Posts by BumGravy

Hi there.

I have created a map for Empires, a source mod that combines RTS elements with FPS. To create the terrain in this map I used Terragen to create a heightmap and Dispgen to convert this into displacement geometry. I have written a tutorial on this technique for other Empires mappers, as Empires maps are bigger than most mods to make for better use of vehicles, they tend to take up most of the size of the hammer grid, and I found this technique to be very good for making large areas of terrain that are also decent looking and easy on resources.

Anyway here is my map:

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

If you play Empires please visit this thread for download location and to leave gameplay feedback.

If you want to learn how to use Terragen and Dispgen to make terrain like this, here is my tutorial: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=6332

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In places where your map really is divided into areas, like how the flag room is seperate from the base. Look around in mat_wireframe 1/2/3 and see what excess geometry is being rendered, hints dont always help, and place areaportals "in front" of the geometry, but in places where you don't have a line of sight to the area portal where the problem is.

The flag room sees about 10 polies into the base, and vice versa, because I have already hint brushed it off. I cant think of anywhere where areaportals would be useful, that isnt already covered by my hint brushes. If you dont believe me, have a look in wireframe mode yourself, my areas are pretty well seperated, except from an area near the front door, but this should be remedied for the next version, and wasn't really a major fps issue anyway.

Surely the whole point of hint brushes is to seperate areas like this, and if done properly negates the need for areaportals? Please if I'm wrong help me out and tell me where an areaportal would cut out some brushes and i'll give it a go.

Anyway, another change I will make for the next version is the texture theme for the natural areas. I have swapped some hl2 stock textures for FF textures, see what you think:

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Yes I know some textures arent blended properly etc, this is just to show you what the texture theme is going to look like>

Thanks again for your comments!

Hint brushes yes, occluders no for reasons stated above, and I havent tried using areaportals yet - there are no doors in my map for gameplay reasons, I dont know how areaportals could help my framerates.

Quote from Meotwister

found an .dxf importer for xsi for ya! http://www.highend3d.com/xsi/downloads/ ... -4354.html

so if you wanna do it the way I was talkin about you can.. unless you figured it out with that other way..

Yeah like I said, I figured out how to get displacements into XSI, but I am no longer going down that road as it is prop models I need to reduce, rather than replacing world geometry with even more models.

But thanks

Prop models bar is about as high as the world gteometry bar, everythign else is way under both of these. I take that to mean my prop models needs reduced, as my map is sufficiently hinted off. r_drawstaticprops 0 gives me the fps boost I need to get this thing done. So my theory is removing alot of models and simplifying a bit of geometry should get my map sufficiently optimised.

Note that i havent bothered with occluders, as there are no areas where I could use an occluder that hasn't already been vised-off with hint brushes.

Please tell me if my theory is sound!!

I worked out that you can export a displacement as part of a prefab VMF, which can be imported into XSI. I dont have nor am I willing to shell out for max, I am but an amateur!

Anyway this is academic as I have worked out that displacements arent hitting FPS too badly, and props are actually my main bottleneck, especially when combined with the expensive water I have. As light fittings are what I am using most of my props for, I think it is an idea to rethink my lights set up and get rid of the props. I am so glad I worked this out before geting further into converting brushes to models,which would only have compounded my problem if anything.

Quote from m8nkey

Your approach to lighting makes sense. Send me some dimensions and base colours and I'll wip up some light textures for you if you like, pretty simple stuff.

I would like to take you up on this offer if it's still open, i will send you some info in a pm.

Quote from m8nkey

Does FF use Orange Box SDK? If not ep1 doesn't support light emitting models so you still require light entities to give the impression the model is emitting light.

Yes FF is still on the Ep1 engine.

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As for models vs textures it really depends on the circumstance. There are several cases where a texture does the job.

Using "$additive" 1 and "$translucent" 1 in conjunction with eachother it's possible to create very nice neon looking signage. The alpha map is used to simulate light falloff. This technique is prevelant and used to good effect in Dystopia mod. It can also be used to create very cheap inset style ceiling light fixtures too.

Texture lighting is also the way to go if you want to create a trim around an entire room that emits light.

I also don't use the lights.rad for texture lighting. I rely on selfillum and the alphamap to denote which areas should appear to be emitting light. I use this method for both models and textures.

Whether you use model or texture lighting, the light emitting areas need to match, or come close to the colour of the light entity. In your bottom pic for example the light is red but the model appears to be emitting a white light.

I get your point, some of my models arent the correct colour for the light they are emitting, Im going to sort this.

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*edit re:performance issue

You could create the same shape by creating a brush the same size as the dislpacement, breaking it into triangles, then vertex manipulating the triangles to reflect the displacement shape. This would be more expensive than a displacement though.

How would this help my performance then? Surely it is best to keep the displacements as they are ?

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The geometry looks very clean and simple but purhaps it isn't well optimised or you have a leak (sometimes Source makes it through VRAD even though you have a leak, check your compile log for errors). Judging purely by the pics you should be able to afford an expensive material effect in that sort of scene. I'd look at optimising the geometry.

I have no leaks - if I did you would notice the water not renedering properly, if at all. I think world geometry is my main bottleneck, so yesterday I tried using XSI to convert some brush based geometry into models. I got as far as exporting a mesh and compiling it into a model, that works fine. The problem I am having is gettting textures onto my model. Unfortunately the tutorial I found for XSI here: http://www.hl2world.com/wiki/index.php/ ... ng_Outline seems to be outdated, or for a different xsi version, I am having great trouble unwrapping my mesh and getting a texture onto it. If anyone knows more about this than I do i would be grateful of the help. I will look into using a diferent program to get a material onto my mesh, that might be easier than trying to work out how to use xsi, which seems to me like it doesnt want me to have materials on my model mesh.

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Looks good, if you can fix the performance issues I'll have to see about getting this known on the dev team forums.

Hi ginerlord good to see you on here and much enjoying epicentre Have you much experience with the brush-to-model procedure described above? DrSatan is putting togethere a map pack, I think hes holding off to see if this and a few other maps get finished before he releases it.

Thanks for your help and comments.

That's kind of you, you mean to use instead of the FF models? Surely models supercede brushbased lighting?

I need help now with regards to the performance on this map. It seems that on a busy FF server, (that's Fortress-Forever - not to be confused with friendly fire ) FPS drops to single figures in the flagroom. This is partly because of the reflective water, but also I think because of the moving textures on displacements method Im using to get my waterfalls. How easy would it be to convert a displacement to a model, and if I did this would it give a performance boost, bearing in mind I will be using the same moving texture material on the model?

Thanks for your comments.

There are several waterfall in the map (hence the name), they are all made from a scrolling water texture on a displacement surface, and the ones in the pictures in the OP are actually 2 displacements stacked and noisy to give a better 3d effect. The scrolling water texture itself is included in the Fortress Forever mod.

Thanks for your comments. Re: lighting, inside the bases and above ground level I have used pastel shades so the colours are more subtle, the underground area for both bases has a more saturated intense light to contrast with the dark areas. These areas are just connectors to the main base really, and won't see much action, so I've taken a bit of liberty with the colours i think your right about the self lighting on the models, to be honest I havent paid much attention to how all those littlelight models render, but Ill sort it out for the final release.

I realise this I just thought image spam might be bad etiquette -Changed anyway. Thanks for you comment

Pics:

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Download: http://www.filefactory.com/file/d8369f/

This is a map for FF - http://www.fortress-forever.com