Subtraction engines...

[Stardog]

Does anyone else find adding brushes wall-by-wall a complete nightmare? I don't know how Valve/id mappers put up with it... I've been treated too well by the Unreal engine.

 

Are there any best practices/tips, other than not using subtract ever and capping rooms like so:

 

[STiFU]

I prefer substracting engines too in general. It's just so much cleaner to build stuff that way and leaks are also less likely. But Dark Radiant is way better than any UnrealED, so that surely makes up for that additive doom crap... ;-)

 

Anyway, I think there was a "make hollow" feature, resulting in just the structure you linked below.

[New Horizon]

Anyway, I think there was a "make hollow" feature, resulting in just the structure you linked below.

 

Yup, it's on the toolbar. It's for speeding up the building process when you're making rooms.

[Melan]

Stardog: we recently discussed this issue in the newbie questions thread, starting with my post at #145. You may find that discussion usable, it cleared up a few things for me.

[Mortem Desino]

I think the reason I put up with it is because I started out mapping with Half-Life 1 and then HL₂ (and got so familiar with the additive geometry mindset).

 

[stupid Spokesperson] But now, if I go back to Hammer, I'm so frustrated with how slow my brushwork is in the hammer editor. I can do more in 40 minutes of DR than my fastest 1 hour in Hammer. I can do more with patches than with displacements. In DR, texture alignment is really easy, but it was such a chore in Hammer. Doom 3's "dmap" automatically optimizes worldspawn faces (whereas in HL₂ I had to do that all by hand.) The only thing that Hammer did faster is decalling. ....and...that's it. But now in DR+TDM, I can choose the size of the decal, and (if I use blendlights) I can skew, stretch, and even color the decal! [/stupid Spokesperson]

 

See what I mean? Additive engines, I will admit, are slower in getting the very basics of a map down. But DR is so fast and versatile in getting AI, patrol paths, models, details, and just plain eye candy into the map that a 10-year-old engine just can't do or was such a chore (especially that texture alignment part in DromEd).

[HappyCheeze]

I think one of the first mapping tools I ever used was Unrealed, for Wheel of Time. It was okay, I remember liking Hammer/World Craft for Half-life way better.

 

I'm with Mortem Desino, Its hard for me to go back to that after using DR. DR is now my favorite tool

[STiFU]

Radiant in general is the best. But Dark Radiant is indeed the cream of the crop. Cheers to Greebo and all others devs...

[greebo]

Thanks, guys.

[AluminumHaste]

Thanks, guys.

 

You know we love you guys <3<3<3

[Baddcog]

I think the only thing really easier with subtraction is the lack of leaks. It's impossible to make Dromed leak. And considering quite a few people make a huge airspace in Dromed then add...

 

But sticking to a larger grid size for main brushes is easy enough in DR. The thing that's a bit tougher for alot of newbs is wrapping your head around building inside a box, without building a huge box.

 

And I actually started to really dig additive geometry. Easy to clone walls, drag where you want, clip in half for doors or trim tex.

 

 

I actually find tex alignment in Hammer easier. There are not only buttons for fit, but align (top, bottom, left, right). Would be a great feature to have in DR.

 

I like displacements alot more than patches unfortunately. Easy to make pipes, plus you can paint geometry and get very precise. Patches are just kindof curvy ground. You can get what you want but not like displacements. Also displacements let you paint alpha layers on textures for pathways and sprites like grass.

[AluminumHaste]

I find subtractive editing totally unnatural. When you are building something in real life, whether it's with Lego or a real building, you don't start with a giant concrete block and start carving it out from the inside. No you start by putting up the walls, then adding trim and such, which is exactly what we are doing in DR. So for me, it's very natural to add geometry into a level.

[Melan]

Not to belabour a topic that is slowly but surely getting tired, but Dromed did not just feature subtractive geometry. It featured subtractive and additive geometry, and let you pick whichever was convenient. That's a big difference. Sure, you started out entirely in solid space, but you could just make a few large air brushes and build the rest with solids (actually, that's how the second mission in Calendra's Legacy was made; I replicated this method in Prowler of the Dark, a mission much less ambitious, and some sections of Disorientation). In theory, you could even omit subtraction entirely if you had enough brushes and polycount to spare; on all but really antiquated PCs, there are no significant performance differences. What there is, is that it is way easier to get too many polygons in view this way; constructing your stuff in tunnels is inherently safer.

 

There are a lot of things iffy with Dromed, but this isn't one of them.

[Stardog]

I find subtractive editing totally unnatural. When you are building something in real life, whether it's with Lego or a real building, you don't start with a giant concrete block and start carving it out from the inside. No you start by putting up the walls, then adding trim and such, which is exactly what we are doing in DR. So for me, it's very natural to add geometry into a level.

 

Like Melan said, you can just subtract a massive cube as a skybox, then add brushes inside that like any other additive engine.

 

Compare the number of brushes and how much sense they make visually:

 

 

4 brushes vs 15 (i think)... Now imagine wanting to resize the original room

 

I've found a decent way of working in DarkRadiant - for indoors I have one large roof/floor brush which allows me to mess with the walls only letting me have a bit of speed when making rooms of the same height

 

Thank god DR's far better than the other Radiants with a lot of it's features or I think i'd shoot myself.

[AluminumHaste]

Don't worry, give it a couple of months then try to go back to DromED, I think you will find that you have become very fond of DR and the way it works

[Komag]

I suspect that you could build just like you do in Dromed, doing lots of subtracting, but ONLY if you kept all your architecture as simple and low poly as it is in Dromed. Probably at that level of detail it would still work out okay.

[SneaksieDave]

Using only subtractive for an entire map -- subtracting walls of buildings from within a "gamespace cave", same for stairs and walls and railings and trees and... -- creates a lot of geometry and requires very complex work. Realistically, no one does that; instead they create a large air brush or brushes (whether a single large space is needed or tunnels for streets etc) and use additive to add back in. So the difference is removed at that point and it becomes the same ball game. It's just like drawing one huge block (or blocks) and hitting Make Room in DR, then working within it/them. There will be no leaks there, either. It might take a little while to rewrite the shift in mental thinking, but it's largely the same after the first step. And at that point, that of plain raw brush manipulation, DromEd can't compete.

 

The one thing I did like about DromEd was setting the brush order. It was neat to be able to set that and achieve the desired results (e.g. carve air, add fountain base, add water). But in DR/TDM, it's not necessary; you just build what you want and it's wysiwyg. This is intuitive because it's like the universe we know -- empty space until something is added. Because of that one could argue it's less error prone.

 

If you're having misgivings about for instance moving doorways and window openings, around in walls that are already built (in DromEd, you'd simply grab the hole and move it -- very nice), if you built it correctly in an additive engine, you simply grab the correct vertexes and move them as a whole -- same effect. Depending on the situation, perhaps more work, but it's more than made up for in the rest of your design time saved.

 

I have a feeling this debate will go on forever.

[AluminumHaste]

Using only subtractive for an entire map -- subtracting walls of buildings from within a "gamespace cave", same for stairs and walls and railings and trees and... -- creates a lot of geometry and requires very complex work. Realistically, no one does that;

 

My uncle did that for one of his Thief 2 maps, I can't remember which one, but he went crazy optimizing it. I think it was A Thief Nonetheless maybe? But yeah he said doing it that way, gives a good boost to rendering speed when playing the game.

[jdude]

I just wanted to get my two cents in I absolutely hate subtraction editors. I feel like I have way less freedom of detail as I do with addition editors. And DR is also the best editor I've ever used

[SneaksieDave]

I'll reword it to say, there's no way I'd ever do that.

[Neb]

Apart from DromEd are there any other subtractive editors? I'd never heard of them before.

 

When it comes to electronic music I know that there are subtractive and additive synthesizers. They work by either adding oscillators, or carving away via the use of filters. 

 

 

[SneaksieDave]

Yep, UnrealEd (and thus Deadly Shadows editor).

[Stardog]

I feel like I have way less freedom of detail as I do with addition editors.

In what way?

[SneaksieDave]

I have a simple answer for that one. If we're talking about purely subtractive, consider building a ladder using each method.

 

Subtractive: subtract four times to establish the front, the back, and both sides (nevermind about what room you're putting it in; that's way too much to think about right now!). If you want the rungs to be recessed from the legs, subtract again front and back, for the recess. Then subtract a box for each rung. That's six subtractions, plus another one per rung. Since we're purely subtractive here, your containing room is... well, a strange box made of four or six or eight cubes, depending on how you carved. Hope you don't need to change it from there, because just changing the room touches the ladder (again, since we're purely subtractive in this example; and if we're not, then the case is already diluted in favor of Additive).

 

Additive: drag draw the two legs, and each rung; done. That's two brushes plus one per rung. No need to think about the containing room here, as you have all the space in the universe available to you.

 

 

Subtractive mapping might foster creating a quick room / containing area, but that's where the advantage ends, and Additive pulls ahead fast at that point. Further, you can simulate the same with Additive by simply creating a brush and clicking 'Make Room.' There, you have one big sealed "air brush" to work within. In fact, I'm willing to bet you can do this faster in DR than DromEd or UnrealEd -- you drag a diagonal line, and click a button. Hugely easier than brush manipulation in the latter editors.

 

 

Note that I'm not trying to blast any well designed editor, just discussing my take on it having used each of them. Additive is more "real world" to me, building things with blocks in empty space, as opposed to carving out of solid space.

[Mortem Desino]

CSG engines are intersection negative and positive brushes: which makes simple indoors areas ultra-fast. But it's expensive. And it's also error-prone when geometry gets too complicated. That's why games like Thief, Deadly Shadows, all liked using static meshes for detailed bits.

 

In DR, if you make tiny details using brush primitives, you can generally turn it into a func_static and it'll behave (albeit slowing down the map compiler).

 

Then again, I loved playing with "Legos" when I was a little kid, and the additive geometry mindset fits nicely with that toy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTuba531Fp8

(Lol that youtube code has "Tuba" in it!)

[STiFU]

I kind of like the idea of subtractive modelling. At first you carve out a very basic layout for a section of your map by subtracting a few basic brushes from the void. This is a very clean approach. No extra polys to render (makes the editor faster), less surfaces to align textures on, no chance of leaks, and the layout of a room is easily changed by editing one(!!) brush (if it is a cubig room) without having to realign textures in most cases. A Connected hallway with a door doesn't matter at all. This all is very nice for getting a first feeling of a new section. After that, you work just like you would in an additive engine, adding detail. So it actually only differs in the layouting process and that is really just a question of taste. Everyone must admit though, that this approach is cleaner and I must say, I kind of like it clean. Another smaller advantage is that you don't see the backface of your subtractive brushes, so you always look inside a room, even if you're outside the brush. In an additive environtment you'd have to hide the viewblocking brushes and if you rotate the camera, it's the same process all over.

Edited October 27, 2009 by STiFU