The Oculus [WIP]

[Thothie]

Oh... No... The body field uses a submodel in the set, if you have a set of submodels in one model. That works, but it don't preview. I'm also not sure how it works with multi-part models (eg. more than one submodel group - like the Orcs). I think it just works by increasing the value until you get the combination you want, rather than entering a group and index, so there maybe some trial and error there.

The model viewer (JHLMV) indexes submodels from 1, but the game indexes from 0, so you gotta subtract one from the model viewer's readout when figuring what body index to use.

 

[Crow]

Redid the spawn point because it was too open and bland. Pic on the front page.

 

[Crow]

I want to teleport a bunch of players to the same place, but I don't want to gib them all. Could I make a bunch of tele destinations all with the same name so it chooses one at random with the hope that people won't spawn inside eachother? Or is there another way to manage this?

 

[Thothie]

That be, more or less, how it be done now. Just scatter a bunch of info_teleport_destination's of the same name around the area where you want the players to wind up, and it'll randomly spread the players amongst them. (Can't remember which patch MiB implemented that in - didn't used to work that way.)

As additional preventative measures, you can always supply multiple teleporters and/or leave at least one player height of space (96 units) for the players to fall after teleporting. trigger_push helps too, but not always very effective. Main thing, under the new system, as I said, is just to use a lot of duplicate destinations.

 

[Crow]

Fun fact: The deletion of a brush that touches nothing in my map causes a leak.

I will kill.

Everyone.

 

[Thothie]

Ain't Hammer fun?

Suggest trying unhiding everything, maybe you have a hidden point entity inside there.

Could also be empty solids, sometimes causes that.

More likely due to the fun geometry you got going on to the right of it. Check the compile logs, see how many solids the HLCSG is discarding. Also reload the .map file into hammer and see if it drops any. If it does, recompile with the reloaded .map file and hunt down via the pts for the real leak.

 

[Crow]

Yea, I'm finally forcing myself to do caves.

Probably gonna be doing nothing but vertex manipulation for the next 4 or 5 days :|

Though I'm a little worried I'm going to run out of... planes, or solids, or whatever it is that happens when your map is just too damn big or complex.

 

[Stoned]

Yea, I'm finally forcing myself to do caves.

Probably gonna be doing nothing but vertex manipulation for the next 4 or 5 days :|

Doing vertex manipulation is fun and easy, just very time consuming. I mean, look at ecave :?

 

[Crow]

To each his own I guess. I'm not a fan myself. What's ecave?

 

[Thothie]

Stoned's latest never-to-be-finished project.

It's the leaf node and clip count the vertex manip style caves tend to kill the fastest. You are going to have to use custom compile commands to get a really large map featuring that style to compile correctly. There's also the occasional leaf-node error, and mysterious missing face error.

 

[Crow]

Whats the command to show rspeeds and fps and the like in game?

You are going to have to use custom compile commands to get a really large map featuring that style to compile correctly.

Any ideas? Increase max node size? Scale textures large where it doesn't have too big of an aesthetic impact? (I mean I do this already, but does it help with those specifically?) Changing the Chop? Increased texture data?

 

[jon50559]

The only solution is to change the cliptype to desired setting to use less clipnodes, OR optimize your clipnodes by extensively using the CLIP brush to cover up places the player can't reach. You also can make areas less complex clip-wise by going over geometry with CLIP brushes to simplify it.

 

[Crow]

Alright, sounds doable.

 

[Thothie]

-cliptype precise or smallest (in that order) for the HLCSG will likely be required, in addition, as he said, to filling all the areas the player cannot reach with clip brushes. Beware that these may fux with navigation on small sloping tunnels you may have. These will reduce your clipnode count (MAX_CLIP_NODES) greatly, but it won't do much for your leaf count.

Setting your -maxnodesize to 4096 in the HLBSP might help your leaf count *some*, but by the time you find yourself doing stuff like that, you're really up against the wall, and don't have a lotta breathing room. This will also help some with MAX_FACES. As always try to avoid splitting brushes or going crazy with cylinders - good mapping habbits keep down the leaf count more than anything else.

Your light data will also get increased quite a bit, leading to MAX_PATCHES... Easiest way around that is to raise the chop/texchop in HLRAD, probably starting at -chop 128 -texchop 64 - and working your way up in hexadecimally round increments. (64,96,128,192,256,384,512) - Lighting quality will suffer some though - or at least the edges of shadows will. You can also decrease the -smooth value, so that HLRAD will use less patches in tight corners than it otherwise would. You should also always use the "-sparse" vismatrix HLRAD flag.

 

[Crow]

I wish there was a way to make a certain texture glow, as if I was a texture light, but not actually go to the trouble of emitting light. I have a lot of little crystal peices to this portal I have, but having them all calculate light emission take daaaaaays, and splitting up the brushes with the texture into seperate peices so I can convert them to a func_wall and then change the default light level would also take days.

 

[PBarnum]

I wish there was a way to make a certain texture glow, as if I was a texture light, but not actually go to the trouble of emitting light.

Wouldn't you accomplish this with lights.rad? Or treat the textures like +textures...?

 

[FER]

I have a lot of little crystal peices to this portal I have, but having them all calculate light emission take daaaaaays, and splitting up the brushes with the texture into seperate peices so I can convert them to a func_wall and then change the default light level would also take days.

Maybe I a model-based crystal could solve that

 

[jon50559]

Make the crystals 1-2 groups, and make them a func_illusionary. Give them the regular texture or whatever rendering setting you want. Copy and paste the crystals so now there's 2 copies inside each other. Make the new copy an illusionary as well, with the Additive setting, possibly with a greener or bluer or whatever texture.

 

[Crow]

I just want one face of a brush (the only one with the texture) to glow. Lights.rad is texture lighting, which I want to avoid, because while it does indeed make the texture glow, it also has to calculate the light it emits, which is what I don't want.

 

[Thothie]

You can also always use a very bright texture, func_wall it, and set it additive 255. Can even make it pulsate, if you want, via renderfx.

 

[Crow]

Vertex manipulation done for the first set of caves (the much bigger of the two)! Screen shots coming in the next couple of hours.

EDIT: Ok, it's taking a lot longer to fix all these weird leaks that keep popping up in places that didn't have leaks before...
Not really sure how long its going to take to find and fix them all but I should have screenies in the next day or so.

 

[Crow]

Sorry for my absence, but I had to scrap my cave and it made me grumpy.

Anywho...

I'm trying to get a certain effect with a certain sprite but I can't quite seem to get what I need.

Basically I want my sprite to act like an env_glow (you see the whole sprite unless the very center of the sprite is blocked from you view) but I don't want it to fade in/out as you get closer/father away. I want it a constant opacity.

Any ideas?

Also, can't seem to get fog to work via mstrig_weather
link in the mapping tut is broke

 

[Thothie]

http://www.thothie.com/msc/weather_tower_b.rar - Apparently a typo in the link in the tutorial.

Good to know no one's tried to download that one in over five years. >_>

As for the sprite... I've no idea. You can try playing with the render props, but I think the fade-based-on-distance is part of the glow rendermode function. Would need low-level code change to undo that - may even be an engine function, not sure.

 

[Crow]

well... ok I can live w/o it ^_^

That tutorial shows me how to do different weather (clear stormy, snow...), but (as far as I can tell) not fog. I just want perpetual green fog.

:EDEET:
Tried mstrig_weather
also tried doing it as is done in that tutorial with the script make_green_fog (just guessed)


Also, entity report doesn't work for me anymore.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I just want perpetual green fog.

Please don't put perpetual green fog in your map. Maybe you can pull it off, I dunno, but it does not work well in Edana Sewers, imo. It's just a giant cloud of ugly and it's quite annoying. At least to me, it is.