A bunch of questions...

[Dario D.]

I was just wondering a couple things... You don't have to answer all; just the ones you know.

1: Does the presense of normal mapped, relfective surfaces greatly slow down framerate compared to regular textures?
For example, is there much FPS difference between a ton of BSP covered with flat concrete, versus a ton of BSP covered with heavily normal-mapped / cube-mapped surfaces?

2: Do physics objects use ANY more CPU or net resources than a prop_static when they're not moving?

3: Do prop_physics objects with the flag "Motion disabled" checked use more resources than a prop_static? Does "Motion disabled" actually make a difference, like as far as net transfer?

4: Is there a way to play all sounds in an ambient_generic? Lots of sounds, and lots of music can't be played in my ambient_generics.

5: Why don't smoothing groups seem to do anything on BSP or func_details?

6: Do nodraw surfaces occlude in the same way as a textured BSP surface? Sometimes I can see through them, and I wonder if they ruin the visibility occlusion.

7: Is it fairly easy to setup your own textures, and does it require coding? I'd like the opinion of someone who makes custom shaders. I'm almost finished with my map, and I just want to know if it's "really easy" to do, because I probably won't make any other HL2 maps after this. If it's easy, I want to do a few things with my map.

8: I have this massive combine wall mesh that won't disappear, even if I stand right in front of an occluder and completely cover it. Why is that?

If I remember more questions I had, I'll ask them later.

Thanks.

 

[Firkat54]

Ok, here's a couple answers, but I expext Raeven0 to come along any time now to blow me away .

For #2 & 3- I'm not sure if it uses any more or less, and even if it did, I don't think it would be noticable. The reason it's there is because some models won't appear with a prop_static, but will with the prop_physics (Raeven0 can explain in more detail than I).

#7- It's not hard at all for basic textures, all you have to do is (if you have photoshop 6.X or up) get this plugin here

Then, after you save your texture, open notepad. In notepad use this format

LightmappedGeneric
{
	"$basetexture"	"name-of-folder\name-of-texture"
	"$surfaceprop" "materialtype"
}

Note: The "name-of-folder" is the name of the folder the texture is in, it MUST be inside the materials folder.

For all material types go here

As for shading, that's somewhere in the help files.

Hope I was of some help

 

[GonzoBabbleshit]

1: Does the presense of normal mapped, relfective surfaces greatly slow down framerate compared to regular textures?
For example, is there much FPS difference between a ton of BSP covered with flat concrete, versus a ton of BSP covered with heavily normal-mapped / cube-mapped surfaces?

Probably not a noticeable difference.

2: Do physics objects use ANY more CPU or net resources than a prop_static when they're not moving?

It should do, but again, probably not something you'd notice unless there were lots of them.

7: Is it fairly easy to setup your own textures, and does it require coding? I'd like the opinion of someone who makes custom shaders. I'm almost finished with my map, and I just want to know if it's "really easy" to do, because I probably won't make any other HL2 maps after this. If it's easy, I want to do a few things with my map.

Adding custom textures is very easy, and are tutorials all over the internet for it. Interlopers would probably be a good place to start. Custom Shaders are a completely different thing though.

 

[Raeven0]

4: Is there a way to play all sounds in an ambient_generic? Lots of sounds, and lots of music can't be played in my ambient_generics.

Env_soundscape can play many sounds at once, but you're still limited by the engine's sound buffer.

5: Why don't smoothing groups seem to do anything on BSP or func_details?

Let's see if I can interpret the arcane writings of the Source...

By default, if the dot product of the normals of a given face and one of its neighbors amounts to more than cos45°, then the given face's normal will be added with its neighbor's, and the new normal will be used for lighting purposes instead of the old one. This would probably cause the two faces to be lit more evenly, since their normals would be more aligned.

But if the smoothing group is set to any of the Soft numbers, this doesn't occur. The normals are left alone.

That doesn't seem right, does it?

6: Do nodraw surfaces occlude in the same way as a textured BSP surface? Sometimes I can see through them, and I wonder if they ruin the visibility occlusion.

Nodraw blocks VIS and cuts up VIS leaves, but if the engine is rendering something on the other side of a nodraw face, you will see that something through the nodraw.

8: I have this massive combine wall mesh that won't disappear, even if I stand right in front of an occluder and completely cover it. Why is that?

It's a model, right? And you haven't messed with the occluder/occludee properties in Map Properties?

I don't have a card powerful enough to do bumpmaps/cubemaps, but which do you suppose is more expensive: rendering an area once, or rendering it once for materials, once for bumpmaps, and once every time you turn for reflections?

Physics props are generally always more expensive than static props, especially when they're actually in physical interaction with something.

Firkat: a VMT uses slashes, not backslashes. Backslashes are escape characters.

 

[Dario D.]

Env_soundscapeLet's see if I can interpret the arcane writings of the Source...

By default, if the dot product of the normals of a given face and one of its neighbors amounts to more than cos45°, then the given face's normal will be added with its neighbor's, and the new normal will be used for lighting purposes instead of the old one. This would probably cause the two faces to be lit more evenly, since their normals would be more aligned.

But if the smoothing group is set to any of the Soft numbers, this doesn't occur. The normals are left alone.

That doesn't seem right, does it?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. So, in other words, you can't do smoothing groups on BSP or brushes?

 

[Raeven0]

I mean that either I am misunderstanding the code in a horrible, ugly way, or the Hard groups are useless and the Soft groups do what Hard is supposed to do (i.e., make the lighting across faces harder).

 

[Dario D.]

Oh, I see. Thanks for all the help. :cheers: My understanding of Source is getting better, and my map is running faster.

 

[Firkat54]

Firkat: a VMT uses slashes, not backslashes. Backslashes are escape characters.

that was actually taken from a file that is included in the sdk...i just changed the words on either side of the backslash...

guess i better go find that file...

 

[Raeven0]

that was actually taken from a file that is included in the sdk...i just changed the words on either side of the backslash...

guess i better go find that file...

You can't go with a substantial part of the stuff Valve provided, unfortunately. Dev_monitor isn't a valid monitor texture, many materials use nonexistent proxies, at least one of Valve's example maps uses a hollow cube to prevent leaks... It's hideous, all of it.

 

[poseyjmac]

for smoothing groups to work right, you may have to lower the lightmap scale to a higher quality on the faces you wanted smoothed