From: Martin Espinoza To: ml@qoole.com Reply-To: ml@qoole.com Date: Mon, 02 Feb 1998 20:43:14 +0000 Subject: Re: LEAF Problems This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------B457FCFAB0FF0B9930A89994 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Boardman wrote: > > Hi all, > > > Can't help too much with the errors, but one piece of advice, JAMM. Don't > > put too many textures in a small area or else people will end up having to > > load textures while playing and it will slow down the game. Plus it gives > > Uh? Are you saying that quake can only hold x amount of textures in > memory at one time, and that when a new texture comes into view it has > to load that up from the bsp on the hard drive? Is this situation > affected by how much memory quake has allocated (that is, if quake has > bucket loads of memory available to it, will the problem be avoided). Well actually, most of the time this is going to be dependent on the video card. If you're using the software driver, yes, it's going to be based on how much mem is allocated to quake; If you're using 3dfx, it's dependent on how much texture memory you have (which is why the Pure3D kicks the monster's ass). AGP video cards are going to win here too, because the textures can sit in main memory and the card can access them directly. > > the overall feeling that somehow the textures used were not well chosen. > > Most people dont wear purple corduroy pants with a tye-dye Tshirt, jean > > jacket, and white socks with yellow shoes. Choose a few textures to use for > > the whole level and let that be all. I suppose 10 textures would be about > > good, that what I'm using. Although I am curious, how many textures are any > > of the rest of you using? > > I think maybe 10 is a little low. If you check out the id levels, they > have between 20 and 40, believe it or not (maybe even more than that). > You can miss the detail if you aren't looking for it. I think the level > I recently released must have used between 20 and 60 (its hard to be exact) > although it probably looks like I only used about 10. Things can be > deceptive like that. > > I have done a level with not much more than 10 textures in, and ppl tended > to complain saying they were confused and it all looked the same (so ppl > find it hard to navigate around your map, and that can only be bad for you > the map maker). The solution to that is simple; Give your rooms different shapes with different lighting effects. Then you can texture them more or less the same. Look around you as you walk through a building... How often do you see rooms that are colored differently unless it's a museum of some sort where each room has some sort of theme? Even then the floor tends to be the same in each room, etc etc. In an office building, every door tends to be the same color. There's nothing wrong with that; The difference in offices is furniture placement, posters, and lighting; Quake levels can (and in my opinion, should be) similar. For an example, look at the levels in quake, or Q2... Most rooms in a level are more or less similar. Not only does this reduce the texture memory necessary, but it gives each level a distinct feel. ---------------------- mespinoz@tivoli.com ------------------------- You are what you do when it counts. --The Masao --------------B457FCFAB0FF0B9930A89994 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Martin Espinoza Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: Martin Espinoza n: Espinoza;Martin org: Tivoli Systems email;internet: mespinoz@tivoli.com title: Engineer x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------B457FCFAB0FF0B9930A89994--