Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[grayman]

Stupid question, but why does the rats have their own AAS? Is it because their size...or is the RatAAS stand for something completely different?

 

Yes, that AAS belongs to the rats. It's probably a smaller footprint so they can run through small spaces where the regular AI don't fit. Like behind dressers and under tables and chairs.

[DeTeEff]

But I guess monster clip is used to avoid vermin infestation?

[Mortem Desino]

Yes. Rats are AI, and all AAS sizes and all AI are affected by monsterclip.

[PranQster]

Ok, I need some help with this problem which showed up last night after I had been working on the beginning of a forge made of patch cylinders (in an early stage in the foreground of the screenshots).

Compare the DR screenshot with the game render and please tell me what could have caused this. Also, ignore the green painted area... that's just me keeping something to myself for now.

I can walk through the wall where it has no texture... the other side has texture and I cannot walk back through it. The edges of the untextured area do not match at all with the edges of the brushes making the walls. The upper part of the wal runs the length of the room and extends down to the arch... all 1 piece.

I had a visportal in the archway, and thought it could have been that, but I removed it and the problem remains. I have remade the walls to no avail. I have moved the patchwork arch elsewhere and it was not causing the problem. I have deleted all but the .map file to make sure nothing stale was causing a problem.

 

Nevermind. I just learned a valuable lesson in snap-to grid. Somehow, during the course of editing stuff, one of those triangular sections of wall by the arch got pushed into the room by about .125 units. That caused a rendering issue similar to what is in the screenshot (but the other triangle was missing). So I tried to fix it by cloning the bottom left wall and the left triangle piece > to the right side of the arch, which made it worse. I pushed those 2 triangular brushes back into the grid with the rest of the wall and presto! all fixed.

Edited August 31, 2010 by PranQster

[Melan]

That's the AAS calculation stage. In tiny, tiny Doom 3 maps it might have only taken 5 seconds or less, but in NHAT 2/3, it took up to 45 seconds.

 

If that's it for such a huge mission, it isn't too bad. Having spent watching monolog.txt for several minutes each time as Dromed was calculating and recalculating lights for large levels, and before I was told on TTLG I could just run it with Quicklight and it would be done so much faster, 45 seconds is generous.

[Serpentine]

When else are you meant to make tea?

[Baddcog]

Working on a conversation but it doesn't seem to be working very good.

 

I want to keep it on the low down so I can't say specifically what has to happen.

 

Anyone care to take a look for me?

[Fidcal]

I can look at it tomorrow if you like if nobody else can do it sooner. I've ran out of time tonight.

[Baddcog]

Cool, I think I'm about done screwing with it, can't make it play an anim no matter what.

 

//from the enemies def file

anim melee_attack1 models/md5/swing.md5anim
{

 frame 8   	melee melee_knife
 frame 10      sound_body snd_footstep 
 frame 17      melee melee_knife
 frame 19      sound_body snd_footstep
}

 

I want to play this anim in the conv. I selected correct actor, chose play anim in conv dialog. and I've tried both

melee_attack1 and models/md5/swing.md5anim as the anim name. I've also tried just swing and swing.md5anim

 

And I've tried a few different entity types as the actor (gaurd, peasant...)

 

But I can't get an anim to play at all, he just goes to the next item which is walk towards actor 2. (but I can't get the conv to play at all if I check off walk to each other).

 

---------------------

there's a bug with the highlight things latley. I can't unhighlight this text.

 

was able to remove bold with edit

[DeTeEff]

Is there any top limit for AI in a level? Betrayal seems to kill performance for lots of players but nbohr1more said he had smooth game run if he killed all monsters...Is the performance so heavy on the engine even if the AI isn't visible? Shouldn't visportalling delete everything about them but their origin?

[nbohr1more]

BTW. I've seen this mentioned with regard to AI performance...

 

Have you adjusted AI Interleaved Thinking ?

[Baddcog]

You can have them stop moving when they are out of range. It might be weird in places where a player expects a guard to come back, but he's frozen in his patrol aways away.

 

I think they are always on patrol and what not while in closed portal areas.

[DeTeEff]

BTW. I've seen this mentioned with regard to AI performance...

 

Have you adjusted AI Interleaved Thinking ?

 

 

Hmm, no, had no idea that there was a spawnarg to make them less performance eating when far away When my work is finished tonight, I might do YET ANOTHER update to Betrayal...That damn mission will haunt me!

[stumpy]

it would be useful if they didn't do idle gestures when out of range of the player, that must eat into the performance if they carry on doing idle gestures when you cant see them. I noticed that the spiders in my vertical map were doing non existant torso idles, I understand that the torso bug on spiders is fixed in 1.03 thou.

[Mortem Desino]

it would be useful if they didn't do idle gestures when out of range of the player, that must eat into the performance if they carry on doing idle gestures when you cant see them. I noticed that the spiders in my vertical map were doing non existant torso idles, I understand that the torso bug on spiders is fixed in 1.03 thou.

A lot less than you think. Turn off all gesture anims in their entity defs, and you'll get no difference in performance. Running an AI cycle (known as a 'think' cycle) is what will suck away performance. Pathfinding is definitely more complex than an animation.

[DeTeEff]

Is there any way to turn things 45 degrees? The R the circles is too analogue, I need exact control...Somebody that can interpret those numbers in the rotation spawnarg?

 

EDIT:

 

Why doesn't the rotation spawnarg work on brushes converted to func_statics?

Edited September 2, 2010 by Fieldmedic

[Diego]

Isn't there a rotation snap?

[DeTeEff]

Nothing I've ever found...I believe I've solved it without rotation, but it may be good to know in the future...

[aidakeeley]

Are you talking about something beyond Modify->Rotate and scale... Step: 45?

[DeTeEff]

Aha! Good one Aida Thank you!

 

New question:

 

If I make an intricate model out of brushes, and turn into func_static, add caulc and so on, is that whole model equally performance eating as if I built the whole thing in Blender?

[nbohr1more]

func_static's and models are about the same performance-wise as long as the func_static boils down to the same number of triangles.

 

(Meaning, if the engine finds a way to cull triangles that either your brain or Blender couldn't then the func_static will win...)

 

Jesps caves in Mad's Mountain are Lightwave models so you can see that even large models can perform very well.

[Baddcog]

Optimizing models really isn't that hard once you learn how. It becomes second nature after awhile.

Most common mistakes beginning modelers make is just having too many sides/too many segments.

 

Cylinders don't need to be 20 sides to look decent, typically 9-10 is good for this engine.

If you are making a pole you don't need 5 height segments (unless they add shape) but if it's tall 2 segments help with lighting/shading.

 

If it's a lamp post you can delete the bottom polys from the pole (they will be unseen in the ground - unless a player wants to have one fallen over)

----

Where it matters most is if there are more than one of them, objects will be better as it reduces draw calls (but func_statics could be combined into one to have similar effect.

 

A good way to optimize func_statics (other than caulking unseen faces) is to make edges not aligned. Say you have an x beam on your ceiling. Make on beam 8 units thick, and the other 7 thick. Then where they cross they won't cut each other from being on the same plane.

 

 

[aidakeeley]

Aha! Good one Aida Thank you!

 

Sure. I too abhor the very idea of not being able to input manipulations without having actual numerical control.

 

The fact that you built a whole mission with only the graphical manips is impressive. Me, I can't even begin to begin, but I'd certainly never have had the fortitude to do that! I think there was something pretty ~fundemental~ Biker (it might have been someone else) said he'd only learned after all of his great work too... I put it down to Biker because I think I was so impressed hearing this was after his Cathedral reworking! I obviously don't recall exactly but these are the kinds of efforts that are both inspiring and daunting.

[DeTeEff]

Optimizing models really isn't that hard once you learn how. It becomes second nature after awhile.

Most common mistakes beginning modelers make is just having too many sides/too many segments.

 

Cylinders don't need to be 20 sides to look decent, typically 9-10 is good for this engine.

If you are making a pole you don't need 5 height segments (unless they add shape) but if it's tall 2 segments help with lighting/shading.

 

Depends on size. In this case there are only four sides. Works very well as the edges are "inside" other parts.

 

If it's a lamp post you can delete the bottom polys from the pole (they will be unseen in the ground - unless a player wants to have one fallen over)

----

Where it matters most is if there are more than one of them, objects will be better as it reduces draw calls (but func_statics could be combined into one to have similar effect.

 

A good way to optimize func_statics (other than caulking unseen faces) is to make edges not aligned. Say you have an x beam on your ceiling. Make on beam 8 units thick, and the other 7 thick. Then where they cross they won't cut each other from being on the same plane.

 

I don't quite get this last part...If I set them on the same plane, they would Z-fight....or am I getting you wrong?

 

Haha, if I just could send you my top secret func_static_model I've constructed, you could see if it would be beneficial to make it in Blender...or if it's okay the way it is Maybe if you would like to B-test it when the time comes

[SiyahParsomen]

Is it possible to make multiple skin for a model made in DR? If so, how?