reachspecs

[[DL]Dragon]

hi people ! does anyone know why ued and ued2 adds 100 reachspecs everytime you "build" your level, even though you only change the tiniest thing, like a light intensity setting. i'm just curious, but it seems the more times you build, and the more reachspecs that are created, the laggier a complicated level gets...am i just spacin out, or is there a way around creating all those extra reachspecs.

[Fuzzpilz]

I don't know, but it's been getting on my nerves too. That number even increases if you delete EVERYTHING in your map, including the brushes. It doesn't add more reachspecs, I think, it only checks if it should add them to the paths network. Nonetheless, it could mean trouble if one worked on a map for a very long time.

[[DL]Dragon]

yeah that really bums me out ! i had a really cool ctf level going, my first attempt at a large map. it was playing smooth as butter with 16 bots until i got down to adding the detail. i also added a couple of enclosed guard stations. and i was doing a "lot" of rebuilding to test the lighting and the special lit features and noticed that the gameplay was getting jerky when i playtested the map. i was almost finished, so i added all my zone portals and a couple of unwanted walls to block the player from seeing to much of the map at once. but this only added to my problems, so because i liked the level so much, i started stripping it of everything i could to reduce the brush count, but it only got worse each time i compiled, until it was unplayable, and there was actually "less" in the level, than when it was playing smooth as butter.So now i'm stuck with a previous save, where the level looks "bland" but it plays pretty good...:+) i guess i'll just have to take the risk of adding more content between saves, to reduce the amount of rebuilds in my future work.

[tarquin]

What if you only ever do geometry and light builds, and leave pathbuilding till last?
I've only built the paths once, once the basic geometry was made to test how the bots liked it.

PS. re: your sig. Is adept level generaly considered to be tough? I'm not that good when I play online -- well, okay, I get my butt kicked, but I can usually beat the bots on adept.

[[DL]Dragon]

holy moly batman !...er Tarquin...:+) i didn't think of that. when i was editing for unreal i did that everytime, but with ued2 i've just gotten in the habit of clicking "build all" each time. thanx for the heads up, i'll definitly try that on my next effort. heh, heh ! adept setting for me is probably like "godlike" for you...:+)i just barely win on experienced setting...i guess thats why i love "team games. then the rest of the team can take up my slack...speakin of slack, i dloaded the Q3 team arena demo last night, and even on the "i can win" setting i got my butt kicked...thats why i edit more than i play...:+)

[tarquin]

Had another thought:
In the build options dialog, next to the 'build' button there's a button labelled 'create new paths' or something similar.
(I have 432 + fix, and I don't know when this button first made its appearance)
I haven't tried it, so this is speculation, but this might reset the reachspecs to zero and start from scratch -- try it on a copy of your level that still has all the detail but all the reashspces too, it might rescue it!

[Hetemti]

I've noticed that Reachspecs seem to loop, ie, in my level, once they passed about 1500 they'd drop to 500 and start building again.

[Phragmites]

yeah, i noticed that happen as well, but only to one map and only once. if anyone trys the create new paths thing, let us know.

[Fuzzpilz]

The "New Path Network" button does the same thing as the "Paths Build" console command - i.e. pathnode your map automatically.

[Phragmites]

d'oh!

[ZodiaK]

hmm...it sure doesn't work any better than the notorious 'paths build' ...ok, so it doesn't stall your machine every time but it's still pretty useless. I tried it once and it managed to put just a couple of pathnodes (something like 8) in one room of the level. i haven't experimented with it though, only that one time.

[Arkive]

Crap, I'm just noticing this too on my level. I'm constantly rebuilding while I was working on the terrain (essentially, that's all I've done so far, with some outside details and misc bug fixes...just have the bases left to do now). At any rate, I always do a "Build All" because I have a pretty fast machine and just figured, "what the heck?". I had no idea there could be any adverse reactions. Right now, my reachspecs are up to 3000 (I never really noticed it during rebuild because it goes so fast, you only see it for a split second...at least on my system), and I haven't even done *any* pathnoding on the level. Gauging by what ppl are saying, I'm starting to get concerned that I may have wasted a tremendous amount of time, even though the level plays like glass right now.

Just out of curiousity, what exactly are reachspecs anyway?

Jeff

[Fuzzpilz]

I THINK:
Reachspecs are what determines which path-relevant object can be reached by which. When the paths are built, the editor adds them between all those objects that are in a certain distance from each other, and visible. During the "Cleaning Up" phase, redundant ones are removed.
This is nothing more than a speculation, I do not know for sure.