Hullmakers vs occluders

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Hullmakers vs occluders

Post by Spawn » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:30 pm

I didn't find any info on occluders in the Nolf1 docs, but I guess hullmakers would function in a similar way?
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Post by SPYDAVE » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:42 pm

Occluders are more absolute in their blocking (always on). Therefore they can't be placed where a player can see them (put them behind walls, etc.)

Hullmakers can be placed in hallways (places the player can see). They are not always on ... the engine decides when to draw what's behind them. The engine decides this based on player's location (and line of sight) to hullmaker.
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Post by Spawn » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:49 pm

Oh, I see

Thanks for the quick reply Dave :)
I'll look further on info about occluders then..
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Post by SPYDAVE » Tue Nov 28, 2006 8:51 pm

What is this for ... NOLF1/2 or CJ?

Also remember this ... (Geared towards NOLF2 & CJ - NOLF1 does not have dynamic occluders)

http://spydave.net/FRAMES/NOLF2Dyno.HTML

Hopefully it will give you more of an idea.

Which now that I look at it I notice part of the last is missing ... ((2)) ... Sorry about that ...

(If this is for NOLF1) ... I feel like I need to mention portals. Portals are brushes that are hidden in doors. Doors (closed or not) do not block vis. With NOLF1 I was able to get away more with portals and hullmakers. NOLF2 & CJ ... dynamic occluders is clearly the best bet (to me)!
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Post by Spawn » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:29 pm

Yeah, its that nolf1 competition map :P

I tried the same method as I used in NOLF2 but ended up with a lot of black areas in
the level.. Even though they are hidden behind walls. At least they increased the framerates.. Now I also tried making them nosnap & detail 0 but they don't work very well when I do that :huh:

do you see anything odd in the setting below?
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Post by SPYDAVE » Wed Nov 29, 2006 12:29 am

Yeah occluders in NOLF1 are a completely different beast. First of all they are not dynamic (there's no box the player runs through).

First of all in NOLF1 ...

Occluders are NOT single sided brushes (at least I've never seen them single sided in NOLF1).

Hullmakers and portals ARE single sided.

Occluders are hidden behind walls (where player cannot see them).
Hullmakers are placed in hallways (right in plain view of player).
Portals are placed inside doors (and are attached to the door mover so they move with the door).

As for your brush's properties ... set EVERYTHING to False BUT TerrainOccluder.

These are the settings that Coty used for my Land of Evil map for SHOWDOWN (thanks again Coty).
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Post by Coty » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:57 am

http://coty.ms11.net/downloads/rrrrr.zip

That was a map that I modified and sent back in email, from a question at the glue factory to show how nolf1 occluders and hullmakers were used.

Walking around in the map, you can see the effect. You may want to throw a texture on the floor to more easily see. The cubes are where the doorways are, and the cylinders will pop in and out according to where player is.

NOTE: There is no hard viz blocking in Nolf1 like you have in Nolf2's Occluder brush. Walls set for detail level 0 block viz in Nolf1. But this is determined by the engine weather you can see that area or not (soft block). TerrainOccluders are mostly use in outside areas where you wouldn't want to see walls. If you changed those terrainOccluders to a regular wall, you would get the same engine viz blocking effect, but you would see the walls, and they would be solid, like a regular wall in an indoor map. You can see this by making the terrainOccluders regular brushes. The occluder texture should still make the brush invisible, but if not, give them the invisible texture so you can see that it is the same viz blocking effect.


Portals are placed in a doorway (inside doors) and given a special name. The name is placed in the door's portal properties box. When the door opens, the seal is broken and engine visibility is drawn. When the door is closed, the portal seals the room blocking engine viz when it is touching the detail 0 walls around the doorway.

Nolf1 is more complicated than Nolf2. Engine viz blocking is much harder due to the old BSP way.
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Post by Spawn » Wed Nov 29, 2006 10:48 pm

Thanks for the great info guys B)

I'll check it out tomorrow
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Post by SPYDAVE » Wed Nov 29, 2006 11:49 pm

Just to add ... like Coty said viz blocking is harder with NOLF1.

The best rule of thumb is to make levels that are built not to lag. Connecting U or S shaped hallways (etc.). Of course we don't always design with lag in mind ... creativity gets in the way, hence blocking ...

In NOLF1 I did all my blocking with Hullmakers and Portals. Remember the subway train level in SHOWDOWN? ... Every door had a portal assigned to them which really helped that level run (without the portals on the doors the engine would have drawn the entire car since doors don't block viz).

So ... if you are using doors look and see if your problems could be corrected via portals.

Other than that ... use fraps and run through your level taking note of any 'problem areas'. Then you might want to consider placing Hullmakers in hallways to attempt to cut off certain areas.

The best example of Hullmakers is the NOLF1 single player sample maps ...
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Post by SPYDAVE » Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:27 am

One more thing ... I know you're not used to mapping in NOLF1 ...

Have you set your map up correctly to check for leaks?

Have you ...

1. Placed a insidedef object inside your map
2. Placed an outsidedef object outside your map
3. Put ... -leakfile myfile.lek ... in the Extra Parameters of the Processor

If you want to check if it's working correctly create a leak in the level and when processing it should tell you there is a leak. Go to World -> Debug -> Load Leak File and you should have lines bouncing through the level ... and out of the hole you just made.

Leaks can really kill a level! ... And it's not something we had to worry with NOLF2 / CJ
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Post by Spawn » Thu Nov 30, 2006 8:33 pm

Lol! there are lines going everywhere!

The box that surrounds the map is supposed to be detail 0 right?
Thanks a lot for the info guys :thumb:

I get framerates below 30 some spots though, but I'll tweak the design a little and lower Farz a little :unsure:
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Post by Fatty » Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:17 pm

Yeah the "outer shell" of your map should always be detail 0. Also there is a way to simulate the effects of dynamic occluders in NOLF 1. Bind the brushes that you want to hide to a group object and set up a trigger to hide the group and whenever you activate that trigger it will hide all those brushes bound to that group object. You'll also need to set up another trigger that will unhide them when you enter an area in which they would be visible. It's a lot of work to set up though and you have to make sure you set up the triggers to hide/unhide the group(s) in the correct locations to avoid any noticable pop-ups.

EDIT: Turns out what I mentioned above with the group object and triggers would only work correctly in SP maps, and would be ueseless in MP.

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