Quake3World

not impressed by how this turned out after 20 hours of trying this trying that.
no matter what i tried i just couldn't vis the map properly.

i gained maybe 20 fps on this map sacrificing nice lighting but the map is quite playable.

there are changes to the map but nothing extreme ..some textures were changed and some models and effects were deleted for game flow.

O'dium made a very good map and i tried my best .
the map needs an complete overhaul to work in quake4 properly.

at one point i remade the map getting rid curves,patches and fancy stuff but i looked really plain so i gave that up.

here is the link to beta3 as i call it.


http://www.savefile.com/files.php?fid=7508042

Well, I'm not an expert in terms of optimalization (still fighting with some fps drops on my last map :P) but I believe this map can be optimized much, much, much better, and it's not a question of visportals. Too bad i've got no textures for the map, but I looked at the it anyway and made few points.
First of all: you didn't optimize patches' subdivisions. To do this select a curve, press s and check "Subdivide Patch" option. Then reduce patch subdivisions using sliders below.

BEFORE:


AFTER:


It looks worse, but still fine.

Next, your biggest sin Caulk brushes under curves don't block the vis as good as they should be. Let's look at this corner:


Now the caulk brushes are placed in that way:


Place them like this, almost along the line of a patch:

Notice that the edge on the left is much closer now, it's actually in the same place where the edge of the patch is.

Don't know why you did it, but there are many curves that overlaps each other. Didn't look at it closer, but in this way you probably force the engine to calculate more shadows. I've "fixed" it and reduced the number of subdivisions:


One more pair of shots. Those show how many polygons you can save with patch subdivisions (curves are still overlapped here though):
BEFORE:

AFTER:


I think you should get a lot of fps after all those procedures. Unfortunately I've got no time to do it by myself (also I'm not a fan of remakes ).
Good luck anyway. It can be done.

good work sir lukin :icon14:

I haven't looked at the map direct but there are a few more tris to be saved on the floor curves using end caps instead of full tris strips, like so:

Foo wrote:I'm a bit late, but you might consider creating those curves like this instead:


by making the undersides from caps and 2 brushes, you save some tris, and as a side benefit light wont leak down through the patch (because the caulked brushes are in its way.

This screenshot shows what I'm referring to in the bottom-left:

You can see a tris strip being used to edge the floor around the curved wall. This can be replaced with an end cap mesh to reduce tris (at the expense of some overdraw). I mocked up a quick radiant example:


I'm not up to speed on Q4's performance specifics so I couldn't tell you how much of a 'real' benefit you'd see with these tris savings, and how much you'd lose to the overdraw.

those are some dramatic differences in the number of triangles.

tonight i will try again and hopefully the caulk behind curves could be where i couldn't figure out why visportals wouldn't work properly.

the visportals in the map i linked i know are not done correctly in that version because i didn't delete some overlapping brushes at the bottom of doorways ,when i did they still didn't work anyway so i just left them.

i will redo everything mentioned

Community ftw!

Nice little essay on optimizing patches, there, Lukin. :icon31:

Way to go guys! I can't wait to see how this turns out.

god you guys rock so hard thanks for your work guys nice to see quake3world come together. :icon23: :icon23: :icon23:

o'dium's ignorance ftl

j/k. sort of.

I want to see new screenshots wtf.

still working on it .. rebuilding everything you can't see .. it's gonna take all night ++

Mogul wrote:o'dium's ignorance ftl

j/k. sort of.

Cant blame a man for trying. At least its going to get someplace.

Its all good

i have visportals now but the main room is still drawing too much .. i'll get it done if it kills me.

axbaby wrote:i have visportals now but the main room is still drawing too much .. i'll get it done if it kills me.

I assume you're using the performance debug hud? If not, it makes tweaking stuff a lot easier. Info here, just in case:
http://www.iddevnet.com/quake4/LevelEditor_Performance

using as a test just 1 ambient light ..gotta fix vis before i need to tweak lights .
thanks for the link .. i'll be on the map all day all night..got a weekend off finally.
original beta had some overdraw but not too bad

Can we get a pk4 next time if at all possible?

I think we should all wait till its close or done to get a pk4 that way people don't say this map sucks on a beta version.

i finally got it vised properly and fps are way way better.
i will release it tomorow.

oooo nice one ax.

shadd_ wrote:oooo nice one ax.

I second that one!

axbaby! You have a PM to read. I'll see everyone tomorrow night
after a good day with the wife and kids.

Great, this really IS going somewhere.

tonight for sure