tiger@sound.net on 1/7/2006 at 13:07
Martin Karne, may I ask about T3 and its fogging ability in its Level Properties?
(I've heard several UnReal mappers talking about simple fog-parameters giving them a room-sized "moving view", from its ability to dynamically isolate the player's viewing-area, for some fairly "wide open" geography.)
Martin Karne on 1/7/2006 at 14:00
Not a chance, from what I have read and worked back in 1999, Unreal engine accepts about 20,000 polygons, and it seems that fog is not good for detail at distance, you can see it, at least from what I have read now in this fleshworks.
I am not new to mapping, just keeping it to the most probable candidate, so far I have made one (wow) Unreal I MP map, not very detailed or well done anyway, a demo map pack for HL 1, and still working on another, and two RtCW maps, so I'm not very present in public, but in private I do most of the testing and stuff, and if there is the inspiration and the capability I try to make one good map.
I don't know if I will be able to complete it, but I am trying.
Judith on 1/7/2006 at 14:04
I could make a demo that would prove your statement wrong ;) When you use fog and zones (doubled in pairs) it reduces e.g. the number of static meshes displayed in player's view. It's not perfect, but it works, and enables you to make fairly large landscapes, at least in comparison to what we've seen in OM's.
Crispy on 1/7/2006 at 14:11
So you have to split the area into multiple zones, and then the fog is taken into account when zones are being considered for visibility? Is that how you're doing it? If so, that's a very nice method, good work. :)
Martin Karne on 1/7/2006 at 14:11
Then someone must tell them to correct that "typo".
I could try some fog, I don't know how it will come out.
Judith on 1/7/2006 at 14:21
Yep Crispy, it works that way. Let's say you shape 3 road segments surrounded by hills in 3dsmax (e.g. 2048 uu long), put some trees on the hills all the way, then divide those segments with 2 pairs of zones and add fog (in my FM the distance between them is about 16 or 32 uu). Some of the trees should disappear when you're at either "end" of this road.
I wish I had some more spare time, because my SM's still look very simple, it would be great to find a method to "texture paint" landscape. For now my "road and hills" have only one texture - grass..
Ziemanskye on 1/7/2006 at 15:01
That I might have to try - I know fog by itself doesn't reduce visability (it does in UE2), but maybe with superfluous portals it does...
STiFU on 2/7/2006 at 08:53
Do I understand you wrong, or do you use veeeery big zoneportals to split your area into multiple parts? because it was said that big zoneportals would hit performance badly. More detail about that plz judith. (Perhaps you should even go further and write a tiny tutorial for the wiki. It is always handy to have such information for later FM-authors)
Judith on 2/7/2006 at 11:22
Hmm.. these zoneportals are indeed big, 640 x 1536 for example. I thought you might want to check it out yourselves, so I made a kind of a demo:
(
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=F4B13DF0412F5713)
or:
(
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9NYINJ5W)
Instructions
1) unpack the archive into your t3/content folder (it shouldn't overwrite any files)
2) run the editor
3) open map forest_demo.unr
4) hit the "play map" icon
Ok, head straight out the cave, and take a look around - I hope the performance is fine. If you want to check this concept turn right and go to the end of this road. You should see a torch, and blue feet. Stand there looking towards the west and start strafing south. You should notice that as you move, more trees appear in the gap between the hills.
Ziemanskye on 2/7/2006 at 13:06
Good news: it runs fine, which is surprising since my graphics card usually chokes on plantlife in this.
15fps is fine (on this computer, I say 10 an average and 8 an absolute, and rare, minimum)
Bad news: the fog's having no effect on the visibility - that's just your portals doing their thing quite normally. You also seem to have used two portals in each place, which is totally unnecessary and can (I don't think it is here, but it *can*) hurt performance more than it helps.
And yes large portals are allowed, but aren't recommended - as a little hint though, you can kind of cheat: use a BF textured brush to cover most of the space and put smaller portals in where you can see enough stuff for it to be worth it. The portal will draw the BSP and any meshes "visible" through/behind the BF brush. Mostly only of much use with large Smeshes, but it's still potentially useful to know. And if you have a smesh floor, you can step out of the world through the BF too, for the ultimate in visibility control (no portal, not even any world between A and B, just smeshes visible in both A and B, so they still get drawn inbetween!).
