What are you working on?

[Electro]

I've looked forward to couch coffee_move ai cafe grand simplicity outlet handbags for the longest time pays bills.

We should get together and discuss other cell phone games testing and what I'm working on.

Love simplicity grand is essentially blind.

<insert some other random string bits here and a link to bs>

[Chip]

@Electro

[ajay]

Finally got back to Quake after some months caught up in other stuff.
Have returned to mapping quite productively; adding a canal, some more buildings (some 'usable', some 'gameplay-significant', some 'blocking') and tinkered, fairly unsuccessfully, with zombie code.
May be around a lot in a few weeks as I may be made redundant, but swings-roundabouts etc.

[ajay]

So close. Finally got to the finishing 'edges' of the map, though not the complete, finished map, and TreeQBSP has gone bang:
ERROR 73: Vertexes in map exceed 65535

That, from what I've read, is fairly fatal now, I'm not sure there's a QBSP that goes beyond that?

[ceriux]

ajay i watched your trailer lol, the mods looking awesome. i hope you can figure out a way to get everything fixed up. i want to play!

[qbism]

So close. Finally got to the finishing 'edges' of the map, though not the complete, finished map, and TreeQBSP has gone bang:
ERROR 73: Vertexes in map exceed 65535

I know that some big maps use external bsps to stretch limits.

The video goes deeper than a tech demo... who is the real monster?

[ajay]

I've temporarily fixed it using -hilimits, but I've then hit bad surface extents errors, first in light.exe and in running the map.
Fixed again, but I'm not sure I'm going to finish the planned layout/details of the map.

External bsps? Interesting, how does that work?

[goldenboy]

Another one bites the dust, er, the BSP format. Welcome to the club.

External BSP is exactly what it says, you save part of the map as its own file and compile it, then load it into the main map via a misc_model or similar entity. Much like the old health boxes.

There may be problems with proper lighting of BSP models and so forth.

[ajay]

Has the current quake software reached their limits, or can they be further increased if programmers wanted? TreeQBSP has pushed the limits, as have newer engines - would further limits be possible, or have the Quake formats got limits that can't be extended any further?

EDIT:
Have started this http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=4254%20thread%20for%20this%20discussion,%20as%20a%20more%20relevant%20place

[mh]

You're never going to get more than 64k vertexes in a valid Q1 BSP, -hilimits or no -hilimits, because of this little bad boy:

Code: Select all

typedef struct
{
   unsigned short   v[2];      // vertex numbers
} dedge_t;

This is basically a lookup into the vertexes that surfaces use during loading, and is hard-wired in the binary format. The only way is to reduce your map complexity.

[ajay]

I was afraid of that. Don't fully understand it, but was afraid it would be the case. Have begun 'rationalising' areas of the map.

[Spike]

use the -darkplaces option for hmap2 as it'll allow larger lightmaps and reduce the number of fragments such surfaces are cut into.
use slopes instead of steps.
place details a unit or so away from the wall they're connected to, to avoid cutting in to the wall, preventing it from being fragmented.
complain at qbsp+engine makers and get them to agree on some standard that doesn't result in the loss of lightstyles.

[goldenboy]

It's a shame that you have to "rationalise" your map.

It's no secret anymore that a few of us are in the same situation, and that something will be done about it. See mh's blog.

Save a backup of your un-rationalized map, ajay...

[ajay]

I'm forgetting about map woes and just cracking on with building it. Currently working on a tower block, which is enormously complicated to get proportions and scale right, anyway it'll be a little like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peabodylon ... /lightbox/

[hogsy]

Currently working on a map for my project OpenKatana... still has a long way to go