OMG what did I read

[animatrix]

This is Animatrix, from old school RF. I just read some whiny shit about RF and it kind of made me mad.
To anyone who thinks they cant make a good game with RF, you suck. I have made totally functional and fun wicked games with this software. you can do most anything with it. i could care less about all the friggin high power graphics that you need a 400 dollar vid card just to play. My games look decent and play very well. its about making the most of what you have. Ive done some awsome effects and puzzle type games. if theres a thing you want to do, look at the scripting and figure it out. One game I am still working on is in a huge underground maze, you cant see except with visible sonar just like the movie Daredevil. Your pulses bounce of walls and objects and they glow like in the movie. So anyone that says cant, can just eat that.

and by the way, RF is not bad.

[Jay]

Yep. RF graphics is basically the DX7 era of video games - this is what RF can do. In other words, everything that came before Morrowind. The only thing that really hurts is the missing hardware T+L... However, there are also some stumbling stones in the way to implement that... the biggest problem being the lightmaps. They cause many texture switches and this nullifies any hardware T+L there is... I think Quest once had a DX9 version that renders a world without any lightmaps... In the level i do at the moment i have chosen to disable all the lightmaps at all (Full Bright to all Faces), because this really speeds up the engine.
Another thing that really rocks is not using cut brushes at all, because they produce WAY to many portals, and i have actually seen a speedup from not using cut brushes! (One level i once had... it had only around 70 portals, and it wasn't even really small. With Cut brushes there must have been at least 200-300 portals)

The less portals, the faster the BSP. I try to aim at under 200 portals for my current level. Not using cut brushes only produces 1-3 new portals for each added room. Room walls = normal brushes, Everything in it=Detail brushes. Also, things like connecting the individual brushes so that their outside forms a plane reduces portals too (a portal has the shape of a plane, and the engine can combine these brushes to one portal then). Leaving no space between brushes. (For example expanding the brushes so that they meet the hollow cube around the level which is the sky) also leads to portal reduction, AND it makes the engine use the portals more efficiently (-> more culling of the unseen (haha how that sounds... "THE CULLING OF THE UNSEEN - NOW IN THE MOVIES!"))

Yes i am rambling on

[animatrix]

My absolute fav game was the original Tribes. graphics were fairly lame but omg the game play was awsome. I would still play it if there were servers for the original.

[megatop]

agh yes RF my first game engine. Great one too. I would like to thank the guys here I think im moving to game maker. I love RF no doubt about it. But im moving o to bigger and better. thanks again and farewell RF. Also from the gm3d fourms are simalar. These are common fourms.Thanks for everything bye

[Veleran]

Puzzle or mind games are an attractive idea for using rf.About the portals,less unused spaces as possible and accurate snaps help having less portals.However you cant have too low portals ,still have the shadows and the game does not look like you are in the year 2000-2001.

You need many brushes and actors to have some variation.otherwise the levels look straight block y and empty-somewhat like the first 3d 1st person games of 1995 like menzoberanzan or even castle master in 1990.


Cut brushes are good,you just have to make them newest and hit refresh.Making the same with many solid brushes gives more or so the same portals,but with more total poly count.
How you cut an arch out of a wall without a cut brush,you make a shape with all vertices snapped on grid and then extrude it otherwise,you still make that arch cut and use it as a template to create various convex shapes for the arch-if you cn create them in a modelling program.

If the brushes are nt snapped they give too many portals anyway and you might get clipping and collision fail with overlapping brushes even if it is too small to show.