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Can you use me as beta mapper?


Jesps

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I did an experiment and made the floor brush of the starting area much thicker (so that the lantern light volume doesn't extend outside of it) and this prevents the performance drop.

Absolutely right. Even if a light is completely surrounded with a worldbrush room, It will still try to calculate lights/shadows of anything with noshadows=0 within its radius.

 

It sometimes takes a lot of creativity to adjust brushes and light radius in order to simply get decent performance out of some vis areas. One of my maps is pretty well-lit (which means light volumes extending out of rooms), and I'm sacrificing a lot to get good performance. It pays to do sketches and pre-planning.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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I promise to continue working on the map and get it ready as an FM package. ^_^

 

Now to thicken some walls...

 

and floors...

 

and ceilings...

 

and maybe some things that don't fall under any of the categories above...

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@swordbreaker: A mappers worst nightmare. That the mission crashes. :( Is it under any special conditions it crashes? You are in a certain spot, look at a certain entity, perform a certain action? Or does it seem to be random?

 

@Flanders: Thanks :). There is a half finished sequel on my computer. However, after using DarkRadiant I don't have a great desire to return to DromEd, although I still hope it will be finished some day.

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I should test more to be sure if it crashes because of same reason but:

Game freezed for nearly half minute when ai discovered me , then it crashed. (this situation happened 2 times and in total I tested your map 3 times) On my laptop it terminated and returned to Windows but my desktop pc showed blue screen. I will look at error log and write here if it is something useful.

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@Jesps: You should seal everything beneath the deck level and outside the ship from pathfinding with monsterclip. The outside of the hull (beneath the patch) is pretty complicated.

And maybe building the actual hull isn't necessary because the player never sees it (if you can keep him/her on the ship).

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Yesterday I tested again and again... So I'm sure that game crashes because of AI in any places. When they definitly see me it's over but they just hear something or search me there is a still chance to finish the game :) however I couldn't. I just tired of crashes to do it, but I'm sure that you can overcome this problem. ;)

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@ Baal: After monsterclipping, and thicken some walls, floors, and ceilings (have not done it for all the rooms yet) the framerate increased a bit. So it seems I'm on the right track.

 

I have also moved some of the doors to avoid too many visportals to be open at the same time.

 

@swordbreaker: I still don't know what causes the crash when AI discovers you.

 

Do some of the coders know what happens when the AI see the player? Do they eat up a lot of ram, do something cpu-intensive, etc.?

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Do some of the coders know what happens when the AI see the player? Do they eat up a lot of ram, do something cpu-intensive, etc.?

If an AI is going to search for you, there will be a small CPU impact for a short timespan, because the hiding spot search algorithm is doing a bit of processing. This is somewhat proportional to the number of AAS areas in the surroundings of the incident. You'll not notice it for one AI, but it might become noticeable if 10 or 15 AI will go searching at the same time, depending on your CPU. With CPUs above 2 GHz I think it's not that much of a problem.

 

When an AI is actually chasing you in "combat" state, it won't take much more CPU processing.

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... You'll not notice it for one AI, but it might become noticeable if 10 or 15 AI will go searching at the same time, depending on your CPU...

 

Can't (Don't?) multiple AI sharing the same hiding-spot info and so shouldn't it not matter if one or more AI search for you at the same time?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Can't (Don't?) multiple AI sharing the same hiding-spot info and so shouldn't it not matter if one or more AI search for you at the same time?

The AI are already dividing the hiding spots into sections and distribute it to all search participants, but that isn't 100% of the deal. It's the actual lighting traces per second which are expensive, and this number increases with the number of AI involved.

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The AI are already dividing the hiding spots into sections and distribute it to all search participants, but that isn't 100% of the deal. It's the actual lighting traces per second which are expensive, and this number increases with the number of AI involved.

 

I guess the "lighting traces" are of the "Can I see that spot from here" nature, not of "how much light is at that spot"?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I guess the "lighting traces" are of the "Can I see that spot from here" nature, not of "how much light is at that spot"?

No, it's the latter. The former would be an "ordinary" trace. The lighting traces are in fact calculating the lighting in a particular spot.

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No, it's the latter. The former would be an "ordinary" trace. The lighting traces are in fact calculating the lighting in a particular spot.

 

Hm, ah ok, but why are these not shared by multiple AI? Isn't the lighting in one spot the same for every AI? Or do you mean when 15 AI are running around, they look at different spots, and so the time to find the lighting increases simply because there are more spots simultanously looked at (by different AI)?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I have here a new version that should run somewhat better (50-60 fps on my system anywhere with the lantern on).

http://rapidshare.com/files/195207996/ship4.map

It has thicker walls, more monsterclip brushes, and the outdoor "room" is significantly smaller.

I experienced the crash when ai sees you, myself some times. Only in the room next to the captain's cabin however. After making the skybrush room smaller that has not happened, so I'm hoping it wont for you guys either.

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I just tried it and it runs much better. It's playable with good framerates on my OLD system now. :)

But I think you removed more details than necessary. You can make single areas pretty detailed as long as you make sure that not to many of them are rendered at once.

 

I noticed a spot where you use a noshadows light on a wall with a volume reaching into the room on the other side (outside the cabin with a bed, a candle, some loot and a guard).

It's not noticable in this case but it will light up both sides of the wall. You have to make it cast shadows or adjust its light volume to prevent that. If it's a static light that won't be to bad for performance (I think).

 

EDIT: The hull patches are rendered even when inside but I'm not sure what could be done about it and it's not that bad.

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Oh, mention of the outside 'room' triggered a thought. Dunno if anyone has already mentioned this, but if so, just ignore it (easier than me going back and re-reading the whole thing). Anyway: I think part of the problem related to that might be when the outer room is so big, there is possible AAS information on it, unless you cover it all with monsterclip. So that might be worth trying too. The programmers would probably know for sure, but my guess is that whenever something has to pathfind, it maybe is taxed by so much unnecessary AAS crap. Well, something happens when it's so big, anyway; I've seen it often myself.

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