Make sure you make a backup to cd/dv/internet before then, eh ;)

Same goes for Rubicon 2! 

Thanks, it sounds good to me :) 

wasnt that like some sort of urban legend that was disproved on Mythbusters? 

that we actually have a tread like this. The only possible explanation for:

"I'm trying to run Fitzquake on a machine running an AMD Athlon 951 MHz processor with 576 MB of RAM on an nVidia GeForce 4 MX graphics card, and it's a complete dog."

Is that your hardware is broken, you are not using the correct drivers for your hardware, your PC is infested with viruses/spyware or all of the above combined. I used to run FitzQuake on a P3/450 with 128mb ram and it flied. 

I think, after going through two dozen watermelons, half an acre of bubble wrap, and wrecking three vintage cars, they decided it was "inconclusive." 

#56 i thought was aimed at #55, as in "minimum FitzQuake System Requirements = #56"

:P 

at the very end you have to determine the system requirements, and it takes a lot of time, money and overall effort 

The only possible explanation...

You're probably right, but there's another possible explanation as well. It could be that they're trying to run a completely unoptimized pig of a map that some people dump on us these days (HEY MAN, DON'T OPPRESS ME WITH YOUR DRACONIAN LIMITS). 

its NEXT GEN man!
when was the 'screw the r_speeds thread"? QMAP `2003? (too bad the archives vanished) 

yeah but 'inconclusive' really means we dont believe it but for those of you that still want to hold on to something, we wont shatter the hope for you :) 

Hah! 

I didn't realise I'd upset people by ignoring ten year old arbitrary limits.

In any case all future maps will come with a special unoptimised pig disclaimer, just for the sensitive out there.

Oh, wait, maybe if you had bothered to read my earlier post instead of pulling out one phrase I'd give a shit. Or if you'd bothered to play the maps.

Why isn't there a retarded bullshit icon? 

because then all func posts would use the same icon...

frib, that's a bit harsh though, there's unoptimised pig maps and optimised hippo maps that break limits just because they are big not because they are poorly made.

And this post should really use the retarded bullshit icon too given that I'm arguing about engine stuff when I've never even thought about opening up an editor :) 

If you want hippos, you get pigs too. But if you ban pigs, you ban hippos too.
Baby with the bathwater etc... 

you appreciate the hippos & ignore the pigs.

on the flip of the coin, sure you can appreciate the lack of pigs.. however it's never nice for the hippo farmers out ther to have to slice their livestock into pieces X(


it's just something i feel strongly about because i have two maps that are presently at 5 & 6 thousand brushes respectively and neither are half done yet.. i'm not sure how that translates into marksurfaces but make no mistake they're already pretty fucking BIG and it wouldn't surprise me if they ended up breaking limits. i'm obsessively tidy when it comes to brushwork so there really isn't a whole amount of optimisation to be done, the only thing pushing them beyond the limits is ambition.

i'm full aware that bigger doesn't always = better, but personally LOVE huge epic maps you can literally spend hours on (like warpb/warpc) and think there's a massive scope for exploring mapping on that scale. providing vis is always taken into account, of course. 

release the hippos. 

bigger = better 

what with all the pig maps, hippo maps, turtle maps... 

Even though your engine does not support them, there are normal maps too! 

I didn't realise I'd upset people by ignoring ten year old arbitrary limits.

I'm not upset, and I doubt anyone else is. If you want to ignore those limits in your maps, go right ahead. Just be aware that in doing so, you forfeit the right to complain if people refuse to play those maps (on the grounds that they don't function correctly in their engine of choice).

You can argue that the original Quake limits are arbitrary and antiquated these days, and that's all well and good (it's a discussion worth having!)

You cannot argue against the fact though, that for better or for worse, many engines adhere to the standard Quake limits, and as such, exceeding those limits restricts engine choice (and in some cases can deny people the chance to play the map at all, as our mac and linux friends have reminded us recently).

In any case all future maps will come with a special unoptimised pig disclaimer, just for the sensitive out there.

They already do - here's an excerpt from the warp spasm readme:

"...you most likely will encounter crashes and various problems... due to engine bugs and limitations... You will receive a series of warnings at the start of most maps, relating to various limits being breached... Do not complain to me that your favourite engine cannot run the maps. I don't care."

So don't worry - you're already covered!

Oh, wait, maybe if you had bothered to read my earlier post instead of pulling out one phrase I'd give a shit.

I read it. I understood it. I simply happen to have a different opinion. You're entitled to yours, I'm entitled to mine. You'll note that I didn't chime in like I usually would in that other thread - I actually didn't want to argue with you about this, despite my strong opinions on the matter. I don't know you, I have no beef with you personally, so I didn't want to just fly off the handle unprovoked... that would be most unlike me! ;)

Or if you'd bothered to play the maps.

I actually have warp spasm on my list of stuff to play, since someone asked me nicely. I hadn't actually looked at the readme yet, if I had seen that shitty comment about not caring that the maps won't run in my favourite engine I'd be much less inclined to play it, but whatever. Do you want to know the real reason I haven't played it yet?

I've been busy.

Why have I been so busy? I've been doing a lot of overtime. Doing what, you ask?

Well, I've been busy cutting gameplay out of my maps in order to get them to load on (PS2, PSP, <insert platform here>). Everything was all fine and good, but then the art team came along and started adding boatloads of unoptimized, wasteful art into my levels in the name of making them pretty.

After they've exceeded all of their well-known poly and memory budgets (to the point where the game crashes on load with 50% of the game's levels), naturally these artists are too lazy and undisciplined to fix the problem they created, so they fuck off home and leave someone else to clean up the mess.

In order to get the builds out to the publisher on time, I then come through and delete gameplay features like destructible/dynamic objects or try to trim my entity files down by a few kilobytes until the levels load again, so that the art guys can come back the next day and add more shitty art and break the levels again.

Why isn't there a retarded bullshit icon?

Listen up metl! This is an excellent suggestion. I strongly approve of and endorse the "retarded bullshit icon" concept. I would use said icon in at least 70-80% of my posts. If you don't know what icon to use, you could make a small version of this image:

http://media.steampowered.com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/18/18e59a64eea43dd236f643f9949865af485c6532_full.jpg 

because then all func posts would use the same icon...

Bollocks. There are people like yourself that consistently post sensible and worthwhile things in between our retarded bullshit posts.

frib, that's a bit harsh though, there's unoptimised pig maps and optimised hippo maps that break limits just because they are big not because they are poorly made.

Sure. I get that. I also get that people get a bit carried away, whether that's just ambition or momentum or whatever... and plenty of people like big, epic maps. But in all seriousness, if your map won't load in standard engines anymore, isn't it time to trim things back a bit or break the level up into smaller chunks?

By making the choice to continue past the standard limits, you're limiting your audience's engine choice and possibly locking people out from playing the map at all. Even those that can play it, are going to have a less than optimal experience if they're playing in an engine they don't like or don't have configured properly.

If the map is the best thing since sliced bread, it might be worth it (for those that can actually play it)... but if not, what's the point? In many cases, beyond a certain point, isn't it just the mapping equivalent of "guitar wank"?

And this post should really use the retarded bullshit icon too given that I'm arguing about engine stuff when I've never even thought about opening up an editor :)

I call bollocks again. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and everyone can voice it too. That's the beauty of teh intarwebs! :) 

I was pissed off because it seemed that you were assuming that I didn't care about optimisation, when that was maybe half the work I did on warp.

I decided at the start to limit the engines, since as well as good ones, like fitz, that have maintained the original limits there are many bad ones. As I said earlier this meant that also stopped Mac and Linux users from playing because AguirRe's engines are windows only - something I overlooked.

I'm not arguing that maps without fullvis or just a load of crap thrown together are what I want to make.

I prefer design to art or programming and the key to that discipline is a want to make a solid system that functions well. Programmers tend to worry more about the thing working at all whilst artists tend not to give a shit if it works or not, just how it looks. Technical artists are more like designers in that respect.

That's the reason that allot of warp was bland - fancy shadow casting brushwork #10 copied throughout maps of that size would have given me vis times of more than a day.

I overreacted, but "ho-ho, these n00bs don't have a clue" was the vibe I got.

And wait til you have to use a PS3 - there's a memory partition between graphics and runtime; 256 a piece. Whilst a equally crappy xbox 360 allows full access to all 512 from whatever source. The difference is you're more likely to see animated loading screens on a PS3.

But that same difference is similar to the discussion here. Limited resources or not. 

I honestly think you'll probably like WarpSpasm.

I mean OK - many limits are broken, but Ijed has done a pretty good job of vis blocking, and the levels are quite tastefully done. The pack will run OK an pretty much any machine with 48+ Mb of RAM, and I dont think that's an unreasonable requirement.

OK, you're tied to using a particular engine, but the engine has some pretty cool features, none of which are un-true to the Quake style of gameplay.

666 monsters might sound like a figure which was done for the sake of doing it, but you'll find the monsters are actually spread out.

And like I've said, the levels are pretty well visually optimised, and speeds are pretty good :D

I dunno, my 2c

I can see both sides... 

FitzQuake runs well on a K6-2 433 with Trident Cyberblade3D i7 4mb, well around 20fpsish constant at 800x600. That's good considering this is a single-TMU card with the worst OpenGL support ever. Interestingly GLDirect makes things worse for framerate on it. This card also forces translucency on the most opaque of objects so fill-rate is also down the drain. (now if only the card didn't do that things would be much much faster)

Also for this card, gl_cull has to be set to 0, otherwise pieces of the map do not render. 

What does Slave to a Machine run like on your comp?
(Sounds like a beast BTW!!!)