Sotha

This is truly amazing: I've made several TDM maps already and it feels impossible to do anything with such a restriction. Basic scene is instantly 50 000 polies. I even stopped to think are you kidding. How can dromed mappers do it? Hey! Suddenly I understand! I agree that there are too many missions with gameplay halting key hunts or puzzles, etc. TDM would definately use few more missions with simple good and fun sneaking around without soap opera plot twists or rubik's cube / quantum physics problems. And those key hunts. *shiver* Think about it: our russian friends may not not be able to ask for hints to make progress because of the language barrier. Of course it is frustrating to get stuck. Maybe a mapping contest with the following restriction: the map must be fun simple good well flowing sneaking experience?

Ah, good to hear external view. Thanks, I was sure the text was understandable. It is just more fun when people have different opinions, it always broadens my views when I chat with such people. But not in this case and I am too old for sandbox altercation. I wish I was younger... At any rate, I am not going to do same mistake twice.

Hey, be sure to check the "City Reference Pictures" -thread. That is a true gold mine. Also, google image search is a most excellent source for inspiration. @AH: Thanks. @Melan: Absolutely!

Meh, dunno. Been sick for some days now and bored witless. Just playin' around. Let's see if something comes out of this. No promises, no responsibilities.

Dramatic shot of the day: EDIT: strange. The forum resizes this rather weirdly. Oh well... You get it open by clicking.

Not only at home with DR, but also inventive and imaginative! Promising. Hm. You could try to create a patch and try to bend it so it fills up the backside. Or you could make a simple rectangular wooden brush, with which you fill the wolf head backside completely. You know, so that the new brush completely engulfs the one attached to the wolf head. EDIT: Dang! Beaten by _Atti_.

Looks like a really good start. Obviously you are at home with DR.

Nope. It is not, actually. But I can see the tone of your posts getting more aggressive. It is funny. Oh you're now picking my main points. No, told you just now what my main point was. Let's dig previous posts. Look here: This breaks into following info-packets: In the medieval times we had technology level x.There has been a lot of time in between current time and the medieval timesNow the technology level is x+y.This provides more fun to people. It does not say The medieval era was ended by technological advances. Yeah, but what kind of responsibility I asked. Please tell me. What kind of responsibility in a practical level? Of course as a human beings we should have the moral responsibility of all of our deeds. That is obvious. Most of the scientists I know are humans and they do have the basic normal human behaviors. So scientists are not in any way above normal human moral responsibilities. No. I said that getting up from poverty makes people happy. That has been said now many times. Why does the message not go through? This weird hostility may be an indication of lack of communication skills. Could you explain why you cannot communicate neutrally? Does offensive style give you some kind of sick satisfaction or do you think you're winning some kind of dispute contest by disdaining your fellow conversation partner. Weird strategy. Surely you see how immature/childish that bolded section sounds like?

I did provide the source. Even with pretty colors. I will not delve in this more. I don't have the time to write everything again, so I'll copy-paste: Note that my main point was not to go on about history, but the main point was to bring out the increase of peoples increased wealth when compared to those days. Technological adances have increased our materialistic welfare a lot since those days. You simply cannot deny that. How would I know? How can we know what kind of changes are coming? It is the future thing. Fact is that things will change eventually. I'm excited to see how. I'm flattered if you believe I'm a psychic or something. I just hope the change happens via scientific advance (more peacefully) than via revolution. Much more deaths that way. I will not give in. I do not see these two are different. They mean the same. If they look different to you, I blame the language barrier. Yeah, to me scientific leaps SEEM to occur peacefully & For some reason, only scientific giant leaps seem to occur peacefully. Everyone building a bomb, who understand it will kill people, obviously are virtually responsibility on the deaths. The person who decides to fire the weapon at certain people carries the ultimate responsibility. It is obvious that "ultimate responsibility" means that the politician or general is in the war crime tribunal, but how should this "virtual responsibility" (the level of guilt the bomb designers and manufacturers) manifest itself? Okay, so Einstein should have been sent to prison because of the Hiroshima bombings? Do note that the section I highlighted in the quote would mean that actually the TECHNICIANS who build the bomb would go to prison. Their work obviously influences everything in the society. But the politicians make the final call. And their decisions are often based on other factors than scientific ones. Politics, economics and so forth. I've watched in my country how politicians deal with experts opinion and I find it laughable to say that individual scientists are lobbyists. Maybe in your country the politicians really listen to the experts. Lobbyists are usually entities with money and power, I think. Corporations. They might be research institutions, but remember that politics come into play in those. In my country certain research institute prohibits its individual researchers from making public writings, which contradict institute policy. That's horrible, but describes well individual scientist in the rock and a hard place of politics. As the Harward professor Gilbert suggests. I agree with him that if you get rid of poverty, you attain a basic happiness level, which lasts until you get lowered back into poverty. If think the stuff you present is related to increased happiness when already in the middleclass. It's kinda silly actually. I'm basically talking about how scientific advances allow more resources to make people happy by raising them up from poverty. And you talk about scientific advances not bringing extra happiness to the already wealthy middleclass. I think we agree in these.

Yeah, even with these results, I think I will continue caulking the unseen surfaces on objects I will clone. It is really small extra job to caulk the surfaces on the clone prime, and the good tris saving effect will multiply when I clone the brushes. Every little bit helps, of course. But the performance yield is not worth doing this afterwards.

Done: #2452. This is a known thing, since it says following in DR material description for the darkmod/decals/blood: "Not for mapping use. Use textures/decals/splat*" It seems intentional.. But why?

Heh. That doesn't look like the most reliable information source. Note that my main point was not to go on about history, but the main point was to bring out the increase of peoples increased wealth when compared to those days. Technological adances have increased our materialistic welfare a lot since those days. You simply cannot deny that. Hey, you found the font-size switch! Does using it make comments different? Yeah, I think technological advances will bring changes into the society we live in. Yeah, to me scientific leaps SEEM to occur peacefully. Anything you've said so far has not altered this belief. Yes they do. However, bigger responsibility falls on those who make the final decisions regarding the technologies. Scientists do not have the control over the politicians who decide how the technologies are used. Therefore I am uncertain how the scientists should express their responsibility. Care to elucidate that? I'll give a fun example: I invent a new type on Nanotech, which enables the construction of The Nanoparticle Bomb and The Universal Constructor. At the moment of understanding the technology, I have the opportunity to contemplate whether or not I will publish my results to the world. Is it wrong or right to publish? Bombs or Constructors? The technology might allow the fabrication of Universal Constructors which would revolutionize material sciences, providing fun to all of humanity. Nanobombs would be the newest, deadliest and coolest killing device ever conceived. You could wipe out continents with those babies. Of course I'll publish the results. It is my responsibility! It would be unethical to hold the results back. As a scientist, it is my duty to report my findings. It's my job. That's the reason I do what I do. If I do not publish, then someone else will, since the background knowledge I used to come to my invention is available to everyone. So I publish the results. Then the control moves to the politicians. If the politicians decide to make Nanoparticle Bombs instead of Universal Constructors, I have no control over it. I can whine nearby (like everyone else) when the bomb plants start pouring out The Technology of Death, but what can I do about it? Got it? It is just reality: Scientists are not policymakers. You simply cannot deny that. Oh, yes I did. The name of the book is in big red color text. The author name is in green. He's a professor in Harward. Hardward University is located in... Cambrigde. It is one of the most esteemed universities on this planet. I'll write it more open: technological wonders create mechanisms which bring forth abundance of resources. More resources mean more people can get up from poverty. When people get up from poverty they become more happy. The downside is that more wealth (resources) are gathering to few individuals, making it more difficult to allocate the amount of funds which would elevate another person from misery (poverty) to happiness (middleclass). And these individuals do not get more happy even when they have more stuff. All clear? Looks like everyone else left this thread for us to derail into our wonderful discussions.

This time I added 2 ragdolls into the scene and repeated the last test. Now it looks like this. NO CAULK views 5 draws 1885 tris 315690 shdw 43372 image 87.5MB fps 34-35 CAULK views 5 draws 1878 tris 314580 shdw 43218 image 86.9 fps 34-35 Some conclusions of my fun little experiment (unless someone points some mistakes in the setup): So 2fps drain was caused by addition of roughly 23000 tris, 75 draws and 2500 shdw. That would be basically a lot of windows with 5 caulked surfaces. Each surface caulked saves 2 polies. That's 10 polies per window. Caulking 2300 such windows would yield a 2fps benefit. On my computer, that is. Lowend systems might still benefit from lower amount of caulking. Adding ragdolls do not drain memory, because one model is loaded only once. However, it looks like surface caulking has a memory saving benefit: caulking (and elimination of) 1000 tris saves 0.6MB of memory! How significant this is I leave to computer geniuses to comment.

Okay that was a good idea. Now the values were rock-solid with very, very low variance. I could take really accurate data. Scene: I removed the guards and put 16 ragdolls in the scene. After the map loaded the corpses came tumbling down (a mighty spectacle indeed). I killed the living AI's in the map with killmonsters. The I waited some 5-7 minutes until the fps did not improve anymore (ragdoll physics relaxing). Then I recorded the data. Performance: NO CAULK: Views: 5 draws: 1812 tris: 292470 shdw: 40842 image: 87.5MB fps: 36-37 CAULK: Views: 5 draws: 1803 tris: 291440 shdw: 40710 image: 86.9 fps: 36-37 Yep, looks like the people who say caulking is useless for fps gain are correct. Still we observe roughly 1000 tris saved by the caulking proces. These 1000 tris weight 0.6MB in memory and a few more draw(call?)s. It might be useful to see how many tris are needed to be increased to make a solid effect on the fps count. This could be done easily by adding more ragdolls. This would yield the extent of polies saved by caulking in order to have an effect on the fps counter. That is, if the polies in the ragdolls are handled similarily as the func_statics caulked. I'll add a few more and see what happens.

Howsabout if I use killmonsters and replace the choking AI's with ragdolls to bring in more polies. Trying it now.

Do not use textures/darkmod/decals/blood/ Use textures/decals/splat* Yes, that means using D3 assets, but the TDM assets are the same anyways. And they won't work for some reason. The splat textures do.

This is faulty setup, read the next one. There: I did a caulked and noncaulked version of the Knighton Manor start. In the caulked one I've caulked all the visible func_statics from surfaces the player cannot see in any circumstances. I also added some AI's to choke my computer. The both situations were taken from a player start shown in the image. Starting position was exactly the same for both maps. Mouse was not moved. I only crouched in both cases to make sure I can do my experiment unseen. Performance breakdown: NO CAULK: Views: 5, draws: 1860, tris: 295 000, shdw: 50500, image 108.5MB Rate: 29fps. CAULK: Views: 5, draws 1850, draws: 293 000, shdw: 50500, image 107.9MB Rate: 31fps. Please note that all the values drift quite a bit due to AI's fooling around with the lanterns and drinking. I'll redo this later without those props. But the values I took were the minimums I observed in the drifts. Basically this shows that very simple caulking does have a slight performance increase. I wouldn't advise people to start caulking objects they already have in their maps, but I recommend that before cloning objects, it would be good idea to spend 5 seconds to apply caulk on the unsees surfaces. When you have many of such objects visible, slighly better performance will be gained when your source func_static is properly caulked. To answer Springs question, I had to caulk following objects to get few fps more: 20 windows 2 torch holder metal squares 1 statue footer few tens of meters of hedge 2 wooded supports 2 chimneys

Springheel is our vocal wizard here, I hope he spots this offer. I have a good feeling about this...

Acting friends, eh? We could always use new vocal sets.... --- First question: I'm sorry, I didn't undestand what is the problem with ragdoll bodies. You can find more skins for them by giving the ragdoll spawnarg "skin" with value "x" in the entity editor. Then click on the skin property and a button choose skin appears. This will open a dialog in which you can see al the skins available for the ragdoll. At least ragdoll_commoner has several skins available. Also you can change the head with the def_head property. See wiki for AI heads. As for killing AI's it is simple: Select any func_static in the game. In the upper menu choose entity->stim/response. Select response Select type trigger Right click the effect list and select add new. Select effect "kill" Give the target the entity name you want to die. What you did is: set the func_static to listen for trigger response. Once it gets it it produces the effect kill for the named entity. You can put a button which targets this func_static or you can select ANY piece of worldspawn and give it in the entity editor spawnarg "target" and the name of the func_static. Everything the worldspawn targets, is targetted when the map starts. It is really worthwhile to learn the stim/response editor. You really can do magic with it.

Probably you never want to like it in windows. If you want a tansparent window, you do not put any brush there. If you want to have window, which cannot pass, use nodrawsolid. I think The Engine caulks automatically the worldspawn surfaces which touch the void. If you noclip ingame into the void you can see into the map, you do not see the textures on the worldspawn exterior surface. If you transform an object into func_static, then all the surfaces are always drawn and the engine does no automatic caulking. That's why you caulk the surfaces newer seen to the player. And remember to NOT caulk 'invisible surfaces' like table bottoms or something like that. They might cast incorrect shadows then. Caulk only surfaces which touch the walls or something else, surface which the player cannot see in any circumstances. See the image. The left one shows the window from inside the room. The right image shows the same window seen from the direction of the wall. The wall has been removed for clarity. If I didn't have the caulk on these surfaces, the game would have to render them even the player can never see them. For one window it does not matter much, but once you have many such objects the poly savings are getting quite high. I agree. That's why its good idea to put caulk on the objects before the mapper starts cloning the objects. It takes few seconds to apply caulk on the object and once it is the caulked object you clone around you get easy optimization without large amount of excess work. Thanks for the clarifications, though. I didn't know polygon size is so important.

Oh, and remember textures/common/caulk texture. It is a texture which gets not drawn in game. A good way to save polygons. When you make your first window, make sure all the surfaces the player will never see are caulked. After that, make the window into a func_static and start cloning it everywhere. It might sound silly, but it is really smart thing to do: each rectangular surface you caulk saves 2 polies. Math: you have a window which consists of the panel brush and 4 brushes which make the frames. If you caulk the 5 surfaces which touch the wall (player never sees these) you save 5*2 = 10 polies. And your scene which contains 100 windows is 1000 polies cheaper. If you apply caulk in all such objects you'll save even more, meaning that you can build more complex scenes. I learned caulking just recently and want to share this wonder. Also remember to turn non-void sealing detail objects into func_statics. Note that func_statics in which the AI can bump into need monsterclip brushes to surround them. The func_static conversion saves you also a lot of polies. You can easily check the effect by making 2 worldspawn walls and putting a func_static window and a worldspawn window on each of the walls. When you look at the wall ingame r_showtris 3, you can see that the worldspawn window causes the wall to be divided into larger amount of polies. These kinds of technical things should be learned quite early, because it allows you to build technically more advanced scenes, saving you the trouble of optimizing you map before release. Optimization is boring work so it's clever to avoid it by building smart.

Well, if you do not see the difference, I cannot be blamed for it. It makes the continuation of this discussion difficult, because you can interpret my comments any way you please. When people get risen up from poverty (peasant-level) to middleclass, happiness will ensue. Increasing wealth further brings no happiness benefits. Stumbling on happiness, Daniel Gilbert. In feodal times tech level did not allow current middleclass level of living for everyone. Now it does. Of course the technology level affects all the aspects of civilization. Yeah, but as concluded, he was persuaded by the risk of Hitler having it first. Technologal advances do change the world. If you do not understand this, I cannot help you. It is obvious. Think about the emergence of the internet, the world has never been so well connected. Foreign countries are suddenly near. Of course it will affect everything from politics to construction yard economics. The basic idea is that new technologies can change the world. Including goverment and economic systems. Remember that the reality is not so black and white like you suggest. The same tech, which provides the ability to destroy everything can also be used for peaceful purposes, providing huge benefits for the entire mankind. It is all about how the tech gets used. And that is not the scientist's call.

Aye, stop feeding the troll. Obviously this is exactly what it is trying to accomplish. Let's not turn this into darkfate. We're better than this.

Incorrect. I said: I do not see the word 'never.' And there is not the word 'always.' See? I describe a tendency, not a black and white fact. And about the nuke, one could still argue it was a technological advance, which brought peace, not war. That tech ended the war, with the unfortunate cost of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course it is not the only factor there. It would be silly to claim otherwise. I was not dicussing the disappearance of the feodal system. I was only saying that the people of our modern era are enjoying entirely different level of living than previously, mostly due to technological advances. Back in the medieval times destroyed crops meant starvation. In the current era we have systems for such events. Recent studies (and common sense) indicate that people are more happy when basic sustenance and other life basics are in order. Technological advances provide it to us with high reliability. Yeah, I read them like you write them. If you try to convey some other information rather than the info you write, I will not receive it. I do not read minds and my connection to the orbital mind control satellites in currently offline due to Wikileaks security measures. Remember also that, as concluded in some other threads, we seem to be on the other side of the spectrum, which makes picking up this type of imagination-hidden-meaning -information more difficult for me. To avoid misunderstanding, I emphasize that I say this with respect and politeness.

Also remember to keep visportals nice and clean. If you have a visportal penetrated by a worldspawn brush, erratic AI pathfinding will result and the visportal looks just fine. Func_statics and entities can penetrate visportals without issue, but I recommend your portals are always free of clutter.