Making bad stuff because you're making it for an audience of idiots is a rather poor excuse. I might map for fun but for me fun is congruous with producing actual good stuff, I don't enjoy producing shit. If it's fun, it will be more fun if it looks better and plays better due to more effort being put into optimisation and visuals.
Odd, my experience is different. They need to be hovering at least a unit above the ground, otherwise the refinery won't place. (Though, hovering too far above the ground could probably cause other issues.)
Well i have some 1 or 2 units in the ground and some 1 or 2 above, but the problem ones don't seem to have anything to do with how far it is above the ground. I tried them multiple different ways and still nothing. I redid the entities. Hopefully this worked because this is probably my last compile for the night. Edit: It worked for one but not the other... Also the snowfall runs out after I join a team, e.g. when I'm still unassigned there is snow, but if I go spec or BE or NF, it stops spawning.:confused: Edit again: Fixed both refs and the snow problem. Zenarion has made some nice new textures, which I am testing now.
have them hover over the ground, if your res node is below ground or your terrain is sloped up in a section that your ref will cover the ref will not place. you can actually have your res point hovering several feet off the ground and it will still place fine. Few inches or so underground and it wont. Does not have to touch ground to work. If I'm placing refs on uneven terrain I generally lift them a fair ways off the terrain and check em out in game and just lower the ones that are too high. And Chris...well how do you respond to the ego... well anyway you ignore the fact that displacements are very easy to render, one the the most inexpensive items you can use to add to your map. You ignore the other attributes the z-clipping plane can provide and just spew some nonsense that goes something like 'im the biggest and the best'. Simply because you dont like open maps like duststorm doesnt mean your word is worth a shit, its a matter of preference. Saying all maps should be linear canyons is simply YOUR opinion of what a good map is. Source isnt really built for most empires maps, they are all very large and open. But that doesnt change the fact that its what people want out of maps for empires. I guess I should re-write some benifits of z-clipping plane since you cant seem to even read them or maybe understand them. While by default empires entities do fade with distance and you can make shit like prop statics fade by setting values in them you cannot do that with brushes and water especially. For instance In tropic vendetta the skybox blimp undercarriges are simplified blocks, there is no inside to them, there is a significant ammount of detail cut out of them, the prop physics, boxes and everything arent viewed or anything. all water after 10240 units is rendered as simple water and doesnt reflect or anything, that alone saves significant FPS since when do you care if you see a reflection a football field away. Things like the SAM sites arent rendered across the map. If your map has significant brushwork say some detailed interrior buildings you could just make them simple brushwork block from far away, it acts as a LOD control for mappers to use. The way valve has made 3dskybox's render is general makes it a performance boost. Maybe YOU never considered any of these benefits or simply even tested them on a map but the skybox barely scratches performance. Since I guess it takes you 2 years on average to make a map that is basically a bunch cylinders copied and pasted around the map HL1 style its easy to forgive your ignorance. I dont know why you think that looks good but w/e, again MY OPINION. I personally think the mapping should be worked around a gameplay concept, I've made several gameplay concept maps and they have either failed(frozensummit) or succeeded(alpinerush) in their gameplay goals. Which im fine with having a few trial runs with these maps too see what really works since they are just filler maps that take a day or 2 of effort to make. Failure of concept? no biggie not alot of time lost. Success of concept? build on it or make a new map with the concept in mind, just put some effort into it the second go around. Basically im trying to say that the gameplay is priority and aesthetics can come later. You didnt even test kutm before completing it, you basically completed the map full of what you think of as aesthetics then are too far down the road to fix it for gameplay. I'll prolly just leave it at that. Sorry switch I didnt mean to more derail your thread and prompt more of chris's trolling, I normally just ignore this kinda shit, but I couldnt leave what he said being taken as true without argument. I think experience and success play out far better than his theory on how it should work. Because I dont know if you notice, no one plays shadows or kutm. Just keep making your map as you think it will best play out, get feedback and just make it work.
Func_lod will fade with distance, that's what it's for, make the movement controls a small nodraw block and then parent a func_lod to it. Or better yet, get off your arse and model it. http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Func_lod You shouldn't need to fade water, water is used within the confines of visleafs, of course if you're an idiot and don't know how to use visleafs and instead cover the entire map with water you will have a problem, which is why tropicvendetta lags like shit. You could also use non-reflective water if you must use it in large areas, considering tropicvendetta's water spends most of its time reflecting the skybox you should be using it all the time, but you aren't. I don't need to use idiotic optimisation methods because I can use the proper optimisation methods like the visleaf system and areaportals and all the other things which the engine is designed for and which actually work, I don't make stupid maps which are entirely unoptimised and blame it on 'oh the engine isn't designed for optimising my map' because that isn't an excuse, you build your map around the engine, not in defiance of it. If you are incapable of doing that you need to learn. Making a fast map to concept something out is fine but when you make the same map that has been made nonstop for the past two years that's not fine, because it's a waste of effort, adds nothing, you learn nothing from it (if you're learning how to map you shouldn't be releasing the shit you make).
even if it would make me highly unpopular, i have to side with chris on thisone (without the whole idiot calling though) mapping for empiresmod are however very unfriendly conditions etc, since source still is designed with closed architecture in mind
Which is why you learn how to think in rooms. King is an empires map more or less like canyon in structure, or slaughtered, or coast, but fly above the optimisation and disable the areaportals and see how many FPS I managed to drag back from oblivion by simply knowing how to map. You can build a map which can be played using empires tanks and empires infantry and empires commanders and still optimise it, you can plenty big enough for the game as well, it's simply down to knowing how to map, and empires mappers don't.
yea, but the thing why i said it was unfriendly for empiresmod was that some of the more open maps end up being 2 or 3 rooms, maybe even just 1 room if you designed it poorly
But that's not an empires problem, that's bad mapping, you don't build one huge room for a game level, you build many rooms, the same is true of empires, you just use more of the grid. Empires is just a scaled up version of normal source mapping.
Beautiful. Not only does it look quite good, but it plays really, really quite well. Great stuff Varbles. Needs heavier snow though, and more rocks. The tall pine trees also look a little odd since they don't have snow on them. Nice work.
I put this map on VIPER and when we entered the game the map was pink and black checkered. I triple checked and all the files are uploaded on both servers, empires and fast downlaod, but I did notice that the file Emp_glacial_b1.vtf has a capital E, would this be the cause?
res files are case sensitive I think, as I recall I had that issue with king's res file, but it shouldn't make a difference ingame if you have the right files.
I dlded the map from first page of this thread. So whatever files are in there that's what I uploaded. When I tried to create a server just before and chose this map it started loading and then poof hl2 disappeared, so something is wrong with the files I downloaded I believe. Anyone else having this problem?
They are, in ma first release of ma emp_internetisforporn4, I had all files with a capital, so half the people couldn't spawn for the rest, the minimap was white, IF I remember.
I took off the files and used switches files to repalce them, now on both create a server and VIPER the mpas loads and at very end of loading the screen poofs and takes me back to desktop.
I figured out the problem, the map didn't support -dxlevel 80, when I put my launch options to -dxlevel90 the map worked fine. Varbles is correcting the issue.
