Are you making an uber-terrain map if I recall? If you get a minute, what sort of clipnodes/marksurfaces are you getting on that? 

Start your teleported monsters off in a hidden box outside your main level. Make them stand inside trigger_teleports, but give the triggers targetnames, that way they won't teleport until triggered. Set up your info_teleport destinations where you want your monsters to appear. Have another monster target the trigger_teleports - when you kill him, the others should teleport in. You might also want to add a delay to that. 

...strange, it sends me to the fat controller's Q1 ladder tutorial.

*shrug* 

Are you making an uber-terrain map if I recall? If you get a minute, what sort of clipnodes/marksurfaces are you getting on that?


from my qbsp.log:

---- WriteBSPFile ----
8259 planes 165180
13898 vertexes 166776
6414 nodes 153936
292 texinfo 11680
11280 faces 225600
25868 clipnodes 206944
4035 leafs 112980
13603 marksurfaces 27206
50568 surfedges 202272
25692 edges 102768
43 textures 783216
lightdata 0
visdata 0
entdata 30840

I just c'n'p, 'cause I honestly don't know what it all means :P 

With my map I get:

---- WriteBSPFile ----
15103 planes 302060
26567 vertexes 318804
13760 nodes 330240
847 texinfo 33880
22945 faces 458900
44954 clipnodes 359632
5951 leafs 166628
28612 marksurfaces 57224
101267 surfedges 405068
50691 edges 202764
54 textures 1130160
lightdata 0
visdata 0
entdata 30754


Already, I can see the similarity with the high clipnodes/marksurfaces ratio, which is I believe a result of loads of triangle brushes. I'm currently covering as much as I can with clip brushes, which is having a dramatic effect with reducing clipnodes, although I have a long way to go before they drop below the magic 32,000. 

If you are using Dark Places anyway, maybe you should consider the Quake 3 BSP format. You are using Q3 textures a 1 to 1 ratio would look better too.

PS. I still fear the Vonder! 

you would not be able to use Aquire's tools. 

with q3map2 and all of it's bazillion features or whatever 

I haven't researched the idea of Q3 bsp in Q1 yet. Can monsters still navigate the same? i.e. are the clipping hulls the same?

As for Q3 textures, well actually they are the same scale because I resize them 50% before I do the palette conversion.

And yes, having to use totally different compile tools would be a headache as well (not to mention having to switch to GTK). 

Those stats are after I replace the valley floors of my terrain with large flat brushes, which reduced the clinodes cosiderably. 

Another thing I need to do though is isolate patches of terrain that combine to form convex shapes, and replace those with single brushes. That should reduce a lot of overhead if I can find lots of instances of that. 

you're going to need it ;P 

yeah - although I reckon if I go really crazy with the clip brushes, I can probably get the clipnodes under the limit. 

a general interest in me publishing a high-capacity WinQuake 1.20 variant similar to GLQuake 1.20? 

That would be cool. Winquake has many useful features lacking in GL, r_drawflat for instance.

Btw, something I've been meaning to ask you; I've been using -hull # in your bsp tool recently, and I've noticed that clip brushes are still invisible - is that intended? 

. 

but also standard limitations on clipnodes etc. 

I previously have had no problems in my test maps with Q1 monsters in Q3 bsp's. Of course the hull construction has to be different to accomadate the crouching mode.

I had planned to send you one of my test maps, but when I tested it in Dark Places the bugger crashed! I have been tweeking the Dark Places code for my own sordid purposes, so that may be the culprit and then again, it could be a corrupted .bsp

I suggest building a small DM map with a good deal of connectivity and then running Reaperbots in the map. If the reapers can navigate in it then surely any monster set up you may have in mind would definitely work.

I'll get back to you later in the day. 

Sounds cool. I'd like to hear from any Q3 gurus, how do the hulls work in Q3 bsp? Logic would suggest that there only needs to be two hulls - a player hull and a crouch hull. Either way, they must be different to the Q1 hulls. So how does DarkPlaces handle the monster clipping? 

if you could put in the r_drawflat on your glquake engine, that'd be nice. ;) 

OK, I'll see what I can do. I have already a version where most of the improvements from my GLQuake seem to work, but there are a few weird things I'll have to investigate further. WinQuake also have the r_draworder cvar that's useful for checking visibility.

Kinn: Yes, clipbrushes are always removed entirely from hull 0. I actually haven't thought of if this is correct or not when using the hull # option.

Necros: I don't know how much work that is atm, maybe later. 

The bsp was corrupt. For shame! I am compiling a new version of it at this time. Currently it is giving Q3map2 a run for its money. I made extreme rez textures (each is at least 4 megs in size) for it with the idea of compiling the light maps and then replacing the textures with lower rez ones later.

As it stands it would actually be a decent map for Quake 3 Tourney, well after the textures are replaced, and a sky box is added . . . 

AguirRe, would it be difficult to make clipbrushes visible in -hull# builds? That would strike me as quite a useful option, as it would give a true visual indication of the clipping hull.

HeadThump, 4 meg textures? o_O. I hadn't thought of the idea of using hi-res textures to generate lightmaps, then replacing the textures. Although I don't think i'll be going down that road. 

It sounds like a good idea and it also appears easy to implement. But after looking at a typical DM map where large parts of the walls, floors etc are covered with the clip texture, I'm not so sure it's such a good idea.

Maybe this sounds awkward, but you can get a similar effect by just replacing "clip" with e.g. "clap" in a temporary copy of the map file and build with the hull # option.

You'll then either see the "clap" texture (if there is one) or the checkerboard pattern instead of the clipbrushes.

Have you tried this?

The search/replace operation can be automated using a standard sed (stream edit) utility if it needs to be repeated. 

They played like manly men. No problems.

A few notes about the Dark Places Q3 bsp implementation that is even different from its Q1 protocol. Ambient lights are stripped out and only sourced lights are used.

Models for the sourced lights are stripped out too. Its the biggest bitch I have with DP. You have to custom cache them in your mod like you did with that huge flame in Bastion (I know this works in Bastion, I've done a little, uhm, experimenting with it on the side).

You can convert the flames to Spr32 format and you'll get some sweet high high rez particle effects with them. Also, you can use glow or luma textures on surface lights. You wont even miss the old ambient light entity everywhere.

I'll convert everything to low rez so I can ship it to you. Don't expect much from those textures. They are just place holder solids.