I have the bsp I would not know what dump it would be since VIPER is gone and I didn't have it on my cycle for quite awhile due to that. But if you recall it crashed EPIC not long ago during a PUG or Scrim. Trickster or cyberkiller might have it. I believe it started crashing servers after we moved to 2013 but I can't be sure.
I'll take a look at it tomorrow. I have a idea why this and a few other maps always crash on high population.
Complacently forgot to posy back. Around this time Viper and Epic moved to new host also ? Plus it's been about 2 years since serves seen this many players. Now Nubs hosted in Canada. What was / is server info now vs then ? Decompiling forest shows lots of displacements. Tho they make maps look pretty. They put more strain on the server. All of the ground in forest has power X4 displacments. Not sure who or when this map was last redone. But I am 95% sure this is why maps like forest crash on full servers. Displacements add to server calculations and network traffic. Network traffic is where I think we are hitting the limits. Every time we get close to limits. "Big battles. Lots of ml spam." The server has to keep sending updates to clients and can't keep up. Clients start getting packet loss (lag) Clients then request full updates = crash. Displacements are not the only issue but they add to it. That's why some maps like forest crash more then others. 1 solution is models in place of some of the displacements. In stead of using displacements all way around the map for walls.(like most maps do) use a small model.. 2013 port did have some changes but mostly improvements. So one idea is for events (scrims and pugs) Have stripped down maps on the event server. Very few displacements, No exploding barrels, No dropping shipping containers,ect.. Basically mimic the shape and flow the normal maps but focus on stability and performance.
Slaughtered has (and has had for almost a decade) a full grid of ^4 displacements. I know it's bad but it's a huge huge huge time sink to redo them as smaller ^3 displacements since cutting them up would mutate the geometry irrecoverably. The brushes they're based on are relatively large though, around 2048 units square, with an 18x18 grid thats 324 ^4 disps plus probably another 150 in the skybox but these are physics disabled. How many does forest have roughly? Do you think disabling physics on disps that don't get any interaction with players or physics to begin with is a possible improvement?
VIPER never changed hosts I was with same host for the 5 years VIPER was up. It worked for years then at one point it started crashing servers
I have always been told never use higher the ^2 displacements. If you need that lvl of detail use models. With emp_Forest even with the compiler it throws up warnings that ^4 displacements will require more server cpu and ram. Every displacement adds calculations. sound,light,shadows,walk able, ect.. Higher the displacement power the higher the calculations and the higher the network traffic. Every step you take there are calculations ran server side and relayed back. Angle, position,ect. If it is within the skybox it is interacting with players/physics. As for Forest physics 6097477/4194304 (145.4%) VERY FULL! So out of the 4194304 max the map is using 6097477...Majority of that is displacements. So like I was saying some ways to cut back is In place of the outer wall being displacements. Make the outer wall a scaled down model and use 3d skybox. Lower all displacements to ^2 or lower. Any thing higher should just be a model. (reference - emp_forest physics 6097477/4194304 (145.4%) VERY FULL! models 4/1024 192/49152 ( 0.4%) Move stuff from physics to models.) @Varbles - Don't get me wrong. I love your maps. They look amazing. Just saying maybe we should try the same maps without displacements with a full server to test if that would fix the problem.
Silk did some testing a year or so ago, just dropping from ^4 to ^3 disps was a huge change in the physics department. Like, really huge. It might be enough to get forest back within the limit.
"only" the floor is x4 displacements, outer walls are x2, inner walls x3. the floor is 1920x1920blocks, just cut it in half and lower displacement level by 1 (in that order or youll lose detail - also dont select all disps at once when doing that, it might crash hammer). it should instantly free up a lot of physics memory even though verts stay the same. also you serious about that model thing? i can think about a million things why you wouldnt want to do that (in source at least, and actually its also not a millon reasons, but a handful at least, mainly revolving around "dafuq i cant even imagine how unnessecary complicated that would be" ) i have a emp_forrest_ob.vmf btw - i dont think its decompiled, but honestly idk - i cant tell how old it is either, or if its the latest version - it certainly is a couple of years old (file says 2011). https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/331067/empires/emp_forest_ob.zip
Anything higher the ^2 displacements would be better as a model. Reason - Only reason you ever need more then ^2 is for more detail. You don't necessarily need more physics. You just want things to look how you want them to look while mapping. You want mountains to peak a certain way. Or you want a rock just to look more rock like. Models can give you the more detail but with the big difference of the mesh. You can go as detailed as you want. But the mesh will set how the physics interact with that model. You never go crazy with the mesh it basically squared out. So you have flat surfaces the physics are dealing with. Models do have some down sides. Like rag dolls falling threw them. Like when you die in a rax. So they are not ideal for the ground. But ether is displacements any higher then ^2. It's the ground you don't need that much detail. Ideally in place of both you would want Hd textures. That would give the impression of depth of field. That way you could apply a texture on a flat surface and give it that nice natural 3d look. without putting more strain on the physics.
you dont say i guess thats the reason why the ground is x4 displacements and those are the problematic ones. i assume simon didnt know. actually a lot didnt until silk figured that out not so long ago. and if it was neccessary to have the middle cliffs x3 idk, i didnt make it, i made my cliffs x2 bc im too lazy to push thousands of vertices around. also with sources incredibly convenient workflow i totally see how creating model cliffs for a whole map is gonna work out. entity limits aside. dont get me wrong, i hate displacements, but theyre there for this very reason.
Models are simple. Even if you hate modeling programs. There is always propper. In case you don't know propper makes models by allowing you to compile as a model in place of a bsp. So you could take existing cliffs. 1. Convert them to a model. 2. Scale down to 1:16 scale 3. Add the 1:16 scale model to 3d skybox. 4. add in clip brush where cliffs was. 5. do some touch ups like sealing the map. You now have the same looking map with 1 1:16 scale model doing the same thing as all them pesky resource stealing displacements. All with only a -1 to your entity limits.
no matter how you turn it, the gain isnt gonna be worth the effort. just use non-x4 displacements and you should be fine. what i proposed takes a couple of minutes, your suggestion an hour if not several ... ... and for on-the-fly mapping where you might still want to change stuff its even more inconvenient. sure, technically it is an option, but i would recommend not to try.
the only reason why forest crashes now is because the jump to the new engine made ^4 displacements use ALOT more physics power. anything else has nothing to do with the crashing
Same engine updated code.. But this gave me an idea. Was it the code from 2013 or was it the fix candles did ? When we first switched to 2013 we got stuck on everything. So candles had to push a few updates. That made Empires playable again. Also new ^4 displacements are more optimized then older ^4. It's one of the changes in the code for compiling bsp. So even recompiling older maps in the updated hammer will show some improvements. As Empires really hasn't seen any updates... I'm not sure if the updated compiler was in the live sdk before the port. So might need to install the current 2013 sdk for the improvements. //I really hope when we do see an update it moves us to the current version of 2013 sdk. There has been lots of improvements / bug fixes.
so did anyone actually recompile any version? i have the above vmf (and anyone who downloads it aswell) just need to tell me. edit: i might have found the issue. the center floor platform in my version has really bad brush geometry. its off-grid, hollowed AND partially a displacement. so either this is a decompiled map where something went horribly wrong or chances that it has to do with this brushes aren't so bad. if someone has a different version please check - if mine is decompiled there might be other issues aswell. thats the displacement in question Spoiler
