I would suggest that you should update the first post when topics with new questions popup. Also when the list will grow too big maybe it should be handy to divide it to sections (basics, geometry, testing, limits etc...)
Also for Texture tool, it should be noted that ALT+left click applies selected face's properities to clicked face
Ok I've collected few around the forum. Feel free to edit mine, because I am not native english speaker and some of my descriptions could feel too crabbed. Sorry if some are already in the list.
Q:Is there a point where spark will crash when I compile a map? A:Nope, the map doesnt need to compile. The same file you open in the editor is loaded by the game.
Q:What are the build limits? I notice a lot of those timelapse video mappers use a lot of brushes and crap, is there a limit I should keep in mind? (Same question but with entities too) A:When you type r_stats in console you will see some various render stats of current view. Keep an eye on value "draw calls". In offical maps this value varies from 500 to aprox. 2500 depending on the size and detail of room. The good value for smooth run on slower machines is to keep this value under 1500.
Q: Ok, but is there anyway to see that from the editor? A: There isn't at the moment, you have to just guess it according to your previous experience.
Q: Is there anything that can be done to optimize a map? Or are all map optimizations done automatically? A: To keep draw calls at bay, enclose your map in occlusion gemetry. Also not all lights should cast shadows, or should have low shadow fade rate. Try to keep lighting as simple as possible, because thats the largest GPU eater. However is worth to point out, that NS2 performace suffers much more from CPU overload caused by LUA which is the gameplay written in.
Q: How do I see my xyz location in the editor? It is not standing out for me. A: There is no such information displayed by default, however when in "Move tool" you can see XYZ coordinates in bottom bar next to the filter buttons. Same goes for "Scale tool", showing the XYZ dimensions of selected object.
Q: What is occlusion gemetry? A: Occlusion geometry is an geometry placed in "OcclusionGeometry" group (F8) which is blocking player's view. Objects between player and occlusion mesh are not rendered by engine. The best way how to use this is to enclose your map in a Occlusion capsule folowing the outer geometry of your map but few units larger. If you type cheats 1 and r_wireframe in to console you will be able see how your occlusion geometry works.
Q: What are the limitations of the spark editor? What problems will I run into if I make the level too big? A (Kouji San): Maximum render distance of entities is ~45 meters (1500 units), the engine is optimized for indoor scenes. If you have entities that are more then 32.000 units from the origin of the map (X:0 Y:0 Z:0), they will get deleted from the game. Because the game will see them as "out of bounds"
Q:Also I have two sets of two verts in the same spot. Any way to weld them? A:Select them and while still in "selection tool" the option "weld verticles" will become available in Edit menu. If there will stay some duplicated edges. To get rid of them, you should place the geometry in a layer and hide, all redudant edges will stay unhidden. But beware not to have selected geometry in multiple layers, sometimes it will let you delete edges that are belonging to existing face.
TIP: Hindrance to welding is, that later modification of geometry becomes little bit complicated. The best way then, is to select faces you want to change, cut and paste them. Then they will have they own edges and become independent of surrounding faces. However the edges of original faces will still stay in, and you will have to clean them with forementioned method.
TIP: Some mappers never weld the geometry together for easyier modification of mesh later.
Q: How do I get the overview to colour in the vents for the mini/maximap. A: All the geometry and props supposed to be colored should be placed in "Vents" layer (F7)
Also there is some usefull stuff summed up in one post here <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=122829&view=findpost&p=2007619" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...t&p=2007619</a> could be copied here.
Thanks. And don't worry, English is not my primary neither, but I bet that we can find an American who can't spell "you / they are" to make us feel better about ourselves ;) Well, sentence structuring has always been a problem of mine, anyway.
I've edited the one about how to reapply textures. Tomorrow I'll look over your collection of questions, add questions, and add categories to make it simpler to navigate.
Also worth mentioning should be some bugs, there are 3 comming to my mind right now.
Q: Sometimes when using line, rectangle or extrude tools to extend curent mesh, new face isn't created. A: This happens often, there is probably and double edge you are trying to extrude from.
Q: Sometimes when using line to extend/split current mesh, skewed, broken or doubled face is created. A: This happens when the engine fails to enclose edge loop. Probably you will have to find different or siplier way how to create face you wanted. Double faces happens often when trying to split a face using line tool.
TIP: Line tool is very powerfull tool but it creates unwanted edges. Welding vertexes, checking and cleaning the geometry of double edges regulary is way to go.
Q: When rotated by 90° around two axes, some props start mirroring themselves when moved A: Yes that is really annoying bug. It helps to rotate it just by 89° before moving and set it to 90° when in place.
TIP: Sometimes, instead of rotating, it is better to mirror the props by typing negative values in the "scale" parameters in prop's properities when in "selection tool"
<!--quoteo(post=2025944:date=Nov 16 2012, 11:08 AM:name=Rudy.cz)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Rudy.cz @ Nov 16 2012, 11:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2025944"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I've tried to categorize the Q&A's, but quite frankly, I'm awful when it comes to categorization. Half-way through I have no idea what I'm doing anymore. If you (or anyone else reading this) knows how to categorize these Q&A's properly, don't hesitate to set it up. I feel like I'm trying to separate "Christianity" and "Islam" apart, but silly me can only see "Religion" because it's all the same to me.
Q: When I open some of the official maps, Summit for example, I notice that most of the indoor areas are invisible until you turn "show triangulation" on. Why is this? How are those triangulation areas actually created?
A: That's because those areas are in layers which are turned off. Open the layers window and turn layers on by clicking the little eye icons on the left hand side. If you dont have it on its either Window -> Layers or just press F7 (Default)
Get an idea of the layers mappers use and/or make up some of you own so you can put them in soon as you start making your map, This keeps everything organised and it means you can hide the areas of your map you are not working on so they don't interfere with your 2D views, and makes it much easier to make GEO around props etc
[credit: Insane & QuiXXer]
Q: Are the mapping guidelines (found in NS2 folder) still valid?
A: They are still valid to some extent. Although the gameplay of NS2 has evolved during development, the core mechanics presented in Guidelines are still the foundations of the game. Definitely outdated is the part about pathfinding, because the engine now uses different pathfinding mechanics. I would also check the required entities setup, because it could vary from the Guide's original a bit.
(if I am wrong, pls correct me)
Q: The grid reorients from vertical-horizontal to diagonal when I try to draw lines on a face made by the circle tool. Is this a glitch or feature? Because simply drawing a line to the center of a circle is impossible. My workaround is using the square tool instead, and extracting the needed faces. But it would be much faster, simpler, cleaner if the line tool worked predictably.
A: Probably it was meant as a feature to help designers to paint on angled geometry. At current state, it acts more as a bug.
Q: Merge vertices doesn't seem to work consistently, but lerking the forums I see vertex merge has been a known issue. I'm just curious if anyone knows a reliable workaround, or can teach me a reliable workflow that will keep my maps as clean as possible. So far I've resorted to measuring the space I need to fill, creating the geometry off to the side, then moving it into place and hoping my measurements were all correct. But that leaves me with pretty much nothing connected and lots of redundancy in lines/vertices. Is that going to be a problem for my map's performance?
A: Redudant lines/vertexes doesn't hinder the performance of your map, but they could be pain in the ass while trying to select others lines/vertexes. If you want to get rid of redudant stuff after welding, select all youe geometry and hide it in a Layer, redudant stuff will stay unhidden and you can delete it.
Hey, thanks for the tips Rudy. Your efforts tidying the forum and answering noob questions is sincerely appreciated. I have just two more.
1. Speaking of required entities, the only list I've found beside the outdated official guide is this one wiki.unknownworlds.com/index.php/Ns2_sample from Kouji_San's guide. Is that list complete, up to date? (Can I trust it?)
2. On the more specific side: I'm having trouble getting commander view to work on my custom. I have all the required entities from the above list, but when I login as comm my view is locked on a closeup of the comm chair floor. I can't navigate in any way. When I then exit the chair, back in first person, the commander HUD still up and the mouse cursor is present, moving freely without affecting the view.
2. On the more specific side: I'm having trouble getting commander view to work on my custom. I have all the required entities from the above list, but when I login as comm my view is locked on a closeup of the comm chair floor. I can't navigate in any way. When I then exit the chair, back in first person, the commander HUD still up and the mouse cursor is present, moving freely without affecting the view.
It sounds like you haven't yet rendered a minimap and heightmap. The commander camera entity is used by overview.exe to render the minimap and heightmap files required to make commanding possible.
You can either run overview.exe manually via the command line. Something along the lines of:
Q: The grid reorients from vertical-horizontal to diagonal when I try to draw lines on a face made by the circle tool. Is this a glitch or feature? Because simply drawing a line to the center of a circle is impossible. My workaround is using the square tool instead, and extracting the needed faces. But it would be much faster, simpler, cleaner if the line tool worked predictably.
A: Probably it was meant as a feature to help designers to paint on angled geometry. At current state, it acts more as a bug.
Does anyone know SOME way to avoid this?
(Except design a whole map with cubes without any circle/rounded faces?)
... it is somehow possible to manually rotate the grid? =/
This "Bug or Feature" is for me really a pain in the a$$ at the moment.
Does anyone know SOME way to avoid this?
(Except design a whole map with cubes without any circle/rounded faces?)
... it is somehow possible to manually rotate the grid? =/
This "Bug or Feature" is for me really a pain in the a$$ at the moment.
If what i think you want is correct, this should help a little.
Drawing lines in circles seems to be a problem, unless you hold 'Alt' while drawing things. Makes everything snap to vertices.
Q. Where can I download / find the Spark Editor?
A. Spark is located at and launched through "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Natural Selection 2\LaunchPad.exe". When you have launched the Spark Launch Pad, double click on "Editor" to launch the Spark Editor.
Any chance Spark runs on linux? I don't see it in the Steam's Tools section and the only relevant file I found in my installation directory was "launchpad.pdb" but IIRC that is a MSVC development artifact.
Comments
I would suggest that you should update the first post when topics with new questions popup. Also when the list will grow too big maybe it should be handy to divide it to sections (basics, geometry, testing, limits etc...)
Also for Texture tool, it should be noted that ALT+left click applies selected face's properities to clicked face
Q:Is there a point where spark will crash when I compile a map?
A:Nope, the map doesnt need to compile. The same file you open in the editor is loaded by the game.
Q:What are the build limits? I notice a lot of those timelapse video mappers use a lot of brushes and crap, is there a limit I should keep in mind? (Same question but with entities too)
A:When you type r_stats in console you will see some various render stats of current view. Keep an eye on value "draw calls". In offical maps this value varies from 500 to aprox. 2500 depending on the size and detail of room. The good value for smooth run on slower machines is to keep this value under 1500.
Q: Ok, but is there anyway to see that from the editor?
A: There isn't at the moment, you have to just guess it according to your previous experience.
Q: Is there anything that can be done to optimize a map? Or are all map optimizations done automatically?
A: To keep draw calls at bay, enclose your map in occlusion gemetry. Also not all lights should cast shadows, or should have low shadow fade rate. Try to keep lighting as simple as possible, because thats the largest GPU eater. However is worth to point out, that NS2 performace suffers much more from CPU overload caused by LUA which is the gameplay written in.
Q: How do I see my xyz location in the editor? It is not standing out for me.
A: There is no such information displayed by default, however when in "Move tool" you can see XYZ coordinates in bottom bar next to the filter buttons. Same goes for "Scale tool", showing the XYZ dimensions of selected object.
Q: What is occlusion gemetry?
A: Occlusion geometry is an geometry placed in "OcclusionGeometry" group (F8) which is blocking player's view. Objects between player and occlusion mesh are not rendered by engine. The best way how to use this is to enclose your map in a Occlusion capsule folowing the outer geometry of your map but few units larger. If you type cheats 1 and r_wireframe in to console you will be able see how your occlusion geometry works.
Q: What are the limitations of the spark editor? What problems will I run into if I make the level too big?
A (Kouji San): Maximum render distance of entities is ~45 meters (1500 units), the engine is optimized for indoor scenes. If you have entities that are more then 32.000 units from the origin of the map (X:0 Y:0 Z:0), they will get deleted from the game. Because the game will see them as "out of bounds"
Q:Also I have two sets of two verts in the same spot. Any way to weld them?
A:Select them and while still in "selection tool" the option "weld verticles" will become available in Edit menu. If there will stay some duplicated edges. To get rid of them, you should place the geometry in a layer and hide, all redudant edges will stay unhidden. But beware not to have selected geometry in multiple layers, sometimes it will let you delete edges that are belonging to existing face.
TIP: Hindrance to welding is, that later modification of geometry becomes little bit complicated. The best way then, is to select faces you want to change, cut and paste them. Then they will have they own edges and become independent of surrounding faces. However the edges of original faces will still stay in, and you will have to clean them with forementioned method.
TIP: Some mappers never weld the geometry together for easyier modification of mesh later.
Q: How do I get the overview to colour in the vents for the mini/maximap.
A: All the geometry and props supposed to be colored should be placed in "Vents" layer (F7)
Also there is some usefull stuff summed up in one post here <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=122829&view=findpost&p=2007619" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...t&p=2007619</a> could be copied here.
I've edited the one about how to reapply textures. Tomorrow I'll look over your collection of questions, add questions, and add categories to make it simpler to navigate.
Also worth mentioning should be some bugs, there are 3 comming to my mind right now.
Q: Sometimes when using line, rectangle or extrude tools to extend curent mesh, new face isn't created.
A: This happens often, there is probably and double edge you are trying to extrude from.
Q: Sometimes when using line to extend/split current mesh, skewed, broken or doubled face is created.
A: This happens when the engine fails to enclose edge loop. Probably you will have to find different or siplier way how to create face you wanted. Double faces happens often when trying to split a face using line tool.
TIP: Line tool is very powerfull tool but it creates unwanted edges. Welding vertexes, checking and cleaning the geometry of double edges regulary is way to go.
Q: When rotated by 90° around two axes, some props start mirroring themselves when moved
A: Yes that is really annoying bug. It helps to rotate it just by 89° before moving and set it to 90° when in place.
TIP: Sometimes, instead of rotating, it is better to mirror the props by typing negative values in the "scale" parameters in prop's properities when in "selection tool"
I've tried to categorize the Q&A's, but quite frankly, I'm awful when it comes to categorization. Half-way through I have no idea what I'm doing anymore. If you (or anyone else reading this) knows how to categorize these Q&A's properly, don't hesitate to set it up. I feel like I'm trying to separate "Christianity" and "Islam" apart, but silly me can only see "Religion" because it's all the same to me.
Some new question emerged from other topics.
Q: When I open some of the official maps, Summit for example, I notice that most of the indoor areas are invisible until you turn "show triangulation" on. Why is this? How are those triangulation areas actually created?
A: That's because those areas are in layers which are turned off. Open the layers window and turn layers on by clicking the little eye icons on the left hand side. If you dont have it on its either Window -> Layers or just press F7 (Default)
Get an idea of the layers mappers use and/or make up some of you own so you can put them in soon as you start making your map, This keeps everything organised and it means you can hide the areas of your map you are not working on so they don't interfere with your 2D views, and makes it much easier to make GEO around props etc
[credit: Insane & QuiXXer]
Q: Are the mapping guidelines (found in NS2 folder) still valid?
A: They are still valid to some extent. Although the gameplay of NS2 has evolved during development, the core mechanics presented in Guidelines are still the foundations of the game. Definitely outdated is the part about pathfinding, because the engine now uses different pathfinding mechanics. I would also check the required entities setup, because it could vary from the Guide's original a bit.
(if I am wrong, pls correct me)
Q: The grid reorients from vertical-horizontal to diagonal when I try to draw lines on a face made by the circle tool. Is this a glitch or feature? Because simply drawing a line to the center of a circle is impossible. My workaround is using the square tool instead, and extracting the needed faces. But it would be much faster, simpler, cleaner if the line tool worked predictably.
A: Probably it was meant as a feature to help designers to paint on angled geometry. At current state, it acts more as a bug.
Q: Merge vertices doesn't seem to work consistently, but lerking the forums I see vertex merge has been a known issue. I'm just curious if anyone knows a reliable workaround, or can teach me a reliable workflow that will keep my maps as clean as possible. So far I've resorted to measuring the space I need to fill, creating the geometry off to the side, then moving it into place and hoping my measurements were all correct. But that leaves me with pretty much nothing connected and lots of redundancy in lines/vertices. Is that going to be a problem for my map's performance?
A: Redudant lines/vertexes doesn't hinder the performance of your map, but they could be pain in the ass while trying to select others lines/vertexes. If you want to get rid of redudant stuff after welding, select all youe geometry and hide it in a Layer, redudant stuff will stay unhidden and you can delete it.
1. Speaking of required entities, the only list I've found beside the outdated official guide is this one wiki.unknownworlds.com/index.php/Ns2_sample from Kouji_San's guide. Is that list complete, up to date? (Can I trust it?)
2. On the more specific side: I'm having trouble getting commander view to work on my custom. I have all the required entities from the above list, but when I login as comm my view is locked on a closeup of the comm chair floor. I can't navigate in any way. When I then exit the chair, back in first person, the commander HUD still up and the mouse cursor is present, moving freely without affecting the view.
It sounds like you haven't yet rendered a minimap and heightmap. The commander camera entity is used by overview.exe to render the minimap and heightmap files required to make commanding possible.
You can either run overview.exe manually via the command line. Something along the lines of:
(But with the correct path of course.)
Or use Mendasp's LaunchMap tool.
^ Highly recommend to other new mappers.
How to reconnect yout local files with Workshop item is discussed in this topic:
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/122152/steam-workshop-publisher-connection-backup
did somebody know how to increase the number of vertices with the circle tool?
its made circle with only 16 vertices. thats looks very.. unsightly
never see that this windows pop up xD
Does anyone know SOME way to avoid this?
(Except design a whole map with cubes without any circle/rounded faces?)
... it is somehow possible to manually rotate the grid? =/
This "Bug or Feature" is for me really a pain in the a$$ at the moment.
If what i think you want is correct, this should help a little.
Drawing lines in circles seems to be a problem, unless you hold 'Alt' while drawing things. Makes everything snap to vertices.
Any chance Spark runs on linux? I don't see it in the Steam's Tools section and the only relevant file I found in my installation directory was "launchpad.pdb" but IIRC that is a MSVC development artifact.
Usually at dinner.
Yeah, especially in summer.
Just to be informative to eyeris: wine is a lib that run Windows programs on Linux. Many games are working and other stuff as well. Fell free to try.