How goes the vis project with the map I sent you Willem? 

Yes, 20k portals is very big, with older vis tools you wouldn't even be able to vis it at all, make sure to use an enhanced vis that can handle it (mine does and I think Tyrann's works, too).

Also, make sure to use a modern qbsp that doesn't create bogus prt files with a huge amount of portals, all wrong. Again, mine and Tyrann's should do.

For more info about improving vis times, see my ToolTips doc. 

"How goes the vis project with the map I sent you Willem?"

My interest sort of petered out there, sorry. I got caught up in other stuff but thanks for sending it along anyway! 

Yup, mine has 20000 portals, too. Fastvis is bearable, fullvis is ... not nice.

Both Tyrann's and Lord Havoc's tools can handle it. So should AguirRe's.

I'll not do that again, though :-)

Question: Do any Q1 tools support Hint brushes?

Question 2: Do sky brushes block vis the same way that normal brushes do? 

Answer ( short ): No.

Answer ( long ): Support would be required not only in the compilers, but in the .bsp format and the engines. This issue appears on Func perennially.

Answer 2: Yes. 

If there are two rooms next to eachother with say a 32 unit wide wall between which is just one brush; is this less effective at blocking than 2 separate walls with a void in between? 

Alexander Malmberg's qutils have hint, detail and skip brush support, and while I've never tested it, I'm pretty sure they don't require any special engine. 

Unless I misunderstand hint brushes, it would only be the BSP compiler changing. The hint brushes simply suggest cuts, don't they? 

because it has no vis 

...take a trip in noclip. If the brush you are talking about is solid than you should see a void in between anyway :)

Quake does not draw brushes, it draws faces on some of the internal surfaces of volumes. 

Unless I misunderstand hint brushes, it would only be the BSP compiler changing. The hint brushes simply suggest cuts, don't they?


Ack, you guys are right. I was getting confused with detail brushes. My bad. 

No need for hint brushes anymore, it turns out that hvis isn't terribly effective and thus half of the map was drawn at once. This doesn't happen with tyrutils or aguirRe's utils. 

I've managed to reduce the vis level four time by about a factor of four. 

Nice! Definitely pays off to invest a little effort in your VIS times. Pays off in spades at the end when you want to iterate on the map and tweak things. 

...trying to get sickbase to vis in a reasonable time frame. Unfortunately I started my first final level 4 vis and then after about three days it because apparent that it was going to take a hell of a long time, so I went back and re-worked my arrangement, turned as many things into func_walls as possible, then set it off again. And then I had to do it AGAIN after another couple of days, because although it was going faster than before, it was still gonna take a hell of a long time.

Wasting a couple of days then stopping it, re-working and starting again will save a lot of time in the long run. Half an hour of map adjustments can equate to weeks less vis times, when doing horrible open planned maps!!

Getting it as efficient as possible first time is even better!! :P 

 

hvis is rubbish, I'm sorry to say. I'm only amazed that you even got it to work at all.

Also, fuck the optimization, how about just don't make stupidly open maps in the first place?

p.s. I didn't really mean fuck the optimization. I'm not sure how you'd accomplish that, though it might be an interesting experiment. 

I'm attempting to turn the shotgun in to a weapon which delivers a short, three round burst and then is unable to shoot for a second. So far I have only been able to create one which has a two round burst, through modification of the weapons.qc W_Attack() function and the inclusion of a new function which calls both player_shot1() and W_FireShotgun():

void() W_ThreeShot = {
player_shot1();
W_FireShotgun();


};

...

else if (self.weapon == IT_SHOTGUN)
{
W_ThreeShot();
self.nextthink = time + 0.1;
self.think = W_ThreeShot;
self.nextthink = time +0.1;
self.think = W_ThreeShot;
self.attack_finished = time + 1;

}

The last self.think function appears not to be called. There isn't a wait function or something in qc, is there?

This is probably a laughably simple problem, excuse my lack of coding understanding. 

You can't stack self.think calls like that. It's not a queue. So:

self.nextthink = time + 0.1;
self.think = W_ThreeShot;
self.nextthink = time +0.1;
self.think = W_ThreeShot;

Is the same as:

self.nextthink = time + 0.1;
self.think = W_ThreeShot;

You'll need to add a counter variable that gets checked in W_ThreeShot or something so that it stops firing after the third shot. 

"Also, fuck the optimization, how about just don't make stupidly open maps in the first place?"

It's a fun challenge sometimes, but if you're building those areas then - yeah, you really give up the right to bitch about VIS times. Heh. 

Yeah, I'm just shitstirring anyway. Ignore me :) 

I edited the animation stuff in player.qc to call the W_ThreeShot function, and changed the animation to have the shotgun shoot three times rapidly.

Works quite well, bit like the battle rifle. 

Oh yeah, that's a good solution too! 

has appalling vis blocking in the central hub area (look at my last screenies ^^^ ), but all of the tunnels and rooms around them, I have spent a l00t of time making sure that blocking is present and as functional as possible!

Besides, vis works really well on a core2duo ! (AguirRes) 

Is it multithreading? If not, that 2nd core isn't doing you much good. :)