Please ask your basic (newbie) questions in here. - by scumble
Ziemanskye on 11/9/2007 at 17:41
Well, daylight if done with actual lights if going to kill the level. Outright.
Daylight done with a high-ish minimum light, well, it doesn't give normal maps anything to react with so things look a little flat and it makes gameplay a bit more difficult because you can't hide in the shadows, anywhere.
Daylight with fog wont help (performance, not sure about gameplay): fog doesn't block engine visibility at all so even if the player can't see it because of the fog the engine is rendering it.
Other than that: based on that map, which probably isn't to scale anyway, your big areas are too big to be able to see any visible lights in, and that's likely to screw up most of the insides of things. Also, if every building is accesible, you're going to A) kill performance with how many objects you have, and B) kill it with how many portals you have.
I'm not saying a big town area map isn't possible (since I have a vested interest in proving otherwise), but you *will* need to scale the ambition back a bit and learn what the engine can/can't do.
On the daylight issue at least, DarkMod *I think* can more or less cope, because you can fake it much easier with texture effects that should still affect the light gem, and it's "unlimited" in terms of how big and how complicated you want to build apart from the limitation of anyone being able to run it, at least according to some of the boasts they've made.
Other than that, the area/volume you're trying to fill is roughly what I'm aiming at so I can tell you this simply from practical experience: it's a lot harder to fill that much space than you might think.
Beleg Cúthalion on 11/9/2007 at 19:58
It is a little defiance of me to stand by TDS....because few do so. I'm thinking of something at dawn so maybe there's something possible with a couple of lights and a little minimum light. But not sure at all. :erg:
I just took "The Bridge" as an image for the possible size of plazas, but after all str8g8 didn't have a lot of things around them. Hm...I'll have to try it out. And I have to convince one special second person to try out T3Ed, too. :sly: Thanks again for your advice. :)
By the way, any interesting...facts about your semi-experiment...?
Ziemanskye on 12/9/2007 at 17:09
Interesting facts?
Not that I'm allowed to reveal, since it's part of the Cabal campaign thingy. It is going to include rooftops, a large play area, a lot of new smeshes, but other than that, we'll all have to see once it's done: hopefully it'll work out, and be kind of fun, but as one of my missions you can at least be pretty sure it'll look good :p
You might find some of my Cathedral staticmesh pieces useful if you go ahead with your plan.
Beleg Cúthalion on 13/9/2007 at 21:35
I already found str8g8's packs on his homepage, but nothing of you in here. :erg: Well, there's a lack of time now anyway, so it's not urgent.
str8g8 on 14/9/2007 at 12:00
Hey Beleg, so you've gotten the map building bug, eh? ;)
What Z says is true, it is possible to do large city areas, but you may have to scale back some of your initial aspirations. Large open spaces are a killer because of the number of lights (or the size of lights) that need to fill it. I found in the Bridge that the large open spaces really suffered, and had to turn off most of the shadow-casting lights in those places :(
If I were doing a large city section I would think more of a warren of narrow twisting streets, with just a few open places. Something like the Ambush! map in TMA for instance.
So rather than subtracting a large brush and filling it with houses, think of streets as corridors and squares as rooms, with portals in each doorway. Unreal is basically designed with corridor shooters in mind - that is what it is good at.
Anyway, good luck!
Beleg Cúthalion on 14/9/2007 at 13:32
So, but how big (or rather long) is your Bridge?
Seems like I "just" have to inflate the building sections and shrink the streets and places. :erg: By the way, is there any possibility to make a view across some rooftops without forcing UE to render all the lights? Since the game doesn't crash when you climb on top of SQ or OQ, it should generally be possible. Has anyone tried to create horizontal zone portals on...maybe...upper floor level to keep UE from rendering everything below in case Garrett's standing on some rooftop? Or would they appear as glowing white surfaces (I once had that issue with my tutorial mission when a zone portal was short in front of a doorway instead of being inside of it)? Untill now this is no essential part of my concept (I'd rather prefer some small...shortcuts...on the way), but I just wanted to know.
I don't really care for mere system performance since I would not reproach myself if someone hardly hitting TDS's minimum requirements would not be able to play it...but it's just the engine. Call me mean. :p
PS: If you could give me a link, please, Ziemansyke...? I did not find one. But I spelled your name correctly at once. :D
PPS: What about NPCs? Are they somehow treated like lights so that they don't affect performance too much if they stay out of sight? I fear I would need a lot of them, too.
nomad of the pacific on 14/9/2007 at 20:21
Building a castle area now. I wanted my towers to be visible from long distances, but it was a disaster. I'm rebuilding for the third time. I don't recommend it. Best to keep your lines of sight short.
Beleg Cúthalion on 15/9/2007 at 22:29
Str8g8 had some nice chimneys visible from far away but I'm not sure if one can do this with giving the chimneys their own little zone so that only a little part would be rendered.
Too many zones. One day I'll start zoning my environment. :weird:
str8g8 on 17/9/2007 at 10:33
The chimneys were in the skybox ;) If you want to create a long view over the rooftops then this is the way to do it.
Beleg Cúthalion on 17/9/2007 at 15:40
But there were three giant chimneys...you could even reach them and touch their bricks. :weird: I swear it! And I saw them from far away.
By the way, it's difficult to use two different textures inside the skybox, isn't it? In The Bridge the background chimneys were smoking in different directions but I fear that one would need precisely made images to make the edges disappear. I guess I won't have any bad weather. :erg:
