Start Building Outdoors or Indoors

[DeathStage_12]

So, after finishing Fidcal's tutorial, I wanted to start building a small mission. I had hoped to do it without having to post much here at the guild, but I have a dilemma already...

 

Should I start by creating a large skybox within which the castle will be built, or is it better to build from the inside out and make the outdoors as separate "rooms" adjacent to the outer walls of the castle?...or is there a better way?

 

-DS:12

[OrbWeaver]

Don't create a big box to build inside, this will make visportalling difficult and your map will run sub-optimally. It is best to build outside areas in the same way that inside areas are built; with "tunnels" and "rooms" that use an appropriate skybox texture instead of a ceiling.

[Komag]

ditto, mostly. Start that way, get some experience, especially with vis-portaling and performance, and then you'll have a better feel for what you can do and what you can get away with.

[HappyCheeze]

One of the biggest mapper "No-No's" is making a giant cube around your whole map. Plus not having to render a giant cube will increase the preformance.

 

Also remember to think of you map as a bunch of hallways, thats the way the doom 3 engine renders the map, with visportals to section them off.

[Dram]

From experience it is almost always better to start off with the indoors sections first. Outdoor sections with moon light etc will run worse then indoor sections, understandably. Therefore, it is better to make the indoor sections first, and then you can mediate how performance intensive the exterior is, and how much is accessible to the player etc.

[Baal]

Outdoor sections are just big rooms with a special skytexture on the ceiling (a simple case).

You should start with the interior (which is much more easy if you're new to the engine and editor) and add "outside rooms" later. Don't worry if this explanation is a bit confusing, it all becomes clear with a little experience.