Whats the deal with zones?

[Aphex]

Are there any further guidelines to zoning for performance increase other than the std ones? ie:

* How many zones should you have...
* ...and is there a performance hit for too many?
* Should every room in my map be a different zone for best performance?

etc.

[Aridale N. Belmont]

ok all a "real" zone is used for is to supply the engine with a quick reference for the area its in. Its best to use them as you need them but not every room unless every room needs to have its own zone assigned to it for some reason or another. Thats basically all Zones do. Some zones of course have special uses like the SkyZone and LavaZone and so on and so forth. Ive never noticed a hit to speed or anything due to a lot of Zones. Its best to use Zones when you need to though not just cause you want to. Best use for em is like going from one place to another where you really cant see the area you just left. Like going in building from an outside zone. Make 1 zone info for the house so its not pitch black then add mood lighting and one zone info for the outside to make the base outdoor light. But like zoning the outside as two or more zones isnt useful cause most zone effects and only effective in the zone they apply to. Like Fog.

Ari

[Wanderer]

You can get nasty performance hits if you've got a really huge ZonePortal but that's a given.

Other then that, can't have more then 64. Once you break 64 the Unreal engine will start merging Zones together.

[Aphex]

hmmm ta
I read in some Official Epic doc that zones may increase performance when used to partition maps using small areas for the zone cuts. So it would be best to have lots?
(Excluding huge ones of course /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif)

[NutWrench]

Try to keep the Zone Portals as small as you can and put them in out of the way places where you'll see them for as little time as possible. Put them in a connecting coridoor between rooms. A well zoned map will run MUCH faster than an unzoned one.

You can do cool stuff with Zones, too, like change the physical properties of the Zone you're in. Zone brushes don't have to be sheet brushes, you can add a new Zone in the middle of a room using the other brush shapes.

Try adding a ZoneInfo and fiddling with its Properties. You can change the gravity in a Zone by editing the Z variable under 'Gravity.' The default Z acceleration is -950 units/sec (downwards) with a Terminal velocity of 2500 units/sec. Try lowering this to around 100 (the Z acceleration). You should also reduce the GroundFriction variable from its default setting (around 4) to 1 or less (to simulate momentum). (DMTundra on the Unreal 1 CD uses a 0.25 GroundFriction to simulate a slippery surface).

Make a Low-Gravity Deathmatch map! I haven't seen a single ONE yet! /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif

--Nut

[Aphex]

Cheers for info!
<Much zoning ahead /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif>