Quake3World

Dunno if you know, but i've been doing a bit of mapping for Q4 of late, trying to bring PROQ3DM6 into Q4. Now I've had a bit of trouble along the way, not with scales, but with physics, height differences etc. At one point i had to rip out most of the map because the player jumps HIGHER in Q4, heh. Then I had to rebuild the map and... You get the idea...

Anyways, I'm trying my hardest here with this map but I cant for the life of me get any vis working in this level. It just will not work right.

I stopped working on lighting ages ago just to do vis work as you will probably tell by the rough shadows, so ignore these, as well as the textures which a couple are obviously Q3.

It would be very helpful if somebody could take a look at my map, tell me where i'm going wrong, and help me along the way. Quite a few people wouldn't mind this finished, myself included.

Thanks in advance.

REMOVED the file. I just noticed one big ass fucking retarded error, heh.

Sorry if you already have it, hold on a sec.
EDIT: Side note. I've also found a few flickering texture spots in the map, yet there is no reason why they would do this and TBH have left me stumped. There is only a single brush there, so it shouldn't flicker :s Any ideas?

Did the 'one big ass fucking retarded error' purtain to your VIS-problem? (Not likely, unless you left everything detailed).

Texture flickering indeed suggests Z-fighting.
Then again, you say there aren't overlapping textured brush faces.

Just up the map file.
Don't be shy.

And please specify problem areas' coordinates when you do.

Still need help with the map?

Whoops, thought i re-posted, I only posted in Q4 disc:

http://www.quake2evolved.com/files/odq3dm6_beta2.zip

OK I spent 20min to see what you had there. It looks good but its going to need alot of work to get it to play right. Don't want to come off as negative here just tryin to help.


First off heres a bit of vis work in the lower area. I managed to improve my fps by about 20. It would be alot higher but you have way too many lights overlapping on surfaces. You will need to remove quite a few lights and cut up brushes so that you don't have an insane amount of lights over lapping. I will explain that below.

Map with vis portals
[lvlshot]http://www.planetquake.com/bkp/scrotch/od_s1.jpg[/lvlshot]


Light problem

I removed about 4 lights from this area shown here (same shot as above but with r_showlightcount 1 turned on. Here is a comparison of the tweaked one on the top and the original on the bottom. I didnt spend much time with it cuz it will take some time but you can see the difference already just by removing some lights and repositioning them. You dont really want more than 2-3 lights overlapping on a face at any given time or else you get a big FPS hit. Keep an eye on your lights bounding box and tweak its shape, also make use of the "J" tool so you can postion the light center around to direct your light without having to stretch its size to a massive amount. If you have a large open area try to cut up the brush face into smaller pieces so multiple lights dont add to the count.

Tweaked version - notice the walls have some blue on them now, means there is only 3 lights hitting that face. There is still a huge problem as you have alot of white/pink faces showing, which means you have way too many lights on these faces.

[lvlshot]http://www.planetquake.com/bkp/scrotch/od_s2.jpg[/lvlshot]

Original Map Light - everything is pretty much white.
[lvlshot]http://www.planetquake.com/bkp/scrotch/od_o1.jpg[/lvlshot]


If you wish I could try and spend some time this evening working on lighting an area and I could send you the .map file.

Please do, I would like to see the results. I was having a hard time with lighting anyways, everybody just moaned it was to dark all the time...

Alright I'll take a look after work tomorrow and see what I can come up with. Are you alright if I make some slight structural changes to make the visportals work a bit better?

Maybe this will make up for the DM6 I never finished for DOOM 3 a year ago heh.

Well it depends, it cant change too much for obvious reasons. I've already had half the world bitching at me because the doorways are higher, even though they were bitching at me before that because they couldn't jump through them... heh...

Do whatever you feel is right!

Yeah I was just reading the novel on the Q4 boards. I'd only make a change if it was necessary to increase performance so the map is more playable. I'd also try and blend it into the theme so its not like a huge noticable thing.

Hmm, now you have me worried. It cant be a big change, thats the thing, otherwise it may throw it off alltogether.

But, do whatever you think is needed and we can see that later I guess. :icon32:

Managed some progress. Some areas portal nicely, while some others are still having mjor problems, but on average my FPS have gone up anywhere from 10-30 fps. Some areas Im maxed or near max FPS. I also removed alot of lights to try and help, there is still alot of overlapping tho.

If you want the .map let me know, maybe it will give you something to work with. PM me an email address or something I can send it to.

I want it.

JJ, want to try it too

Are we gonna see this map Q4dm6 finish someday ???

dan1407 wrote:Are we gonna see this map Q4dm6 finish someday ???

Twas a valiant effort I guess.

Too bad it died in battle though.