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I was half way through making a map and when i test played it it was really slow. does it get any faster when it is made into a game. if not what steps should i take to increase the speed without effecting the level dramatically. It does have alot of lights so perhaps thats the reason? just dumb down the lights as much as possible?

while im waiting for an answer i shall smoke my corn cob pipe

Yeah I noticed this. Meh..

me on top

Unless you want to stick with using whatever version of FPSC you are now using - you should wait for V1 release and see how that behaves in terms of FPS in either test run in Editor ot final game.exe

EA has numerous problems with fps that will slow a game down some of which like the restricted area lagg which cannot (easily) be overcome by the user. As to the use of lights I believe and I may be incorrect here as its not unkown : Lighting is calculated at compile time and loaded into memory at run time - so during gameplay the number of lights should have no bearing on the speed of your game - polys and portals, dynamic entities and alike, the speed and power of your computer - now thats another matter.

Dynamic, thinking entities are the biggest drain on fps in EA though there are many others. In EA Building very large complex maps with many Portals and Dynamic entities requires careful design and much testing to say the very least to get the best result.

This is true of "almost" any indie engine though and is likely to be so for V1. Unfortunately the majotity of game engines will not allow us to fill up levels with unlimited content of any complex nature and design and build levels without careful thought and planning, much testing and in some instances rethinking and design of levels to get the best results.

Not very palatable I know, but thats the reality. You have to find and understand the limits by experimentation which may cause some headaches in the process. Once the engine is understood then you have to design with its limitations in mind and suucees will result.

V1 is something of a different animal to EA.

Differnt possibilities and different results, how it works in practice for each and every individual user remains to be seen.

what are portals I have never used a portals in the map maker so what do you mean by portals. When its loading it says "loading portals..." is that what your reffering to and if so what are they.

mmm i was rethinking about changing the map but i have bits and peices of it made not all in sequential order (from beginning to finish.) Is it possible to copy parts of the map to a new map so i can chop my current level into three or four peices? that way each peice will run smoother. the only part is that each place you go you will be revisit but in another part of the area(like a balcony not previously reachable), its a very cool design however the complexity i guesse as you said is making it slow. Because of the revisiting factor the areas on each new map would need to be accurate i would need invisible walls to prevent players jumping off the balcony into an area built only for show not play. how would i go about making them do i use the fake wall entity and make it transluscent and what number do i set the transulsency to, to make it completely invisible.

thanks for listening

i just noticed that when i make a test game it loads every item i've looked at but not neccisarily used in the game if i made a game knowing every item i am going to use and look at only those and use them would it speed up the game because it doesnt have to worry about the unused items?

i know one thing...in ea it takes forever to test a big level....in my beta, it takes like 2 min with no lightmapping

Jack R

In an oversimplified description - Portals are your world object constructions (walls, floors etc even static entities, as opposed to dynamic entities ) = how your level is divided up into parts which are rendered by the engine. The engine looks at your level at compile time and makes decisions about how it divides the level up - the result can be that in some areas you end up with more portals than in other areas = more portals = more polygons = lower fps.

You can copy areas of a map but as far as I am aware they can only be pasted back into the same map - i.e. if you copy and area of a map (to clipboard) and close the map the contents of the clipboard are lost. Unfortuneately what is required to keep the contents on the clipboard is for to have the ability to have more than one map open in the Editor at any one time so you can copy or cut from one map into another map. That is not currently possible. I have written previously regading this issue and its something TGC should look at for the future.

Your only other option if you have already created a very large map that you need to break up into smaller levels is to save your map multiple times with different names and then remove parts from each one to create a broken up version of your level into different smaller individual map files.

As you have quite rightly stated and discovered this then makes things rather difficult in as much as each of your smaller levels would then have a library which may consist of numerous items which are not needed to accompany each level and so being unremoveable from the library and compile folder. If all your maps are part of one game it wont matter as any library items cannot exist more than once in your game compile folder anyway as they would be overwritten unless the compile process were to name them for instance as say Tavor and Tavor1 in which case the entity would be duplicated unecessarilly.

You can see how working successfully and to best advantage with FPSC takes a little getting used to - you are now finding out something of the need for gaining an understanding of how it works and planning around that.

Do not despair - I have built very large and complex maps so know it can be done. You must be careful if using EA to build very large and complex maps and make backups of your levels, so that in the event that you get any permaent failure of a level due to its complexity - you can use an earlier backup to recover your hard work from.

To make a single wall transparent you could copy the files from any default single wall segment that you can find in the folders.
Rename your copies leaving the default ones intact. Dont use the originals but use your copies. You can use wall entities but segment walls are better for this situation. The best method of achieving transparency is to copy the default texture for the segment you are using, rename it and edit that in your paint program. You will need to give it an alpha channel if it does not have one. Fill the alpha channel with 50% balck for a 50% transparency. A fill of 100% black will make your wall 100% transparent or invisible. In the segment srcipt file go to the object visibilty settings part and enter the line (if it does not exist already) Transparency = 2 that should do it - this method should be guaranteed to work.

BULLSHOCK 2

2 minutes is not a long time to wait for a large level = The FPSC editor effectively does a full compile of your level for a test run each and every time you test run the level which is why it deletes it again on return to the editor - which again takes some time.

It is a well documented and uneccessary waste of time as most users would see it but thats the way it currently works.

I have asked for TGC to consider new methods of compile for future versions of FPSC and made some recommendations as to how I thought - both editor test run and final game compile could be considerably improved.

TGC I believe are considering this and many other improvements to FPSC that will help addresss concerns for numerous issues that are well documented and requested/suggested as improvements that could be made for FPSC and indeed some issues that have not yet been requested as far as i am aware.

The result could be that Post V1 FPSC could well be progressing to becoming an even better program with many further improvements and enhancements

Don't bother telling us whats in it, we can guess .

uman i honestly dont know how to do any of that stuff i've never used a program like this before i know nothing totally serious so if u could give me a step by step process on what to do than i could follow. What is alpha? segment script file? the only files i can open are some of the pictures(icons for menue and a few others)