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[ReD NeCKersoN]

hope to hear your opinion guys

You obviously aren't giving up. It's about time somebody showed up that can stick with it! It's also very refreshing to see someone who wants to do the best they can rather than rush something simple to the public. I took some time out of my evening to put this together for you & other potential level designers. (I also had to make my own pk3 from your files to get everything working properly. D'oh!)

Some of your design basics are lacking, but your overall brushwork is quite surprising. I only found one "sparklie" in the whole level so far. Even more interesting is your creativity with this new map compared to your first attempt with Lago. Ghost Town feels much more like something I want to play. I like the layout, atmosphere & clean design. Now you just need to learn the stuff that all new mappers struggle with.
Click here & read the tutorials under optimization. Very important that you learn this!
In the console, /bind x toggle r_showtris & hit ENTER. Then you can toggle showtris on & off by pressing x. (While in devmap mode.)

On a side note, little things can make a nice visual difference. Try varying the size/angles of the dead trees for instance. The rooms in your buildings all look pretty much the same? Lately, I seem to prefer maps that only use a few textures. It's a clean look in my opinion & imparts a "theme-sort-of-feeling" to the level. Fairly nice work overall. Keep learning & you'll be ready for more advanced stuff before you know it.

[MachoBastard]

oh wow, thanks for takin so much time for just one of my maps, ive one almost "finished".. the one with the MAX_POINTS_ON_WINDING, i havent been able to fix that out so far..im not even sure whats causing it, made a backup and deleted some of the clipping brushes but the error will keep on appearing when compiling AAS.. tried the -meta and all the stuff ive found googling.. any ideas?..

oh..something else.. im tryin to check out my bots behaviour..but they see me when im close to em, are there any list of console commands so i can be invisible to em..like "cheats"?

thanks again red for the prefabs and the useful info

[Pardner]

Definitely give texture blending a try. I recommend making just a simple box map and then try creating a small path. Texture blending ca really change the look of the map:

(err was going to find some screens of 2.1 Backwater.. but they seemed to have disappeared)

oh..something else.. im tryin to check out my bots behaviour..but they see me when im close to em, are there any list of console commands so i can be invisible to em..like "cheats"?

you can use no clip, or just go into spectate mode.

[MachoBastard]

Heres a lil' somethin i made up with some free time i had..didnt know where to post it so here it is

WideScreen- 1440x900

Square- 1280x1024

sorry about the bad modelling, im sort of rusty on 3d max..also it was made hasty..lol

about the texture blending... couldn't find any related to it on the tutorial zone..any link?

[Pardner]

• General mapping links
  
  • SimonOC
    
    • Terrain Blending

the blending textures are made:
/textures/sg_blend/
and the alpha map textures are alread made:
/textures/sg_alpha/

the basic idea is cover your terrain with the blend texture and then place brushes with the alpha textures at the verticies. I see if I can whip up a quick tutorial for it this week.

[MachoBastard]

hi again, got this lil glitch, seems this water shader affects ase models only with touchin the water brush, is there any key i can add to the models to fix this? or ill need to swap em for brushes?.

underwater fog on ase models:
Underwater Fog

[ReD NeCKersoN]

I had the same problem in Steamboat. See HERE.
When using models, you'll need to use a water shader that doesn't have fog parameters. It should be ok to use brushwork instead, like you mentioned, as long as they aren't moving in & out of the water like Steamboat's paddles.

[MachoBastard]

i was wondering about this other shader glitch, is it just bad modelling? or a missing texture during compile? i enabled _rs and _cs for that tree, its not the same as the other pines behind..


pine_tree2.ase
Underwater Fog - shot0062.jpg

solved the fog problem replacing with brushwork

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Most likely you are missing a texture. I'd just use the pine trees that work well for you.

i enabled _rs and _cs for that tree

Save yourself some typing & just use the key spawnflags with a value of 4. Does the same thing.

[MachoBastard]

well..the problem is that the trees on the background have a lil problem, when you are close enough and you look up at the branches it drops the fps to 30 or 40..whats really not good when playing, but only when you are below the tree.. can this be fixed? or i need to replace the model?..

[ReD NeCKersoN]

If you have a lot of trees & brushwork (high polycount) but no "vis blocking" then I could see that happening. Remember, you should really learn how to design layouts that allow you to use structural burshes & hint brushes as mentioned earlier in this thread.
Try r_showtris 1 & tell me if you can see everything, from anywhere, all of the time.

[MachoBastard]

Howdy again, well im about to "finish" another map, but theres some details i dont like at all,also ill try to explain better about the fps-killer-trees..

if i try to use ASE models logs with a foggy underwater shader appears the outwater fog glitch on ase models.. as u saw in my previous post..

if i use brushwork logs on a water surface they strangely wont proyect any shadows on the surface.
No shadow proyecting log - shot0066.jpg
What ASE model logs actually do.
Shadow Proyecting ASE Model on water surface - shot0065.jpg
Also i really dislike theres no underwater effect with normal water shaders.. it just looks like the cowboy floats or somethin..lol
no underwater effect - shot0070.jpg
as i see the foggy underwater shader does a lot of glitches to happen.. any tips or hints to make some underwater effect so it wont look so simple?

Now..about the fps killer trees.

The pines i was talkin about drops my fps to 30~40 when i get close like this:
Under the pine branches! - shot0071.jpg
What doesnt happen if i walk a few steps away from it like this:
No fps drop - shot0072.jpg
so as long as i dont get close enough to the pine and look up toward to the branches everythin runs smoothly 80~120 fps.. im no genius engine or viewports programmer but this doesnt sound logic to me.. unless the tree polygon draw increase when i walk a few steps toward to it..?

btw, how do i avoid this to happen?
Light thru walls! - shot0063.jpg
some lights go thru the walls and show that lil light spot on the other side..

Again, thanks for your help guys!

[Pardner]

as i see the foggy underwater shader does a lot of glitches to happen.. any tips or hints to make some underwater effect so it wont look so simple?

I think the glitch are cause by the fog param in general. If you make any entity inside a fog box it will cause the same result. The shadows might be that shaders properties. Macho, you know you can write your own shader files right? you can customize how fast the water flows, the fog under it, the shadows, etc. Just open an existing shader, copy out the shader you need to modify, name the new shader file to your liking, and then add that name to the shaderlist.txt

Now..about the fps killer trees.

The pines i was talkin about drops my fps to 30~40 when i get close like this:
...
so as long as i dont get close enough to the pine and look up toward to the branches everythin runs smoothly 80~120 fps.. im no genius engine or viewports programmer but this doesnt sound logic to me.. unless the tree polygon draw increase when i walk a few steps toward to it..?

The tree is not sticking out the top of your skybox is it? I had this problem in NoNameCity. The big tree was poking out the top of the skybox and I was getting horrid fps draps when i walked under it.

btw, how do i avoid this to happen?

some lights go thru the walls and show that lil light spot on the other side..

viewtopic.php?t=997
if that doesnt fix it (which i dont think it will because thats not really a light leak) try makeing the light entity smaller. if you need a light source with only 5/6 side of a cube you can do what i did in NNC. look under sg_sfx and there is a shader named lightyellow_bright and lightyellow_darker. you can use these to add light to your map. you can always copy it and rename them and then customize it too.

[MachoBastard]

Ok, thanks for the info pard, had to improve some stuff with the foggy water, yea, i know about shaders creating..but if im not wrong ill need to include those shaders in my releases so any sg player can take a look at the map, right?..

about the trees, no, the skybox its way higher than em...but it seems it was a driver problem, had to format about 3 times and i dont get the fps drops anymore..instead i get a darkish glitches all over the branches like brushes overlaps..

i liked the sg_sfx's light shaders, its easier than adding just light entities, but the glitch was still there so i had to improve somethin again..everythin seems to be ok now...

now i got a problem that i cannot solve with aas and i cant go on with my map...

BSPC crash! - bspccrash.jpg

thanks for the info guys

[sparcdr]

Maybe a bug in BSPC. Try renaming "Smokin' Guns" to just "Smokin Guns".