As promised, here the new version of the town map. I've played around a bit with 3D floors in the tower of the keep, I'm quite satisfied with the results <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> (though it's not yet finished). <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramborc/town_20040229.zip">http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramb ... 040229.zip</a><!-- m --> To run it, simply unpack all 3 files to the base dir of your Vavoom install, and add both wadfiles in the "Files" box of vlaunch.

Quite good! Only stairs in a lower section is impassable without jumping <!-- s:wink: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=":wink:" title="Wink" /><!-- s:wink: -->

Yep, I've put in wrong sector heights for one of the steps (by 2 units), that's why the gap was there 26 instead of 24 units (the max you can traverse without jumping). Already corrected in my local version (but was too lazy to upload because of that again). <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) --> BTW I'm currently test running my new PC so that I move over everything only once it's been working reliably for a couple of weeks, so I still edit maps on this Duron 1.3 GHz, but I already made a test run on the new 3 GHz P4 and the time to build the vis data whenever I edit a map and start a test run in Vavoom is nearly exactly 3x faster (9 instead of 27 seconds), so in the future I should be capable of working more effectively on the town (and I'm already much faster now on this Duron which I use in the transitional phase, before that I was building this map on my old P3-600 and there the vis data took ages, I guess somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes).

That was the first time I actually played a map if slopes and 3d floors... It's so great to have those features on Hexen, unbelievable... I really like the Stronghold's tower, with the stair and different floors. I just wish to see it completed, it is going to be fantastic. I could also notice the glass effecton the windows, and that 's also great. This map is going to be really, really great.

LOL it's good to hear you people like that town map, after having started it in early 2001 and not getting any positive feedback on it for years, I started to think it's utter crap (one of the reasons I stopped several times for many months to work on it). <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) -->

BTW slopes, 3D floors, window glass and swimmable water (there is some in the cellar of the restaurant, see if you find it, just don't be too shocked <!-- s:P --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s:P -->) are all possible because of the engine switch for SE from Doomsday to Vavoom. <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->

I'm just glad you didn't quit on the map - it has qualities never before seen in any Hexen map. As for the swimable water, I have to check that out! All I can discuss is the visual factor (for instance, the original dark blue sky is depressing, and is heavy, as an atmosphere; we should look for ways to change it's graphic to something more natural, for example). I just wish I could work on the project more often, I really want to populate the city with all sorts of interesting npcs. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->

[quote="mago":3r19f6xt]I'm just glad you didn't quit on the map - it has qualities never before seen in any Hexen map. Could you be more specific? (so that I know what stuff I should put more into the map)

Well, not exactly specific aspects, but rather concepts never seen before - for instance, the human scale. The map isn't a maze or a deadly architectural trap in which no living being can live; it's a normal human urban development, filled with every-day houses, simbolic buildings (Church, etc.), "profane" buildings (tavern, etc.), all gathered in a dense organization, which is how a fantasy town should be. That kind of aproach is unique to Hexen, and is very immersive, very interesting, as we could notice in Antara or Dragon Lore 2, for example. The atention to details give the map a life - the map holds activities that were going on before the player went there; it shows the map's history (like the alley where all those crates are stocked (comercial, ordinary life)). The map has, in an architectural point of view, urbanistic qualities that give the place realism, like the points of reference or attention (the clock tower, the big Mage tower, the huge buildings of the other orders), and urban differences/conflicts, where the major buildings concentrate in the center (the point of all important activity - sign of power), while the ordinary ones (poor houses) are left in the outer area of the town. The point is, if we manage to design specific characteristics to this map, and if the artists acomplish the task of giving it human life, then we could have a really special map here, very complex, and most of all, fun to play and spend time inside. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->

The reason I could do this because this map was never meant for fighting and action, this is what allowed me to build it in such a "normal" way. There is another thing I tried to orient myself by more or less, from all three gates you can travel on a more or less wide street straight into the center of the town (the place with the clock tower, around which the market hall, the church and the town hall are centered). In a late stage, I put some houses in there because the place was too big and empty, but I might take out those houses once again and put something else in there if someone has an idea (like a fountain with lawns all around?). Biggest drawback of the map that can't be easily changed any more is that it's flat, i.e. floor height is the same for every single street. I was giving it some thoughts and came up with following: Below is the map of the area where Scattered Evil takes place (by the original storyline which is not the one we currently have, mind you). [img:1kd8m1yg]http://www.korax-heritage.com/images/history/koraxmap_v1.jpg[/img:1kd8m1yg] Notice the town more or less in the middle of the map (capital city of the province). It's on a steppe which is more or less flat, so a flat city should be OK here. Also, putting a river in the middle of the town is not an option any more, what can be done instead is to modify this map a bit and put that city on the Eastern side of the river. That way, when the player exits the town through the Western gate, he comes to the shore of the river. It could be done skillfully, making a map (or several) that have the same town walls from the outside, and between that wall and the river there could be a couple of houses (customs, fisherman's huts etc), and a couple of docks/piers in the river itself (it's not yet to rule out that traveling by boat will be possible in SE). There could also be an important road running north-south, explaining why there are also north and south gates, but not an Eastern gate (that direction, the land would be less populated, increasingly so as one nears to the Plains which are home of some wild tribes of humanoid monsters, Ettins or something else). Or in worst case I might try to put a gate on the Eastern side of the town too, I'll have to check whether it's possible or collides with some important buildings in a big way. p.s. if you look at some of the houses with the new textures in the Eastern part of town, you'll see that some textures are flawed (wrong colors), could you correct them? Also, if based on those textures (or from scratch) you could make some more, it'd be good to increase variety. Same goes for the roof images, there are only 3 different types of roofs and for the close to 100 houses of the town that's not much.

The idea of leaving it flat due to the plain location makes sense, and I can sure imagine how hard it would be to actually modify the ground height, now that all those sectors are already implemented. The height difference could be very useful (and most medieval cities also aren't flat, because they wouldn't be able to move big masses of land, and so they would adapt to the place's characterisitcs), but that can prove impossible to achieve. One more thing that I would like to suggest, now that a lot of buildings are still not completed, is if you could try to make a "poor" section of the city, possibly with ground differences (like durt instead of paviment). Maybe that would increase the city's personality. The river idea is also cool, it will give the player a sense of place, a sense of direction. And we should definetly have houses and farms outside the city - since the Iron Age, many cities would have defense walls around the important center, but as the years went by, most would expand beyond it, somtimes having to build aditional walls. Also, the products created by the outside area would help to sustain a big city with needed goods (and that can be shown in game, in the chats, etc.). As for the textures: I couldn't find the wrong textures... The only thing I noticed id that there's a stone texture with too much green, and that the green is to light (shining too much). Could you please pack the flats and patches you wanted me to check and send them to me (korax mail)? PS: Tell me something RambOrc: how does the flat texturing work? I saw some building had their textures matching prefectly, like they were made for them. Making the size of a sector with multiples of a flat will make the texturing perfectly match, is that it? Because this way, if possible, we could have a big flat that covers an entire building's side - with four complete flats, we could have a house. I think this way we could also have more realism on the textures itself, and more personalized houses. (Think about those big flats that are used to texture the rocky walls in Hexen).

I will try to make some new textures for the town, I will try to make them as different patchs, so we can use them combined if needed, I will try to make them based on the ones we already have, and if my luck is enough, I may even make new textures, heh! <!-- s:wink: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=":wink:" title="Wink" /><!-- s:wink: -->

Janis should be able to tell what the maximum texture size for Vavoom is, I think it's quite large, but 256x256 is surely possible (and that also works with any 3D card since the very first Voodoo ones). As for the plain floor, if you look at the map above you'll see that there is a port city at the estuary of the river - it could be made a relatively steep hillside where the river goes down to the sea, with a lot of height differences, a river in the middle of the city and a sea on one side, that city could offer a lot more variety. I think I'll finish this first city now as soon as possible, then start on other maps, and only later on when I've got a lot of experience with Vavoom mapping will I even start with the other city, so that it will be different from the beginning. Another possibility would be for DarkRaven to build that city (or both of us together), it's not that I'd want to build both cities (besides them, I think there should be only smaller villages and no more big towns, that would be too much work on urban environments and in the end there wouldn't be enough outdoors maps).

Yes, maximum texture size prety big. WinTex allows maximal size to be 128x1024, but engine should have no problems with larger ones.

How do we put textures with a height of >128 into a wadfile?

Yes, even though Wintex allows large textures, 128 is only 2 times the player's own height (if the unity is the same for both entities), which means insufficient space to draw an entire "wall" texture. I was going to ask the same thing - Janis, is there any other way to put graphics inside a wad without using Wintex?

DeepSea allows creation of larger textures.

I think XWE can do it too, but I might be wrong... <!-- s:? --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_confused.gif" alt=":?" title="Confused" /><!-- s:? -->

I've taken the liberty to steal that cool part of Janis' old map from 2002 he never finished and put it into the middle of the town, see <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramborc/test.zip">http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramborc/test.zip</a><!-- m --> This is just a test, first because Janis must allow me to use that stuff and second because I just wanted to ask you ppl (especially Mago) whether it's better than the couple of houses that were in there previously.

I see you took the complex square he had just before that "temple" portal. It's a dear square to me, because that is actually the place where I found the city mage and had my first chat in Hexen! As for my opinion: It made me think of 3 points: - I realized that we may be lacking a good open space\square area in the main town. Most medieval cities had a center that was often marked by the presence of a open space, the social space. We COULD have such an open space in it, maybe to place a small market place, or to populate with some busy npcs, and give the city more unique spaces. It should be near the important and symbolic buildings (like in this test, where it's placed in front of the citiy's temple). But the actual moddification raises 3 issues: the square itself, although beautifully constructed, is way too small to fit as a social space, which automaticly turns it in more of a monument space. This characteristic raises the other two issues: it stands in a lower ground plan than the rest of the city, what is a negative aspect for the "monument" recognition; and it has symbols that also doesn't fit in the city's universe (the gargoyles are not related in any way with the city feeling and architecture, in my opinion) - but that could, and it would be interesting, be "fixed" by creating specific sculptures\symbols that have something to do with the game's storyline. -The act of placing the clock tower to a different location (although temporary) is a bad move for the recoginition aspect of this particular area of the city, because for me, it always acted as a land mark in the city's landscape that would help me orient myself in there. It was structured in a way that would give it much more weight in the city image than now. -Somehow, that particular area has somewhat undefined limits, which is confusing, considering a open space must have a defined area to be confortably viewed and understood. Maybe another, more dense, area could be choosen for the placement of the square. PS: It was nice to see more materials in the city's pavement and constructions. I really think the city could use more pavements. Anyway, my opinion is that it's a very interesting concept. We should have more experiences in this sector! <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->

OK so how about this? <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramborc/test2.zip">http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramborc/test2.zip</a><!-- m --> The open area in front of the Tower of the Mage could be converted into another garden (with a street between the two gardens). The big yellow building with the white lines was meant as a restaurant but that's not necessary I guess and it could be converted into a palace (which is IMO a good thing anyway, currently there is only a Town Hall and without a palace of the governor that indicates a republic and I'm not sure that's a good thing for medieval fantasy).

I like the idea. You can use these parts of my map in any way you like. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->

The new town looks cool, I like the new position you gave to the small square there, it looks better there than into the first test map you made. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->

OK then I'll consider this a done change and continue work with this version.

New version for you to look at, with square more or less integrated in the Eastern part of the town. I've made the water translucent and retextured the square with one of the new textures Firebrand fixed up for me. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> Oh yes and since Mago likes the clock tower as landmark, I've increased its height by 256 units (half of it is a 3D floor BTW, using Vavoom's capabilities once again). <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramborc/town_20040403.zip">http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramb ... 040403.zip</a><!-- m --> You can run it in any version of Vavoom, don't forget to include both wads with the -file argument.

The latest version is at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramborc/town_20040523.zip">http://koraxdev.korax-heritage.com/ramb ... 040523.zip</a><!-- m --> It's heavily "under construction", meaning a lot of the stuff looks less finished than in previous versions, because I half-converted a lot of things from the old 2D to the new 3D capabilities, but not yet all buildings. I also started with an idea for the city walls, let me know whether you find it better than the former version. I included also the graphics wadfile in case you don't have this version, and also the .gwa file because it takes quite some time to build (15 secs on my 3 GHz machine in fast mode, on a 1 GHz machine it takes about a minute, on even slower machines it could take forever).

It really looks nice, I like the idea for the town walls a lot <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D --> .

I'm not sure who wanted me to make the clock tower into one you can go into and get up to the top, well I did that too now. <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) --> The clocks itself is ATM "under construction". <!-- s:P --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s:P -->

I just got an ATI Radeon 9700 instead of my Matrox P650 (which has about half the speed of a GeForce 3), and while on the old card it was "acceptable" that frame rate went down as low as 15 fps in the town map, the same happens on the new card too and that means this map will have to be scrapped and I'll start from scratch. <!-- s:( --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad" /><!-- s:( --> For this new start, I need your help with two things: 1) This is for Janis, please take a look at the latest version of the map (link in my post further above) and make me an as detailed as possible list what causes the slowdowns in this map, and also tips what cool features don't reduce speed and which cool things should be used sparely. 2) This is for everyone, if I already start anew it can be built any way, so everybody is welcome to post any kind of feedback/suggestions for this new town, like what kind of buildings it should have, feeling etc. Sketches and plans of any kind are also welcome. The mappers among you are also welcome to make some prefabs, like a nice building or so that can be integrated into the map. If we want to do several settlements for SE, prefab buildings are imperative anyway.

The main reason that couls slow down is that too much of the map with a lots of detail is (or might be) visible from single point. By reducing this with solid lines will help. Open areas with less detail should be Ok. Slopes and 3D floors should not reduce speed. Static light calculation also depends on visibility, but less than rendering. And light calculation is normaly done only once, so it shouldn't be a big isue.

I think that if you want to restart work on the town map it's ok, because you have had a lot of experience from working on the first version for some time and you will have an idea where to start and how to it, if you need any help just ask! <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D --> BTW, it will be good to remember this comment Janis makes, for further maps for any project we do.

As I think I already mentioned a couple of times, for SE I'd prefer many small maps instead of a couple of big ones. The maps could be REAL small if the engine could handle monsters going from one map to another, and the other feature that was discussed years ago and deemed possible (linedef teleport with position marking).

[quote="Firebrand":cycaaodq]I think that if you want to restart work on the town map it's ok, because you have had a lot of experience from working on the first version for some time and you will have an idea where to start and how to it, if you need any help just ask! LOL "for some time" means nearly 4 years by now. <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) --> <!-- s:oops: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" title="Embarassed" /><!-- s:oops: --> As for help, yes I would appreciate any kind of ideas and prefabs/design elements. One thing I'm sure I'll do this time is pedestrian walkways, they give rows of buildings a better look and I even tried it in the original SE town once, but at most places the streets weren't wide enough. Also, this time I'll make the terrain up'n'down, not a flat like it was done for Doomsday.

An obvious question I forgot to ask in the first place and which is quite important, could you list what you like in the current town map and what you don't? So that I make the kind of stuff in new maps that's actually cool. <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) -->

[quote="dj_jl":ypvq2w0g]The main reason that couls slow down is that too much of the map with a lots of detail is (or might be) visible from single point. By reducing this with solid lines will help. I just realized there is something I don't get about this... if you go into the SE part of the town, to that big building south of the fountain square, and go upstairs, looking out through the windows you not only see the courtyard but also the tower of the magi which is north-east from the courtyard, and from the window you're looking through it's behind a solid line (unless I misunderstood what this means). What gives?

Most likely it's visible because of the usage of fast mode of glVIS. Normal mode should eliminate most of such situations.

That's been another prob with this town map, when I tried to run glvis in slow mode, it didn't work, after a time the status bar stopped and nothing happened even after I left the program going on for minutes.

Yes, glVIS can have problems with big maps with a lots of visibility (like town map). I don't know yet if it really stops somewhere or maybe there are too many calculations that it takes a lots of time to process all of them.

I could try to let it crunch for an hour or two on my 3 GHz machine, I guess that'd be rather conclusive.

Well I let it run a short time ago, in the first quarter hour it made slow progress but reached about 1/3 or so of the progress bar, then I went away for approx. 3/4 hours and when I came back it was at maybe 10% further and didn't seem to move any more. I checked it another quarter hour later and it seemed to still stay at the same spot, so I just shot it down. <!-- s:( --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad" /><!-- s:( -->

Isn't there a way to make glvis work faster??

Probably it really locks up somewhere. As of speed, currently it's more about precision raher than speed. But anyway the current version is much faster than first versions. I'll see if there's a way to speed it up even more.

Another Q, how do 3D models affect performance? Is there a big slowdown if a larger number of MD2s is in a map?

It depends on video card, amount of objects visible and their detail level. But normaly they shouldn't take a lots of processing time.

I've got some experiences with the KMOD engine how well it handles 3D models and in what amounts, can you tell how Vavoom performs compared to it (similarly, somewhat better, much better)?

I don't remember exacly how complicated was the model rendering code in kmod. In Vavoom the code is very simple so it should be about the same or maybe even faster than kmod.