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Killhour application thread.


killhour

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:) We might take a little longer than 24 hours to review an email, but yes I've taken a look at it just a few moments ago. I'll open an application thread for you.

 

What is with these application threads? Are they a private thing that some supersecret group of elite modders vote on whether you get in, or is it an open thread where you give them something to do, and they do it?

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Sorry, people are generally very busy, especially at times like these. You'll understand once you got accepted. :)

 

I didn't have a chance to look at anything you did so far, which I apologise for. I'm sure somebody else will jump in soon to give you some feedback.

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hmm, the latest map seems to make my game crash when trying to compile, some possible incompatibility between TD version and my current version perhaps?

 

...tried again, no dice, might want to check it out to be sure everything is fine on your end

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...hold on, after letting it sit for about 10 minutes I noticed that it actually finished!

 

My performance is still very bad, but I think a little bit better after adding the visportals. I think it could use a couple more as well, including one in the middle of the main hallway, bisecting the house that way. Perhaps the glass panels in the upstairs doorway are draining performance? I can't tell. I noticed one of the side patches (on that doorway) not perfectly aligned as well. Very nice development so far, more and more improvements every time. It appears from the outside that the texture gets repeated to much at the very top, possibly a symptom of having texture lock on for a while when placing those brushes?

 

Keep up the good work!

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...hold on, after letting it sit for about 10 minutes I noticed that it actually finished!

 

My performance is still very bad, but I think a little bit better after adding the visportals. I think it could use a couple more as well, including one in the middle of the main hallway, bisecting the house that way. Perhaps the glass panels in the upstairs doorway are draining performance? I can't tell. I noticed one of the side patches (on that doorway) not perfectly aligned as well. Very nice development so far, more and more improvements every time. It appears from the outside that the texture gets repeated to much at the very top, possibly a symptom of having texture lock on for a while when placing those brushes?

 

Keep up the good work!

 

I don't know why it's taking so long to compile, it's really pissing me off. Could the performance be from too much AI's? How many can I have before shit hits the fan? Do I have too many shadow-casting lights? I'd make some of them non-casting, but I don't want them to show through walls. Is there a way around this?

 

Also, is it possible to have sleeping/sitting AI's with the thieves' den code?

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Is it possible to selectively disable the automatic close with door function on visportals? I have a door that I want to get proper sound propagation with, so I put a portal through it... the only problem is that it's a glass door. I need to be able to see through it when it's closed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nice improvements, love the sewer ditch entry (well done area there!), like the upstairs light pattern, other stuff good too.

 

My only complaint is my horrible performance, I was almost always under 10 FPS, most of the time around 7, sometimes it fell down to 5 or 4, very unplayable for me and my computer I guess. And the map still takes an inordinately long time to compile for me, don't know why.

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My only complaint is my horrible performance, I was almost always under 10 FPS, most of the time around 7, sometimes it fell down to 5 or 4, very unplayable for me and my computer I guess. And the map still takes an inordinately long time to compile for me, don't know why.

 

I don't understand the performance. Compared to levels in other games, this is downright tiny. There's only 5 AI's, and not much detail at all. It takes forever to compile for me too, and it's quite annoying when I just want to test a few changes. Hopefully, I can get this stuff sorted out. <_<

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Wow, yes, something's very wrong. I was going to suggest maybe pathfinding data of such open spaces (based on older versions) but even DarkRadiant is struggling with it on my test system. I can navigate even deadgathers or blackheart far better than this. I'm talking 1 frame / 10 seconds, and that's the ortho view! WTF?!

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Nice map killhour :)

 

I can see where some of your performance problems come from. There are a lot of large moving lights in the map, like this one:

post-483-1223578065_thumb.jpg

I would suggest reducing the size of the lights and maybe making them non-moving. Calculating the shadows for moving lihts is a big performance eater, especially if the shadows have to be calculated for objects like these:

post-483-1223578100_thumb.jpg

You can reduce the polycount on them a lot without losing visual quality. Just set the patches to fixed subdivisions (maybe use 3x4 or something like this). Same goes for the trim at the ceiling in the house:

post-483-1223578242_thumb.jpg

 

The glass shader is interesting, did you make that yourself?

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Good points being made, especially about the super high-poly patches (which I hadn't realized myself).

 

BTW, I didn't see any huge vis-portals when I checked them out in game, am I missing something? The full-hallway portal is not too big I think, and I suggested that one myself!

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Okay, just for kicks I've worked on this map in DarkRadiant for a while. Some stuff is still messed up, some parts I messed up (some texture problems), and I never did get a couple of the vis-portals to work yet, but I felt like stopping. Here is my version:

 

http://www.shadowdarkkeep.com/files/kh1_komag.map

 

I reworked a lot of brushes and things, for instance I made the ground brushes only where they need to be and trimmed in the big sky portal brushes to avoid having any sky portal texture exposed to the void. I shrunk the size of most of the lights. I lowered the subdivisions on the balcony posts way down and reduced the number of them. Something I did made the map compile MUCH faster now, so that's good! Plus I get somewhat better performance, such as only going as low as 6 instead of 3 FPS, but it's still pretty low.

 

It appears killhour that when building, you first slap down big solid brushes, and then you do CSG Subtract within them to make rooms and such, is that right? This is a very bad way of building because it creates tons of weird long sections of brushes which get multiple light counts, extend into multiple vis-portal zones, etc. I "normalized" some of the outside walls to attack this problem a bit, but I see it's just rampant all throughout the house, ever wall and floor and ceiling is all broken up into weird long brushes and brush "splinters" that extend across multiple rooms and floors. I suspect the engine doesn't like that stuff.

 

After working on this for an hour I see that you have an interesting mixture of cool creative approaches and newbie crappiness! The newbie part will wear away, so it's clear to me you can become a great mapper over time. B)

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Nice map killhour :)

 

I can see where some of your performance problems come from. There are a lot of large moving lights in the map, like this one:

post-483-1223578065_thumb.jpg

I would suggest reducing the size of the lights and maybe making them non-moving. Calculating the shadows for moving lihts is a big performance eater, especially if the shadows have to be calculated for objects like these:

post-483-1223578100_thumb.jpg

You can reduce the polycount on them a lot without losing visual quality. Just set the patches to fixed subdivisions (maybe use 3x4 or something like this). Same goes for the trim at the ceiling in the house:

post-483-1223578242_thumb.jpg

 

The glass shader is interesting, did you make that yourself?

That glass shader looks wrong.  I just used the "clear glass" shader built in.  Strange...

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Okay, just for kicks I've worked on this map in DarkRadiant for a while. Some stuff is still messed up, some parts I messed up (some texture problems), and I never did get a couple of the vis-portals to work yet, but I felt like stopping. Here is my version:

 

http://www.shadowdarkkeep.com/files/kh1_komag.map

 

I reworked a lot of brushes and things, for instance I made the ground brushes only where they need to be and trimmed in the big sky portal brushes to avoid having any sky portal texture exposed to the void. I shrunk the size of most of the lights. I lowered the subdivisions on the balcony posts way down and reduced the number of them. Something I did made the map compile MUCH faster now, so that's good! Plus I get somewhat better performance, such as only going as low as 6 instead of 3 FPS, but it's still pretty low.

 

It appears killhour that when building, you first slap down big solid brushes, and then you do CSG Subtract within them to make rooms and such, is that right? This is a very bad way of building because it creates tons of weird long sections of brushes which get multiple light counts, extend into multiple vis-portal zones, etc. I "normalized" some of the outside walls to attack this problem a bit, but I see it's just rampant all throughout the house, ever wall and floor and ceiling is all broken up into weird long brushes and brush "splinters" that extend across multiple rooms and floors. I suspect the engine doesn't like that stuff.

 

After working on this for an hour I see that you have an interesting mixture of cool creative approaches and newbie crappiness! The newbie part will wear away, so it's clear to me you can become a great mapper over time. B)

 

Wow, you did a great job optimizing this. It takes a fifth of the time it did to compile. Mind if I continue working on it from yours?

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  • 2 weeks later...
http://shadow516.googlepages.com/kh1.map

 

It's still far from done, but I'm eager for more opinions. Keep the criticism coming. :P

Just found time for a quick look at this map killhour. With Saint Lucia being released you can understand now why we've not had much time.

 

For me, it dmapped very fast and plays fine. I didn't really pay much attention to framerates as I didn't see any problem.. I was using Komag's version btw so maybe it's OK now.

 

I like the general layout and I like the start. It worked gameplay wise to have to get through the hole in the wall then creep round the back to get in the window.

 

I assume some of the textures are placeholders? But mostly OK. I think I saw one or two places like the stairs down to the basement was totally different stone so it looked like it was a separate object rather than built in but as I say I can't be sure of the eventual texturing. Didn't see any serious texture misalignments I don't think.

 

I'm not sure what plans you have but I'd suggest more architectural detail before adding furniture and the like, eg, pillars, buttresses against walls, and so on. When it comes to lighting then it will come alive. It is very flat until then.

 

It's a good start and I hope you take this further without being too ambitious. I think one of the big mistakes for beginners is to have plans that are too grand and then cannot finish when it gets past the enjoyable creative building. We ought to have a prize for the first small mission to be finished each month.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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