Need expert advise or help with maps and .mis files please!
by Svengali · in Torque 3D Professional · 04/11/2011 (12:58 pm) · 3 replies
Ok , I know I should be looking for bugs in the preview , however our title relies to heavily on other structure such as AFX, and UAISK to be transferable yet.
This has bugged me from the beginning, I have always assumed it was just that T3D was still beta, and that eventually either the final would fix it, or I'd figure it out.
I haven't, and I'm not sure the final will either. I cannot completly designing a map. At some point in each mission file the game just begins to crash. For some background, it occurs the same on each of my machines, I have a mix of NVIDIA and ATI card, I have duel cores, single cores, and even an i7, each box has 4-8GB of ram. I use L3TD Pro to generate the terrain files, then mod them in T3D. I've licensed almost every applicable art pack you can find on the net, it occurs no matter how much or little I mix them. It always goes the same way. First I can never load the material selector, it always crashes, I thought I had over loaded it at one point, however recently I removed ALL the art and have been placing them back in one at a time, and even at 0 added art the selector crashes torque. Not a huge deal, I'm a programmer not an artist so I just manual do it. Other than that everything runs smooth at the start. Soon after I have place probably 50 models (numbers are never the same only close) the game will no longer resize. Also not a huge deal, but a symptom. After a few more models, say 25, everything becomes unstable. The program is never unstable at any other point, our server ran 30 days straight no issue during a test. Eventually, the .mis file just simply will not run any more. I can remove a few models and it works again, but as soon as I place them back or add different one it crashes again. So, obviously something is full, or overloaded, right? But I look at every one else pics and vids and there maps seem to have many more models than I. I guess my real question would be what the hell is going on? No, just kidding. What are the requirements for the models? Pixel count for textures? Do textures need to be XxX not XxY (ie. 512x512 compared to 270x112)? What is the max for models? Is it that I only use one LOD at original design? Do I have some form of cull set wrong? Is it that my terrains are to big? They are all 2048x2048. Anyone have any tips that could help?
This is causing me much frustration as I've finished the software side of the game now, and level design is one of the last things to do, and I can't Lol.
Please lend me some of your expert advice. If necessary, I'm willing to share what ever info that is needed.
Here's one example of the map I was working on last from high altitude, a closer aerial, and an example of how it is somewhat working well, lol!
Thanks in advance guys!
This has bugged me from the beginning, I have always assumed it was just that T3D was still beta, and that eventually either the final would fix it, or I'd figure it out.
I haven't, and I'm not sure the final will either. I cannot completly designing a map. At some point in each mission file the game just begins to crash. For some background, it occurs the same on each of my machines, I have a mix of NVIDIA and ATI card, I have duel cores, single cores, and even an i7, each box has 4-8GB of ram. I use L3TD Pro to generate the terrain files, then mod them in T3D. I've licensed almost every applicable art pack you can find on the net, it occurs no matter how much or little I mix them. It always goes the same way. First I can never load the material selector, it always crashes, I thought I had over loaded it at one point, however recently I removed ALL the art and have been placing them back in one at a time, and even at 0 added art the selector crashes torque. Not a huge deal, I'm a programmer not an artist so I just manual do it. Other than that everything runs smooth at the start. Soon after I have place probably 50 models (numbers are never the same only close) the game will no longer resize. Also not a huge deal, but a symptom. After a few more models, say 25, everything becomes unstable. The program is never unstable at any other point, our server ran 30 days straight no issue during a test. Eventually, the .mis file just simply will not run any more. I can remove a few models and it works again, but as soon as I place them back or add different one it crashes again. So, obviously something is full, or overloaded, right? But I look at every one else pics and vids and there maps seem to have many more models than I. I guess my real question would be what the hell is going on? No, just kidding. What are the requirements for the models? Pixel count for textures? Do textures need to be XxX not XxY (ie. 512x512 compared to 270x112)? What is the max for models? Is it that I only use one LOD at original design? Do I have some form of cull set wrong? Is it that my terrains are to big? They are all 2048x2048. Anyone have any tips that could help?
This is causing me much frustration as I've finished the software side of the game now, and level design is one of the last things to do, and I can't Lol.
Please lend me some of your expert advice. If necessary, I'm willing to share what ever info that is needed.
Here's one example of the map I was working on last from high altitude, a closer aerial, and an example of how it is somewhat working well, lol!
Thanks in advance guys!
About the author
Creator of SvengaliGames, and developing the once up coming title NightLife: The MMORPG Of Dark Horror. Now named ATROX NOCTIS: Daemons Cradle- www.svengaligames.com
#2
One last note, thinking at one point that the different texture types were the issue, I have converted everything to .png.
04/11/2011 (1:44 pm)
Thats the odd part, I can't find a common link. I'm running just the art in this one map now, and it still occurs. I wonder if I have non power of 2 textures. I'll check that. As for LOD as i do plan to use it. I figured that I could build the maps before tying it together, is this unhealthy thought?One last note, thinking at one point that the different texture types were the issue, I have converted everything to .png.
#3
Thank you very much again!
04/14/2011 (9:56 am)
Thank you everyone! All of your advice was indispensable. I actually do typically follow Acaster's blog, but I started right after he addresses my issues, hilarious. Although there does not seem to be any hard fast rule for what the limits are, I am most definitely overloading the software, apparently somewhere around 5000 draws on initialization causes the crash. I striped out all my roads and dropped nearly 3000 draws, allowing me to add back in the rest of the buildings, removed dif park structures and pained them on instead. I'm really beginning to appreciate the level designers among us. We have come a long way from building tribes levels... I got to set LOD on the models today, that will lower the draws even more, I can't wait to take that on as I never have done it before. Originally, we though the title was going to be overhead or ¾ view, but that has since changed to a more orbital cam making LOD necessary. Thank you very much again!
Torque 3D Owner Andy Wright
BrokeAss Games
ive had test terrains that were 32km x 32km in size, from a 4096 heightmap.
2048's for me run perfect, nomatter what size their stretched too, I havent come across any crashes myself directly liked with it being from a 2048 resolution heightmap so that shouldnt be causing you any problems.
I cant remember off the top of my head how many "entities" you can have in a mission, but by the sounds of it you are nowhere near that total, ive had over 700 objects in a mission, plus a small forest, grass etc.
Alot of art packs out there have issues when being used with torque, and need a bit of prep work to get them running smoothly, some of them using dds textures for me are a right headache, aswell as some non conformant texture sizes causing material viewer crashes.
Using LOD;s on your models is always advisable, reduces the poly's in view when say you have a whole town on view in the distance, you dont want to be drawing so much detail when essentially its not recognisable.
Apart from that, without knowing a pretty firm common link between the problem its a bit hard to say what the crash is...