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The Geonosian Arena WIP


DaJo Kesea

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on the doors, i have a suggestion: make a group of boxes spiked on the bottom that are a rising gate when put together instead of a swinging one. i think that would be the best way to do it, and you could get one of those neat sounds that they us in movies with castles where those kind of gates rise. there is actually a sound of just that in RtCW and it was the same effect, except not as large. just an idea. would probably actually come across better than swining anyway.

 

but on swinging. . .RtCW and Medal of Honor both have swining doors, and they're both Quake 3 games, so i would think that there should be some way to do it, whether it's in a different editor or not, i don't know. all i know is that the effects exists and exists quite prominently in other games.

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hmm. that's too bad. since it's star wars and supposed to be all space doors rising and spreading, i guess it makes sense they wouldn't include it, but it would have been nice to have the same option as other quake games. oh well. then i guess you will HAVE to do rising doors. but like i said, i think they'd be cooler anyway.

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Not sure what is going on with the posts. My last post that belonged between Matt's and lo5t_h0pe's is actually a few above. I wish the people running the forum would figure out how to set the clock!

 

Still working. Thanks for all your info.

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Hello all.

 

I often frequent the boards, though I haven't registered until recently.

 

DaJo, I didn't know you were a texture artsist for AOTCTC!

 

About ypur questions: You could enquire at Rich Diesal's web site. I'm not sure. But for clipping patches, press the X key! :D

 

Anyway, from what I've seen of the Arena thus far, it looks brilliant. Well done.

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this speak of patches is making me a bit nervous. . .they're wonderful things if you need a curve here and there, but. . .

 

maybe i'm alone in this, but patches and smooth curves are FPS killers. they look beautiful, but there is a very good reason that Raven didn't use them very much in their levels. many of the places that should have been a curve were just a many sided -gon shape. maybe i'm completely wrong in this, but when you say patch, my thoughts stray to a couple maps i've seen that have patch tunnels, and the FPS suck REALLY bad if you look right down one of the tunnels.

 

that's just me, though, i guess.

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that's what i'm thinking. i can run most of them fine. like rich's kamino duel runs fine, and that has many, but the new icecave one that was released a bit back isn't very friendly at all. the tunnels are all patches with beautiful curves and look very natural, but the system takes a hit bad. it's playable on mine, but not as pretty. now it is possible that rex has a different video card than i do. i have a geforce 3, and he may have a radeon. radeons handle things like that different. there are many possibilities, but in reality, if this map is going to be widely playable, the patches are going to have to be cut down to only when absolutely necessary, especially on a map of these massive proportions. it will be harder for the map to look right, but it's a sacrafice that will have to be made for the little guys. sorry. patches are pretty, but underneath the pretty skin, they're bitches and are out to destroy a perfectly good game experience. i would hate to see that happen to this map.

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I sometimes even get low framerates on the Duel Kamino map.

 

I'm hopefully going to be trippling my RAM sometime soon, as well as getting a better sound card, so that should, IN THEORY, tripple my game speed *crosses fingers*

 

Patches look spectacular, but for a lot of what you're doing, you won't need them. It would look cool if you could make the sand groove upwards toward the arena walls, and a few hills here and there would be nice. Just don't overdo it.

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Just for all of your information, a curve will end up being faster to render than a highly clipped/many surfaced brush designed to create the same look. Plus the lighting looks oh so much smoother. In duel_kamino, those columns were originally sets of 16-sided polygons. When I converted them to all curves, each column increased the tri count by about 500.

 

If you can avoid curved surfaces altogether, that's best. But if you hafta choose between actual patches and faking it with brushes, go ahead and use patches.

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Hi everyone!

 

Due to having a wonderful birthday and a few computer issues, I have been AWOL for a few days. (I know what AWOL means, but what does it stand for? LOL)

 

For my bday, I got a copy of Flight Simulator 2002. Talk about a LARGE number of triangles to draw! From up in the plane you can see for miles, and FS2002 generates random 3D structures on the ground as well. But in talking to some tech support people, I have found out some interesting information that might benefit anyone who has an older configuration such as mine:

 

550 mHz

384 MB of RAM

64 MB GeForce Accelerator card

 

If you are experiencing slowdown in Jedi Outcast or other 3D games, check this: Make sure your AGP or PCI video card and your sound card have at least one space between them inside your chasis. Next, be sure to get the updated drivers for your video card and DirectX.

Last but not least, right click on the My Computer icon and choose Properties. Go to the Device Manager and click on the View menu. You want to show hidden devices, and you want to be in "Resources by connection" mode. Click the [+] next to Interrupt Request (IRQ).

 

Look at the number next to the device. That's the IRQ port number. Are two or more of your devices sharing the same IRQ port? For example, your sound card and your video card? This really slows down frame rate! It was described to me as being like a football team all trying to go after the same ball at once, even if it was in another teammate's hands. All my PCI cards are running off of port 9, and that contributes to some of my problems. You need to talk to a support technician for your computer if this is the case. Tinkering with the driver setup for your computer could cause your hard drive to crash or worse, so be careful, but this is something you need to change if you can.

 

Have no fear. I'm still working on the Geonosian Arena. Talk to you soon!

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thanks dajo, and thanks rich. good help from both sides, even though on different topics somewhat. i didn't know that about patches and brushes. good to know. all i knew was that levels i play with many curves (aka patches) kill things pretty bad, but i did not know that a polygon would run worse. interesting. thanks. i wasn't completely wrong, but i apologize for the wrongness that i did have.

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Two words for anyone who wants to reassign IRQ ports:

 

BACK UP.

 

Back up your important data before you play around with the settings.

 

I thought this IRQ stuff was just a DELL thing, but it's actually a Windows thing. In order to change the IRQ assignments, you have to change your system driver from ACPI (?) to Standard PC. This can be done in the device manager, but I'm giving limited info because I have limited knowledge. You REALLY should talk to a support technician, or a computer professional if you aren't one. I will be getting some instruction on Saturday from a friend I know who is a big computer whiz.

 

If you successfully change your IRQ settings without harming your system, you should notice less choppiness in games, and better performance in other processor intensive work.

 

The arena is coming along okay. After free rotation of entire rooms, some patches get misaligned, revealing the caulking from behind. This can easily be fixed by altering the troublesome patches in vertex mode. I just have to watch out for the sudden "brush with no normals" error. I have found that the best way to prevent problems is to not let that error go unattended, and use bobToolz every now and then.

 

There probably won't be any updates for a while because I'm building stuff right now that HAS to be out in the open. But you can count on an update as soon as I get to a point where I can seal something up! Thanks for all your input and help. It says on Rich's tutorial site that "once you start something, finish it!" I plan to do just that.

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