Need help with hints, wpoly reduction Created 18 years ago2005-09-06 20:41:32 UTC by dleemiller

hi everyone. you guys seem pretty knowledgeable about mapping so I was hoping you could help me out with my problem. I'm building a map that's supposed to be a somewhat historically accurate map of auschwitz. The only problem is that I am left to deal with very open areas. Here is a overview of what the map looks like. Each numbered area is a barracks building.Dimensions: 5670 X 3900

Now I don't need to deal too much with the tops of buildings. Would connecting the tops of the buildings to sky brushes keep the whole map from being drawn at every point. Or can someone suggest how to place hint brushes? Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Before you hint, apply the null texture wherever possible. That means anywhere that players cant see in game. You might want to play the map a bit and make a note of what surfaces you cannot see. Cant see it? Null it.

i tried that but to no avail. :
...and at this point i pretty much only have basic undecorated buildings, roads and curbs built.

These cool counter-strike maps got lots of buildings maybe you can get some insperation from them!

de_vine looks really cool...if only it included a .map or .rmf file so i could see how they kept thier speeds down.

Cool there is going to be a de_vine2! Maybe ask him on his site!

Try scaling the textures up a bit. Less polys.

: i want to save that for a last resort. i'm not sure the brick would look right at X2

There's not much else you can do unless you func_wall everything, and even then...

HL1 engine isn't suited for outdoors, tbh. It's sad, but you might be forced to live with the R's or switch to a smaller map.

then at least try x1.5.. Trust me - scaling WORKS!
Read the tutorial on hint brushes if that and null textures don't work...

You can also alter the layout a bit... Heres what I did:As you see, I just moved the barracks to block the open areas and placed some more crates in the areas that cannot be blocked. Such layout makes the map more interesting and makes the r_speeds lower... Just experiment with the layout...

it might be an idea to save that map idea till u own a copy of HL2 and make it for CS:S.

If you have to scale the brick texture to 2x, then it might be worth it to use wally and make a texture that looks right at that scale. Or you could create a larger texture that covers more space (not sure if that reduces polys though).

Hinting won't help a lot here since you have a lot of area's that have free line of sight to a lot of buildings/space/faces.
Changing the layout is your best option. CS maps go best with a path-based layout anyway. Exactly reconstructing real-life environments hardly ever gives you a good playable map, both performance-wire and gameplay-wise. And, as has been said above, it's often less interesting than a 'levelized' environment.

You might find David Johnstons articles interesting, like Common sense vs level design and The making of: dust.

I agree with the layout change, it would be the best way to fix problems.

thanks for the replies. i'm going to mess with the layout a little and see what i can get away with.

One option to implement what Captain P was saying, would be to use murals--textured brush(es) instead of the buildings--on either end, which would look exactly like the North/south portions of the camp.

One way to achieve this would be to 'snap' a picture--f5-- for each 'row,' then make a custom texture from the shots, and finally, apply them to a single brush face, one for each row.

Just adjust the accessible portion of the map to/from the 'murals' accordingly, and it will be hard to tell they're not real.

Also you'll have to find creative ways of cordoning the inaccesible areas with vehicles, rubbish, etc.

Hope Helps.

Agreed with rowleybob. Mapping is all full of player-fooling. Many paths, that the player would want to take, to explore the map further are always blocked by something...

Sometimes area's have acceptable poly counts exept from one point of view. Instead of tuning the area down, you can also restrict the player from getting to that point. I believe it was Mr. Ben who wrote about that trick and I haven't seen it mentioned a lot around.

great comments so far guys, the wpolys are very reasonable throughout most of the map now, but there are still a few areas i need some advice on. here is a pic of how i adjusted the map. in the upper right corner is where i get the most trouble. the 2 yellow spots around it is where i put some temporary walls to see if it would fix the problem.here is an in-game picture of the corner that i have secluded. note that the walls to not connect to the sky, but they are pretty tall.as you can see, the walls did nothing to shelter vis from drawing the rest of the map. any ideas why?

Tap "gl_wireframe 2" into the console, and you can see whether the wpoly count is being nudged up by the wall, or by stuff being drawn behind it.

k here you go. as you can see it draws everything...but if i move just a tad forward, the ground behind the wall disappears.

Well I'd use hint brushes, but you could make some extra walls in the problem areas to block them.

no, that huge thing right in the picture IS a wall, but it hasn't done anything to stop vis from drawing the rest of the map behind it.... :

Probably too low. Try building an invisible extension on top of it, all the way up to the sky brush.