moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
I went through the map today with the sole intention of figuring out what you could easily change to make the map look better.
I came to the conclusion that the lighting is the #1 culprit. There's lots of good geometry, and some good texturing. In terms of bang for your buck, the biggest thing you can improve is the lighting.
Right now Jambi's lighting has two main problems:
Unnatural orientations. If you want lighting to look natural, and for the map to look like a real place instead of just geometry, by far the most effective thing to do is to put the light sources on the ceiling and point them at the ground. This is the way almost all buildings are lit, it's the way the sun lights the earth, and it's what humans respond to by default. There's plenty of cool stuff you can do when you violate this, but those should be the exception. Accent with lights in unusual locations, but start with something natural.
Fear of commitment. All of jambi's lights are very low intensity. They barely illuminate the area around them, such that most of the lighting feels like it's just flat shaded ambient lighting. When people complain about how jambi is too grey, it isn't the texturing that's the issue. It's the lighting. Summit and tram both use the same texture set, but they don't have this issue because the lights are intense, and the lights have a color scheme. Take those lights and crank that shit up dawg. Commit. Follow through.
I took some screenshots, dropped them into gimp and took a stab at relighting them using these techniques. See what you think. http://imgur.com/a/GtWJN
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Moultano is definitely on to something, I don't think your supposed to take his examples as literally being better, than their originial forms on jambi, it's just concrete examples about his feedback, I like the original pictures better aswell, but I can see where he is going with it, and it could improve the map in many ways.
It will need more adjustments and fine tuning than Moultano's quick "stab", remember to read what people write ^^
Moultano is definitely on to something, I don't think your supposed to take his examples as literally being better, than their originial forms on jambi, it's just concrete examples about his feedback, I like the original pictures better aswell, but I can see where he is going with it, and it could improve the map in many ways.
It will need more adjustments and fine tuning than Moultano's quick "stab", remember to read what people write ^^
Yeah, keep in mind, I was doing this by painting over the screenshots in gimp.
SamusDroidColoradoJoin Date: 2013-05-13Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited February 2014
I looked around Jambi is the editor and there wasn't anything that stood out that needed changing. IMHO Jambi is like Docking for me. There's just something I can't put my finger on about the map that makes me dislike playing the map.
Imo best map created by modders so far. Great lighting techniques (revised lighting seems a bit too exaggerated though), great room design, and seems to have good flow of combat.
I looked around Jambi is the editor and there wasn't anything that stood out that needed changing. IMHO Jambi is like Docking for me. There's just something I can't put my finger on about the map that makes me dislike playing the map.
It is harder to route block on jambi because there is one extra lane that is tough to account for. I don't know how that is relevant to docking but there you go.
Imo best map created by modders so far. Great lighting techniques (revised lighting seems a bit too exaggerated though), great room design, and seems to have good flow of combat.
Thank you. There was a lot of collaboration with the NS2 community and the mappers to ensure these qualities
Playing on Jambi today I noticed an absolutely massive FPS drop in Skylights. What's up with that? I just went in and took some screens and it cut my fps in half when I was in Sandbox mode. When I was on a public server it dropped my FPS to 20 from 100+
Playing on Jambi today I noticed an absolutely massive FPS drop in Skylights. What's up with that? I just went in and took some screens and it cut my fps in half when I was in Sandbox mode. When I was on a public server it dropped my FPS to 20 from 100+
It's not really a bug. There is a line of sight across multiple rooms, causing the game to render a few rooms in those spots.
I went through the map today with the sole intention of figuring out what you could easily change to make the map look better.
I came to the conclusion that the lighting is the #1 culprit. There's lots of good geometry, and some good texturing. In terms of bang for your buck, the biggest thing you can improve is the lighting.
[...]
I agree that the lightning could be far better without working hard on it (Peace 'o' cake). But more light (brighter) will kill this map definitively.
Light must be use with caution for several reasons:
-Skulks need dark areas (crucial in early game). Jambi is desperately in need of dark spots. Any marine that check corners properly never gets in real danger.
-Too much lights (game entities) can slow rendering (NSL maps are modifications of original maps to reduce number of lights as an example).
More atmospheric will also do the same. Not to mention the ppl that deactivate every graphic setting to see things better.
I would say :
-More contrast (to get the dark areas).
-More color... A soul.
Then stays the 'X' issue but that is for another topic.
yeah, everybody's pretty much accepted that skylights causes massive fps drop for some reason. if you angle your view in some specific directions it gets really low.
SamusDroidColoradoJoin Date: 2013-05-13Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited May 2014
Things I have noticed looking around in the level file
1) There's a lot of really big lights that light a room, similar to how you would light a map when it's first greyboxed, "1 light per rom" approach.
2) People like "pretty shiny" things, it appears "flat and boring" because there is not enough lights that use specular/reflection probes.
3) Skylights appears to be fine, no idea why people would get poor performance.
4) There's not enough "natural light", with lights coming from props to light rooms
5) No biodome glass (people like shiny), but reasonably so, never made any sense in Refinery to have shiny glass.
LokiJoin Date: 2012-07-07Member: 153973Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited May 2014
Its not an occlusion geo issue.
There is a duplication of the spot lights in "skylights" (external lights outside of the ceiling windows)
Removing those excess lights will net you some more FPS
On top of this the lighting settings there can be tweaked a bit (spot lights) to gain additional FPS
Comments
I came to the conclusion that the lighting is the #1 culprit. There's lots of good geometry, and some good texturing. In terms of bang for your buck, the biggest thing you can improve is the lighting.
Right now Jambi's lighting has two main problems:
I took some screenshots, dropped them into gimp and took a stab at relighting them using these techniques. See what you think.
http://imgur.com/a/GtWJN
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
I don't. Some of those edits are a bit over the top, but in general I think it looks better with "cranked the **** up" lighting.
It will need more adjustments and fine tuning than Moultano's quick "stab", remember to read what people write ^^
Yeah, keep in mind, I was doing this by painting over the screenshots in gimp.
Balance and bug reasons. Balance: It was too easy for skulks to ambush marines. Bug: You could cancel blueprinted res nodes from running underneath.
It is harder to route block on jambi because there is one extra lane that is tough to account for. I don't know how that is relevant to docking but there you go.
Thank you. There was a lot of collaboration with the NS2 community and the mappers to ensure these qualities
EDIT: No, just checked it out for myself. Occlusion seems fine. But I did notice the draw calls jump waaayyy up in that area (~2000 from 500-600s)
I noticed in r_stats that there are also a lot of lights and models visible in that one spot you mention.
It's not really a bug. There is a line of sight across multiple rooms, causing the game to render a few rooms in those spots.
For the love of Gorges, please please put your images in the spoiler tag.
Unfortunately there is no current redesign of Jambi. The map will continue to have bug fixes and stuck spot fixes for now.
There may be a redesign in the future (Whether it is done by me or another group). If anyone is interested just shoot me a message.
Thank you for your continuing interest.
I agree that the lightning could be far better without working hard on it (Peace 'o' cake). But more light (brighter) will kill this map definitively.
Light must be use with caution for several reasons:
-Skulks need dark areas (crucial in early game). Jambi is desperately in need of dark spots. Any marine that check corners properly never gets in real danger.
-Too much lights (game entities) can slow rendering (NSL maps are modifications of original maps to reduce number of lights as an example).
More atmospheric will also do the same. Not to mention the ppl that deactivate every graphic setting to see things better.
I would say :
-More contrast (to get the dark areas).
-More color... A soul.
Then stays the 'X' issue but that is for another topic.
@f0rdprefect can you please take a SS of the exact locations with r_stats 1 on and please message me.
I don't get massive fps drops but my draw calls spike up to 1800 in some areas.
Does that have time until the weekend? I am currently making backups to set my PC up freshly later today.
Once I looked right at this position, fps would drop to 40. The following screenshot shows where it's worst, with fps going as low as 33:
In the whole skylights area, my fps were in the 30s and 40s and would not exceed 50.
1) There's a lot of really big lights that light a room, similar to how you would light a map when it's first greyboxed, "1 light per rom" approach.
2) People like "pretty shiny" things, it appears "flat and boring" because there is not enough lights that use specular/reflection probes.
3) Skylights appears to be fine, no idea why people would get poor performance.
4) There's not enough "natural light", with lights coming from props to light rooms
5) No biodome glass (people like shiny), but reasonably so, never made any sense in Refinery to have shiny glass.
Examples of tiny changes that make a noticable difference +- a few lights
old http://i.imgur.com/gmkLAxp.jpg new http://i.imgur.com/xbsiqKG.jpg
old http://i.imgur.com/gsFI24k.jpg new http://i.imgur.com/EJGTFlb.jpg
old http://i.imgur.com/MTKRXcm.jpg new http://i.imgur.com/Q9GZPIn.jpg
There is a duplication of the spot lights in "skylights" (external lights outside of the ceiling windows)
Removing those excess lights will net you some more FPS
On top of this the lighting settings there can be tweaked a bit (spot lights) to gain additional FPS