Some Questions About Darkradiant

[Renzatic]

Great. So I can use as many brushes as I want...

 

Yeah, you can. But for health and safety reasons it's best to keep it at or around 80-90,000 tris per portal.

[OrbWeaver]

Yeah, you can. But for health and safety reasons it's best to keep it at or around 80-90,000 tris per portal.

 

I prefer to think of it as "80-90,000 tris on screen at any one time".

 

Of course as graphics hardware improves this limit will increase also, so that when the Dark Mod is finally released it might be possible to use 150k or even more as a general limit.

[Bukary]

Why?

I'm a newbe if it comes to Radiant, therefore I might be wrong... but 4096 entities (lights, objects) seem not that much. Of course, I might be wrong. How many entities had these (rather small) Doom 3 maps?

[OrbWeaver]

I'm a newbe if it comes to Radiant, therefore I might be wrong... but 4096 entities (lights, objects) seem not that much. Of course, I might be wrong. How many entities had these (rather small) Doom 3 maps?

 

4096 is fine when you don't have to use static meshes for basic geometry and you can "inline" meshes so that they become part of the BSP. You are likely to hit performance or memory limitations long before the entity limit is reached.

[Renzatic]

I'm a newbe if it comes to Radiant, therefore I might be wrong... but 4096 entities (lights, objects) seem not that much. Of course, I might be wrong. How many entities had these (rather small) Doom 3 maps?

 

On a guesstimation I'd say the D3 maps had about 500 or so entities in it at any given time.

 

Like Orb said, it's not really that small. You're obviously used to Dromed, and the entity max is roughly the same in it as it is in D3. I don't think any FM, save for what I've heard of the Hammerite Imperium maps, have even come close to approaching that limit.

[Dram]

Here's an interesting little thingy.

 

I managed to get a 16384 x 8192 texture of mars into Doom3, including that sized normal. It loaded for ages but ran fine

 

I tried to double the size but then it would'nt load lol.

 

Hell, it was more trouble trying to get a texture of that size rather then getting it in game

 

Obviously I wanted an uber hi res picture to see if i could go in game and zoom in on it riiiight up to it and still see tiny details. Well, it worked

 

Anyways, that's pretty much the limit of my hardware as to texture size.

[Gildoran]

Dram: Have you thought about experimenting with detail textures? There's all sorts of fun things you can do with alpha-maps, modulation and scaling, and it doesn't use up half as much memory as one huch texture.

[Dram]

hmm, no I have'nt. I'll give it a shot though, thanks for reminding me - I forgot about detail textures lol

[OrbWeaver]

I managed to get a 16384 x 8192 texture of mars into Doom3, including that sized normal. It loaded for ages but ran fine

 

The loading time is probably because D3 creates compressed DDS version of textures while loading the level. You can save time by creating a pre-compressed DDS file externally.

[Dram]

Ahh! so that's what happened

[Bukary]

On a guesstimation I'd say the D3 maps had about 500 or so entities in it at any given time.

Hmm... I've just loaded Mars City Underground (quite small map). It has 2549 entities. So... if it is possible, you should up this entity limit.

 

I've got another question/problem:

 

1) I've got 512 MB RAM (and Doom 1.3). When I examine original maps , I often get this error: "Physical memory is over 80% utilized. Consider saving and restarting". Is there any way of fixing this?

 

2) Sometimes when I press F3 (render mode) while examining original map, my system freezes, and VPU Rcover error message appears. I need to restart my system then. I have Radeon 9800 Pro. What should I do?

Edited March 14, 2006 by Bukary

[sparhawk]

4096 is fine when you don't have to use static meshes for basic geometry and you can "inline" meshes so that they become part of the BSP. You are likely to hit performance or memory limitations long before the entity limit is reached.

 

The original game was built with that limitation. The introduction map had about 800 lights. You have to add all the individual objects and stuff, but the map itself was rather big, even though it felt a bit cramped, because of the layout.

[sparhawk]

Hmm... I've just loaded Mars City Underground (quite small map). It has 2549 entities. So... if it is possible, you should up this entity limit.

 

It's not really a high priority on our list.

 

1) I've got 512 MB RAM (and Doom 1.3). When I examine original maps , I often get this error: "Physical memory is over 80% utilized. Consider saving and restarting". Is there any way of fixing this?

 

The obvious solutions:

1.) Buy more RAM

2.) Run less apps at the same time.

 

2) Sometimes when I press F3 (render mode) while examining original map, my system freezes, and VPU Rcover error message appears. I need to restart my system then. I have Radeon 9800 Pro. What should I do?

 

Restart the system.

[OrbWeaver]

Hmm... I've just loaded Mars City Underground (quite small map). It has 2549 entities. So... if it is possible, you should up this entity limit.

 

We don't actually know that it can be increased - although it is available in the code and could be adjusted, the long-term implications are not known, for instance the rendering code could break in some subtle way or performance could deteriorate due to the changed setting.

 

2) Sometimes when I press F3 (render mode) while examining original map, my system freezes, and VPU Rcover error message appears. I need to restart my system then. I have Radeon 9800 Pro. What should I do?

 

1. Turn off VPU recover.

2. Make sure your drivers are the latest version.

3. Consider using the Omega drivers for ATI, I use these and a number of crashes have now stopped happening (in particular the use of r_showTris in fullscreen mode used to crash the system, now it doesn't).

[Bukary]

3. Consider using the Omega drivers for ATI, I use these and a number of crashes have now stopped happening (in particular the use of r_showTris in fullscreen mode used to crash the system, now it doesn't).

Which Omega do you recommend for both Doom3 and TDS?

 

It's not really a high priority on our list.

I know. But Nomad has managed to reach TDS property limit with 4638 actors in his map (Evicted). This map is rather medium sized (and not very detailed) compared to DromEd maps. In Doom we have 4096 entities limit. More that ~4638 actors in TDS = BOOM. More than 4096 entities in Dooom 3 = BOOM. I'm hoping for levels MUCH bigger than Evicted in Dark Mod...

Edited March 14, 2006 by Bukary

[sparhawk]

I know. But Nomad has managed to reach TDS property limit with 4638 actors in his map (Evicted). This map is rather medium sized (and not very detailed) compared to DromEd maps. In Doom we have 4096 entities limit. More that ~4638 actors in TDS = BOOM. More than 4096 entities in Dooom 3 = BOOM. I'm hoping for levels MUCH bigger than Evicted in Dark Mod...

 

You can not compare TDS and Doom 3. Really!

 

In TDS afaik almost everything is an object, while in D3 you only need an entity when it should be able to interact in some way. This means you can populate your map with tons of static models which don't need entities as their base. As long as they can not be interacted with it's fine. This means you can make a completely populated room, whith everything that you need to make it feel lived in, but only has a few entities for the lights.

[Bukary]

You can not compare TDS and Doom 3. Really!

 

In TDS afaik almost everything is an object, while in D3 you only need an entity when it should be able to interact in some way. This means you can populate your map with tons of static models which don't need entities as their base. As long as they can not be interacted with it's fine. This means you can make a completely populated room, whith everything that you need to make it feel lived in, but only has a few entities for the lights.

Oh, I see! I thought that each object (table, window, stairs) is an entity... But what does it mean "interact" here? Does walking on objects (eg. stairs) is considered interaction? Are objects that can be moved/pushed by player (eg. chair) entities?

[OrbWeaver]

Oh, I see! I thought that each object (table, window, stairs) is an entity...

 

It is, but like I said you can "inline" static meshes so that they don't take up an entity slot. This would not be used for moveables or small objects, but stuff like windows would be fine.

[sparhawk]

If walking on an object would already be an interaction, then everything would be an entity, because you also walk on the floor.

With interaction I mean that this object has some special features. For example, a light needs to emit light, so it must be known which position it has and some properties, like lightradius, colour, etc., which are needed for a light to define it.

Interaction is not a good word for it. Rather, if you don't need any propertieson it. So if you put a stool in a room just for display nad you can not move it, or do anything else with it, then it doesn't need to be an entity. As soon as you want to do something with it, for example, move it around, it needs to be an entity, because you must track the position of the stool.

[Springheel]

because you must track the position of the stool.

 

That's what my proctologist told me on my last visit.

[sparhawk]

[Dram]

lol

[Bukary]

My friend was trying to get his new object (created for my future FM) into Radiant. He says that it was a real struggle. He had lots of problems with textures etc. And he's built dozens of objects for DromEd and T3Ed before, so he knows what he's talking about.

 

Did we find a weak point in Radiant (compared to T3Ed), or it's just that we don't know something? Can you point us to some good tutorial about making and importing advanced custom objects into Radiant? BTW, these tutorials did not help...

[OrbWeaver]

Did we find a weak point in Radiant (compared to T3Ed), or it's just that we don't know something? Can you point us to some good tutorial about making and importing advanced custom objects into Radiant? BTW, these tutorials did not help...

 

Any new process will seem complicated when you are not used to it. Once you have imported a few dozen objects into D3 it will seem very easy and natural.

 

Which tutorials you want depends on what 3D application you are using to create your objects.

[Dram]

huh? struggle? it's extremely simple.

 

Basically, the model's groups must have their materials named as a material in a material file (.mtr)

 

For example:

Textures/dram/tree/trees
{
qer_editorimage Textures/dram/trees/trees.tga
nonsolid
	twosided 
noshadows
{
	blend diffusemap
	alphatest 0.2
	map		Textures/dram/trees/trees.tga
}
{
 if ( parm11 >= 0.5 )
	blend  add
	map	Textures/dram/trees/trees.tga
	rgb 0.5
}
}

 

The first line in this material should be the name of the material in the model. So lets say i have a group in the model which i want to use this texture, well i name its material Textures/dram/tree/trees

 

Obviously the material must point to existing textures (the textures it points to must be in those folders)

 

Now we just paste the model into the models folder and away we go. Of course this is for static meshes such as .lwo or .ase

 

 

 

Or am I missing something here?