Stretching the Engine

[Chrysaor]

Can I get some opinions please?

I'm in the process of making a map of an entire town. The dimensions I'm working with right now are 11,264 X 11,264. Most of the town will be filled up with with stuff. It won't be open terrain or anything. Many of the buildings you will be able to go into and the streets will be "bustling". It's already going to be an extreme challenge to make it playable, but I'm wondering if that sort of map, say 6-8,000 brushes would even compile. Like I said just looking for opinions from people who have more technical expertise than myself.

 

[Hourences]

oh it will be rebuilded and work, but it the question how cause the rebuild will take 1-2 hour or even much more with 8000 brushes and the map will be erm 30 meg or much more, so everyone that doesnt has a 1337 pc with 1337 ram will have a slideshow game

 

[Chrysaor]

Originally posted by Hourences
oh it will be rebuilded and work, but it the question how cause the rebuild will take 1-2 hour or even much more with 8000 brushes and the map will be erm 30 meg or much more, so everyone that doesnt has a 1337 pc with 1337 ram will have a slideshow game

Well I've got the layout, it's from the Mod I'm working for (Ugas Daos) and the layout is pretty finely set already. I'm trying to do most of the outside streets with detailed textures, so that it won't lag even tho you'd be looking down 11,264 world units of space on one of the streets. The brush count is considering that the inside of the buildings will be well decorated, and with many buildings, you can see how the brush count could rise so quickly. I'm not concerned about the file size. Altho, stuff like Shadar does take a long time to load even if it isn't an inview pressure on the engine it still has to work on the vast size of the level behind it, or so I've surmised. Release for this map is some time away, so I'm not sure how good the "average" computer will be at that time. This sort of size is a little beyond what I'm used to working on and I'm just trying to talk out the possibilities of my making it successful (without the slideshow )

Know that I'm just concerned, and I'm trying to get a feel for how difficult this is going to be.

 

[bobtheking]

look at falkenstein, i have a sh!t computer and i can get an average of 30 fps in it, and 70-80 in the 100 polygon areas. i have a feeling 20,000 polygons is enough maybe? if you just keep the polycount of a view down, it should be okay, but make sure you also keep the occlusion down. that will kill you if you don't get it right.

 

[Chrysaor]

Originally posted by bobtheking
look at falkenstein, i have a sh!t computer and i can get an average of 30 fps in it, and 70-80 in the 100 polygon areas. i have a feeling 20,000 polygons is enough maybe? if you just keep the polycount of a view down, it should be okay, but make sure you also keep the occlusion down. that will kill you if you don't get it right.

Oh gosh, Occ is one of my biggest worries

 

[bobtheking]

the only thing i can think of, and i'm not even sure if it would do anything is to use the largest grid you can. this will cause more and more polygons to be on the same plane (especially true with a realism map, more cubes and less arches and such) and less cuts for the bsp. i'm not even sure if that is right or would do anything.

 

[Chrysaor]

Originally posted by bobtheking
the only thing i can think of, and i'm not even sure if it would do anything is to use the largest grid you can. this will cause more and more polygons to be on the same plane (especially true with a realism map, more cubes and less arches and such) and less cuts for the bsp. i'm not even sure if that is right or would do anything.

Well the grid I'm using for the map has blocks of 512, so most of the cuts would be along those lines except where my poly count gave me room to ameliorate.

 

[Bot_40]

I dread to think what it would play like. You'd have to have soooo much ram to get it to play well. Like when I play Shadar, and I go flying into new areas where I haven't been before, it flickers really bad because it has to pre-cache that area. I dread to think what it would be like on a map that big.
If I were you (Thank god I'm not in this case ) I'd wait till Unreal2 comes out, then have some fun
Also, are you prepared to spend 6-7 moths on 1 single map adding 8000 brushes? I'd be very impressed if you managed to concentrate on 1 single map for that length of time.

 

[Chrysaor]

Originally posted by Bot_40
I dread to think what it would play like. You'd have to have soooo much ram to get it to play well. Like when I play Shadar, and I go flying into new areas where I haven't been before, it flickers really bad because it has to pre-cache that area. I dread to think what it would be like on a map that big.
If I were you (Thank god I'm not in this case ) I'd wait till Unreal2 comes out, then have some fun
Also, are you prepared to spend 6-7 moths on 1 single map adding 8000 brushes? I'd be very impressed if you managed to concentrate on 1 single map for that length of time.

So I'm right about the size of the map eating up RAM regardless of what's actually in veiw?
For 8,000 brushes it would only take 3-4 months

 

[Evil_Cope]

you should talk to 007mike about his nalicity map.

 

[Laff]

you could divide up the larger level into several small ones...there's a tutorial at http://www.planetunreal.com/unrealed...you're welcome in advance =D

 

[Chrysaor]

Originally posted by Laff
you could divide up the larger level into several small ones...there's a tutorial at http://www.planetunreal.com/unrealed...you're welcome in advance =D

I'm not sure that would work..you can wonder freely from part to part, so why would you have people keep loading between levels to cross a street a few times? Trust me I had considered it.

 

[OO7MIKE]

in responce to your email:
Before you really get into the city you should know that it will take a long time to do. I still havent finished the nalicity map. Pictures of it can be found on the clan site or here: http://spots.flatland.com/oo7mike/3DArt.htm

Speaking from experience and a lot of greef with this map (greef is now over cause i solved it) one thing that you should not do is 1. DO NOT PUT TO MANY LIGHTS IN THE MAP!!! use only a few for the sky light and just make sure to turn there light radius up.
2. DO NOT MAKE COMPLEX BRUSHES OUT IN THE OPEN. Never in my life have i had ued crash so many times because of errors related to this and light shining on it. It just seemed to much for Ued to render.
Since i dont have much time i will just have to say that keeping poly count down is very hard if you want the city to look good. A intersection of a street can give you a hella amount of polys. Just the plain existance of a street taht you can look down and see buildings can really give you some poly count hell.

My nalicity map was never intended for playing. It was for pure eyecandy only. Unfortionately i had to cut back on a lot of that because the Ued didnt want to render the lighting in just normal editing. KEEP THAT POLY COUNT DOWN MR!! Your city will be a bit more restrictive.
Right now my map is 5mb in size and about 30mb of textures. compiling the map only takes a few minuts. Its really not that bad. Just remember. You dont have to do a complete compile everytime. in fact...if you dont have to...dont rebuild the lighting everytime. The lighting takes twice as long to compile as the rest of it. Well...for my map anyways.

There is more i can tell you but.....
I gotsta go

 

[Chrysaor]

Originally posted by OO7MIKE
in responce to your email:
Before you really get into the city you should know that it will take a long time to do. I still havent finished the nalicity map. Pictures of it can be found on the clan site or here: http://spots.flatland.com/oo7mike/3DArt.htm

Speaking from experience and a lot of greef with this map (greef is now over cause i solved it) one thing that you should not do is 1. DO NOT PUT TO MANY LIGHTS IN THE MAP!!! use only a few for the sky light and just make sure to turn there light radius up.
2. DO NOT MAKE COMPLEX BRUSHES OUT IN THE OPEN. Never in my life have i had ued crash so many times because of errors related to this and light shining on it. It just seemed to much for Ued to render.
Since i dont have much time i will just have to say that keeping poly count down is very hard if you want the city to look good. A intersection of a street can give you a hella amount of polys. Just the plain existance of a street taht you can look down and see buildings can really give you some poly count hell.

My nalicity map was never intended for playing. It was for pure eyecandy only. Unfortionately i had to cut back on a lot of that because the Ued didnt want to render the lighting in just normal editing. KEEP THAT POLY COUNT DOWN MR!! Your city will be a bit more restrictive.
Right now my map is 5mb in size and about 30mb of textures. compiling the map only takes a few minuts. Its really not that bad. Just remember. You dont have to do a complete compile everytime. in fact...if you dont have to...dont rebuild the lighting everytime. The lighting takes twice as long to compile as the rest of it. Well...for my map anyways.

There is more i can tell you but.....
I gotsta go

Thx for the advice Mike!
I'm going to try and keep the streets tight so the poly count won't be as big of a deal. But I'm sure it'll still be difficult.
The lead coder of the Mod is trying to make a way for me to extend the light radius to something like 1024 or 2048 so that the lighting will be easier it's an outside daytime setting. Actually the the big reason I wanted daytime, is so I don't have to model any lanterns, which should be a big poly saver

Once again thx for the tips

 

[MMAN UGITU]

On my single player packs i'm doing one of the bits will take place on the skaarj homeplanet with you in disguise and i'm hoping to do a big part of the city! I think i'll split it into several small areas like hong kong in Deux Ex even though the load ime might be a bit annoying (i'll have to get some code to let you go back and forth between areas).

 

[bobtheking]

one thing you could do is turn everything that you can into a mesh. the only thing i can think of right now is light poles, but would save a lot of polygons. basically anything cylindrical that can afford not to tile textures would be good for a mesh. there is a program called meshmaker, you intersect a brush or number of brushes, and export the brush. then you can use this program and will generate .u and all the things necesary for making meshes. If you do a search in these forums, it is bound to come up, but i don't know where it is off the top of my head.

 

[Chrysaor]

Heck yeah! I'm planning on doing all of the tables and barstools and stuff inside the buildings with meshes, but I've got 3DSMax for that...

 

[bobtheking]

thats all i can think of, other than using low shadow and super low shadow detail on everything possible. all the roads, the sides of buildings, anything that works and looks ok with it. it will use less ram and should marginally increase framerate.

 

[bobtheking]

also, use semisolids on anything with a diagonal cut. that one cut could slice through every polygon across the level. i'm not sure if thats right either

 

[Chrysaor]

Originally posted by bobtheking
also, use semisolids on anything with a diagonal cut. that one cut could slice through every polygon across the level. i'm not sure if thats right either

Semi's don't occlude tho But I'll definetly use them more than I would normally.