The reason I've been on the DL for like, I dunno, 2 years now? Was because of two things. Girls, and the fact that I've been working on this SP map which is a city (got the idea from GTA 4 and Saint's Row 2) , and the reason I don't have pics is because it WON'T COMPILE IN TOOL, no matter how many times I try. STL Check says I'm right, so I'm just gonna assume that Tool hates me.

Anyways, I've come up with this theory. When I was attaching the buildings to the sidewalk, I became wayyyy too lazy to do the same thing with, I dunno, 200 something buildings? So I slept, thought about it, and came up with the following solutions:

A. Export the buildings as scenery to save BSP Polygons
B. Just not attach the buildings to the sidewalk and leave it 0.1 higher than the sidewalk

And then, I came up with the following system for city maps:

1. Create all the sidewalks, but not the road. Give them the same sidewalk texture.
2. Create a huge box that goes under all the sidewalks, and give it a seamless road textures. Add decals for the crosswalks and lane dividers (or whatever they're called)
3. Pick one of the above methods for the buildings
4. Add street signs and lights and traffic lights and stop signs or whatever.
5. Decorate

This way, everything looks attached when really it's detached, but it forces the engine to render unnecessary polygons.

So which is the lesser of two evils? Deleting faces and attaching them to the base of the object... or just simply put it 0.1 higher than the floor?

Edit 1: Spelling error. "Systems" to "System"
Edited by Evil 5partan on Nov 2, 2008 at 11:39 PM

Delete/attach is the non-evil solution. I don't think I've seen the 0.1 method in Bungie's maps. They're all whole bsps, except special materials. mb i'm wrong.
You could extrude the buildings, too.

I can also imagine the 0.1 method possibly fouling up pathfinding for ai, but I don't know this for a fact

i think you have apoint. being unattached to the ground could caush AI problems, i think. At least when entering/exiting the building...

A city right? big map? i don't think you can afford to have unnecessary polygons rendered. lag. Anyways Binary Space Partitioning is faster then the other system for scenery, you'd rather have more built in things, but scenery can be placed when you come near it and removed when you leave it. As for path finding, i think the ai's will just avoid the buildings. My advice would be to get better at 3ds, there are faster ways to do this, i model in blender so I wouldn't know how to speed model in 3ds but i'm sure someone can teach you.

Lol. Good point, everyone. The thing is, I'm too lazy to do the math, and a BSP, I believe, can only have I think 50,000 polygons. Or at least that's what's recommended in the guide.

EDIT: For the buildings, which saves polys, Bump Mapping or extruding?
Edited by Evil 5partan on Nov 4, 2008 at 01:06 AM

bump mapping fakes details. Extruding would be creating those details for realish, by adding polys.

Well...it is a rather complicated city. Are AI smart enough to avoid scenery?
And what to portals do again?

they divide the map into clusters, which allows the game engine to not render areas out of view.

details can be rendered into bump maps (somehow), or made scenery. Some loss of quality may occur

Hmmmmm. This might help, atleast if you plan on having lots of repatative buildings. I got this from I283023. Her'es what he said about how to fuse stuff...

"1.) Select your object

2.) Under the pull-down menu that says "Standard Primitives", choose Compound objects.

3.) Under Object Type choose Boolean

4.) Scroll down to Operations, and choose Union

5.) Scroll back up, and click "Pick Operand B"

6.) Now select your other object, and both of them shall merge, deleting overlapping faces

7.) Convert your map back to Editable Mesh so that when you export your map it shall work smoothly.
"

I haven't tested it, but it seems really helpfull. You can just make a building model, place it all over your map, then fuse it all.

As for roads, it is overall better to do tem the old fashioned way, with real geometry and uvw maps. I would make a really good road bitmap that's easy to uvw (just one long section, not 2 side by side because uvw mapping those sucks), and one for sidewalks. Then iether have a seperate shader/ bitmap for special sections, like intersections or turns. Then make really good road sections, a strait section, turn, intersection, etc, and put them together and weld. The 3ds max home grid and grid snaps might be usefull here. (not that i know how to use them), as well as roation snaps and other helpfull stuff like that.

Street signs I would do with scenery. I don't know If I would even make them collidable. Stuff like dumpsters and trash cans I would though.

OMG! I never thought of boolean modeling! Wow. Thanks!

Boolean is a great tool, but i'd be carfull using it. i don't often but have before and have found it puts a lot of useless verts and may cause open edges because of it's poly-like behavior.

Sorry. L It's hard to tell.

Anyway, what's boolean modeling.

I love asking questions.

say you got 2 balls (no comment) overlapping a little. If you do a boolean->Union with the two, the parts of each which are inside the other are removed, and the edges are welded together. When you convert it back to an editable mesh, the intersecting circle is selected at the vertice and edge sub object levels.
If you subtract, you get something that looks a little like the Death Star from Star Wars
If you choose Intersection, you get the opposite of Union. An M&M, with a sharp edge

booleans leave you with excess geometry. Optomizing to .1 will get rid of them, but then your textures get screwed up. Boolean can get really messy with complicated objects. Thats why the more experienced modellers suggest attaching instead, and manually stitching the objects together.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, I did my math. Let's say I were to use a 16 x 16 box for a building. It would take about just as much polygons to attach it than it would to not attach it.

sometimes. If a pilar is attached in the center of a large room, many more faces are made on the floor and cieling, but faces capping the ends of the cylinder aren't used. That must be the math you were referring to.
Having a bunch of loose objects in the bsp can't be good. Clusters are designed for many more faces, Such loose objects should be scenery objects instead. I think it'd be easier on the engine to handle fewer clusters at a time, but I don't really know. I'm just speculating, when I should be sleeping X)

Lol yeah. I guess I'll just export the buildings as scenery, and attach the sidewalks to the street. And put like a bunch of exactportals everywhere and hope for the best, lol.

exact portals are for the bsp i would think, they might not work for your scenery.

I know. I don't want the game engine rendering too many scenery pieces, so I'm using exactportals to snuff the ones that you can't see out.