Boogalou on 11/4/2005 at 20:20
I've read what I could find on portal and zone placement but am still confused.
My maps are beginning to get fairly large, so I'm wondering if there are any solid recommendations on map sizes? At what point do you say ok, it's time to wall off this area into it's own zone? Should an area above a certain size, say 10mb be it's own zone? Larger? Smaller? Or should I use criteria other than size alone? I'm on a very very fast computer so it's difficult to judge relative performance.
Also, I'm very confused about portals, do you use them to seal off every room? Every block of rooms, every so and so units of bsp?
Can anyone point me towards an article on proper structuring of maps for decent performance? I've read the performance tips article in fleshworks but am still unsure of how to properly place zones/portals.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Komag on 11/4/2005 at 21:13
You might explore in depth an OM or two to get a proper feel for it (assuming the designers did it pretty much right, which they may not have perfectly)
OrbWeaver on 11/4/2005 at 21:21
Are you talking about BSP zones or load zones? They are different things, that solve two very different problems.
SneaksieDave on 11/4/2005 at 21:38
Regarding the map size question: My own experience (also posted elsewhere, somewhere) was that I started getting crashes after I doubled my ~4.5Mb map to about 8Mb, and then started adding stuff till a full build brought it to a bit over 9Mb. Also elsewhere, a map ran which was quite larger than that. Krypt has recently stated that they were making larger stuff at Ion without problem, so perhaps it is a quirk/bug and not a fixed array size type of limitation afterall. Damn, I wish we had one of the engine coders to tell us for sure if there's a fixed limit we're seeing. :erg:
Boogalou on 11/4/2005 at 21:43
Quote Posted by OrbWeaver
Are you talking about BSP zones or load zones? They are different things, that solve two very different problems.
Yeah I wasn't very clear. Load zones is what I was referring to.
Boogalou on 11/4/2005 at 21:45
Quote Posted by SneaksieDave
Regarding the map size question: My own experience (also posted elsewhere, somewhere) was that I started getting crashes after I doubled my ~4.5Mb map to about 8Mb, and then started adding stuff till a full build brought it to a bit over 9Mb. Also elsewhere, a map ran which was quite larger than that. Krypt has recently stated that they were making larger stuff at Ion without problem, so perhaps it is a quirk/bug and not a fixed array size type of limitation afterall. Damn, I wish we had one of the engine coders to tell us for sure if there's a fixed limit we're seeing. :erg:
Thanks SneaksieDave. Guess I'll try to stay around 5ish until I hear otherwise then :)
Boogalou on 11/4/2005 at 21:49
Quote Posted by Komag
You might explore in depth an OM or two to get a proper feel for it (assuming the designers did it pretty much right, which they may not have perfectly)
Good idea. When I very first started messing around with the editor I did that and was put off by the complexity of the levels. But now that I've had some time to let stuff sink in I'll give them another look.
