Quick questions & answers
Apocalypse Dude
Join Date: 2007-12-18 Member: 63208Members
Join Date: 2007-12-18 Member: 63208Members
I thought that the mapping forum needs a thread dedicated to asking and answering anything related to mapping. As a newbie mapper there's huge amount of questions popping to my mind, and sometimes I find it hard to find information from the existing threads. Also sometimes it's hard to look for them, as the questions might get "buried" in threads. I hope that this stays as clean as possible: Always quote the question you are answering to avoid confusion.
- When I open some of the official maps, Summit for example, I notice that most of the indoor areas are invisible until you turn "show triangulation" on. Why is this? How are those triangulation areas actually created?
- Are the mapping guidelines (found in NS2 folder) still valid?
- When I open some of the official maps, Summit for example, I notice that most of the indoor areas are invisible until you turn "show triangulation" on. Why is this? How are those triangulation areas actually created?
- Are the mapping guidelines (found in NS2 folder) still valid?
Comments
2. I haven't looked at them in a long time, but I'm pretty sure they are likely to be out of date by this point.
If you dont have it on its either Window -> Layers or just press F7 (Default)
Get an idea of the layers mappers use and/or make up some of you own so you can put them in soon as you start making your map, This keeps everything organised and it means you can hide the areas of your map you are not working on so they don't interfere with your 2D views, and makes it much easier to make GEO around props etc
1. The grid reorients from vertical-horizontal to diagonal when I try to draw lines on a face made by the circle tool. Is this a glitch or feature? Because simply drawing a line to the center of a circle is impossible. My workaround is using the square tool instead, and extracting the needed faces. But it would be much faster, simpler, cleaner if the line tool worked predictably.
2. Merge vertices doesn't seem to work consistently, but lerking the forums I see vertex merge has been a known issue. I'm just curious if anyone knows a reliable workaround, or can teach me a reliable workflow that will keep my maps as clean as possible. So far I've resorted to measuring the space I need to fill, creating the geometry off to the side, then moving it into place and hoping my measurements were all correct. But that leaves me with pretty much nothing connected and lots of redundancy in lines/vertices. Is that going to be a problem for my map's performance?
3. Almost all the information in the stickied thread "NS2 Mapping - Guides and Resources" is out of date. There are only two tutorials on youtube, both are introductions that don't go into any details beyond how to create simple geometry and add a light. The official guide is way way out of date. The Wiki is pretty barren (especially in the entities list). The question is, is there anything else to read/watch that I haven't found?
I used to make maps in Hammer for TF2 and L4D, and maybe I'm just spoiled by the wealth of info out there for an engine that's been used for such a long time. How did you all learn to map for NS2?
Yes, I feel a bit in the same boat really, looks like there used to be a series of videos over at Guide to the Spark editor, but they have not been uploaded again since own3d went down.
I feel like I'm missing some workflow practices and being very inefficient about certain things.
I've tried to watch some streams of people mapping, which is really great for getting ideas and seeing how people bring a roof to life, but all the streams are at a fairly late stage in the map, there is non from the beginning with a flow of how to get started.
We could really do with some more guides and best practice ideas.
It is sort of FAQ. I support the idea to revieve this thread and use it to collect all the questions and answers.
Edit: Pandemic - I have answered you questions in aforementioned FAQ topic
Are you talking about vertex merging or vertex welding?
Sounds good. I further suggest: pin the FAQ?
There are two ways of welding - you can weld all the selected vertexes, but only the near ones (<< 1 unit apart)
or
you can weld all the selected in one vertex regardless their distance
If there are some redudant lines or vertexes, you can hide all the geometry in any layer and they will stay unhidden and you can delete them. Steve has worked on the geometry merging recently and the situation is now way better than it was before.
You can only weld when you have the select tool(Space) Selected not any of the other tools.
You had the move tool selected so you couldn't weld.
Its the same with Make Face (Alt+C)
You can confirm this by opening the edit menu and seeing what options are available.
Ah glad that's cleared up
@Pandademic Also, the meaning of the "weld" command is to take ALL selected vertices and weld them into 1 vertex. So to fix that curve+square, select the two vertices that overlap, hit Space to go into Select Tool, then do ctrl+w(or whatever the hot key is).
I agree, this is a major UI-fail, and next time I take a pass on the editor I'll fix it (game performance is current top priority!)
Another thing to be mindful of are the selection filters (vertex, line, face, prop, entity, light - found near bottom right of screen). If you're filtering out vertices you won't be able to weld them.
"Overriding map's pathing_settings.option_tile_size from 48 to 36"
Music is the greatest teacher. As in music, so in life mapping.
Err if the entity does not have commander alpha parameter then it is not possible to hide it :-/
Welding works only when in select mode
Thanks for the quick response Rudy. Looks like my OCD may make me get rid of the waterfalls. They are simply too ugly from the commander view.
If my question isn't clear, have a look at this screenshot. That's the same onos in each of the editor views, but look how the top and side views have the onos facing opposite directions. It would be much more intuitive if they faced the same way, so that when I move something to the right in the top view, it moves to the right in the side view, and vice verse.
(As is, I find myself using the perspective view instead of the side view when making edits from the top, or using perspective instead of the top view when making edits from the side. And so every time I switch between editing in the top or side views, I have to move my perspective view accordingly.)