Keeping Files Sizes Down?

by on 12/29/2007 22:18, 18 messages, last message: 01/14/2008 18:25, 1374 views, last view: 05/03/2024 15:53

I\'m making a map roughly based on Silent Hill and as I\'m sure you can imagine, making a large town full of various large buildings -most of which you can enter- takes up a huge amount of space.

I\'ve only finished the general plan of the North-East section of the town, and it\'s taking a good 45 seconds for it to save already.
I only have sunlight and two 120 radius lights to render, and it takes a good 3 minutes. Lighting the hospital will take a minimum of 30 lights, and this is on top of the civilian houses, street lights and other key buildings I may wish to build.

Once I add map models, materials, envmaps and anything else necessary, it\'s going to take a good 5 minutes to load.

Are there any tips on how to keep memory and processing requirements down to a minimum?
I already have fog set to 400, which doesn\'t help much.
My frame-rate\'s bound to ditch too, it already does when I zoom out and look down upon the town.

I\'m worried SB really is only good for death matches.

   Board Index   

#1: ..

by JadeMatrix on 12/30/2007 04:16

What's your computer's specs (other than better than mine)? Could be just on your end, though I doubt it.

Also, you can do the map in detailed sections with less detailed surroundings, each map loading at checkpoints. Unless, of course, you want full roam to be available.

Wait, what exactly does "lod" do? Could it be used here (ie decrease lod with distance)? I haven't had much experience with that var.

reply to this message

#2: Re: ..

by steve_e on 12/30/2007 05:12, refers to #1

Break the map into smaller sections if scoring isn't critical/necessary. Small maps will load very quickly, so calling a command such as 'sp mymap' will load the new section without much wait at all...

You could possibly have an outdoor map/s and then maps for the inside of bigger buildings.

reply to this message

#3: ..

by marcpullen2 on 12/30/2007 09:42

If you want, I can take a look at it and see if it's something in the map causing it to run poorly.

I usually run /remip and /recalc fairly freqently, and I test /calclight 3 painfully frequently too, you might try the same and see if it cleans something up.

Shoot me an email if you want a second set of eyes to look it over.

reply to this message

#4: map sizes

by kurtis84 on 12/30/2007 18:20

LOD options don't help much, but good map layout planning does. You have to give occlusion something to work with beside a huge open area full of details. If you can stand in one spot of your map, and look around and see all of, or a large portion of your map...it's a bad layout. This isn't something only sauer has a problem with btw, it's just something all mappers for any engine has to learn to deal with.

You might want to take into consideration the lightprecision setting...it is at 32 by default, and that will take forever to compile on a really large map. Lightprecision can greatly effect your maps file size also. I'm not so certain you will see performance improvements from changing lightprecision, but loading the map, and compiling will be a lot faster at 96 or 128, as opposed to 32.

Also, theres the chance you have an old/outdated graphics card, maybe lacking the opengl-specific occlusion feature, and struggling with the shaders?

reply to this message

#5: ..

by W4 (on his old computer) on 12/30/2007 21:56

Do not use the smallest cube size when possible and try to optimize geometry some, which is not as useful while editing but it makes a huge difference when playing. If you can, use patchlight instead of a full recalc for a basic idea of how everything will look when lit.

If you map is textured, try not to use huge texture sizes, just make the texture able to tile. While it is often tempting to make a completely random texture that will cover the entire map without ever tiling once, current limitations of the engine make maps slow to load when they use that technique. Also look at texture file sizes. Try compressing them some or saving them in a different format. Instead of creating every little detail out of cubes, use sharers to make the illusion of depth.

reply to this message

#6: Re: To all comments so far.

by on 12/31/2007 16:19, refers to #4

Thanks to everyone for suggestions.


Lets leave it that my graphics card is old enough that its unable to handle power of two textures.
Im hoping to buy a GeForce 7 card at some point. Its the only modern card that has a port for a CRT monitor. *grumble grumble*
Hopefully that should help a little.

I was hoping to have the outside town as a free roam level with triggers set at the doors of key buildings that warp you "inside". That being to another map.

Ive copied and pasted the hospital to another map, but I dont know how to set the trigger so that it will load it. Ive used triggers for basic things before, but Ive forgotten how to programme them after accidentally deleting my old work.

As for:
<b>"If you can stand in one spot of your map, and look around and see all of, or a large portion of your map...its a bad layout."</b>

Hopefully that shouldnt be a problem as most of the map will consist of exploring alley ways to get anywhere.
The close fog should limit your FOV considerably anyway. I hope.

I wish the fog boundaries were less defined and more "noisy". Is there any way I can do this within the confines of the map.cfg without changing settings for the whole engine?

reply to this message

#7: Re: To all comments so far.

by Hirato Kirata on 12/31/2007 16:35, refers to #6

don't most GPUs that use DVI ports ship with a DVI to VGA converter. I'm in possession of a 20' CRT monitor and an Nvidia 8600GTS and using both quite happily.

~Hirato Kirata

reply to this message

#8: Re: DVI to VGA converter

by steve_e on 12/31/2007 16:54, refers to #7

Agreed - generally anyway, you will get a connector. I thought the minimum card with 2 xDVI is the Nividai 8600 (In the Nvidia line that is), so anything less will have VGA as default (at leat here in Aus).

reply to this message

#9: Re: DVI to VGA converter

by yetanotherdemosthenescomputer on 12/31/2007 21:18, refers to #8

Actually, I've seen much lower cards with dual DVI-I, but they come with at least one DVI-VGA converter (and actually, my 7600GT came with a VGA, DVI *and* a DVI-VGA converter). This was at Newegg.com, for the curious. :)

reply to this message

#10: Re: DVI to VGA converter

by rancor on 01/01/2008 00:48, refers to #8

Actually, my 6800XT had dual DVI, which was actually a primary reason that I bought it. Most 7xx0 cards also have dual DVI. I wouldn't worry about it, since they uniformly come with at least one DVI to VGA adapter.

reply to this message

#11: Cheap card...

by dfhksdsjkfhsdconorfhjdsfhjk on 01/01/2008 21:12

7300GS, VGA, DVI, and a connector.

reply to this message

#12: Quick rendering

by steve_e on 01/02/2008 03:49

I have just started mucking around making my own textures and doing a texturereset in the .cfg - it seems with only a few textures loaded rendering speed is amazingly quick. You might be doing this already, but it certainly amazes me how fast some renders are.

reply to this message

#13: Re: ..

by SheeEttin on 01/02/2008 23:56, refers to #3

Speaking of calclight, you might try calclighting at a lower quality... I have /calclight -1 through 3 bound to F5-F9 for easy access, though I only really use F5 for immediate views and F9 for release stuff. I don't really use the others. :P
Don't use -2, though, it doesn't do shadows (i.e. light passes through everything in addition to lighting it).

reply to this message

#14: filled cubes

by MeatROme on 01/14/2008 00:58

any non-essential bits of the map should be fully filled cubes!
As the question seems to be regarding a map mostly happening "outside" this is obviously not as easy a suggestion as for people having maps hung in space - for the latter it can work wonders on filesize/loading-times if the unreachable parts of the map are skybox-textured cubes!
But think about the height of the octree you're using and the parts of the sky you'll never get to - even with a rocket-jump ...
... just my 2¢ worth - in case people peruse this thread :)

reply to this message

#15: Re: filled cubes

by steve_e on 01/14/2008 10:47, refers to #14

>> the latter it can work wonders on filesize/loading-times if the unreachable parts of the map are skybox-textured cubes!


Cool - great tip - thanks!

reply to this message

#16: Remipping

by AzraelUK on 01/14/2008 17:38

This will probably sound very patronising - but are you remipping? Remipping optimises the map geometry, which will give you a much better framerate and a smaller file size. Press 7 in editmode to see the outlines of the triangles, and then type /remip to see the difference.

reply to this message

#17: Re: Remipping

by jbuk2k7s cookie has gone on 01/14/2008 18:13, refers to #16

Afaik Sauer automatically remips when you calclight.

reply to this message

#18: Re: Remipping

by SheeEttin on 01/14/2008 18:25, refers to #17

It does.

reply to this message

   Board Index