Oobah

Glow only plays a part in dynamicglow being on as it is so brightness will vary depending upon more or less the brightness of the texture used for the glow itself.  So that's more or less the way you make it come out even shinier.  If you're using the same texture as you do for the one that glows.  Simply make the texture for the glow its own individual texture and just bump the brightness up on it till you are satisfied with how high the glow on it is.  Textures in general, even with mapping, function the same way with the core game with glow shaders and its really only there to make use of the dynamic glow command.  See little brightness without the dynamicglow on but that's really where the glow comes to life honestly but it can impact fps pretty heavily.

I do still recommend using if you run into errors/bugs the shader tool that comes with the original sdk because it points out individual errors to you, usually just a matter of where things are typed/placed in the shader setup.

That's just due to the colour of the original texture itself, that's all the glow does is mimics the texture colours.  Easy fix is just change it to a more red texture.  To be honest lot of the colour comes through them, supposed to be floor grates so the colour doesn't actually come from it but from what is under/above the grates itself. 

I still gotta tweak a few more lighting bits, but the pit darkness looks fairly well for the most part.  I also added switches to turn on the emp and board room chairs on and off.  Beyond that the rest of the map it is setup/working fine and looking quite nice honestly in JA.  Took me a while but I also got bespin cleaned up as well for JA so that's 2 maps that'll be a great addition to my server.

Gonna do some live server tests to see if I find any other specific bugs, but beyond that the only other ones I know of are the lighting on some of the elevators need tweaked.

But I guess the Academy could have gone through a redesign. Surely these walls have been removed by later Sith, when they constructed a large piramid, which included the Academy, made completely of metal walls and large hallways with lots of electronic lights. but I like the older variant more.

Basically what they did was ToR turning it into a full scale sith temple on korriban.  The problem isn't the fact it is more of a fusion of imperial with the sith.  The real problem is it turns to much into a Jedi off shoot.  I just think it's kinda lazy if sith have an archives and a big council room and such.  I think the sith academy as it is happens to be a bit more defineable to the sith instead of just a carbon copy.  Even the jedi enclave on dantooine had an underground area with training areas and archives where as with the sith academy it just had core things since it's more in line with survival of the fittest, I don't see sith having an archives because that means more information for everyone to have access to, a dark council kinda area is just a mimic of the regular jedi council where as the main center hub of the academy as it is can be used for a mixture of meetings and fights.  Kinda a lot more get to the point and cut the crap off.  Even a torture chamber area and jail cells make the place come off as more definable.  Kotors sith academy is iconic so it adds to the overall atmosphere.

As for lighting under under the floor, in the original model none of the hallways had a floor but due to the camera not being able to look all the way down or up you wouldn't see that.  Probably most likely just a plain diamond style light source like JA.  Even the central ceiling pillars had lights and would of most likely went up to a sky of some sort.  But the core focus here was on the academy itself, little things alter/change like in kotor 1 there was no corner rooms or the floor lights and ceiling skys simply due to the fact it wouldn't add to the map in any way.  Only way floor light would work is if there was some kinda light source down there but this is a place built into a cave, you have to literally look down into those areas to see what is making the light and I doubt anyone is gonna spend all day, like the sky in the ceiling, looking at these things.

The ceiling torches in a cave kind of area do make more sense honestly, still means some kinda oxygen source coming through not to mention the fire light and the kinda dim bleak lighting as it is now is more atmospheric but this is just my opinion.  Instead of just little ceiling cuts can just use your imagination and say there are vents cut through the temple all over the place to feed in oxygen.  I can also always change the texture of the ceiling torches if need be so they fit more in line with the academys built into a cave style look.

With any kind of exterior added onto the map as well kinda negates the need for those little things anyway just cause people have more breathing room/areas to visit or go to instead of just sitting in the academy all day long.  People wont focus as much on things like the torches in the academy anymore at that point cause they got more leg stretching room.

Be awesome if you made the cave. Its a bit of a symbolic thing, in reference to KOTOR 2 and the Temple within it.

Caves kinda get to the point like more specific RP sorta maps.  For example: someone could literally setup an entire empire ship with all the imperal computer based areas, but it would come off more like walking through a small corridor office kinda deal.  What would be the fun or interest in literally walking around an imperial equivalent of an office?  Outside of RP it would probably not get used or simply overlooked once the novelty of it wore off since most people want areas for solid ffas these days which the main sith academy centera does provide.  Maybe a corridor shooter but how many servers for specific ffa light end mods are using any sorta guns to do that kinda stuff?  None that I'm aware of.  Not to mention the caves were apart of sith tombs so that = traps and that means needing to add more light sources and traps to fit in with the tomb theme.  Problem is I don't see much use out of anyone using the caves beyond a specific amount of RPers and people who wanna explore.  It's like sith council v2 cave under the bar.  Novetly to it because it's new or no one knows how to get through.  But the magic wears off fast when people burn through the content in a matter of minutes and it can just end up like a dead weight.  Content I wanna setup has specific use or function.  Sure you could argue that point about any area for a map.  But my key focus is on things I see what will more likely to be used vs. things that would only speak to people on the fringes of the community who are into specific play styles.

With focus on the space port and at least having access to the main valley I think is more than enough on top of the current sith academy.  These areas would make more sense in regards to function and usage.  The caves are more like a stretching/blood from a stone when I get to that mapping point.  It would probably make a lot of people happy but in the long run its usage would dimish in comparison to the rest of the map.  But again it means higher map ents and more light sources and considering for the more specific cave I would have to do a lot of curved/specific brush work.  Sith tombs really only went to graves which from a gameplay stand point maybe for RP sure it would add to it, but for most players there really would be no point in the room usage.  Not like you get a magical achievement in an older game like this cause you found a sith tomb  Not like you can ransack the graves for loot like in games with item systems or actually make use of the other tomb with the star map either. 

I think in general it would be great to map out whole temples/cities for usage but even without the engine limitations what would really be the point?  You have a smaller limitation of people who can access a full server hosted, even with 64 player support, you would most likely end up with a lot of chat spam and people just sitting in hub kind of spots like people do in stormwind in WoW.  RPers and curious people would be the ones who wanna get more into the atmosphere and so forth but this is something that caters to a smaller group in the grand scheme of things.  As for being curious, it wears off once people go through everything which anything is new to people they will do everything in there power to see every little bit of content but in the end the curious folks will eventually evaporate anyway.  Like jedi's home v2, they aren't map secrets anymore, most everyone knows about them these days and more than likely most areas go dead empty now anyway beyond the usual break the walls to just open all the content up but at that point it's just a standard area anyone can use which again, no on really does.

Anything I've mapped out is stuff I know I would wanna use and test and get the full amount out of it.  I don't just make content to show off because that's really boring.  I find it stupid to make content I'm not gonna get life out of or enjoy or actually think ot myself about hosting on a server.  What would be the point in producing work like that?  Just feels dead and empty as a reflection on the creator who produced the piece of work as well.  Even on my server I got recently I've been doing plenty of live map testing because sometimes finding bugs that way works better than isolated tests cause it gets you in the mindset of being on a server with players and people who walk around to take in the view, what kinda bugs/issues are they going to see or run into?  Only one real way to find that out.  Creating content alone for looks and throwing it out there is just bland, no real fun in doing that.  I'd rather be a bit more practicle than that.

The lighting still needs fine tuning in areas, the bright lights is from dynamic glow, with it off it's not so in your face and looks perfectly fine.  Fixed up the elevators so they now work like standard JA elevators with the use button, as well as added a small trigger on all the doors, they still open without the use button but this just makes it so you have to be closer to them now before they slide open.  Distance at which doors open automatically without the trigger present on a map with small corridors like this, wont cut it.

Got all the main shaders for specific windows in the throne room and the coolant all setup, I changed also a few wall textures to make use of the moving wall coolant as well instead of just a black space on said textures.  I also added a few more pipes in the throne room, regular JO had a few gaps I merely wanted to close up.  With the entire map properly cleaned up/caulked it should be even more stable now than the JO version.  Also the map file/download is still under 10mbs with all the cleanup and resetup as well.

Same level spawns and item drops.  I added 3 little alterations to the core map.

1. A door for the detention cell.  Only opens from the consol outside.  I don't see abuse in this simply because you gotta be pretty senseless to get caught in something this obvious.  But does make a nice cell for trouble makers (as if anyone would use it for that purpose).

2. Chairs in the big board room table area.  They require a mod with chair sit emotes to make use of them.

3. A proper chair for an emporer to sit in at his throne.

I won't get too into the "good old days", but they did happen, and the hay-day of the DF2 community was very special. That whole era of early online gaming was special (and it will never happen again!). I attribute this to the fact that PCs were rarer and too difficult to understand (due to being less mainstream) for the common, unwise, and hateful people that are so visible today. As a result, there was a higher ratio of reasonable individuals, intellectuals, and cheerful folk to go around. Here's to us!

 

Eeeeh... I made a big reply to most of your post, but I accidentally closed Chrome (/doh!). To summarize: It's not just the sabers that need work, for their own sake, they need to be better balanced against the Force itself. That's one thing I felt OJP did well. Not that I would like to see a replication of its combat. It's a bit awkward for me to say what "needs" to be done, though, when I have very little frame-of-reference on the Jedi Knight: Enhanced agenda for sabers and the Force.

 

By the way, when I mentioned "prequels", I meant the Episode 1 movie. Heheh, the saber in DF2 is a joke, without mods (specifically SBX!).

I think lot of the past stuff was just cause it was new to us, and a lot of the places we joined up with already had communities of sorts as well so it meant more focus on playing and less on recruiting and advertising or even tons of people editing game files.  But we have the other problem now of a lot of "masters" around and no one really focusing more on lowering themselves to get in the trenches.  More people wanna prop themselves up than just integrate into the mass and be apart of the crowd, hard to know when you feel with all the knowledge and experience that somehow you shouldn't get some kinda fancy title or cookie.

I never played JO/JA online, myself. Still, it's easy to understand why the strong stance would be the most popular. It is cheesy, not only for the reasons you mentioned, but because it effectively ignores saber defense (medium does this as well, to an extent). This is why the best of the saber combat needs to be consolidated, while the rest be restrained, so that abuse is minimal and so the playing-field provides a straight-forward, fair, and rewarding challenge. I also strongly disagree that OJP is over-the-top. It attempts to bring some sanity to the chaos that is the vanilla saber combat. It's vanilla JK that is over-the-top. Even more so than the prequels because at least Episode I had -some- values of real melee discipline and theory mixed in with the "sword clashing".

Strong is popular in JA, JO it's more balanced but you still get the occasional spam in the use/form of people picking specific styles to kill people which is not any different from JA.  Had a friend in JO who just killed people with regular blue spam and also got away with it on a constant level that rivals that of someone good with red saber in JA (that was souly with OVERHEAD blue swings also), you can't get away with that in JA as much just due to how the sabering itself was changed to be a little more touchy.  But I purely attribute that to the more sensitve location based saber hitboxs as well as the lock out animations alone.  Nothing else beyond that is really different beyond the added saber styles on top of that.  

Pretty simple when you break it down to that level isn't it?  Hell, force flip kick is STILL in the core game code just */ /* out in the code.  Imagine what base JA would of been if the devs allowed that in the initial 1.00 or brought it back in the 1.01 patch?

Just gonna spoiler most the post, it's to long for lazy people to read/look at.

Hello guys!

Can you change the wallrun animation like in jedi outcast in this mod please

The JK:O version was mutch better (i think)

Those wall run animations (left and right) are specific to JO.  They aren't in the _humanoid folder for JA.  Someone would have to specificly rip the animations or recreate them for JA.  It's doubtful someone would go to that work less they want some brownie points with JO folks.

Front wall run is just the force flip kick animation, you can already do that anyway with just setting your force jump level to 2 in JA.

Red spam is more prevelant in JA simply because your arm swing animations lock out when they hit the mid point in any of the main swings.  Where as JO just does the full/complete swing.  It's a matter of debate whether it is better.  But that is the core reason for pokes in JA.  You can still do it in JO but without the animation lock up it does mean you have to time your swings a little bit more than just spam the red stance all the time.

This is more of the reason why yellow is used more in JO vs. JA regardless of code changes and what have you.  Yellow is the middle or the core saber stance.  It's in all saber styles for that very reason.  If you remove the locking out of the swing animation you more or less revert back to JO with people relying more on the speedy swings/stances and less on reds arms locking up at the swing mid point. 

Is that better from a gameplay stand point?  Eh, considering how many people NOW in JA are used to that animation lock up, I consider more might complain despite the fact going back to JO it didn't do that.

You can do lockup animations on all the swing styles though, where as JO just cycled through the whole animation regardless of the stance you were in.  It was a lot more "fluid" I would say.  Same with even in MP of JO, the characters had a fluid/smoothness about them when they spun around and walked just due to how the animations were setup to be read/played.  Base JA actually has that to a certain degree/point.  It's more so something from the SP portion but changed for MP/other players simply because in SP you kinda move like you're in an ice rink.  Where as with MP it was a lot more grounded.  But this is my opinion.  I'm sure some who play will notice that if they take 2 seconds to pay attention to any animations play from SP to MP between both games as well as how MP animations moved/flowed in JO compared to JA and the mods done for JA.

JO also had the problem of swinging from the left red swings it would skip the animation when you did a 3 swings in red and just cut to part way through the animation.  This was fixed in JA but we got the animation lockup for the midway swing points in place of little things like that.  I imagine like the animation skip in JO red swing to the left, the animation arm swing lock up was probably something they overlooked as well.  I don't think it was there original intention to have it so people can lock up swings and wiggle around like crazy to do high end damage stacking. 

But this goes back to older JO patches, people still play the older versions for little animation glitches cause some feel it's apart of the "core" design despite later patches removing that stuff because it obviously wasn't apart of there design to have people exploit things to get an advantage based souly on gimick or obvious fighting.

This is the MAIN reason why the best people who saber between both games, don't stick to one style and have a good firm setup with use of the yellow stance.  Not just due to fan/wiggle spam either.  Basically person just has that kinda stuff commited to muscle memory and it's really no longer just brain thinking and processing, but there body knows how to move the mouse and keyboard keys to a point it becomes simple clock work to them.  Best saberists I've seen to this day, still knew there way around yellow out of all other stances. 

But it's a game, anyone who plays long enough and pays attention even drunk can get good at sabering lor what have you.  But that's the appeal of JK2 to JA with the hands on combat itself.  It's achievements didn't come in flashy gear, high levels, who did the best raids like other standard games.  But in the skills that people accumulated through actualy playing.  But lot of people hit the point where they don't wanna learn new stuff or are happy in what they got aka that cap point.  But the cap in JK games was always based on the individual and not an over arching system.  It's an individual cap system so it does add to the diversity when every person who plays has distinct styles of play, despite doing same old gimick stuff, but it speaks volumes in that it makes people more distinct when the game is built in such a way everyone can stand on there own merits and not a system saftey net to fall back on (raid runs, gear, etc).  That's the main appeal I feel that makes these games and it's still unique to this very day because of that system.  I also feel people don't fully appreciate a self building up kinda system like this.  Hence why you got the people who talk about 10-0 score crap which just dragged people into the mud instead of encouraging more growth in terms of gameplaying.

Want a more over the top kinda sabering system you can try OJP Enhanced.  Lot more based on the movie stuff but I'm sure if people played at it long enough you'd probably run into the same kinda people using same moves over and over with fights even in that mod.  It's just what happens.  People find/pick out what gets the fastest kills or can boost there e-peen fastest and everyone else either has to do it or kinda be left in the dust cause crowd mentalities can have a major effect on socialization for folks.

So it's a single player based map then perhaps?

If that's the case, I recall looking at a few maps that had misc_model_breakable.  For JO they more or less functioned like misc_model_static.  For JA I recall those kinda things being tied to scripted based events.  Such as on vjun2 with the water room right before a cutscene.

Haven't done a whole lot of digging on it or use of it so I'm just commenting off the top of my head on this.

No regular community folks care for kotf, especially those who've been around at least towards the early part of JO/JA or at least the mid point of JAs life span.  Simply because this mod really didn't bring anything great/new to the table despite at the time promising alterations to the source code (which was pure bs).  Movie hype is more or less died down from the prequels to the original trilogy.  Recreating things we already knew that happened in the movies to play them out is kinda meh, you already know what happens so why play it out yourself instead of watching it the movies over again?

The mod is a black stain as a whole on the community and was more so for the creator to get some e-peen points.  Just represents the worst thing any modding community can turn out, less for a hobby/fun and more for profit and a name.  No one will ever take such a creation seriously due to what was done to produce a frankenstein piece of work like that.  Frankenstein work bugs people when it's more so lazy or just pure offensive.  It doesn't really bug people when enough time, energy, and work is put into it along with being on good standing as a whole with the rest of the group.  Rest of the group being the people who regularly mod files in JK.  From a player standpoint it can be great if you want to re-experience the movies in a gameplay aspect, but again, why do that if all you have to do is watch the movies and or you already know how it all plays out?

Creator suckered a meager sum of cash overall from the project for a new computer (far as I know) and if anyone is trying to milk this black stain at this point/promote it for the creator, it's purely trying to get blood from a stone.  If you wanna play it, go nuts.  But no one outside of the very small group interested in it is really going to want to talk about it, anyone who knows of the mod in general, it's just shameful and the creator got hype off this.  If he's even still commiting to the project at this point I would just say, I feel sorry for him, might be the only thing people really pat him on the back for.  But any kind of digging via simple search engine will show you that he doesn't even deserve a simple pat on the back, just pity for trying to have some sorta name for himself via this project. 

With that stained history already tied to it, would you really want your name tied to that sorta thing? 

Not sure if that's JA, models make me think it belongs in another game.

misc_model_breakable can be found in SP maps for JA and JO but people don't use them for mp.  Besides the obvious it wasn't setup for mp usage by default, most models used in MP are things like chairs and detail related things.  Doesn't really enter a persons mind to have those kinds of things destroyable.  Only map I can think of that had a destructable main area was sith council v2 but those were brushes and again that's like the only mp map I can think of that did something like that.

Basically functions the same way as a destructable brush but for level models.  Plus again models used in mp are mostly for looks or detail.  I doubt anyone is gonna want a chair they can amsit in that blows up if someone bashes against it for 5 minutes or whatever health is put on it.  Really rather useless less you have something more "specific" in mind beyond a standard ffa map.  Something siege based comes to mind, but how many people are falling over for siege mode these days?

Plus for standard ffa map the other problem is you have to restart the map every time you want the brush/model to respawn again for usage.  Can probably make some weird script that resets everything in a map but that's a big overreach with little pay off simply because I doubt whatever uses breakable models is for something specific, not a casual/clan/rp sorta map which would get more usage in the grand scheme of things.  But something new or different never hurts.  Might generate player interest, only one real way to find out about that though.

There actually was one one pcgamemods.com years ago (Dreshdae) but like a lot of early maps it was a mixture of big open spaces mixed with a lot of empty sorta rooms.  Same with Telos and the jedi academy tied into the telo map.

I'm doing some ffa_deathstar cleanup then tests on my personal server, after that I might look at sith academy again.  Maybe not.  Regardless there is already a good core map people can use if they want to.  Don't get your hopes up for another version less I put out the screenshots or start updating this post some more with content related to that map itself.  Everything is either gonna be from here on out is "great map" or "needs more content" or "this needs fixed" sorta deal.  Spaceport and the the main valley itself will fit in fine with the map though, that I do already know in terms of the entity's and so forth.  Just takes a while to make aestetically pleasing content.

I was using comparisons from the actual models from kotor in 3ds max while mapping to get this as close as I could to kotor.  I thought of experimenting with using actual models in place of brush work but the problem I seen was you might hit LOD rendering issues and see gaps in the map itself at certain points as you walk around.

On an off note:

The black model issue is purely due to the shader, nothing else I can figure beyond that.  Doesn't happen to all models also so that's what I point to as the culprit.  Easy fix for that is I would say if you're doing any kinda personal map, setup models SPECIFIC for the map itself and tweak the shaders of those specific models. 

That simply means that you take base models, you resetup the texture paths to the new folder, and do new specific shaders to the model.  This is purely so people don't run into alterations to base files, which is a pet peave of mine and I'm sure it annoys some people almost as badly as people forgetting to put textures in there pk3 files and people test out a map but are missing the files less they download the extra specific files.

misc_model_static works fine in general BUT the problem you may run into with that also is the lightmap doesn't build around it in the same way as a misc_model because misc_model itself is basically baked into the map like the brush work.  misc_model_static is basically an ent placeholder and the model is put into the map after the fact so the lighting wont effect it in the same way.  But if you do say custom shiny shaders and so forth on a model, can kinda texture so people overlook the lighting difference and blend it in, sorta.  But you can basically use same shaders on textures that you do models.  So a shader with a simple glow in the shader path will work the same on a standard model.

Can probably go lazier and just put your models in with your standard texture path and have it all ready from 1 folder instead of a specific model folder if you want to kinda improve map loading times, slightly.  Little tricks like that can streamline the process more.  But I wouldn't recommend more hands on stuff like that till you really know your way around the basics.  Simply because people who edit your files (it will happen no matter what you say or do) might get confused as to why you did certain things and so forth.

Well judging by the looks of it, I think this map is basically done and cleaned up of most of the bugs I could find.  But as for a release, meh don't really care to.  But I did have fun showing it off.  Plus a nice addition to my server for another map to use besides same old standard base maps (which I also removed all of including SP ones). 

Back on topic.  Added some of the bespin wind noises on the main kill trigger and few more texture touch ups.  About it for now.

Semi-related: I know that someone once made a KotOR pack for JKA and Lucasarts/Bioware gone quite batsheet crazy about it. It was quite a few years ago. Do you think they still frown upon such a thing? Also, I tought that when JKA became open source it pretty much become an abandonware?

Code itself might be open source, but the assets are not open source (otherwise people could get full source files to all the game models, animations, etc).  People still have to pay for those when they buy the digital copies of the game also.  Those are still under the copywrite itself.

All JO Specific bespin textures are now in there own folder for JA.  This means not a huge pk3 with a lot of JO assets as well as no issue with confusion or file confliction.  For those who don't also know, ffa_bespin was basically JO's equivalent to mp/ffa3 for JA.

All the drops and spawn points are also on the map as well.

The boundary clip was moved back so people (who have admin) can't tele and walk around the out skirts of the map.

Map lighting was tweaked and improved (lighting on the exterior roofs and a few other map spots).

Few other brush related and texture based fixes (windows now have a proper glow shader on them).  Beyond that, it's jo bespin to JA.  This map was compiled for a relatively empty base folder (mine).  So as such if you run into errors/issues with textures missing (relies also on base JA bespin textures), the error is on your end with a custom map setup that alters base ja bespin textures.

No fancy _skybox in the background.  I kept it closer to the original on that end.  But all other stuff is just more modern implementations on an old map.  FPS wise was also solid through the map for me as well.

Two clips were removed, the main central building and the bevel near the main landing platform just cause it's more areas for people to jump up on.

Little admin "hot box" has a layer of glass inside now. 

This map was also tested live on my own hosted server.  Sometimes live testing can give better feedback.  Map .pk3 size as well is only a small 3.38mbs.

Now for some screenies.

I haven't really changed my mind on more additions to the current map.  I just diverted my energy into other things.  As for the rest of the map related content, maybe after a little while.  Not like the map source is going anywhere anyway.

Just gotta be patient and wait.

I think the space port portion and into the dark valley might be the most needed for that part.  In depth caves sound great, in theory.  But for core usage I imagine might be a waste of energy in regards to usage of said areas ultimately going to waste.  Like the main cave before the dark valley, no real door on that and it would extend the area size for map portals and could cause some strange little headaches just due to what is rendered or potential fps drops.  I'm sure I can get the main central valley into the 4 core tombs to function fine fps wise.  Be big enough also I imagine.  See what happens when I get to that point.  These are just some ideas off the top of my head, nothing is set in stone as of yet.

Map is released and be up when jkhub approves it.  Check it out if you want to replay JO Yavin Temple in JA.  For the memories, I guess.

Well @@Oobah I hate to prove you wrong, but manual hint brushing is HIGHLY important in just about any map

Now before you go all haywire on me. G knew indeed how to work with hinting. But to compare G's work with SJC goes a bit far. G was more of the scripting and less design, while SJC is more or less reversed. (G could indeed script everything. Name it, and he did it). His maps were always in high fps, because of his simple design. The sandcrawler was a good example from him. Sadly he never released it and it's probably gone with the wind.

Wrong, manual hinting is not always needed or highly needed in any way, shape, or form.  The default calculations alone function just fine for the most part.  High FPS comes from cell sizes being to large, typically.  It's why even SJC's maps with huge custom made outside areas got FPS drops.  What about Szico Blue Ice or Atlantica exterior cell?  I get FPS drops and I'm on a quard core with 8 gigs of memory and a 680GTZ. 

This is an FPS game engine.  It's not an MMO/modern engine.  At a certain point it will simply dip the fps because it was not made for huge/large outside areas/cells.  Default portal calculations by Radiant might not be "perfect" but what the hell is in life anyway.  If you're running into issues manually hinting, chances are you're method/way is not any better than the one setup/done by the game engine itself.

Good solid mapping skills alone can either make or break your map, right from the get go.  Might take more work to map things out a bit more "cleanly" but it will save you long term headaches.

Even SP base install maps with large outside areas such as t2_trip, vjun1, etc all get fps drops at points due to the cell size being to far/large to fully render even with the fog they had in place.

There is better ways to render a more atmospheric surrounding cell backdrop than trying to shove it all in 1 cell.

No, it's not misc_skyportal either.

Of course you can manually hint and I would only recommend to do so if you understand how the portal system works to a point you can do it better.  Anyone can manually hint.  But if your mapping is fairly clean and solid, you really wont need to.  You can only squeeze so much optimization out of really any map/piece of work.  If you're getting any kind of fps drops or your rendering other parts of the map, that has more to do with your mapping capabilities and less with the portals generated.  Portals in the -vis stage are calculated after the initial bsp file stage.  Clean up your map and find a better way to produce the content.

Despite whatever fps drops some of the larger outdoor areas that Raven created with the base game, I still will give them credit because they still made some pretty nice looking content for use by players, despite whatever bugs/things they overlooked.  Have you seen some of the base maps in radiant?  Some of them are not even fully caulked/detail brushes, yet people still get pretty solid fps on some of the base ffa maps.  Even with there manual hinting, they didn't put it all over the map either.  They only manually hinted specific areas.

No reason to try and put every single cell into 1 large cell.  Not even Counter Strike: Source/Go mappers do that.

Hint is used for 2 reasons:

 

1) To create new portal splits to limit the Potential Viewable Set, reducing the amount of data that the video card has to draw.

 

2) To optimize the BSP-tree by merging or redistributing portals in a way that reduces the amount of useless portals.

 

You can think of portals as both planes and volumes. When splitting portals for PVS optimization, I think of them as planes - invisible lines that as soon as the player crosses over them, the next PVS loads or unloads. When merging them for BSP-tree optimiztion, I think of them as volumes. You are trying to merge adjacent volumes into a single concave volume. So in the 3rd hint brush example, I had 3 different volumes stacked on top of each other so I merged them into a single concave volume.

 

On detail brushes:

There's a misconception that only decorative brushes need to be converted to detail. Actually, you need to convert everything to detail that isn't directly used to create portals or a part of the hull. So even large architectural items like stairs, even entire floors may be removed if they're of no benefit to reducing the size of the PVS.

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First of all, try to convert as much of those small brushes to detail. This simplifies the portals the most. Then add a few hint brushes to limit the PVS in places like hallways between rooms and such. There are a bunch of hinting tutorials around that will teach you where to put these. Then look for portals that aren't doing anything with regards to the PVS and use hints to try to remove those.

 

Keep in mind that the blocksize also generates portals every 1024 game units along every axis. You can increase/decrease the size of this by adding the _blocksize worldspawn entity key/value pair. You can also set it to 0 to disable if you're comfortable to generate your own portals - though you should avoid this unless you really know what you're doing. When building your layout, you may want to build your floorplan keeping the blocks in mind.

When you have to many things as structural brushes the game calculates portals AROUND those things, detail them.  Anything that isn't mainly a wall/ceiling/floor.  So that means railings, stairs, elevator lifts, doors, ceiling lights, etc need detail brush.  Also if you have slanted walls, detail brush those to and setup a caulk layer behind it so it doesn't give you a compile error.  The game will try to calculate portals on curved surfaces also and they can also lead to issues of walls randomly vanishing IN the compile process.  I'm going to setup a potential guide on how to do background details so people no longer have to compile large exterior cells. 

Backdrop is for looks and the way I mapped it out, it has no drop on fps.

I can do big backdrops and not even have to put it all in a single cell.  Why?  Cause I researched on a method/way to do it.

Why so serious?

I don't care for rend2, persay.  When a full stable, not code injected fixes/improvements here and there, comes out.  I can update this and Massassi accordingly after I learn the best way to deliver the lighting changes.  It's not on my priority list and I'm not sure how much impact it will have on gameplay with fps and such as it stands now.  I'll leave that to the code junkies to hammer out those details.

Not interested in compiling the code and having to constantly update, on top of potential things possibly overlooked that need repatched/fixed again.  Base game alone (with light end mods) is stable, more or less, and that suffices for now.

Can probably, more or less get the same effect with a mixture of skybox lighting and making the lights actually emit light sources onto the map, with a few light diamonds here and there to fill in the gaps.  But like anything else it needs fine tuning to get the best graphical effect.

I've seen worse light jobs though.

And now for the map with level lighting.  More or less done BUT I'm going test it some more to hammer out fine things before release.  I hate endless map versions as much as anyone else so that's the reason I'm testing all I can.  Expect an upload here in a day or so though just due to how it's looking to me so far.

Once you release any content it is no longer fully in your control.

As for -vis I'll give you few things to aid you.

-vis stage is more or less a finer calculation of map portals after the initial map .bsp is compiled.  If the portals get messy and you have vanishing walls, it's due to the portal calculation.  Simply put, clean up your mapping.  Detail more or less anything that isn't the core wall/floor/ceiling.  That means beams, trims, and fancy brush work that doesn't connect the core map to the void outside the level, detail brush it to aid in the portal calculations.

1. Manual hint brush work is REALLY not needed.  The game does fine with the portal calculations. 

2. Portal generation in a cube aka box is easier.  When you have a lot of randomly curved surfaces the portals try to calculate out its way around them and can cause little issues here and there.

3. If you have two cells connected together, not in the form of doors but such as windows.  Like an exterior window to an interior cell.  The exterior cell portals that are calculated will be apart of the interior ones.  Which leads into 4.

4. Portals calculate things that are viewable.  If you have more detail brushes, but an exterior piece of caulk to just calculate out a pure box with the randomly jutting walls as detail.  The portals can become very simple and render distant brush work more so regardless of say, you're away from a window or next to it.  Takes a bit of experimentation BUT it's what you have to deal with mapping on something like this.

Newer games have more rendering of far away detail and such, but this is an FPS engine.  Work within the limitations, don't plow through them.  This is why lot of maps made with big flashy exterior work was a waste of effort.  If the people researched they could of done something as effective without any impact on the map FPS.  MT I did for example did that.

For manual hint brushing a simple thing you can do is put it around areas where the hallway bends into another portion.  It may still render part of the wall in the distance BUT it will not render as much of the entire area.

If you have everything contained in a SINGLE cell, it will most likely render everything in that cell regardless of its distance from you.  This is why you're better off isolating cells to specifics.  This is more so for large exterior cells, which really aren't needed.  If you have a whole map contained in a single cell, which means windows going into hallways, etc.  It renders area portals more or less useless and not effective in the least.

You can render the portals generated in game, but due to Radiant being able to do it, can cut out the testing time to see where the hiccups might be.  But sometimes a test of a basic compile can be helpful also to see what is not fully working right.

At a certain distance, even brush work, the LOD quality will alter/change.  Take that into consideration for things at a far distance.

Looks great so far. I noticed in MT that the "council" chairs weren't solid. Was there a reason for that and will those be like that as well?

They aren't solid on purpose, none of the sitting chairs are.  They're setup with mods in mind to make use of the chair sitting emotes.  Sitting in meditation style sit in a chair looks, meh.  Got the animations in most mods, why not use them for the intended purpose.

Back of peoples minds also, see that larger temple in the distance.  Get there imaginations going and think "other people are there right now training" sorta deal.  With this smaller map setup people will also feel/think that others are at those smaller temples training.  So in general just adds more atmosphere!  Who doesn't love a bit of atmosphere. 

Also this _skybox setup is great for doing outside areas.  No more nasty fps drops if you wanna do surrounding things for looks.

Map has all the music switches also.  As well will support the day/night setup.  Plus due to heavy amounts of usage of MT.  Map download for this will be small in comparison.  It's like, a brother sister sorta deal with the maps.  I wager with the final light build, this map expansion will be no bigger than a skin/model used by people. 

I just hope people realize you will need MT downloaded to make use of this, I can see the endless mountains of posts already, crying about missing textures.

This relies heavily on assets of MT itself, so you will need that installed to make full use of this.

What is this?  It's a restored JO Yavin_Temple to JA setup.  I added few of the changes from JA, such as the temple exteriors being more difinitive and less old ruins (I imagine the Jedi would clean up and renovate things to serve there purposes more).

This temple is based on the position of one of the smaller temples in the _skybox of MT, when you look out in the distance.  I'll let people figure that one out themselves.  I setup and used the same skybox technic so as such all surrounding detail is purely for looks, it will have 0 effect on map fps.

In terms of imagination as well, I wager the surrounding hill space contains rebel hangars and command centers.  But my focus is purely on the Temples.  I'm only doing YT, I have no interest in creating other ones.

If you recall back in JA SP, Jadens jedi training the old ruins cut through hills and so forth.  So that should give you an idea of how the smaller temples connect to the main one.  It's a lot like the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.  Basically the central larger temple here could be considered the upper portion of the main temple, smaller temples in the distance of the main temple are basically the lower levels of the temple.  Like a network it goes out into the little appendages/digits which connect to the smaller temples.  Which are used more for specific and more advance training.  Maybe have 1 temple that focues souly on force, or perhaps another way to look at it is like you have one temple for Guardians and then another for Consulars, etc.

Like Massassi it has all the basic background related things for relaxing, etc.  All small temples are setup for self sufficiency from the main temple.  There is no mess hall at the smaller temples.  They utilize rations and are focused on more advance training.  I also used some of the SP based cutscene rooms for few more room addons to the smaller temple itself (Rosh in medical at the end of SP, bedroom area, and lukes personal room now changed into a smaller council room).  I also setup a small scale style duel6 in the courtyard, it's basically a dueling pit.

If you look out in the distance you will see the larger temple, hiding behind the hill.

Without further adieu (test build, no lighting as of yet).