Map overhaul poll

Discussion in 'Mapping' started by Silk, Mar 9, 2014.

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Which map would you prefer getting an overhaul?

Poll closed Mar 30, 2014.
  1. canyon

    5 vote(s)
    45.5%
  2. duststorm

    3 vote(s)
    27.3%
  3. isle

    4 vote(s)
    36.4%
  4. mvalley

    4 vote(s)
    36.4%
  5. slaughtered

    3 vote(s)
    27.3%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Last edited: Apr 6, 2014
  2. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    the amount of work in photoshop really makes me want to start ...

    ... not ^^

    but its white background so much much better then everything i found so far. search terms really make a big difference - whod have guessed ^^
     
  3. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Well I recompiled Chain and Bush and I'm relatively hopefull the minimap problems will be solved. Also took the time to improve them.

    Bush:
    - Slightly less bright HDR light, but still the most sunny and colorfull map of all
    - Very minor optimizations to the center bunker, probably not even noticeable

    Chain:
    - Better lighting (it was too red at first)
    - Some minor practical tweaks
    - Redid the center east and west brushwork to have more details and to look better overall. The ladder for infantry to get to the second level has been moved inside the round tower. It's still a bit blocky, but the difference is significant. This'll have to do.

    Three comparisons between old and new chain

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u...ain_30032014/chain_brushwork_comparison_1.jpg
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u...ain_30032014/chain_brushwork_comparison_2.jpg
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2014
  4. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    oh that looks really nice
     
  5. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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  6. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    We need this as anti rocket countermeasures.
     
  7. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Well since it's physics they collide with vehicles, and that's a bit annoying. I wanted them to be like that cause it would look weird if it passes through a tank, but being solid they actually can be annoying obstacles at times.

    We might have to remake them breakable again, and just have a new one spawn somewhere when one of them gets destroyed. I'll try to test some things next week, though i won't have nearly as much time as the previous week.
     
  8. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    lol tumble weed hits a solder he gets knocked away a bit and takes 10hp dmg.
     
  9. Varbles

    Varbles Simply Maptastic. Staff Member

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    Every iteration of slaughtered has had player clip and func_vehicleclip brushes over everywhere not meant to be accessed. I haven't kept up with this new engine update (sorry) but my first guess would be that somehow the implementation of those brushes didn't translate to the new Empires. Unfortunately I don't have access to any of the source files for the foreseeable future, or Empiresmod itself for that matter, but if anyone can fill me in on what the problem is I'm sure there's a solution.
     
  10. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    Considering what the tumbleweeds are, maybe he had an allergy.

    Slaugh had exploits for like the past 1,5 year at least.
     
  11. [lodw]keef

    [lodw]keef Hobbit

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    Duststorm is actually ready for particle effects immediately, when I left it I kept a particle callout in the map so all you need to do is add the duststorm.pcf
    http://empires.martinpace.com/images/keef/250bugs/duststorm.pcf
    to your empires particles directory or add the line
    "file" "!particles/duststorm.pcf" //Weather on Duststorm ~LAGGY~
    to your particles_manifest.txt

    The duststorm.pcf linked here is a toned down version, empty had made a cool one back in the day with some serious wind effects but there was complaining about lag by peeps with old computers, if you could find the older one you could probably just use it instead, I hope people have upgraded their PC in the last 10 years. Also empty it should still be on that 60 second timer if your feeling ambitious.

    Canyon is supposed to have detail sprites, however detail.vbsp is one of the poorest regulated file with how it is setup and as such sprite callouts have been lost on textures through the years and would have to be remade. Call that my bad. Also you can force detail sprite render distance client side, I did it on tropic vendetta, not sure if anyone even noticed.

    Love the sand texture there btw, one thing about the prop physics is they can cause a bit of lag if overused, but again hopefully peeps have upgraded in the last 10 years and I really think things that break up the static of a map really bring it to life.

    Mvalley only sort of got an overhaul several years ago, it was mainly because the vmf for it was corrupt for it and caused all kinds of weird shit to happen so I had to remake the map from scratch and so I redid the Dam in the process but focused on recreating the original terrain for the rest of it, nothing else really done to spice it up.

    actually it wouldn't even be that difficult to implement something like that on duststorm using the technique I used in tropicvendetta for the waves: make a translucent texture, add some light waves of sand on it, make 1 or 2 more of them, create another displacement layer on the map a couple units higher than current terrain and add that texture to it(you can turn down the displacement resolution for this as well). If you wanted to not be as lazy as keef you could also make a completely translucent blend texture with it too so you could make it blend away, I picked the lazy route and just sunk the far end of the displacements into the water.


    Aaaaaaaannnnnddd I'm done.
     
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2014
  12. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Hmmm ... interesting ...

    Tested tumbleweeds in duststorm btw. Only placed 3 (never intented to have more than that). They work, but unless I can improve their movement they move a bit weird. Once in motion it's good, but changing direction looks a bit weird as for roughly a second they will still be rolling in the previous direction while already moving in another as a whole. Gonna try if I can make them heavier so they roll more instead of flying, without going slower.

    Although I feel a new mapping break coming. Echelon tired me out ^^
     
  13. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Doubleposting, but this is very surprising yet interesting information imo.

    So the source engine can compress physics on displacements (ground/cliffs) if NONE displacement surface uses power 4 (there's 2, 3 or 4 to choose between).
    I've been given the vmf's for Canyon and Duststorm this week and noticed they did use power 4 displacements. I wanted to see if changing it down to 3 would make a difference. Of course in order to keep the exact same amount of detail, i had to cut ALL displacements with power 4 in 4 smaller displacements before lowering them to power 3. The total amount of detail/vertices is exactly the same as before, but there's a lot more displacements in the map yet with lower powers.

    These are the ... very unexpected ... results.
    Out of a long list of parameters at the end of a map compile, this is the physics value:

    Old canyon (craters are power 4):
    physics [variable] 4468074/4194304 (106.5%) VERY FULL!
    New canyon (craters are power 3 with 4 times as many displacements):
    physics [variable] 80171/4194304 ( 1.9%)

    Old duststorm (half the map is power 4):
    physics [variable] 23790926/4194304 (567.2%) VERY FULL!
    New duststorm (only power 3, about twice as much displacements in total):
    physics [variable] 252125/4194304 ( 6.0%)

    That is one huge change for something easily avoidable.
    No idea if anyone even notices this ingame, but it might very will help on old pc's.
     
  14. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    Silk... (not being rude) I don't know what that means when you post things like that. What does physics variable 100% or more even mean? Is it some arbitrary amount that valve says the object is taking up too much processing time?
     
  15. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Oh I have no idea about how important they are or what their impact is on performance, but the numbers are insane. Although I should have added the headers of that list

    Code:
    [U]Object names       Objects/Maxobjs    Memory/Maxmemory    Fullness[/U]
    physics           [variable]           4468074/4194304      (106.5%) VERY FULL!
    physics           [variable]           80171/4194304        ( 1.9%)
    physics           [variable]           23790926/4194304     (567.2%)
    physics           [variable]           252125/4194304       (6.0%)
    
    In order: Old Canyon, New Canyon, Old Duststorm and New Duststorm
    
    All I know this shows the memory used for that type of .. object, with physics being one of around 45 objects listed. Going above maximum memory almost never seems to be a problem, with a few exceptions I noticed in the past.

    What surprised me so much is the impact of power 4 displacements. ALL my maps are below 100% on everything. Maps like chain, bush and downfall are filled with displacements, almost all power 3. They have roughly 2 to 10 times as much displacements and/or displacement detail than for example canyon and duststorm, yet all of them are very far below 100% on physics.

    So canyon has barely and displacements and detail in comparison, most of them power 2 and very little of them, which makes for 1.9%. Sounds decent. Then when the first guy who made the map a decade ago made the craters, which are power 4 (which in amount of detail for the entire map compared to chain and downfall is still almost neglectable), the map's physics jumped from 1.9% to 106.5% just because the presence of a few power 4's somewhere meant the engine couldn't compress any of the displacements anywhere.

    Duststorm: 567% ?? My version, with the same amount of detail and actually more displacements, has only 6%, over 94 times less.

    For something that silly ...
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2014
  16. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    so if i mix disps at the power of 2 and 3 its totally ok, but as soon as i have a single power 4 disp physics memory usage skyrocket?
    it would be interesting to know what the percentage actually means. i find it odd that it even says max-memory size and you still can allocate 600% of it.
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2014
  17. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Yes to both ... it would be interesting to know.
    Although like I said, usually you don't notice anything.

    Did a complete check just now.

    This is canyon without a single power 4 displacements:
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/234836/mapping/Power 4 displacements/No_Power_4.jpg

    Here I turned one power 3 into power 4 (below right on the image):
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/234836/mapping/Power 4 displacements/One_Power_4.jpg

    The link below is a comparison of ALL objects. The displacements compression made possible by not having power 4's pushes the "physics" for displacements into "physics terrain" I think. So while "physics" drastically drops, "physics terrain" starts using some memory. The difference is still huge, and in total even bigger than I thought.

    Blue backgrounds point out changed values
    Green are improved values, red the opposite:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/234836/mapping/Power 4 displacements/Power_Difference.jpg

    That's 1/3rd more in total from having 1 power 4.
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2014
  18. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    Now the question is... which takes more power to process when live? Terrain or individual physics objects?

    Also... does any of this change compile time?
     
  19. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    oh i just read that
    we need hundreds of them, if not thousands mwahahaha

    no but seriously, dont you think 3 is a bit few for a map like duststorm? unless it really gets a question of performance ofc.
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2014
  20. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    If I add more it'll feel gimmicky to me. I could consider 4 or 5, but I'd strongly advice against more than that.

    Haven't worked on them since then btw, and in the current state they weren't realistic enough. Focus this weekend was on detail props for canyon ... but I hit a dead end there I fear.

    Next two weekends I should have plenty of time to be bored enough to try again though. This week I'll probably just be mildly bored.

    @viro
    Compile time from those screenshots looks the same
    vbsp doesn't matter for compile time anyway. Echelon might be my first map that reaches 10 seconds there.

    Edit:
    Managed to get realistic behavior for the tumbleweeds. The sounds when hit are wrong though, but that might be fixable:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRRTDmam0us&feature=youtu.be

    More problematic though is the strange physics when vehicles bump into them. I don't know if this can be solved.

    And then most problematic is that commanders can place buildings on them. Half the time the building template turns red and it can't be placed, the other half you can actually place a building on top of them. Sometimes they roll out of it, but sometimes they get stuck inside it untill the building gets destroyed. Don't think that is fixable :(
     

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