Maplet lightmaps question
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Maplet lightmaps question
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| ok i've been usin maplet to make some little demo maps to test out my fps engine and i added lights to one map and got a very dramatic slowdown (30 fps). I have know idea why it does this, but i get around 60FPS without. Does anybody else have this problem? |
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| you complaining about 60FPS?? |
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| no i'm complaining about 30 which is what i get when i add lights from maplet, it is around 60 when i don't have the lights and that is good. and i said that up top, but i can tell where u would think othewise, i need to pay more attention when i type |
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| Well, since adding lights in Mapplet is only adding lightmapping which uses a second set of UVs and another texture channel with blending..... I would think that it is the specs of your machine or the way you are doing things... First off, what are the specs of your machine (IE video card, processor, etc). Seondly, are you doing this in windowed mode? FullScreen? Lastly remember that Maplet doesn't construct a BSP tree, so when your looking over the entire level (or just looking in a general direction which covers more geometry in the view frustrum) you have to render everything (including all the multitextured polys in the distance even though you dont actually see them). |
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| p4 2.0, 256 ram and intel "extreme" graphics1 chip(and that i know has to be the reason for it) very weak specs i know i'm embared because my comp lol. i need money to upgrade ahhhhhhh EDIT: fullscreen. yea i know that but i'm doing FPS not top down so does that do the same? Does that include stuff on other side of walls too? and lastly is there anything i can do in blitz to get the same effect but a keep a good frame rate? |
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| p4 2.0, 256 ram (this probly part problem) and intel graphics chip(and that i know has to be the reason for it) very weak specs i know i'm embared because my comp lol. i need money to upgrade ahhhhhhh Well, that's part of your problem. The intel GFX cards are decent, but not as good as they could be (and no where near compared to a gforce 3 and higher). You will get a slight performance hit doing multitextured polys. But that isn't your 'whole' problem. EDIT: fullscreen. yea i know that but i'm doing FPS not top down so does that do the same? There is the rest of your problem. Because maplet doesnt do a BSP tree, the engine doesnt stop rendering gemoetry you don't see (it still renders everyting behind it, it is just drawn over by the stuff infront of it). If you have a large level, remember that all the geometry behind any given wall will be rendered as well (along with the lightmapped multitextured polygons). So if your looking at a wall, and there are 12 other rooms behind that wall, even though you can't see them, they are still being rendered. Your best solution would be to find what the biggest size of one of your rooms and set the camera distance max to that size (just a hair above). That way anything that exceeds that distance from the camera isn't rendered. Although, if you have long hall ways then you will see the end of the rendering field, however you can compensate for this by adding a heavy fog of <insert level ambient color here> at the end of the camera distance (say start the fog 100 before the max of the cam distance, and end it at the cam distance). Just some food for thought for you, hope it helps. |
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| ok that helps, that idea with the camera is probly what i'm gonna do or if i can find a program that does do a BSP tree and is free that would be nice |
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| Quake maps are bsp's, I forget what the map editor was called though. |
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| ok i was wondering about that because i did a google search so i'll just do it again and see what comes up |
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| And blitz has support for loading quake 2 bsp files :-) |
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| try also load your scene as separate objects, and apply on them entityautofade if it is outdoor scene... |
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| I don't think he would use mapplet for an outdoor scene though, but autofade is a good idea! Although then he is throwing alpha tranparancies into the mix and might get even more slow down (I know on my intel GFX at work alphas slow things down). hmmmm. BSP is probably his best option. |
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| best way to improve performance is double your ram, better yet make it 1gig, will be more beneficial than upgrading gfx card. |
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| best way to improve performance is double your ram, better yet make it 1gig, will be more beneficial than upgrading gfx card. How so? Doing Texture blending is in the video card,and not cpu/ram based... |
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| In addition to what has been previously said, Blitz3D will handle some Quake3 maps too. Dark Basic Pro is better in this area as it will handle stuff from Quake 3 based games, such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein (which has some lovely castle-type levels), which Blitz3D cannot handle. Also, Dark Basic Pro seems to handle the lighting better for some Q3 levels too. |
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| yeah but it has quite more bugs and without a Shader 2 card most of the lovely "core stuff" does not even work (thinking of simple bumpmap like Dot 3 etc) as they kicked it out the normal system with the introduction of FX system with V3 ... |
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| ok sorry i havn't posted back(i've been at lake). i did a google search again for the quake map editors and i didn't find anything(or i didn't look good enough). so if somebody could post a link to one that would be great. |
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| I believe it was called QRAD, RADQ, or something with RAD in the name... |
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| ok thank you i will look and see if i can find it |
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| GTKRadiant is Quake level map/geometry editor from where you can export all kind of Quake supported BSP's.Hammer is for HL BSP. |
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| There you go, that's what I was thinking :-) You da man Alien! |
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| ok ty i'll probly dl that tomorrow |
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