Guys,I know that I've been working with RF almost an year,so please,please,please don't laugh at this one (at least not in the forums )
When I compile a level in the editor,in the bottom of the editor there's that "Portals" and a number after it. The thing is that I really don't know what is a portal,when I compile the demo level of my game it says Flood Portals Slow Down for X of 1794. Are theese portals like polygons or something,and if yes is 1794 too much for a level?
Strange,it's maybe because I'm with windows Vista,but the level is not running at full framerate...I want my game to have a great framerate all the time.
In BSPs, the polygons are structured into leafs. Each leaf contains at least 1 polygon. But now there are not only leafs, but also portals, which act as 'gates' between the leafs. Without the Portals, the game would not know which leafs it should render, because they are neccessary for the actual occluding stuff.
To reduce portal count, you can avoid use of cut brushes, and flag small brushes (which will not occlude many polys) as 'Detail' brushes. Those brushes will not generate portals. (This also makes the game faster a little bit, as the BSP tree gets smaller and therefore faster)
Everyone can see the difficult, but only the wise can see the simple.
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Thanks for the clear explanation,Jay! I got another question:
If I mark a big brush as a detail,will the game get slower? and what size of a brush is too big to be flagged as detail?
metal_head wrote:If I mark a big brush as a detail,will the game get slower? and what size of a brush is too big to be flagged as detail?
There is no actual size which is best. If you flag a brush detail, it cannot occlude other polys and your game might get slower because for example there could be thinghs behind a wall which are not seen but rendered anyway.
A general rule is: Walls are normal, rest is detail.
Everyone can see the difficult, but only the wise can see the simple.
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What i know,is that the visibility calculation determines whether the pawns can see you or not if there are world polygons between you and the pawn.
It can also count each sealed room as an area,and checks when you are in one sealed part,if you can see the other areas.
Run the preview in wireframe instead of d3d,and you will see that more are rendered than you might thought.
Almost everything is rendered unless you seal air tight some parts and flag the connecting brushes/doors as "area".
If you have a building made of many brushes and make it a world model,then you reduce a lot the portals,but the models dont receive or cast shadows,they do not block the light,but they block visibility,even when flagged as detail,and the pawns dont see you behind the world models.
There is a limit for the brushes and lights the editor can precalculate visibility,and even if you turn everything to models,the level wont run-not for long,specially if you add 100 lights-which is not too much.
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