Talk:Mapping for Dummies

Nice Tutorial, Wanderer. I could to help you out if you, say, dont want to write a certain paragraph or so. Otherwise, heres some proposals:

-The Button "T" (texture browser) is missing where you explain how to apply textures in the controls section.

-In Mattn's video tutorials, he says corners from two walls should always be built with two faces coming together, like an "angle bisector". Shifting edges may be a bit sophisticated, but if thats the best way to do it a newbie should learn it right from the beginning.

-Somewhere you talk about selecting the whole map or large parts of it by Shift+dragging. It might be easier to just press i (invert selection; and then maybe unselect few brushes).

-I would emphasize stronger that one should set level flags for level-1 brushes. I one had a nasty memory allocation error trying to load my compiled map that disappeared after I set all level flags correctly. Might have been by chance, but who knows.

--Xav 20:42, 2 May 2007 (CEST)

Levelflags

They should be set for level 1, too - otherwise the radiant plugin will not filter them (they will work in game) --Mattn 22:27, 2 May 2007 (CEST)

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- the default view always has the texture window open, which is why I didn't include this. You'd only need this if you use a floating window configuration.

Reduce face count

• Not understanding German, I have no idea what Matt says in the videos... :) Seriously though, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about here with an 'angle bisector'. Do you mean that the edge of the wall should be cornered into the 90 degree turn, so each wall would end with a 45 degree angle? This seems overkill... and painful when you start thinking about midpoint walls internally, ceilings and floors... and also most of the existing maps do *not* use that technique... So I think I must be misunderstanding you.

• • see this:

3 faces from view direction

and

only 2 faces left after using edge editor

--Mattn 07:44, 4 May 2007 (CEST)

• • • Yep, Xav finally got this through my head a little bit ago, but thanks for the screens. Martin, this change does nothing unless you caulk the edges according to the documentation. If we're going to include func_breakables for most walls (so you can pretty much destroy an entire building from outside, one of the fun things to do in UFO), we don't want 'non-drawn' edges. Is this worth it? --Wanderer 17:14, 4 May 2007 (CEST)

• • • • Imo it is worth it. If you make something func_breakable (e.g. a wall) you should not make it the hole wall (it's ok for windows, imo) - you should keep some brushes, it should look like a real break, not like just a removed wall (do you know what i mean - or should i do a shots again) --Mattn 19:01, 4 May 2007 (CEST)

• • • • • No, I understand what you mean by the 'real break', such as the tutorial in 'wall breaks' that recently went up, I assume. The only way I've seen in the current editor to do that is to have an overlapped brush. The full wall breakable at a much lower level then the broken brush (if the broken piece is breakable at all). The way I've imagined this is having a corner 'post', some 'broken' pieces to show the wall blown out, and then a nice flat wall over the top of the broken point. More faces, more draws, massive file size because of overlap. Since you're da boss and believe this is worth it, I'll introduce it when I introduce caulking, or I'll introduce caulking earlier. As Xav said, if this is to be the 'standard', it should be introduced early and used often. I still can't see the overwhelming benefit, but hey, I just got here. (Damn those newbies!!!) --Wanderer 21:21, 4 May 2007 (CEST)

Other

- Inverting: Nah, it's more along the lines of... hm... open up the map with all the ships on it and attempt to select just the cabin by shift-dragging. You end up with the ocean, pieces of the boat, and a few extra brushes. Certainly not an 'invertable' scenario. I'll have to figure out a way to explain myself better there.

- Level 1 flags: Yes, I mention they should always set them, but I didn't want to lie to them regarding if they'd appear or not (thinking that not setting a flag would make it invisible, like a nodraw). I'll add some extra to this when I re-edit the doc.

--Wanderer 23:41, 3 May 2007 (CEST)

I meant, when you get to a point where two walls come together, you drag the edges of both of them so they have a 45° angle at the end. That way, you can 'save' one face per 'corner'. I don't know if thats a real improvement and I don't know if this is done in most maps. Maybe Mattn could comment on that?

Overkill - for mapping? I don't think so... takes just a few clicks per corner... Anyway, when three walls come together it makes no more sense, so mostly has no relevance for floors and ceilings. --Xav 00:15, 4 May 2007 (CEST)

Ah, okay, I understand what you mean by the angles now... yes, I did understand you. I'm not sure it's that important, honestly. You can just 'caulk' the invisible face so it doesn't have to draw, and it's built into the editor as the Best Method. I'm not sure if we want to do that however once we start including more func_breakables, so I didn't chase this down. Also, I don't understand how you'd save a 'face'. The end 90 deg face would just be turned....

I agree that Martin's verdict on this would be best. However, I see it adding a ton of work for very little gain. You'd also have the mathmatics behind the calculation for the additional angles adding to render time from what I understand of the modeling. I just don't know. --Wanderer 00:27, 4 May 2007 (CEST)

Well as I said I don't know how big the impact is either, but you definitely have one face less to draw (e. g. 10 instead 11 if you combine to walls/brushes like that). I would understand if you leave it away for a beginners tutorial. Lets just wait for Martins opinion... --Xav 01:06, 4 May 2007 (CEST)

'eh, I could see it, kinda. I just can't see a heavy level of impact and according to the documentation on GtkRadiant, the walls are still drawn unless you apply the caulking feature, so 'hiding' the extra face does nothing for you unless you do other things. We'll see if it's that important to Martin. --Wanderer 01:54, 4 May 2007 (CEST)

The caulking feature is a feature for Quake, and doesn't apply here. There is no texture that I'm aware of for UFO:AI that will not draw the wall. Oops.

That's an option for the map compiler or the renderer - if a face isn't visible at all, it must not be drawn (at least there is space for optimizations). But the more important part (at least at the moment) is, that texturing a wall is not that much work - you don't have to align 3 but only 2 faces. One could say that this is a minor thing, but believe me it mustn't be a minor thing if you ever retextured a huge brush amount. In every case it is not a must have, but a cleaner way of mapping. --Mattn 14:02, 13 May 2007 (CEST)