Moonbo

Well that's a very convenient cvar, I'm just depressed with how green everything looks on my map...I was sure that I didn't have any overlapping light radii. How does the engine count lights hitting objects? Also, does it count lights behind closed visportals (i.e. if there's a light with a huge radius inside a building with it's entry visportal closed, does the engine still hit objects in its radius outside of the building)?

Hey Badcog, how did you get your lights so close together like that, without any black gaps between them? Are they intersecting?

Hey guys, So I'm trying to put together a scene with about 10 or so AI's sitting/standing in chairs in the same room. Now, I know having that many AI in close proximity will probably kill performance, and I don't need them to do anything but stand still and play idle animations (no need to look for the player, go on alert, say any barks, etc). Is there any way to create "dumb" AI's that fit that description, just standing in one spot idling without having all the other things that AI do going on in the background? Additionally (if I need to improve performance even more), is there any way to load an AI model as a func_static (possibly as a reskin of one of the statues)? I remember something like this being done in Heart of Lone Salvation (the woman who drank the sleeping potion) but don't know how it was done. Thanks!

He Pusianka, so far I've only used stock textures in the map, so everything in those shots comes packaged w/ the game and wasn't taken from somewhere else. I think I swapped out those textures for more standard warped glass anyways, the colors were too jarring.

Thanks RPGista, that did the trick :-).

Is it possible to take a collection of brushes/patches and treat them like a door (mover)? I you need to turn the collection into a func_static first? Thanks.

Keep in mind though that in the latest version Darkradiant there is a bug where moving around sloped func_statics will cause them to change their shape, so be wary of that.

One other downside to func_statics is that they can't be cut in half by visportals. If you have a big func_static and have a visportal running through it, the full func_static will be rendered even if the visportal is turned off. This could affect performance.

Hey Serpentine, I most certainly do have a copy of the map where the crash was happening. I'll PM you with two versions, my last snapshot pre-crash and first post-crash.

Solved it! I tried all the various fixes recommended (adding visportals to smooth out how many entities were in each leaf, applying the 4 GB patch, copy/pasting the whole level into a new pat) but nothing worked. So, as a last resort I just started erasing parts of the map until dmap started working and then looked at what was wrong w/ the stuff I erased. It turns out that as part of the changes to the map I had moved around some angled brushes. Due to a bug in darkradiant these brushes got deformed in the move and were clipping into the surrounding brushwork. The amount of the clipping was tiny, like less than 0.25 units, but I guess that was enough to cause dmap to crash. Once I snapped everything to grid, the problem went away. And now, I'm going to bed :-).

All these pics have got me inspired, and wanting to pitch in :-). This week I've mostly just been trying to fix the map for Bikerdude's (insightful as usual) feedback. So not much new BSP, but lots of moving stuff around and polishing. I still can't find a way to fix the $!@ dmap crash that's affecting the map though...anyways here's the updated rear of the church. Feedback always appreciated: I've got a question that I'd love to get everyone's thoughts on. Once I build out the interior of the church I'll be at about the mid-way point of what I've planned out for the FM. Right now the entity count on the map is about 2,500. I've always wanted to make the whole FM a single map so that players could have a seamless experience, but the dmap/map loading process in general is now taking a pretty long time. Also the fact that I have this dmap crash that I can't solve is getting me nervous. Do you think it makes sense to split a mission with that entity count across two maps using the campaign feature? The downside is that this will pull the players out of the experience as the second map loads, but the upside is that I'll be able to iterate faster and not have to worry about issues with the second half of the map affecting the first... what do you guys think?

Nice! How'd you put together that crumbling wall? Are those bricks just func_statics?

Huh, does that count for lights and func-statics sticking into worldspawn? I'll see if I have any badly placed speakers in the map.

Well, since I'm new to mapping, don't have any youtube vids of my work, but at the end of this vid is a decent chunk of dialogue that I had a lot of fun writing for a previous modding project. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrXoY1xL75s

Sure, I'm just about done polishing up the section I'm working on so I guess I'll flip it over to Biker then :-P.

Hey AluminumHaste, I tried deleting those files and then re-demapping, but I still got the crash. I also tried erasing all the human AI's I added recently, and that didn't do anything either :-(.

Thanks guys. I have two rats on my map, but when I erased them, I still got the crash after dmapping.

Hey Guys, I'm getting an unusual crash during dmapping. Actually, it's not during the dmap itself but right afterwards. I've noticed that there's a few seconds after the dmap process finishes that the game keeps on thinking (maybe it's compiling everything). It's during that time that my Doom 3 crashes. It seems like the AAS file is put together properly and I can play the game normally if I restart Doom 3, but I get a warning message saying that the rat AAS is out of date. I have no clue where to even start trying to solve this :-(.

Hey Capela, It's the "textures/darkmod/stone/brick/rough_natural_mixed" texture :-). It's one of those interesting textures that looks pretty different in practice than it does as a thumbnail in the media browser, I would never have thought about using if I hadn't seen it on a prefab building.

Being a newbie who made the mistake of starting with an outdoor map, I heartily agree with Obsttorte :-P.

Thanks nbohr1more, I'll look into it, but messing with material shaders in general scares me :-P. I've got a general question about map size and map performance. I'm putting some finishing touches on my map so-far in order to send it to Bikerdude to get his once-over. As part of this I went back and played through the start of my map, and to my surprise there was a pretty significant drop in performance. I double checked to see if there were any visportals, etc that were busted but everything seems to be in good shape. I even erased all the lights and still, the framerate was poorer than before. It makes me wonder...is there some sort of effect on performance just based on overall map size? My map isn't massively large, but is it possible that it's hit some sort of "critical mass" which dings performance?

Thanks guys, I'll probably just erase the grime :-(.

Right now I'm going through my map and finding spots where to put grime decals and I'm running into a problem: in several instances I'm placing a dirt decal on a wall which I've also covered with non-functioning windows/doors. When I start up the map the decal is drawn *on top of* the windows/doors. As I go closer to it, there is a distance at which the decal suddenly pops back behind the windows/doors. Here's a "before" and "after" shot: First, when I'm a little while away. The dirt decal is actually on the wall behind this func-static gate, but for some reason it's being drawn over it. And now a few steps closer, and the decal has now popped back to the proper place on the wall behind. This is happening in several places I've set up grime decals behind func-statics and it's really noticeable when the pop-in takes place. Is there any way to avoid this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLckHHc25ww

Hey Fidcal, If you're interested in good Guttenberg-available books, I'd recommend The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, and The Man who was Thursday by G.K. Chesteron.