyway, it would be good if I could test PQomplex with bots to see how is the frame rate, but, argh, I cant get them to work... <br><br>Diego Cueva<br><br> Last modification: Diego Cueva - 05/01/01 at 18:57:13

[randall]

I have a new tutorial on my site, entitled "VIS simplified". It deals with VIS on the most basic level- a plain, large wall.<br><br>It would be something that Diego may want to look at, since the walls in pQomplex are so large.<br><br>Last modification: randall - 05/03/01 at 03:04:06

[Diego Cueva]

Thanks,<br>I WILL check it.

[Moose or Chuck]

randall r_drawflat won't work, its not a command did you write it wroong?

[randall]

r_drawflat 1<br><br>turns it on<br><br>r_drawflat 0<br><br>turns it off<br><br>Also, DON'T use caps- it needs to be lowercase.<br><br>Last modification: randall - 05/04/01 at 12:58:57

[Moose or Chuck]

i'm pretty sure that thats not a command in glquake but i'll try again. ANYWAYS, i am about ready to release a beta of my upcoming map, its a scaled down size but i think it'll do for now

[randall]

r_speeds, r_drawflat and other commands like that are developer commands. They were implemented early in Quakes development for the id software mappers.<br><br>So they should be available in all version of Quake.<br><br>I think I will release screenshots of my upcoming map as well. I just have an assload of texturing to do then I can release it.<br><br>It's still got those damn "cracks" showing through solid walls where pocketQuakes precision is off. There isn't much I can do about it...