GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[EternallyAries]

Hello everyone.

I like to showcase a map model of mine. I started work on it about 5 or 6 days ago. And the model is finish, well besides the texture part. but its finish and ready to be imported straight into Goldeneye.

The level was built on a 1 by 1 rectangle block placement, This allows me to be able to add textures with out any glitches that might happen, let say you place a 4 sided block in the map. your gonna need to carve into it. To make windows or doors. In which could ruin the polygon, and ruin the texture that goes with it. In which my old Super Mario Bros map would be the perfect example of this.

My new idea was to build the map off a flat rectangle face polygon. Which allowed me to be more in control of the polygon placements. And with hopes, I should be able to import the map with ease, with no texture problems.

Anyway back to the showcase. This map has no textures what so ever. And it was built from the ground up. Here some photos.



The whole map.



Stairway.



This is a tiny outside area. The none walkable place will include water.



More close up view of the tiny outside area.



The vent area. This area connects to some rooms. Making it a quick way to access some areas that is far from you.



The farther you go into the vents, you will enter a vent room. That will have vents on the bottom. And vents on the top that connects to second floor rooms.



Big shoot out room. Kinda like how the Library had.



Third floor shoot out room. This room resembles the Citadel's top floor room.



This is the entire floor plan of the map. Its pretty confusing with out the 3D view. But yeah.

Now I am not sure how long it will take me to texture it all up. But I would like some ideas on what this level theme should be. A complex theme or a facility theme. or any theme that anyone could think this map would suit well for.

Name will come later once textures are finish.

Also added information, This level also has over 1300 polygons. I am not sure how much Goldeneye can handle, but I believe 1300 should be fine.

Hope you all like the level model.
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[Sogun]

The maps looks fantastic.
To me it's like a mix with Basement and Bunker with the Citadel addition. It also reminds me my very first but a little, hehe. I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about.

1300 polys seems like too much. Kakariko outside area is like 1100 and lags a lot, both on console and emulator. That's why I had to split it in many rooms. However, I recently discovered that the map plays smoothly when there are no props on it, so if you don't put crates, barrels, etc. it should be ok. Although it won't load 3P or 4P on console, probably.

You can split into rooms in Deled. I think the way you modeled the map is fine for that, since it's all made of rectangles.

I would suggest you texture the map with one texture jut to do one quick test on emu and see how it performs with 2, 3 and 4 players. I also did a 1-texture version of Kakariko and didn't see any improvements, so I think the amoun of textures really doesn't matter.
If the level plays well, then you can texture it meticulously. If not, you should split into rooms first. It's more work to create separate groups for background and clipping, and also do portals, but with a map like this it's going to play super-smooth if you do that.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Looks good, I could definitely see it with a Facility or Bunker texture theme.

[acceptable67]

Ooh! Looks great EA.
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Rare wrote:

Perfect Dark Forever.

[MRKane]

It reminds me a lot of some of the UT maps with the modern "area flux" approach to the map setup (which as a "haunt" player doesn't really suit me! lol).

It's really good work - I'll be keen to see it with a bit of surfacing done. What's the texture palette that you're thinking of?
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[EternallyAries]

After being on break with mapping for a bit. I decided to get back to work on this.

I decided to give the map a complex texture set. I'll be showing a photoset once its finish being textured up.

Also as to why I choose Complex is because Sogun is correct. I would need a small choice of textures to keep this place in a solid 60 FPS, which is why complex would do the job due to how simple its texture set is and plus it does have not many textures to choose from, so it should work out just fine.
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[Sogun]

From my tests, amount of textures doesn't affect framerate. The only drawback if you have lots of textures is that there's less memory to allocate to geometry.

I meant you test the level first to see how performance is because it seems too high poly for multi.

Also, regarding multi allocation. -ma is the amount of memory dedicated to geometry, and it seems it piles up depending the number of players. So if you set it as 200, it acts as 400 with 2 players, 600 with 3 players and 800 with 4 players. Probably values aren't right but I was able to make a map 4P playable after reducing -ma. And console is more restrictive than emus.

Complex is a good choice as texture set because most of its textures are 64x64 greyscale, which allows you good amount of detail and mipmaping on console (emus don't need to bother about this) avoiding blocky textures.
It's easier to add color to greyscale textures with vertex shading and make the level look different than Complex even if you are using the same images. Aztec or my Citadel makeover use this way of doing things. I think you'll like to experiment with it.

[EternallyAries]

The map is 100% Textured, here an image for you all.



If you guys want the bigger image of the map. Here another image of it for you all to see.

http://prntscr.com/26crlx

Made it into a link to keep the post from becoming a giant.

Anyway, The level been fully fix up. I've found left over polygons that we're not even part of the level. I removed the outside room due to the fact that its just a useless room that was just building polygon on top of polygons. If the map was smaller, then the room would of benefit from it.

There is now over 1203 polygons in the map now. This is a big improvement polygon wise that is.

Now all that is needed now is to have a test run on the map inside Goldeneye it self.

I do wonder though, the fence I added in the map. Does it go transparent on import? Or do I have to do something to make it transparent for Goldeneye. I also added a see though transparent flooring in the vent too.

Here two images of the textures I'm talking about, just in case if you need to know what I'm talking about.





Anyway if the map does lag in muitiplayer, I will make the level into rooms, of course there one thing that does bug me about DeleD. I don't know where the coordinate numbers are in the model editor. So I am not sure how to make the rooms be where they should be with out coordinates of course. So anyone who uses DeleD for Goldeneye. Does anyone know where I can read the model coordinates? So I can import into Goldeneye with ease.
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[Sogun]

I don't use Deled for modeling (only texturing) so I don't know about where to find coordinates.
But you can split into rooms by doing this:
http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z345/Sogunesp/Deled_tutorial_creating_groups.png

You can make fences transparent in editor with the 'Replace triangle/Group Texture/Details' feature in Room Positions mode.
You can also do it beforehand while importing the OBJ. You have to add "_Transparent" to the texture name, so if fence is Fence.bmp, you have to change it to Fence_Transparent.bmp
I do the first thing because I always forget to add tags to texture names, hehe.

Now, let me explain something about background groups. Each room has two groups:
-primary -> it's the most common and it's for "solid" polygons (for example, it allows bulletholes when shooting at it).
-secondary -> used for tris with transparent textures, or "non solid" polygons (rays of light, water...). Bullets go through them.

So your fences are better to be placed in the second group. To do so you have to do a new group for those tris and call them "RoomXX secondary". If you have a secondary group you have to do a "RoomXX primary" group too. Rooms with no secondaries can be named as "RoomXX" or "RoomXX primary".
If you apply textures with transparency in a primary group there might be visual order issues, like with the trees in Surface or the "walls" in Jungle.

[EternallyAries]

Okay the level is all split up in rooms now. The only problem is not knowing the room coordients which can be a huge problem for me. But other then that, it should be easy to import straight into Goldeneye. Also just gonna show a photo of what the room list looks like in DeleD. Just gonna make sure its the correct way its made.



I am gonna take a good guess on how the import room works though. I import each room one by one as an obj into one single folder. Then make a room.txt and add the XYZ cords that Goldeneye uses into the txt.

Pretty much make a list like this in the room.txt.



But instead of numbers, it should look like this.

00000000 00000000 00000000 null.bin null.bin null.bin
00000000 00000000 00000000 Room01.bin
00000000 00000000 00000000 Room02.bin

And so on, then export the room file again once its finish.

If I am missing anything for the room import/export, do explain how it works if you don't mind.

Also what do you use to figure out XYZ coordinates? Since it seems DeleD does not seem to show any signs of XYZ Coordinates anywhere in the model editor.
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[SubDrag]

Make sure it says secondary and primary lowercase as case matters. If you do convert obj to GE level it generates the binary file and room positions file for you. Perhapsthe xconverting new levels tutorial on vault will be helpful. You only want one obj with all rooms.

[EternallyAries]

I've follow everything as corrected. But it seemed after I did Convert OBJ to Level. It creates the RoomPosition.txt But it gives out nothing but this.



And it gives out no room files either, making the import into Goldeneye Editor nothing but a blank.

Here another photo of the roomsetups.



I believe I named them all correctly as needed.

So I kinda hit a brick on what to do here.
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[SubDrag]

Sorry room should be RoomXX. primary and secondary are correct casing there. I did mean to make it case insensitive though sometime.

http://goldeneyevault.com/viewfile.php?id=217

[Sogun]

SubDrag wrote:

Sorry room should be RoomXX. primary and secondary are correct casing there. I did mean to make it case insensitive though sometime.

If you ever do that, be sure to make the "Portal_XX_YY vZ" case insensitive too (portal_XX_YY vZ). It has given me headaches sometimes too, hehe.
I think you can do clipping with ClipXX groups too, so make that case insensitive too. And the other groups for presets, etc. too.

EternallyAries, you can easily change the group names if you open the OBJ with WordPad. Go to 'Edition' -> 'Replace' and change all the "room" with "Room".

[EternallyAries]

Sorry for the slow response. I've been quite busy.

Anyway thanks to you both. I was able to import the map just fine. And I decided to replace Egyptian. But it seems after I finish the setup, And the clipping was perfect. It won't load with 3 and 4 players. Only 2 players. So I decided to see how much I can reduce the polygons in the map. I removed around 300 polygons with out making the map look any different. And it still won't load with 3 and 4 players. So I have an idea, it could be Egyptian it self. So I am gonna replace Facility once I have time to do so. Also I raise the -mt to 750. Since that pretty much the max textures number a level can hold. As for -ma I set it to as 800, and it will not load what so ever. So I kept lowering it. And it seems it will only load in game with -ma set at 400 on Egyptian. So I feel if I replace Facility, this might fix my 4 player problem.
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