"Ideally, all these tricks and information scattered across the various threads should be reposted in a central location (progs.dat thread, quoth thread, optimization 101 thread etc)."

Yep it is amazing how much stuff is scattered all over the place, finding it is not easy and involves trawling long thread here at Func. 

So I saved 4 entities by overlapping trigger_relay entities with the info_player_spawn, info_player_spawn2, info_player_deathmatch and the secret info_intermission.

Next step (which I only thought up after deleting half this post) is to go in and turn enough of those ambient entities into trigger_relay hosts rather than self-removing entities, because getting the map to load is more of a win than saving the entities straight off. 

With those tricks I managed to get the map to load in fitz with 600 max_edicts and skill. Unfortunately I think I've copy-pasted something wrong along the way because the hell knights didn't spawn in the ending fight, but otherwise the map was under the limits*.

I might start from scratch tomorrow, this time fixing enough of the teleporter models so that the model count is below 256. You'd have to throw out any entity hacking progress for any change that need recompilation anyway**.

*If you played belligerently enough, refusing to find a single secret, killing all the enemies but collecting no packpacks, and spraying nails across the longest distance you could find it was still possible to exceed max_edicts, but realistic play was fine.

**We can't reduce model count through entity hacks, because even if we removed all references to a particular model in the bsp, it gets precached automatically just through being in the bsp. 

You can also save 10 or so models also by making several func_illusionaries into brushes again. Wires, tops of crates/grates. They were only illusionary because I didn't like the little view pop as you walked over them and moved up 4 units. 

and the wires/lights in the vents don't need to be illusionary either, they just are! 

found it a bit easy on medium skill but very polished looking map (not counting the tech stuff mentioned above), especially for a month's work.

Bring on scampsp2. 

Getting closer, I swear.

But when I recompiled I found that the ogre atop the first slipgate was coming out rotated 90 degrees. I know I hack a lot of entities, but I was sure I hadn't done anything to provoke this. Looking at the original map, the angle for that teleporter is "-1.40334e-014".

This works fine in the quake engine, but there seems to be an unfortunate bug in Hammer. When you load the map file, it appears that Hammer first rounds this value off to an integer incorrectly, by not bothering to parse past the decimal point to find the exponent. This means that it gets rounded to -1.
So what Preach, the editor is still out by less than 1 degree, who cares?
Well, that's what makes the bug unfortunate, -1 is the hack used to indicate an entity facing straight up!

Ho hum... 

Why Radiant apparently sets that as the angle when all I likely did was rotate it 90 degrees with it's own rotate tool is lovely. 

Tis done:
http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/scampsp1ents.zip

The method of attack was:
Open in editor, replace approx. half the teleport brushes with point entities (setting their models to maps/b_nail0.bsp so that they have volume).
Compile the map (I was lazy and did a standard light pass/level 2 vis on the precompiled version provided).
At this point we are below the model limit.

Next come the hacks to get us below the 600 entity limit on map start : Merge 4 of the trigger_relay entities into the info_player_spawn, info_player_spawn2, info_player_deathmatch and info_intermission. Merge every remaining trigger_relay entity into one of the ambient_* entities. This got the map down to 601 entities and I was stuck so tantalizing for about 20 minutes before I realised I could also merge trigger_counter entities in the same way. 600 exactly on hard difficulty!

Thirdly we need to have enough spare entities to not crash while we play. First things, all the ambient_ entities which are not performing double duties as triggers get instructed to suicide themselves on frame 1. That nets us about 20 entities.

Once you get past the exploding slipgate sequence the entity pressure drops enough to ignore. So the last bit of work was to make sure that up until that point we can save as many entities as possible. Firstly I went through and made sure that any trigger_counter entities which fire before that point are removing themselves once used.

Next was to make the early teleporting monsters tidy up after themselves, by making them killtarget their own teleport destinations on death. This makes sure that even if the player doesn't collect their backpack, the net change to the entity count is 0. There's a mild hack which is worth sharing here: monsters won't killtarget entities successfully unless they have a target field set as well. It doesn't matter what the target field is, any non-empty string will do, but choosing an unused targetname feels safer.

Phew, so now I can stop spamming this thread with hackchat and everyone who couldn't play the map before can come share! 

O_O

That's fucking impressive 

Nice work. I'll have to remember these tricks.

Did you give the monster teleporters a custom model just so it would override the brush models from the original map? Because, like I said in the other thread, they don't need volume in order to function, and using ammo boxes as models can cause critical compatibility issues with mods that change the standard files/names (e.g. Quoth, RMQ) which will result in a hard crash.

Hope nobody uses the provided bsp as is. Anything else than -level 4 VIS is not recomended (and it's not even proven that lower levels finish that much faster). Also, by the looks of it the bsp wasn't compiled with Frib's modified TxQBSP - there are many 'micro-misaligned' trims now.

Anyway, nice trickery, and a real pity it wasn't discovered earlier. 

And it's an actually grand title. I can't think of anyone in Q1SP more meticulous or technically competent. I'd accuse negke of being the unabomber but I know that dude doesn't have internet access. And he was arrested and imprisoned just about the time Quake came out... so yeah!

Reviews of this and CZG's new map should be coming soonish; awesome to see new stuff coming in after a slow start to 2012. 

I couldn't get the teleports to activate without giving them volume, do you have to set them up as info_notnulls with a bunch of carefully defined fields? As they are currently if you remove the models then the monsters don't teleport in.

Fair point on the particular model, although really once you start doing hacks you are tied to a specific mod. For instance, say the next version of quoth takes to heart the message that ambient_ entities don't need to remain after they are spawned and culls them in their spawn functions. That would completely break this version of the map!* I suppose the safest model to use would be player.mdl as it's a compulsory precache enforced by the engine.

*Quoth is reasonably good about "optimisation" changes and compatibility, partly for consideration of maps that use these kinds of hacks. Things like the globally replaced ammo packs are opt-in with a flag on worldspawn, so that particular change wouldn't hurt this map. 

You need to give them an origin field of course, and it must be within the monsters bounding box. I usually copy the coordinates from the monster.

It's important to set the silent spawnflag on such triggers, though. Otherwise you'll get the teleporter sound at (0 0 0).

Tronyn: If I'm Sherlock Holmes, then Preach must be Watson. He does all the basic work, I get drunk and take the credit. ;) 

Just tried it again and this time all the point sized teles work fine, must have broken something else last time I tried it. I'll run through those points and put out a repackaged version later today 

A shame I started drinking already for the day -- this may take a while. 

http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/scampsp1ents.zip

Fixes:
� Compiled with frib qbsp, level 4 vis (yes it was faster) and extra light.
� Removed the models from the point teleporters.

Hurrah 

Then got owned by vores.

http://www.4shared.com/zip/F_YiUCH3/ijed1.html

I recorded under RMQ engine, ot sure if that'll cause problems for protocol or whatever.

Thanks :) 

Nice, BUT: light -extra4 is where it's at!

Ok, I'll stop now. 

A fun little (well, kinda large) map with some nicely detailed areas.

I really liked the combat toward the end of the map, although felt you could have introduced some other weapons into the mix, since ssg and ng was starting to wear a bit thin after a while... then I got the RL and plenty of ammo, so I was ok again.

Died a couple of times on normal right near the end, and due to getting pwned by those shamblers and blowing up a dog at the end and nearly taking myself with it I finished on 2 health.

Only found 3 or 4 secrets, but I wasn't looking that hard. 

yes the arena at the end was pretty cool. Got my ass kicked there since my hands were cold I fumbled switching weapons and then my hands strayed from asdw - I think I walked into every grenade the ogres through at me AND dipped my toes into that lovely warm lava a few times to boot. Even if the fiends hadn't finished me off, I would have never gotten past the monsters that followed them. 

I liked it. Good to see the old textures and monsters after only 16 years since the game came out. Congrats 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/demo__scampsp1.rar 

nbr 

I can't play this map under RMQ, can someone look into it?