Ascend The Pit - ChainedFlight's Game

[ChainedFlight]

Hello Everyone I figured I'd make this thread to post updates on the game I'm making. As of right now I've just finished building the layout for the levels. I've removed the format where I was using hollow boxes and cut brushes for the rooms. I've rebuilt everything from scratch, (not fully willingly but after things didn't want to copy paste I was kind of forced into it), and because of it I actually solved a problem that I was having with the story, so it's certainly a win-win overall.

Next I plan on moving onto the lighting, then sounds, then models for a few scenery items and finally the models for the creatures and trying to make everything work the way it's supposed to. Hopefully the things will fall into place as I keep on going with the tutorial. Thanks to the people who made your suggestions in my first post and offered your help and welcome, it really helped to keep the motivation.

[steven8]

Sounds like you're doing very good. Excellent!

I would like to make one suggestion, and I say this from experience, if you are placing rooms one on top of the other, actually make each room a separate level. It will kill the frame rate if you have stacked up rooms. Every time I look at the ground in the demo I made, the framerates gets whacked by half or more because I didn't make my underground room a separate level, and all of those polys down there wreak havoc on the engine.

[bernie]

I would like to make one suggestion, and I say this from experience, if you are placing rooms one on top of the other, actually make each room a separate level. It will kill the frame rate if you have stacked up rooms.

This is very true. I had problems with this also.
I did some experiments and found that if the rooms are totally sealed ie. no doorways at all.
Entering/leaving rooms was done by teleporting when you hit a false door. The framerate didn't suffer because the rooms & their contents are only rendered when you are actually in them & nothing outside the rooms is rendered. I then started to build a level with all the real rooms below the terrain and just shells of buildings actually on the terrain. I was ending up with a massive level with a reasonable frame rate and no level changes slowing down the game. However that game never got finished because I was then waiting in vain for RF2 to materialise.

[ChainedFlight]

Thank you both for your reply. This was something that I would have never thought about but makes a lot of sense. It's also a good thing that I haven't actually copy/pasted anything yet since it'll save me a lot of work. (I only have the 4 base rooms created and I actually added in a ridiculously long hallway before the end to help boost the tension and give a final chase feel to it.) Based on what the two of you suggested I think I understand the idea of what your saying, but not the feasible execution. I think it probably stems from not finishing the tutorial yet, but let me try and see if I understand.

Steven, you say to make the separate rooms separate levels, do note that the rooms themselves are not too big, I assume that you mean to make each of the floors separate levels. (Although each of the floors are only one room big so this wouldn't really be a difference.) When you say levels you mean to have each of the floors saved as separate RFEditProDocuments files and then link the files together through a means that I will be learning.

Bernie, Your saying that I should set up a series of false doors that teleport me from one completely sealed box to another. For functionality I'd imagine that the easiest way to implement this would be to include 1 stairwell and one floor, or since there won't really be much in the rooms to render, maybe 4-5 stairwells and floors in each sealed box. When they reach the door to go to the next section they are teleported to the next set of 4-5. Since this is the case It no longer matters how I actually have the levels set up in the editor open space, since all the rooms are sealed and the rendering isn't determined by any of the other sections.

It's this sentence that has me slightly confused, "I then started to build a level with all the real rooms below the terrain and just shells of buildings actually on the terrain." Would you be able to explain what your refering to by "terrain" and "shells of buildings"?

[bernie]

Would you be able to explain what your refering to by "terrain" and "shells of buildings

I was making an outdoor level with houses etc. I udsed StaticMesh for the terrain and just the outer walls of the buildings nothing inside them just empty boxes with texture on them. I then built the real rooms under the terrain with all the furniture etc. In them I then added a trigger where the doors would be and when the trigger was fired by the player colliding with them. The player was teleported into the appropriate sealed room. Similarly when the player wanted to leave the room he collided with a trigger that teleported him back to the terrain. It is just a rouse to keep the framerate up and it worked. The thing is that if there are openings in a wall then everything outside the wall is rendered as well as the inside so the framerate drops. If the room is sealed and you are in it then only the stuff inside the room is rendered. Similarly if you are outside the sealed rooms nothin inside them is rendered only the stuff outside them is rendered. Difficult explain really but it does work.

[Veleran]

If you place a hint brush at the door of a sealed room,you can enter it through that hint brush.
The bsp hint flagged brush should be much smaller than the door otherwise you can move through all solid areas around the door as long as you touch the hint.
You can also use change level to switch to some rooms that contain too many pawns and entities to get inside and out of these areas.Or if the level editor gets too slow keeping all at one piece.
This way you could split it and save resources and splash an in game screenshot with maybe few words with loading.