Build ratio

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

This puzzles me a bit, apparently after rebuilding map with differently positioned sliders always gives different ratio as well. But can you tell somehow from the ratio itself on which slider settings the map was built? It would be helpful if I could somehow calculate that, or even understand what the fuck the ratio is about, it seems to be Nodes: somethingolys. Where the middle value I don't understand at all.

Anyone want to throw a little light on this subject?

 

[GreatEmerald]

Unfortunately, you can't. That's because if you try to rebuild your map with different settings, you will see that the ratio will go in sort of waves that depend on both sliders. However, you can do one thing: go to the Zone/Portal view and choose a pretty big plain surface which would have a good amount of cuts on it, then when rebuilding, try and match the pattern you saw originally. It shouldn't be too hard to deduce - you will get smaller cuts on the Minimise Cuts side, larger on the Balance Tree. The original Max Depth also helps here - Minimise Cuts increases it. The Portals slider is trickier, however, since the only way to find that out that I know of is to see if zones leak, and that is pretty difficult to do, especially on large maps.

As for what the Ratio stands for, at least in UEd 2.x, it's Nodesolys.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I knew that, but..
there's a middle value as well.

For example here: 2:26:1

Then in same map except a reowkred version I have 2:21:1

What is the middle value about?

What the hell is max depth about I don't understand either.

 

[GreatEmerald]

I'm pretty sure the middle value is point precision. It's supposed to be 2.26:1 and 2.21:1. It is exactly like that in UEd 2.x.

To understand Max Depth you have to understand how BSP cuts work. Basically every surface is split to a lot of small surfaces that the game can render or hide, so that it would be able to save resources by not rendering the surfaces you don't see. There are two ways of doing that - Minimise Cuts attempts to make those those surfaces as small as possible. In Zone/Portal view you should see that small cuts tend to appear on surfaces, near larger ones, and the more to Minimise Cuts the slider goes, the smaller the cuts are. All of the cuts are a part of the BSP tree - a small cut has a larger parent cut, the parent cut has an even larger parent cut etc. Balance Tree, on the other hand, tries to make every cut as similar in size to the other ones on the surface. Hence on Balance Tree you will see all cuts of fairly even size, but smaller than the largest of cuts on Minimise Cuts. That also means that those cuts have a lot less parent cuts. Max Cuts shows how many parent cuts exist on the surface that has most of them in your map. Hence with Minimise Cuts the number will be huge, with balance Tree it will be small.

 

[dinwitty]

What I read somewhere reading from EPIC direct, don't touch the slider. Pretty much from Unrealized (now defunct unless there was a rehash, check the webarchive)

I sometimes do rebuilds without doing BSP, this is done on some trooublesome maps where doing BSP starts making bad cuts in geometry.
Untick Optimize Geometry to try a few things. Building Unreal maps has always been tricky especially when you want to do some little more complicated geometry.
Some mappage may be better when you check on build priorities, putting an object in first or last of the build process, this is the difference of seeing if 2 crossing timbers overlay each other, one might texture overlay the other depending on the build order.
A subtracted room is first in the order, added objects follow, lets say you first ordered a box in a room, that screws the rendering order and looks like crapola.
Try to keep mappage simple and points landing on grid areas as possible, that helps cure BSP holes, I usually don't go lower than 4 on the grid setting.
But sometimes there are circumstances I have to go under, its a test and try and see if it works.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

What I read somewhere reading from EPIC direct, don't touch the slider. Pretty much from Unrealized (now defunct unless there was a rehash, check the webarchive)

I sometimes do rebuilds without doing BSP, this is done on some trooublesome maps where doing BSP starts making bad cuts in geometry.
Untick Optimize Geometry to try a few things. Building Unreal maps has always been tricky especially when you want to do some little more complicated geometry.
Some mappage may be better when you check on build priorities, putting an object in first or last of the build process, this is the difference of seeing if 2 crossing timbers overlay each other, one might texture overlay the other depending on the build order.
A subtracted room is first in the order, added objects follow, lets say you first ordered a box in a room, that screws the rendering order and looks like crapola.
Try to keep mappage simple and points landing on grid areas as possible, that helps cure BSP holes, I usually don't go lower than 4 on the grid setting.
But sometimes there are circumstances I have to go under, its a test and try and see if it works.

I know about the order stuff, the bad thing is that this happened to me while I was working on some Unreal PSX map conversions. Had to change the brush order around, because it did exactly what you say. But for the PSX maps I always need a full rebuild, as there is also mover stuff to retexture and rework etc.

 

[GreatEmerald]

Not optimising leads to unbuilt BSP tree, which is horrible. It's like when you put a light in your level and don't rebuild lighting. It's not supposed to be that way. With an unbuilt BSP tree, the ratio goes over the roof, meaning that your processor will have to work a lot more (less performance) and will fail to calculate a lot more (more BSP holes). Not building BSP is the worst thing that you could ever do to a map, and if it helps, that means you had your sliders put to the wrong positions. And no, changing the sliders is the whole idea of building maps in the first place.

That, however, only applies to UE1. UE2 has different rules regarding that.

 

[AWW SNACK]

What I read somewhere reading from EPIC direct, don't touch the slider. Pretty much from Unrealized (now defunct unless there was a rehash, check the webarchive)

What's Unrealized?

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

What's Unrealized?

A website, I remember that one, somehow.