imperialreign on 27/5/2007 at 01:45

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wondering if anyone could provide some more tips on zoning and trying to keep FPS generally low; I read through the section in K's tutorial, but still thought maybe there might be some other tips not expressed there . . . mostly, working with large areas, for example - a 3 story building with fairly large space all around it - is it better to have smaller zone portals only tween the doorways, or . . . ? As for lighting, smaller strategically placed omni's are better than larger one's with brightness pulled down, correct? At least, to me, it seems to work that way.

Oh, and what FPS stand as being decent rates? Lowest I'm currently pulling is about 15-17 on my system (so I figure rates will be much higher on better systems), and I feel these rates are alright.

Oh, and how does one go about getting spots to work properly? For example, I was trying to add in the SteamWallLight actor, but couldn't set up the properties for the spot light to work at all. I tried adjusting the length of the light cone, brightness, etc, but can't get it to build at all. Saw nothing in the wiki on spots . . .

Ziemanskye on 27/5/2007 at 09:19

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Hehe, my kind of questions.

Zones are bit of a pain.

The general rules are:

* Have as few zones as possible
* Try not to have the engine looking through multiple portals (at least, not too many)
* Try and keep them small
* Keep them rectangular: don't fit them to spaces, that just makes them take longer to process, so make them neat and just take the "hit" of extending them through walls/floors/whatever a little
* Try and keep them vertical. For some reason, the engine doesn't like portals at angles, and that includes lying flat. You can do it, but it hurts performance more than you'd expect.
* Do not double-portal anything. As a simple rule of thumb, don't have any zones contained with less than about 192UU between the entrance and exit portals: those 14 extra polygons or whatever are cheaper to render than the portal test to remove them, so portals on both "sides" of a door frame or window is just not worth it.
* And have portals as close to the problem as possible: doors leading outside when you spend more time inside should be on the "outside" of the door frame. It doesn't really make a huge difference, but sometimes you really are arguing over 1-2fps.


As for large buildings, well, that really is a pain to work around. The answers largely depends on what's around the building, if you can get on the roof, where the place is accessible (doors/windows/whatever), and as ever, how many lights there are.

Trying to put large portals all around the building is probably a bad thing in general, but if the grounds aren't that complicated, or only have a few lights, it might be cheaper just to leave the entrances and exits portalled and sort of ignore outside (it'll be big enough most of the visibility should get nixed by the view-cone rather than anything else anyway).

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FPS, depends a bit of the test system. Ballpark by what the OMs runlike for you: on my system the OMs run like a concussed dog, at a measly 6-8 FPS, so for FMs I tend to say 10 is the goal, and 8 the lowest acceptable (apart from in really bizarre places to be standing/looking). But that's based on performance on my system.

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And spotlights, well I don't know about the SteamWallLight actor, since I tend to just place smeshes and build my lights from the *Light actor, but you need to add the LightShape properties, so that you can give it the right dimensions: *and then you need to move the light* That's right, just wiggle it up and down (back into position) or whatever and it'll update: for some reason they tend not to visibly change the results without being waggled.

(Hint: you can use the Actor>Show Radii option if you right click in the orthogonal views to see the light shape - select the actor and it'll be the red shape around it: a ball for normal lights, a tube for Directionals, and I think it's cone for Spotlights, but could also be a tube)

And yes: small radius lights are better than large damped ones - the fewer things any given light hits, the better. Non-Shadowcasting are cheaper than those that do cast shadows, and Vertex lights are even cheaper still but don't catch normal maps and so tend to be a bit bright/ugly. And try not to overlap the effects of lighte either, since that can hurt really bad - especially if both cast shadows (I know it can be cool - just be careful with it)

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Long speil later, I hope that helps a bit.

imperialreign on 27/5/2007 at 14:27

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Thanks y'all - helps a lot, really! There's not much on zoning in the wiki, and K's tutorial is just basic stuff, I think. Y'know - maybe someone'd be willing to post some of that info in the wiki?



Completely forgot about doing that! I've been ignoring the surface selection after setting up a basic area because I'm running an ATI, and T3Ed has a chance of crashing out when you start selecting surfaces (it's really irritating, too). I've got to save, save before I edit surfaces and textures . . .

Speaking of texture selection . . . I'm guessing that having wall textures scaled in also takes a hit on FPS with this engine because it has to draw that texture a higher number of times? I know some older game engines were like that (DukeNukem, Quake), but wasn't quite too sure here (although, I haven't noticed much of a difference). At least having some prior experience with other gaming editors I think really helps me out, I'm picking things up with this engine very quickly.


The question about the spot lights is because I haven't been able to get the to function properly at all - I've also tried just adding the mesh and positioning an omni with the FleshLightType>Spot property, but it doesn't build at all. Directional lights also don't work, either - I was almost wondering if it's a problem with the engine and ATI drivers, but not sure . . .


Anyways, asides, I appreciate the info, y'all; it's been a major help clearing up some confusion :thumb: ! My first attempt (those pictures I originally posted) just feel through, things were too big - 2nd attempt was smaller, but stressed the engine too much and I was getting very odd geometrical anomalies (holes in ceilings, etc.) - currently working on a 3rd attempt, and coming along much better (3rd times a charm, eh?). I'll try to post a few screenshots later on today.

imperialreign on 27/5/2007 at 22:56

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funny . . . nothing different than last time I messed with one, and it worked for the time being . . . I wonder if it's just an issue running an editor that was designed around different hardware;

anyways, thanx again!

Judith on 28/5/2007 at 08:05

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1.1 patch fixes the bug with resetting difficulty settings, so it probably should be installed before the editor. You won't need any no-CD patch, as the exe files shipped with the editor don't require CD to run and check your maps in the game.