I.R. Hogan

Good News is ..

I got rid of my freeze ups by reformating my HDD and reinstalling everything.

Bad News is..

My back ups were corrupted so I lost all my map progress and have to start over.

Good News is..

I'm willing to start over lol..

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I.R. Hogan |TG|

Vulcan

oye that's no fun, has happened to me too. Sometimes a fresh start is what you need though. Good luck man!

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ednos

Ohnoes! I'm that much further from experiencing the map of the century! Well, at least the problems are gone, unless you installed Windows again.

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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. ~ Bertrand Russell
I have a tendency to key out three or four things and then let them battle for supremacy while I key, so there's a lot of backspacing as potential statements are slaughtered and eaten by the victors. ~ Magna Centipede

MagnaCentipede

The very fact you can nuke the universe on a computer is probably one of their most endearing features.

If you were nearly done with it, my condolences. But if you were just starting out, you'll be amazed how much better you do the second time. I've only done about 20% of the second verion of my map and already it's looking stronger.

Then again, I'm using Regressiontest Cat as the background of the Big Box (since I don't want to bother with sealing while I build) so that automatically makes the map improve.

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sparhawkxx

OMG Hogan I would go postal On my desktop. Good man keep strong I'm sure the second go will be even better.

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FUN FUN

Chewy

Haha... yeah I would probably go find a corner to cry in... that's just depressing, but at least you are gonna start over. Hopefully many of the ideas are still fresh!

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What Is Schwa?

That attitude is what brought some of my map making projects to a complete halt. I finished my re-imagining of cs_Harvest only to discover it would require a complete overhaul to optimize it for good frames. I know it is a giant pain in the ass, but planning how your vis_leaves will compile is essential to creating something that everyone can play.

I find it best to build boxes with the nodraw material on them, than fill in the playable area with func_detail brushes. This has a really nice effect of dropping the compile time for the vis_leaves down dramatically while giving you better control over what the player sees.

If you are well beyond this point in mapping feel free to ignore my comments. I don't mean to offend, I just wish someone had told me this stuff when I was starting out.

-Aaron

What Is Schwa?

Hogan, you sent copies of the bsp to people right? Find someone who still has it than decompile it. Sure it wont be perfect, but hopefully you will be able to recover some of the geometry out of it.

-Aaron

whistler

On top of that, I can't stress enough to back stuff up... Did you ever get the TG webspace?

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section-8

that sucks. you are a better man than I. Because I probably wouldn't start over.

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MagnaCentipede

"If you are well beyond this point in mapping feel free to ignore my comments."

Fear not, I know how visibility works. I've been slapping around some of the mappers at Goldeneye Source (I'm a tester) for not doing it right. Heck, I even fired off some grouchy letters to Valve on how they handle visibility sections, entities, and netcode...and I it seems they fixed part of it.

I wish we had 2D-planes to work with for defining visibility sections. UT was fun and easy to cut up; Hammer makes you create garrish cubes and skip most of their faces.

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What Is Schwa?

Cool... well, if my map turns out to have vis problems now I know who to turn to for help =)

I agree, the hint brushes are cumbersome and awkward. I am curious, what were your suggestions to Valve?

-Aaron

MagnaCentipede

Mostly I was arguing about their netcode; though the vis was part of it.

For about a year I was trapped on dialup. One problem I had with the netcode was I could see a delay between when I first entered a new vis section and when the entities would display. This happened on broadband, too, but if your ping is less than 40ms, there's but two or three frames to possibly notice the effect, which means you don't see it unless you ambush a broken Office window. (Indeed, I'd strafe out and for the first couple frames the window was clearly normal, then it would update and appear in the broken-out state. And this effect was repeatable by simply leaving and re-entering that vis section.) On dialup, however, your in-bound packet rate is already slow, and your ping is high, which means you're frequently mowed down by invisible men. You turn the corner in Office, see nothing but an empty hall, you notice one frame seemed to render slowly, and *pop* there are flying file cabinets and three CTs spamming and bagging your now-dead corpse. gg. So, I charged them with adjusting the code so the server would send information on entities that are in neigboring vis sections so this problem would be solved. I attribute it to the "P90" problem where a SMG rusher would seem to run at double-speed into a hallway while spamming wildly.

Anyway, I know they added some data compression to allow for faster acquisition of entity information, though I'm no longer dialup so I haven't monitored the vis section issue.

My big mistake was being honest. As soon as I said 56k I was regarded as just another brain-dead noob with lag who's money they already have and I was initially mostly ignored and sent kopipe "we can't fix your lag" and "how to tweak your modem" links until my persistance wormed its way up the ranks. If I'd lied and said I was on super duper quantum fibre optics that has 250ms lag because the wire runs up to my awesome space station, they would've given me full attention.

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ViaS

You have a space station? You've been withholding information on me. ;_;

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MagnaCentipede

Reduce velocity. You apparently overlooked the words "if I'd lied" that preceeded my revealing the existence of my orbiting plaform. That I don't have.

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