New Map: Zephyrus

[Smacker]

Textures does not matter, barrels are anoying, plus official textures are ugly.

[TiMe2ChilL]

Nice Barrels dude, they seem so fair, what package is this?

[FusSioN]

Its a nice map, but some times my settings reset and barrels gone wild. some jumps are incorrect

[cusoman]

@jitspoe: why don't you like the func_walls? It means that you have to draw all the faces of a barrel, or have to draw the back wall of the mound of terrain, but no longer have to chop up the world and add horrible tiny triangles everywhere.  It makes vis simpler and gives you less total vertices to draw.  What impacts fps more? Entity vertices or world vertices? If they are equal, it makes sense to leave these things as func_walls to have less total vertices.  I would like to know if I'm misunderstanding the advantages of func_walls (fewer total vertices.)  If this is not an advantage, when, other than using triggers, would it be useful to have func_walls?

@smacker and others: I don't understand either of your concerns:
- barrels: these are a nice team indicator while looking out to mid and use the standard red barrel texture.  Do you dislike the shape/placement of the barrels, or do you dislike how the light makes your textures look bright and silly?

- jumps/extra ledge thingy: I watched your youtube video and it shows how easy the jumps were on _b5.  Are you upset that _b6 made jumps even easier? Adding the ledge doesn't get rid of any of those jumps, it just gives you more freedom to jump around, makes other jumps easier/possible, and makes the mid jumps less gimmicky.  It also solved a problem jitspoe found in _b5 where you could get stuck on the boxes.  Please try explaining why you don't like the ledge

Thanks for all the feedback everyone, I'll make the appropriate changes in _b7 after I get some clarification

- Cusoman

[CheMiCal]

how do those barrels give an advantage? they're pure red which makes it harder to see the opposing team.

[Smacker]

@Cusoman: I do not like the placement of those barrels. There is already one barrel on main and indication is on mid pillars too. I think those barrels are something extra and they do no fit there for me.

[jitspoe]

@jitspoe: why don't you like the func_walls? It means that you have to draw all the faces of a barrel, or have to draw the back wall of the mound of terrain, but no longer have to chop up the world and add horrible tiny triangles everywhere.  It makes vis simpler and gives you less total vertices to draw.  What impacts fps more? Entity vertices or world vertices? If they are equal, it makes sense to leave these things as func_walls to have less total vertices.  I would like to know if I'm misunderstanding the advantages of func_walls (fewer total vertices.)  If this is not an advantage, when, other than using triggers, would it be useful to have func_walls?

The problem is when you use them for large brushes, like big rocks against the walls.  You end up rendering the func_wall AND the wall behind it.  Overdraw is usually more expensive than polygons, so even if the r_speeds are a little higher, the overall performance might be better.  Also, I think there's a bug where func_walls don't count toward r_speeds (so the numbers you get aren't accurate - the r_speeds are actually higher than what's displayed).  Also, func_walls are entities, which impacts network bandwidth.

For improving vis time, you should +detail all non-visblocking brushes (crates, barrels, railings, and other details).

I think the complaints about the ledge might be more of a visual thing.  It looks sort of out of place.

[cusoman]

Alright thanks for all the feedback.

I'll play around with the mid stuff and change the large func_wall sections.  I'll probably be raising the sky too, and unclipping it now that the skygliding has been finalized and has been implemented in multiple builds.  (You shouldn't be able to hit the new sky height anyway) 
I'll try to make the boxy sections of the outer walls in the base look more angular and match the mountain-y look of the other walls in the mid.

I'll try to find some time to crank out _b7

Additionally, I'm going to revise some of sassault4 into a new _b4 and un func_wall some of the larger terrain sections, and try to find another new solution to the fps drop in the mid, though if you have any feedback or suggestions for sass4, please post those in the sass4 thread.

Thanks,

- Cusoman

[Clipz]

sweet you should finish my siege map for me too ;p the subway one you absolutely loved.

[BASEBALLDUDE]

vis doesn't render brushes with the 'detail' flag set. Much easier than func_walls.

[cusoman]

vis doesn't render brushes with the 'detail' flag set. Much easier than func_walls.

func_walls and the "detail" flag do very different things.
Brushes with the "detail" flag will be ignored for VIS calculations.
Brushes that are made into func_walls are treated like entities, and are ignored by the BSP world vertex calculations and the VIS calculations.

For example: If you had an 8 sided barrel sitting in a square room, setting the barrel to detail would make the barrel invisible to the VIS process, but not the BSP process.  Making it a func_wall would stop the barrel from chopping up the square room into irregular pieces, and be ignored by the VIS process.  It would, however, draw the bottom face of the barrel over the floor, introducing the overdraw Jitspoe was talking about. 

When Jitspoe suggested making brushes "detail", he did not mean they were substitutes for a func_walls, only that they will improve the compilation time because VIS will ignore them, and that func_walls shouldn't be used for compilation time improvements.

I will be leaving many of the barrels and boxes as func_walls because they are located next to complex triangle brushwork, and I do not want to exponentially increase the number of triangles in those areas.  However, for large terrain pieces, I can make all of those brushes detail because I don't want them to contribute to VIS, and because the overdraw on such large irregular faces negates the improvements of making them func_walls.

- Cusoman

[BASEBALLDUDE]

I'd like to see this map finalized. Keep up the good work, Cuso!

[jitspoe]

I don't see any major issues with this map -- I think we could probably just move it out of beta unless you have further plans.  It can always be updated later.