personally I have never had an issue with not hearing a Skulk due to ambient sounds - most of the issues are simply due to NS2's poor sound system. I just find most of the ambience is too loud and out of place.
Not many things are as annoying as when in combat your screen becomes all blue and you realize you walked into a frigging hologram. Tram also has one in logistics that should be removed.
While I think that the hologram in system waypointing could be removed without any problems, the one in logistics does block a very long straight line of sight.
While I don't care for the globe, it does serve some kind of purpose i guess. Not sure how to solve that one. Or if it even needs to be solved. :>
I have published an update to summit fixing a few issues. But more importantly: Veil published. I've done some absurdly crazy light reduction so, as always, let me know places where I've gone crazy.
ns2_nsl_veil - Mod ID: 78ac3ed
- Reduced light count for better performance (1867 in the original, down to 376 in this version)
- Removed all ambient sounds and particle effects
- Removed holograms in Nanogrid and System Waypointing
- Removed wall plate in Skylights to avoid marines getting into the vent
The skulks need to be very very easy to see and track, at least when the power is on in a room.
Removing lights isn't always helpful to that end.
If there were some in-game settings to achieve this it wouldn't be a huge deal, but right now it involves changing some global display settings (i.e. going away from proper true color) on the monitor or operating system side
Uh... mendasp can very easily just adjust the ambient light source to be brighter on a per room basis for rooms that are too dark. If it's bothering you that much just make a list of rooms where it is an issue and send them to him.
I would rather play in darker maps then have shit for fps. Obviously people with killer rigs are going to disagree so its tough to find a compromise.
There's no compromise to be made, but I can't make them fullbright either. There's two things contributing to this.
Lack of specular makes seem darker (without actually being darker). Also, the lights that I took to light big areas have dark shades in general, making everything look dark (I'm thinking of veil for this, mainly). The problem is, if I make them brighter, then the map will be close to fullbright. This is because since I'm using a lower number of lights, I can't fine-tune the brightness as well without bumping up the light count.
I forgot that the lighting in the editor looks slightly different than ingame still, I think it still has the ambient fog.
The maps are generally too dark, but other than that good work.
"The maps"? All three? Except north/south tunnels in tram I'd say Summit and Tram are ok in brightness atm, with Veil being the only one that may still need adjustments.
swalkSay hello to my little friend.Join Date: 2011-01-20Member: 78384Members, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2013
Bring back Skylights vent access for a single marine, marines can jump in most vents on veil, I don't agree with removing their access to the most dangerous vent in the entire map. Skylights is a fairly small area, which means it's fairly alien friendly by default.
Also adds the possibility of a skulk camping that vent the entire game to hit Skylights/Overlook, without marines being able to do anything about it without jetpacks or using time to boost up. A skulk doing that shouldn't require 2 marines to be camping him/boosting, or 1 marine hunting him, waiting for him to make a mistake.
Well a single marine can still get in the vent from overlook afaik.
You need to make a small hump in the vent to c-12 so marines cant get into c12 from either entrance of the topo vent. A good example of how to do it is how it's done in the reactor core vent at the top. If you were to try to climb to the top, most times when you jump you'd hit your head on a sloped surface and fall back down.
I find the maps to be fine if I adjust my Gamma, obviously that shouldn't be necessary but if you kept the low amount of lights but generally brightened every map I think that would be good.
Just brightening the lights that are there like you proposed I think would be nice.
Lighting is calculated in real time unlike in GldSrc or Source where it is pre-calculated when compiling the map (something Spark does not do) making for a more intensive and expensive render.
My concern about the fact that editing out lights improves peoples FPS, is that generally your always waiting for the game code to execute IE never waiting on the render thread. If removing lights like this is improving FPS, it makes me think that portions of the lighting code are done in LUA, which would IMO be something that could easily be moved to the engine side for noteable gains.
My concern about the fact that editing out lights improves peoples FPS, is that generally your always waiting for the game code to execute IE never waiting on the render thread. If removing lights like this is improving FPS, it makes me think that portions of the lighting code are done in LUA, which would IMO be something that could easily be moved to the engine side for noteable gains.
I think it has to do with the PowerPointLightHandler as fewer lights will mean less checking for updates when the powerpoint state changes. That would be my best guess.
From the comments in the LUA
// Responsible for working the lights on a map. This is a performance critical area, as there are
// lots of lights and they may need to be updated each client frame. Also, ALL lights over the whole
// map is updated at all times, as the player can see light coming from powerpoints located very far
// from his actual position.
Comments
System waypointing hologram... remove or not? I'd remove it myself as it's annoying as hell, but I want to know what everyone else thinks...
do it
btw we had a game yesterday on nsl summit and everyone liked it because of the great performance ^^
As always, let me know if some areas have become too dark or too bright in the process.
I have also implemented the Flight Control fix for testing. Let me know if it's appropriate to include in the next official version of summit.
Tram has also received an update to fix a location issue that will be fixed in Build 240. See here: http://i.imgur.com/pu8ArBJ.jpg
Thanks everyone
While I don't care for the globe, it does serve some kind of purpose i guess. Not sure how to solve that one. Or if it even needs to be solved. :>
ns2_nsl_veil - Mod ID: 78ac3ed
- Reduced light count for better performance (1867 in the original, down to 376 in this version)
- Removed all ambient sounds and particle effects
- Removed holograms in Nanogrid and System Waypointing
- Removed wall plate in Skylights to avoid marines getting into the vent
Removing lights isn't always helpful to that end.
If there were some in-game settings to achieve this it wouldn't be a huge deal, but right now it involves changing some global display settings (i.e. going away from proper true color) on the monitor or operating system side
Lack of specular makes seem darker (without actually being darker). Also, the lights that I took to light big areas have dark shades in general, making everything look dark (I'm thinking of veil for this, mainly). The problem is, if I make them brighter, then the map will be close to fullbright. This is because since I'm using a lower number of lights, I can't fine-tune the brightness as well without bumping up the light count.
I forgot that the lighting in the editor looks slightly different than ingame still, I think it still has the ambient fog.
"The maps"? All three? Except north/south tunnels in tram I'd say Summit and Tram are ok in brightness atm, with Veil being the only one that may still need adjustments.
Also adds the possibility of a skulk camping that vent the entire game to hit Skylights/Overlook, without marines being able to do anything about it without jetpacks or using time to boost up. A skulk doing that shouldn't require 2 marines to be camping him/boosting, or 1 marine hunting him, waiting for him to make a mistake.
Don't remove something that isn't a problem.
You need to make a small hump in the vent to c-12 so marines cant get into c12 from either entrance of the topo vent. A good example of how to do it is how it's done in the reactor core vent at the top. If you were to try to climb to the top, most times when you jump you'd hit your head on a sloped surface and fall back down.
Just brightening the lights that are there like you proposed I think would be nice.
veil now: never below 120 FPS anywhere on the map
$.
they are just lights !
Lighting is calculated in real time unlike in GldSrc or Source where it is pre-calculated when compiling the map (something Spark does not do) making for a more intensive and expensive render.
I think it has to do with the PowerPointLightHandler as fewer lights will mean less checking for updates when the powerpoint state changes. That would be my best guess.
From the comments in the LUA