NWN2 Houses Tileset

[Legacy_DM_Vecna]

               I will try and expiment and see if I can figure out what is causing the lag
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               I have to say, I would love a version dedicated to just the city aspect, as personally most of the rest of the tileset (in particular the NWN2 stuff) isn't of nearly as much interest. Not to say that it's bad in any way, but NWN has been in particular need of a proper medieval city for a long time.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               Yes, I will make that a separate tileset and I think the docks I will make I'll just make for the city tileset because the NWN2 houses tileset is becoming too big to add more new terrain or crossers.

I think that I'll have to use ships from the Bioware tilesets, the DLA tileset and NWN2 though because I don't think I can make ships yet.



There is something else I was wondering about which probably isn't a cause for the lag but makes the mdl files bigger than they need to be. Whenever I remove faces which are for example the undersides or the backsides of some beams which won't be visible anyway, when I do an unwrap UVW the tverts from those faces are still there. Now unwrapping the UVWs on everything and removing unused tverts would be a rather tedious work.

I was wondering if Clean Models does remove unused tverts. I never got Clean Models to work '>

Even though Estelindis and Christopher helped me a lot with providing different versions of the needed dlls files than the ones I got from the swi prolog website, I could never get it to work under Vistas, not in compatibility mode or admin mode or anything.

So while I remove unused tverts whenever I find some, my models aren't as clean as they could be.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               

Zwerkules wrote...

I think that I'll have to use ships from the Bioware tilesets, the DLA tileset and NWN2 though because I don't think I can make ships yet.

Actually, using the DLA and Bioware ones I think is a good idea, in order to maintain continuity across sea journeys in modules.

There is something else I was wondering about which probably isn't a cause for the lag but makes the mdl files bigger than they need to be. Whenever I remove faces which are for example the undersides or the backsides of some beams which won't be visible anyway, when I do an unwrap UVW the tverts from those faces are still there. Now unwrapping the UVWs on everything and removing unused tverts would be a rather tedious work.
I was wondering if Clean Models does remove unused tverts.

You can fix this by you applying a UVW Unwrap, go to Edit, select all, and using the Weld Selected option listed under Tools. I had a similar issue with tverts with my Catacombs tileset - I somehow managed to get one tile to 40mb that with tverts welded ended up being around 150kb. CM3 will also make these edits for you, but if your tverts are a serious enough problem it can take literally hours per tile to handle.

Though if you have no tiles greater than 1 or 2mb then I'd reccomend CM3 - just remember to turn all the settings in the GUI off. This will make it only run the standard fixes, and leave things like smoothing groups and shadow meshes intact. The only issue you may find, which ruled out the use of CM3 for me in my Wild Woods is that the animations it generates for emitters are actually broken, as they will never turn off ingame, and it has a habit of deleting working ones entirely.



Edit: I didn't read that you were having trouble getting CM3 to work entirely, so you may as well ignore that part of my post. However I'll leave it intact in case anybody else reading learns anything from my issues with it
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 03 novembre 2010 - 09:01 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               

DM_Vecna wrote...

I will try and expiment and see if I can figure out what is causing the lag

Wasn't the orginal problem with that grass SunShadows and turning those off in the Area options made the FTP rate stop going, as the highly techinacal term I am using, baloomey fart?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               

Zwerkules wrote...
Today I made a belltower. It is all finished except for the rope. I think about making that a danglymesh.
http://www.rpgmoddin...ttachmentid=766

I thought this was kinda cool till I saw this....

WOW

Just wow....

That is by all means one of my most favorite things I have seen in a long time.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_DM_Vecna]

               Well it appears that even with no NWN2 houses and just a 16 x 16 area with all the animations off and just the "building" and "city" tiles used. The 8x8 demo area #19 is even a little laggy. It appears that there is something else is causing issues.



TSMDude;

is that a Aurora toolset setting? I dont know of where I would turn off sun shadows. Also there is no grass in the area that I am using.  

               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               That's a good point, actually, with shadows. I've always turned them off on the tile side myself - I remember running Wild Woods with shadows enabled on the tiles when I was first working on it, and that had an equally decimatory effect on framerates to what I experienced with the current version of this tileset.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               Greets Zwerkules



As you know I have been a little poorly so my explanation on causeways in relation to castles has been a little delayed. Feeling a bit better I have gotten around to it now. Please remember what follows is my own take on the subject. As allways any questions, just ask.



Causeways.

A causeway is simply a reinforced roadway that crosses hostile, often deadly, terrain. This reinforcement usually takes the form of the road being paved. Depending on the actual terrain being crossed, the roadway may be raised up above it. Unlike a bridge there are no voids beneath a causeway except where a small culvert may be placed to drain away inimical fluids. So you can have a causeway crossing a bog but you would need a bridge to cross a ravine. The one thing that differentiates a causeway from say a modern harbour wall, is that a causeway has a destination on both ends be it a town, castle, island or city.



In the modern world most examples of causeways are located on coasts and are thus tidal in that they are often covered by the sea at high tide. A pair of examples of this are Saint Michael's Mount off the Cornish coast in the UK and its twin Mont Saint-Michel off the Northern French coast.



In previous centuries, before land drainage schemes, causeways were built to cross boggy terrain and also to cross land that was prone to frequent flooding. An example of this can be found on the outskirts of the small market town of Newark in Nottinghamshire in the UK. Here modern deep ploughing often exposes 17th (I think) century bricks that were used in the construction of the causeway and modern roads still use the, now drained, route.



There is also a third type of causeway. This one often used in conjunction with castle building. Where a castle is built atop a rocky spur, access to it can be via a knife-edge ridge where there is a shear drop on either side. Where this ridge is flattened and paved you create another type of causeway. Also in relation to castles, a causeway may well end in a drawbridge to further improve security. Also, where a castle is built with a moat you may have a causeway that connects with a sally port to enable the defenders to outflank anybody besieging the castle.



In a fantasy game there is one other thing to consider - the type of terrain that is crossed. For example instead of water, the causeway could be across lava, tar pits or boiling oil. Or in the sky it could be made of solid clouds going to a giants castle with the hostile terrain being cloudless areas, although a skybridge of cloud would be more usual in this case.



TR
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

Tarot Redhand wrote...

There is also a third type of causeway. This one often used in conjunction with castle building. Where a castle is built atop a rocky spur, access to it can be via a knife-edge ridge where there is a shear drop on either side. Where this ridge is flattened and paved you create another type of causeway. Also in relation to castles, a causeway may well end in a drawbridge to further improve security. Also, where a castle is built with a moat you may have a causeway that connects with a sally port to enable the defenders to outflank anybody besieging the castle.

TR

That is something I'll make for the castle/pit terrain.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               Now that the GOG contest is over and I can think again, anything happened while I've (on occasion) been slaving over a  hot keyboard?



TR
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               No, I've been working on the roman city tileset, but will work on the castle walls of this tileset again once the November CCC is over.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               Here's a screenshot of a gate with towers that can be placed between two houses.



The castle walls are not completely finished yet. They are based on the TNO castle walls and I'm beginning to regret the decision to use existing tiles as a base instead of making my own castle walls. It is very tedious work to adapt those tiles to the heights I need.

When I make a separate medieval city tileset, I will make my own castle walls.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_DM_Vecna]

               I really love this tileset. Are you still considering pulling the city potion out and maybe using lower quality textures or anything else to improve speed? Every time I create an area it freezes. Please keep up the work on this area. I have big plans for it in my pw.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               I will make a separate medieval city tileset. The textures used for the medieval houses are 512x512, so they are standard quality and shouldn't cause any lag. I won't need any of the high res textures because those or only for the NWN2 houses. I will also see if there are any unnecessary smoothing groups (though I have no idea if they could cause lag) and I will try if I can run 'clean models' on my other computer. I never got it to work on this one with Vista and it probably won't run on the other one with Windows 7 either, but if it does, I can clean up the models.

If then even after removing the day/night animations those tiles still cause lag, I don't know what else I could do to get rid of the lag. The houses have a lot more polygons than the standard Bioware tiles, but on the other hand they have about half the amount of polygons of some other tilesets I have seen and those still run smoothly, so I don't think the polycount matters much.