Zone Portals in Open Air levels

STiFU on 5/11/2005 at 12:24

I have a vast open air area in my level. What can i do to increase performance there? In the tutorials about zoneportals is said that those shouldnt be too big. Shall i just leave that area as it is and try to use less details?

Ziemanskye on 5/11/2005 at 13:23

Less detail, less shadows and fewer lights (apart perhaps from AmbientVertex types),

We don't have anti-portals, and unless you have a building corner or something to portal the stuff around, putting portals across a big space only hurts performance.

Komag on 5/11/2005 at 13:59

So basically you have to just make it really simple with few lights, or else don't have big open areas. That's just the reality at this point with Flesh, until we all get vastly more powerful graphics cards to muscle through more complex scenes.

But at least we CAN make those areas with T3Ed, so we know that in two or three years we can still make a Thief 3 mission and the general system stats of everyone will be somewhat higher by then and we can build more demanding scenes.

It's sort of like Calendra's Legacy - there's no way that could have run well on people's PCs at the time when Thief 2 originally came out, but after a couple years it was doable.

STiFU on 5/11/2005 at 14:09

Ok! Perhaps i will add an archway or something like that to split that openairarea if it remains too bad... Thanks anyway!

But one other question. Do static meshes zone zoneportals? :) Because i have added a roof to a building and the attic doesnt count as a seperate zoneportal.

Ziemanskye on 5/11/2005 at 16:09

Nope, static meshes don't count - only bsp surfaces (though you can hide bsp inside smeshes and portal that way).

Beleg Cúthalion on 13/2/2008 at 13:39

Sorry for resurrecting this one, but I needed a thread about zones. So: Is it somehow possible to add a separated brush to another zone even if both are not linked in any way? At the moment I'm trying to make a fake cityscape that only appears for someone looking out a tower window. I experimented with several brushes but never got it working (and there are afaik already too many BSPs because I have no one who builds a church tower for me :tsktsk: ). If I could link the invisible brush in the sky which carries the roofs and silhouettes to the one in front of the window, there would be no problem.

Flux on 13/2/2008 at 14:30

Your problem is not related with zones, so this would have its own thread.
Anyway, If I understood correctly "fake cityscape that only appears for someone looking out a tower window" is the main problem.

This is not possible because we can't have multiple sky zone properties(although someone hacked this in ut2004 with scripts, which we can't)

Meaning, if you can see that fake cityscape from the tower window, it will be visible to the player when he is on the ground. (which should be, like in real life)

I suggest looking into castle maps. They did some tricks of invisible brushes and skyline meshes. Though I guess that won't be the ideal solution in your case. What you need two separate fake back drops one for general city and one for special tower window view, which we can't have.

Or else, if you insist, you can put this mesh in the skyzone, but set it to boutofworld to true and write a script to set it to false and link to a volume so when the player starts climbing the tower, this mesh will become visible and then turn it off again when the player leaves the tower.

Judith on 13/2/2008 at 14:36

What's the problem with having two or more skyboxes? You can set bOutOfWorld property on each element to true, and then switch it with volumes (and a proper scripts) on and off, where you like - at least in theory.

Flux on 13/2/2008 at 15:02

Heh, that sounds really interesting. Yes, why not?

Beleg Cúthalion on 13/2/2008 at 15:19

I'm afraid of scripts. :weird: No, in fact I wonder if/how I can simulate the whole city beneath with a special skybox. Miniature roofs? At the moment you see the second church tower and the church roof beneath it (the window -w- is on the inside between the two towers). The skyline should now be behind the second tower and there is not much to do since the real skybox works as a good background already. But the only thing left is a silhouette (etc.) as a middleground between the church and its walls and the skybox. Sketch:

Code:

Now the easiest thing would be to tell the invisible brush behind (or next to) the second tower to be part of the zone with the brush in front of the window, but not of the courtyard around the church. Since the second tower is also made of BSPs, I cannot separate the "roof section" to make the silhouette invisible to the courtyard, because I would split the tower in the middle. Now that I think about it...it would really be more easy to have a church tower smesh. Hm...anyone interested in the measurements? It would be very simple; just a box with the mansion (?) roof from TDS and maybe a few shutters near the top.