r_speeds - advice needed Created 20 years ago2004-02-20 16:40:11 UTC by @LLmIxEdUp

Hi,

I've started working on the r_speeds on my de_tube map. I've found what I expected to be a tricky area.

The following screenshots show what I mean

http://allmixedup.dyndns.org/images/twhl/de_tube0023.bmp
http://allmixedup.dyndns.org/images/twhl/de_tube0024.bmp

The first is in wireframe and the second is without - so you can see more clearly. (Sorry if they're dark - but it IS a tunnel after all )

Now my question is how do I deal with this?

It's not obvious to me that hint/skip brushes are going to be much help here. (i've used them to good effect in other areas of the map)

Am I looking at changing the layout to deal with this? It's not inconceivable to extend the tunnel and the train into the tunnel and hide it around a corner or something then use hints etc. to 'isolate it'.

The obvious thing is to remove my lovingly crafted train carriage - but you can understand my reluctance to do so.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks.

(BTW - the screen shots start at de_tube001.bmp , if you want to see more - I just put up the links for the relevant ones)

Once I get this sorted I hope to put this down, post it as a release, and move on. (I finally got the overview sorted thank to the excellent tut on this site, so it's nearly in shape for CS I hope - well at least till I break something else..)

Ok, first of all: Do NOT upload .bmp files to your site/server/whatever.
They are hugie-biggie-fattie. It takes ages to upload and load. Use .jpg.

For the problem: I dont really know :
Make the train an entity... And some of the blocks cutting up the floor.
I understand it can be hard deleting that train, but try to minimize detail (From this pic, I can see some close windows) and look over the interior (which I cant see ).
The picture finished loading at 2.4(!!!) megabytes.

See what you mean... A couple of things that might work:
The tunnel wall texture could be stretched to 2x scale.
All the stuff that ZL said. But you won't get massive reduction.
Your biggest killer is the game engine visible distance. The depth of the map doesn't give you any room to reorganise it so that parts of the tunnel are blocked from engine VIS. Hint brushes would be pretty useless as you say, So apart from a few func_brushes to reduce the number of PVS's.... and a think about the texture, I can't see how you are going to get this to run successfully.

Thanks for comments. Yup - sorry about bmps - that was sheer laziness on my part. I was in a hurry. Don't normally do that and won't again. Not everyone has broadband. (BTW my ISP totally crapped out yesterday so if you had probs downloading try again)

I'm going to try everything to rescue my carriage - but I may have to remove it for a playable CS map and keep a 'private' version to gloat over for LAN play. It's a bit of a 'featureofthemap' that you have to open the cariage doors from the driver cab to get into the carriage to plant the bomb.

On my side is the fact that this is tight little corner of the map. If the player is in this place they can't move much and probably are camping and deserve whatever frame rate they get

I'm going to play about with hints to see if I can push it down, the small gaps between the trains might work angles in my favour.If I can block some of the carriage it will make an appreciable difference I think. I think this has really shown me how vis can work against you. From that place you should be able to see almost nothing!!!

I'll try the entity thing but the carriage is full of them in any case - all windows are breakable all doors open etc..

This is the less fun aspect of mapping...

Nope this is the part where you prove you truly are a mapper by trying to fix this.

Okay. I played with it. The fact is, even after fiddling with the hint brushes, trying to simplify the model and compiling my arse off I have to face the truth. The fancy carriage has to go. The map comes first and as it's a CS map speed is everything. Bye bye carriage. (Maybe one day on the HL2 engine...)

Well it's fixed. I might have got away with it in single player or something but it doesn't really add much to the map and if I seriously want people to try it out then I have no choice but to remove it.

Another mapping lesson learnt...