lo peeps

this is an old map i made in 2007,

i hope ppl enjoy it, you can download it from here.... http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/multiplayer/maps/close-call.zip




screen shots......

















pete

cheers

hi tiddles,
real nice map , good work!

UP THE IRONS!!!

Can't see anything on those screenshots.

adjust your brightness, they are perfectly visible

hardly think so

looks like doomish map, great!

Map brightness is fine here in game, but the screenshots are almost black?

my brightness is at 50% contrast is 100% and back light 5% i used to use crt back when i made this, and it was fine back in 2007,im using a samsung 40" 3d lcd

Tiddles, I really urge you to look into the subject LOS: Line Of Sight. At least, I think that that is the problem with your maps. You can choose to say that it's our fault because we use old PC's, but even on a new PC, people can't have the same fps setting on your maps as they can with other maps. So when your map is up in the mappool on a server, those players notice the slowdown instantly and quit.

Just compare it with a huge map like BALDM3 and see how that is made. Especially notice the fps. Just compare on your own system with cl_maxfps 0 and see what you can get on his map and then your map...

The q1 engine is NOT built for seeing ahead too far - you MUST have solid walls/brushes to block a player's view (no door entities because the compiler doesn't render those as solid brushes).

I know this sounds weird from a guy like me because I never made a decent map myself, but I guarantee you that what I write is true. For technical explanation just go here and ask there for details.

It looks good, as always. Your older maps work fine, like castle. Perhaps with this map it's also not VIS'ed properly? The fps is really really bad.

Actually some engines have not many problems with such open maps.

Can you be more specific? Quake or QuakeWorld engines? With independent physics? I've compared FTEQW and ezQuake, both have 50% FPS drop when comparing FPS rate in small corridors/rooms vs. when standing on the quad spot.

I like Spirit, but he's talking about Quake engines, which, obviously, are useless to us. It's true there are major differences between those and between those and QW engines in terms of handling large maps that exceed engine limits, but whether they render open areas.... I don't know about that. Either way: for QW engines we use, you just can't have large open areas or extremely long hallways. That should be illegal for mappers. If you do create a relatively large space, as pent area in dm3, then it should be a very simple room without much detail.

However, this does raise the question whether engine builders/modifiers could take a look at this subject and perhaps integrate some code into a QW engine. Valve tech has been successful in beating this problem when you take a look at the large open areas in HL2 while the HL(1) tech is based on ID's Q1 tech. So somewhere along the way they've fixed it.

On the other hand, I can imagine the few engine codes we have in the qw scene figure it's not worth their time since the maps that are being played by most ppl are not big open areas because it does not fit the QW gameplay. And POV maps aren't big enough to really be a problem because of the simplicity of those rooms.

the only thing that might be worth it is the level of detail you can produce in the map. but as you say megalodon, custom maps is not being played so its not an issue

what you can do however is to make a caulk texture like the one in q3, put it in qw. The caulk texture does not get rendered in game so it removes alot of geometry that the player never sees, thus making it more optimized.
but then again a programmer needs to program it in qw.

As far as I remember from Q3 tech: the caulk texture only speeds up compiling time and has no impact on performance of the final map.

As you know, it does prevent some z-fighting/hall-of-mirror-effects in some cases when you use simple patch meshes to build arches in Q3 (put caulk texture behind the pillar/arch).

The first way to gain FPS on a map is very simple... Maps are all made of bits and pieces stuck together side by side. Each individual element is called brush and every brush has a certain number of faces. You can easily gain performance by telling your game engine not to display brush faces which aren't visible to the player. A specific texture has been created for this under the name of caulk. It can be found amongst the common textures for RTCW & Enemy Territory and in _tools for SOF2. Any brush face textured with caulk will not be displayed in game.