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Mapping Help
This is the place to ask about mapping problems, techniques, and bug fixing, and pretty much anything else you want to do in the level editor.

For questions about coding, check out the Coding Help thread: https://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60097
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Transparency 
And in case you mean glass, just add key of "alpha" and a value between "0.0" and "1.0". No quotes of course. 
@ericw: 
alright, I will try that. Darkplaces actually runs the map fairly stably, which is another reason why the ezquake renderer needs to be redone. There are plans to do that.

Introducing `-forcegoodtree` helped the performance by quite a bit, but those slow spots are still apparent. I don't feel or mind them, but apparently other players will, and will cause my map to be depreciated.

I can't exactly give data right now, I'm on a trip. However, I will get back to you through email when I do. I will post my fully compiled map here as well.

It does seem to be caused by entities. When disabling them in the renderer, I get a stable 1300 fps around the map in ezquake (AMD card on linux, which is why my performance is lower than usual, others get way into the 3000s and are affected a lot less than me). With them on, I get the slow spots in ezquake.

@Bal

That is true that the performance is similar between dm6, but one of the things I wanted dm6pro to be is better than the original dm6 in every aspect, including performance. If I'm able to improve it, I will. Also keep in mind that there are people in the competitive community that do notice this stuff, but I honestly think it's a buncha bs most of the time. They all play aerowalk, which has similar "slow spots."

This is also an issue with ezquake, so that's introduced as a problem. Since that's the current engine that competitive players use, I will have to design the map around it. I think it actually may have to somehow do with how inefficient ezquake is at rendering entities, but that's only a theory. It's definitely correlated by my tests.

@Qmaster

Again, I will try to get back to you on that.

-----

Thanks for the great initial support, never got that here before.

On the side, do any of you actually like it? I've been trying to get opinions before I hand it up to the higher players. 
@spud 
Now that's how to answer a question in mapping help. I've used fence textures once before but I just learned how to do it properly. Cheers. 
@Spud And @Qmaster 
Thanks for your comments, this is very helpful! 
 
Took a peek at that valve documentation, really helped me understand how I actually need to use hint brushes. I doubt they will help, but they might do something. 
 
When you say that people are complaining about your map's performance, is it "bad performance" in the sense of "only a thousand frames per second instead of ten thousand"? Or is it a performance problem that could actually be noticed without watching an FPS counter? 
 
newbie question: how do I get so you have to kill/press 2 or more enemies/buttons to trigger something and get it to say "x more to go" 
 
o nvm I figured out button, through trigger_counter. trying to figure out monsters though 
 
no wait I'm dumb that's not right 
 
no wait I'm smart that's actually right 
 
but I have no idea how to make it work still 
Trigger_count 
Add a new monster:

"classname" "monster_army"
"target" "t1"

Add another one:

"classname" "monster_army"
"target" "t1"

And another one:
"classname" "monster_army"
"target" "t1"


Then add a trigger_counter:

"classname" "trigger_counter"
"target" "t2"
"targetname""t1"
"count" "3"


Now when you kill the three grunts, the target "t2" will be charched for use, ie a door, a teleporting monster, a light, etc. 
Charched? 
It will be searched for, added to a list, and then all entities on the name will be targeted.

So ya charched I guess, or searchargeted. 
Johnny Law: 
So, it was initially discovered by going around and looking at the FPS counter, however, I was told others would notice it, as well as it being in a key area of the map. 
What Fps? 
Min? Max? Average? 1st quartile?

If your min is 65 I wouldn't worry about it. If your min is 50, meh.
If 40, yeesh no good. 
 
how can I set a command to activate whenever I boot up the game? I'm using quakespasm and it has z-fighting by default but "gl_zfix 1" doesn't save the property when I close out of the game. I don't want to have to type the command every time I test my map. 
 
Put it in autoexec.cfg

If you don't have an autexec.cfg, create one in notepad and put it in the ID1 folder or mod of your choice. 
 
didn't work when I tried autoexec.cfg so I tried putting the command into config instead and that did it 
 
as someone who's brand new to mapping, this messageboard is a godsend. it's over 15 years old and I can still get helpful responses within a couple hours. that's nuts, and it's why I love quake so much 
@qmaster: 
I'm in the couple thousands here, lol. Average is 1300, max is 1600, but min is 700 in the fated spot, which is noticeable.

@ericw

changed my mind about email, lol. Anyway, so I used r_showtris, and all was revealed. standing in particular spots, the middle arena and the armor room were both being rendered for some reason. Some hint brushes in the entrance to this should help, I hope. I think it has to do with the long bridge brush that connects the semicircle to the hallway. 
I Did It! 
The major weird slow spots in my maps are now gone, but there are some that I cant do anything with because they are simply impossible to make any more efficient.

Thanks everyone! 
 
Well I saw a guy on the Discord chat mentioning it getting down to 4100 fps at one spot. Better throw it all out!!!

Seriously, if anyone is actually concerned about that kind of "frame dip" affecting the gameplay in any way... to me that sounds like "quantum HD gold-plated audiophile cables" level of delusion. I'd be interested to know though if there really is any good reason at all for worrying about framerates (min, avg, variations, whatever) once they are up into that regime. 
 
I can imagine being concerned about it if you have a brand new PC with high end kit or something along those lines - i'm pretty sure there are still people out there playing Quake on hardware from a decade ago.

It's not about if you can run Crysis, it's about if you can run Quake! 
 
Hardware from a decade ago is still hardware ten years newer than Quake. 
Idk, It Was A General Improvement 
That was ciscon, he's been helping me test. That spot is unavoidable anyway. Once or if the devs redo the ezquake renderer, I'm pretty sure none of this will be an issue.

Anyway, the reason why I'm making a big deal is that slow spots cause obvious dips that distract from competitive play. It's all worked out mostly now, so that's good. 
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