john9818a on 13/9/2019 at 08:53
Mine is getting to be pretty big. :o I started with the map from my first mission and I've been revamping it like crazy. :)
uncadonego on 15/9/2019 at 08:32
Quote Posted by Yandros
And you won't unless your mission is very large and approaching the cell limit. But that is what this thread is focused on. :)
Mine isn't very large, it was just too bumpy. Unnecessary details made of brushes etc.
uncadonego on 18/9/2019 at 10:08
I saved a lot of cells by simply changing flower beds. Boxes or garden curbs with a fill air in the center, bottom texture flowers. Just change the fill air to fill solid, make sure the line up flush and it save a lot of cells.
I have an unrelated question.
I did a search but came up not finding the thread I was thinking about. It was a thread, not about cell count but on frame lag I think. Yandros, I think, mentioned to use size 16 or greater for textures whenever possible, and set skyhack to 24 to save resources.
My question is this, which the mods can move from this thread if they want, to the right one:
Does it suck up any resources rendering the backs of architecture the player is looking at?
Say Garrett is looking at a building, is the opposite side being rendered or calculated at that time?
Would it help or do nothing useful if I took every place Garrett will never see the back of, or the top of cliffs he can't climb, or areas I know for a fact even Tom Brady couldn't throw a deflated scouting orb, and set it to 24?
nicked on 18/9/2019 at 12:09
Use the command render_backward to show what is being rendered behind stuff.
I don't think texture scale has any impact at all on cell count.
Texture scale is only really useful, from a performance point of view, if you're getting slowdown somewhere. It won't make a difference to your frame rate if you change texture sizes in non-rendered areas.
PinkDot on 18/9/2019 at 16:15
I believe render_backward renders in the backward order, not the back facing polygons.
The back facing polygons are culled - that's the main optimization procedure in portal-based engines.
The only advantage of assigning large scale textures to faces you will never see would be reduced light map size on those faces, as light maps size is always proportional to texture size. That means smaller file size and faster light map calculations. Potentially it may reduce polycount of the generated world mesh, as fewer splits need to happen. (large polygons get split, due to limited light map size, so the larger area a single light map cover, the fewer splits of polygon faces are required).
Unless you have a lot of these unreachable faces, I believe the savings would be minimal, if noticeable at all.
skacky on 18/9/2019 at 20:06
GORT experienced an increase in cells while working on his TDP20AC mission when he made all lightmaps across his mission much smaller than default. Texture scale (and lightmap scale) might have a small impact on cells but it should be fairly negligible I think. I'm not 100% sure on this and haven't done much testing.
uncadonego on 22/9/2019 at 12:28
So far, I've tweaked it down to 18,326 cells. Still working on it. I'm starting in on the intersecting arch areas. I've started with the easiest one. Took out the fill air cylinders and filled in just cubes. Made tiny wedges around the arch doorways more as "placeholders" for now.
I am just substituting two wedges on each side of the doorways to imitate a ten sided cylinder arch. I'm assuming you use a 3 sided corner apex pyramid upside down at the intersection points.
Once I get the hang of it in this simpler area, I'll work on the sewers.
Ok so my question is whether or not there is math to make this easy, or if you wing it by sight.
uncadonego on 28/9/2019 at 15:22
Working day after day on reducing cell count. I have so far worked it down to 16,420 cells.
But what about the sewers, the question in my previous post. Anybody have any advice? I've been saving that for last because it seems like a royal pain.
john9818a on 29/9/2019 at 04:21
It would be nice if there was an archway object with replaceable textures.
uncadonego on 29/9/2019 at 09:24
especially at the intersection of two arches. That's the kicker.