.wad .BSP .WHA? i need my map compiled...

[Trinityxero]

i have my map all done its .map right now but i cant seem to make it a .BSP and i duno how -,- or a .wad (i want to put it in my friends condition zero server)

 

[Yuri]

Whoooa, man. You should definately take a peak at the VERC Collective, its the best site I know of for new mappers.

You need to compile your .map into a .bsp file with Zoner's Half Life tools. .wads are just a single file filled with textures.

 

[Kyorisu]

For the love of god please use Xp-Cagey's Tools for compiling. These are not just for professionals everybody should be using them.

 

[Shinobi]

and don't mess with -maxviewdistance no matter how cool it sounds,, I wasted like 60 hours trying to get it to work

 

[FragBait0]

Um.... you mean -maxdistance. MDV works fine for me.

If it crashes vis then you simply take it off and fix damned errors in your map. Its a good technique that, fixing bugs.

 

[Trinityxero]

i duno what im doing can someone just ompile it for me?

 

[Neutrino]

i duno what im doing can someone just ompile it for me?

If you really can't figure it out then just use the standard hammer compile tool and just hit "run map."

But seriously, just look around VERC quite a bit. There's tons of info there. It's really not that hard and there are a million tutorials.

 

[Trinityxero]

look i finnaly fixed it and put all the dirs of thows Ztools in my options on hammer3.4 and i got my map compiled.... tobad the bots are to stupid.... now how do i set the but zone to zero?

 

[Shinobi]

Um.... you mean -maxdistance. MDV works fine for me.

If it crashes vis then you simply take it off and fix damned errors in your map. Its a good technique that, fixing bugs.

you are way off and sounding somewhat arrogant,, the map compiles fine,, check the performance and you'll realise that while it's not drawing the polies,, it's still performing the calculations,, trust me on this,, I've done plenty of work with it

 

[The Dark Elf]

I'd listen to Shinobi, he knows his stuff, thats why SW grabbed him up :E

 

[FragBait0]

Sorry people i notice improvments in FPS and reductions in wpoly counts.

"not drawing the polies,, it's still performing the calculations"
Ummm...could you clarify this? If its not drawing them then i don't see what the problem is. It is supposed to stop them being drawn.

 

[Dan]

yeah maxviewabledistance should be set exactly as it is named, the maximum distance that can be viewed. Something around 15000 will be more than enough if you have the entire wc grid as one empty room. Basically what this is telling the map is the z-buffer distance to draw the sky at. So all of the "visible" polygons are still rendered, but then the sky is drawn over them at this distance. Normally, since sky is far away, you will want the sky to be drawn behind everything, thus you want a numer atleast as big as the maximum viewable distance. If you make this too small, or leave it at default in a big open map, then you will get the sky drawn halfway through your map, giving you ugly jaggies where it intersects.

 

[FragBait0]

NO!

It prevents leaves beyond a certain distance being rendered.

To set the distance at which the sky is drawn use the map properties dialog in Hammer. It sometimes works and sometimes dosent.

Please, for the love of your favourite deity, read and know your stuff before posting crap information like that.

 

[Shinobi]

Do an r_speeds test,, you'll see

 

[Dan]

NO!

It prevents leaves beyond a certain distance being rendered.

To set the distance at which the sky is drawn use the map properties dialog in Hammer. It sometimes works and sometimes dosent.

Please, for the love of your favourite deity, read and know your stuff before posting crap information like that.

Max viewable distance has no effect on visleafs or r_speeds, it only changes the distance that the sky is drawn. I've been mapping for many many years, I am not stupid.

On a side note, over at the verc anomolous materials forum, they did come up with a modification to hlvis that would stop rendering leafs after a certain distance. The only problem with this method is that it would produce a HOM effect in those empty spots. I think it's now available in a custom zoners tools. Here's a link if you're interested. I think this may be the command that you are referring to. Maxdistance and max viewable distance are two different things. Maxdistance only comes with the custom zoners I'm pretty sure, it's not default.

 

[FragBait0]

Do an r_speeds test,, you'll see

I have seen and you have not. The -maxdistance parameter in MHLT's HLVIS used correctly will reduce visible leafs and hence polygons, provided you have a large enough are3a to begin with and it is split up a few times along it. Note that this does not include giant hallways with nothing in them. The hallway should be split up every so often anyways by BSP (2048 units?) without setting the -maxnodesize option but forcing it on 1024 will show the results well.

Max viewable distance has no effect on visleafs or r_speeds, it only changes the distance that the sky is drawn. I've been mapping for many many years, I am not stupid.

On a side note, over at the verc anomolous materials forum, they did come up with a modification to hlvis that would stop rendering leafs after a certain distance. The only problem with this method is that it would produce a HOM effect in those empty spots. I think it's now available in a custom zoners tools. Here's a link if you're interested. I think this may be the command that you are referring to. Maxdistance and max viewable distance are two different things. Maxdistance only comes with the custom zoners I'm pretty sure, it's not default.

That's exactly what I am talking about. It has happened, a year ago at least.

Ah yeah the max viewable distance is the setting for sky draw distance..thats different.

To clarify it for the stone deaf people here: I AM TALKING ABOUT THE -maxdistance HLVIS PARAMETER!!
/me takes caps off.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

The hallway should be split up every so often anyways by BSP (2048 units?) without setting the -maxnodesize option but forcing it on 1024 will show the results well.

brushes are split up by CSG into chunks the size of the textures applied to them.

 

[FragBait0]

Ill give ya that one. But they are split regularly by BSP somewhere along the line too.

No wait arn't they cut at every 224 units if the surface is larger than 240 too?
Then its cut at nodes too, by default 2048 units i think. But anyway the big hallway *should* show you the effect - adding crates/whatever plus -maxnodesize 1024 and using a -maxdistance 1024 parameter should show it in action quite nicely. I sure as hell know it helps with massive (Massive. That does NOT mean laggy, high poly, low detail. It also does not mean high detail either...usually.) outdoor scenes.

Ah hang on. Vis cannot (read: dosen't seem to) work on the texture cuts so it must be at the node (including the 224?) cuts only.

Whatever. Overall it dosen't really matter. My point is made well as it will ever be.

 

[Shinobi]

If there's a further hack on the code then so be it,, the maxdistance I used was from merl's, performance and r_speed tests remained the same, no fps difference..

 

[FragBait0]

Weird I was using merls for a while but moved to xp-cagey's tools a few months back.

What about the map though? You dont usually see any improvment in a killbox. I sure as hell know it does things like halve my poly counts on large outdoor maps.

Ah did you try and use it on some of those firearms maps? It should have had an effect with a setting of 1024 in spookytown for example. Weird.

Nice work btw. They look to be some nice maps but i dont have/play firearms...yet.

 

[Shinobi]

I tested it with a big open map in which I tried to make to take advantage of the algorithm about 1.5 years ago,,

I just did some forum browsing and it looks like xp-cageys maxdistance implementation is somewhat different, but I'm not sure if it's the same as the anamoulous materials hack,,

I'm really tempted to try out the 2 newer implementations now,, I'll try setting up some tests with the newer compile tools later next week,,