A Request
Jean_Luc_Picard
Join Date: 2003-02-03 Member: 13051Members
Join Date: 2003-02-03 Member: 13051Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Ok, I'm going to get SERIOUS about mappi</div> Ok, I need to know a few things before I get serious on mapping:
1: How to PROPERLY set up Batch Complier / VHE to work with Steam (the tuitorial in the help forum didn't help me... dunno why but it just didn't work. I'm gonna re-format my HD to clean it out so yeah...)
2: How to make .wad files (what do I use? How do I know what they'll look like? Where can I find pre-made ones?)
3: How to use HINT brushes / Vis leafs to split up map sections for easier rendering on the machine.
4: How to properly use lights (like, a lamp that emits light, not just the light entity itself)
5: How to use the light entity properly
1: How to PROPERLY set up Batch Complier / VHE to work with Steam (the tuitorial in the help forum didn't help me... dunno why but it just didn't work. I'm gonna re-format my HD to clean it out so yeah...)
2: How to make .wad files (what do I use? How do I know what they'll look like? Where can I find pre-made ones?)
3: How to use HINT brushes / Vis leafs to split up map sections for easier rendering on the machine.
4: How to properly use lights (like, a lamp that emits light, not just the light entity itself)
5: How to use the light entity properly
Comments
BTW- THAT is in the help forums 0o'
3:Hint brushes are good if you have a cs like map, a big openish city sort of thing, where you can see lots of polys at one time, but even then, you cant just have a hint brush there and expect things to go well. The ebst way to redcue r_speeds is by the architecture, make rooms so you cant really see straight into five other rooms. That means a long corridor with several doors leading to more rooms will be rendered almost entirley.
HEres an example of how I used one in my map -
This hive got up to about 500 w_polys for me, not too shabby, but down the corridor just outside it got to about 800-900 w-poly. TOO MUCH!
somewhere in your hammer directory, there should be a file called lights.rad, this is used to calculate the colour for the light textures and how bright they are. If you go into paint you can select 'custom colours' which give you the red green and blue values.
A normal entry into lights.rad might look like this -
---------------------------------------------
RED GREEN BLUE BRIGHTNESS
Light1 10 10 255 500
----------------------------------------------
The light will be fairly blue, with a hint of red and green, making a sort of yellowish green colour and will light most rooms quite well. The size of rooms you should be building depends on the kind of map you are making, dont be afraid to change brightness amounts from time to time to suit the map.
and 5:
I've always used the light entity for things like natural light cmoign in through a door, or for things that wont have a definitive colour like in lights.rad - basically I use it most with computers.
Wally is good tool for texture editing and makin your own .wad files..
<a href='http://www.telefragged.com/wally/' target='_blank'>Get it from here</a>
I installed Batch compiler yesterday and I used <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=50171' target='_blank'>this</a> and <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=60286&hl=how-to' target='_blank'>this</a> to get it work and it did work with steam.
Are you saying that, if there's a long corridor with doors to either side leading to other rooms, the engine will render ALL of it (even with doors in the doorway) or are you saying that it won't? 0o'
So, uh... that still doesn't tell me how to use / place hint/VIS brushes (what ARE they?)
doors are helpful beacuse they block your vision from seeing into another room, therefor allowing you to see more and then causing you to lag.........
That's about as simply i can put it <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Vis blocking is when u blocks the visibility of the map to low vis.
U can also make doors, they block the "lagg" well and the map goes a bit faster without so much lagg.
Try to make crates, they block very good. It can look strange with a crate in the middle of a corridor but try to do something creative using your ideas.
A map without sky is faster. I dunno why. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Jean Luc Picard, just because your topic in the helpforum did not get any replies, it does not give you any right whatsoever to post a help topic here instead. Got it?
Yes it does <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
So wait... doors don't block it... but crates do? 0o'
meh, I'll just find out eventually (Maybe I'll have someone I trust (kouji) walk me through it when I get there)
Well, I got VHE and BC re-set and all, so I'ma gonna just have to wait till summer break to get the data ripped from me laptop and put onto my HD!
And this is why... (taken from <a href='http://www.vlatitude.com/tutorials.php?tutID=17' target='_blank'>69th Vlatitude</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->It is important to remember that doors are entities. Of course you knew that, so why am I telling you this? Because doors can be either in an open or a closed position. No, I'm not on some rhetorical streak, this all has a deeper meaning. Let's take a door that has a bright light on one side, and total darkness on the other. The door can be either in an open or a closed position. The Half-Life engine does not calculate how the light will look in both positions. Instead, it calculates how the light will look when the door is open, or not present, and uses that for both positions of the door. Keeping this in mind, light effects on two sides of a door should generally look similar to avoid really unrealistic-looking doors. That's not all, the speed of your level depends on doors in a way. Without getting technical, everybody knows that the more objects you presently see in a game, the slower it is. This is why level designers are encouraged to make corridors and rooms over rooms. The doors come in when somebody thinks that they can separate two large complex zones in a level with a door. Logically, there's nothing wrong with this: a door will prevent you from seeing one of the complex areas, and the level should be speedy. However, keeping in mind that doors are entities, and the engine calculates everything as if they weren't physical structures (which they aren't), this won't work. Therefore, when vis processes the above described level, the door entity separating the two complex zones is not taken into consideration as a view-blocking structure, and the end result is a slow-running levels. To summarize, don't use entities (doors, func_walls, etc.) to separate calculation-heavy zones or zones with drastically different lighting.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
'Nuff said.