Team UnrealSP web site remounted

[Mister_Prophet]

I thought that BfNP would have a 'fix' for the nodecount.. so that you could build beyond that... what's gonna happen with that? Or does RD have something similar?

Basically, it's like I said elsewhere. In RD, we really don't have to worry about such things as node count due to the nature of our subleveling HUB system. The average 'big map' in RD has 30k nodes, but some of them were bigger than that at one point.

And what about the light effects.. (saw that in a leaked vid..afaik I only saw that one besides the BfNP team).. I mean, will just the maps, sounds, music, textures be "moved" to RD, or also some technology? (just curious.. may not be the only person curious about this)

That will depend. But right now we're just talking about it.

[Hellscrag]

Darkon - there is some work-in-progress tech available, but discussion of that has been moved to the private forum.

The subleveling system is obviously the more cross platform-compatible solution. What concerns me is that a lot of the BfNP maps that are cresting the node limit can't actually be subdivided in that way - in pursuit of conceptual grandness, they are often conceived as a single interlinking place rather than a series of places, and some have a non-linear layout.

Proph - I'm trying to achieve a build of the Coastal Fortress with nothing invisible / missing, but I'd forgotten just how bad things were getting, node-wise. Fingers crossed I'll be able to do it.

[ividyon]

I guess that's another couple of years to see BFNP content being released, then. Honestly I would have preferred to see those maps in a more classic Unreal experience, even if it was a Deja Vu 2. The obvious advantage would be not requiring all the work a Total Conversion such as RD encapsules, thus reducing effort and time required to bring it to a playable state...

[Hellscrag]

I guess that's another couple of years to see BFNP content being released, then. Honestly I would have preferred to see those maps in a more classic Unreal experience, even if it was a Deja Vu 2. The obvious advantage would be not requiring all the work a Total Conversion such as RD encapsules, thus reducing effort and time required to bring it to a playable state...

Any playable release of the existing BfNP content would require considerable time and effort to produce anyway. Developing the content for RD, on the other hand, would offer the advantages of there being a substantial game framework already in place, a degree of additional urgency to motivate work and, potentially, additional manpower (not least Prophet himself), not to mention commitment in general from an existing dev team.

Based on our previous BfNP-related announcements, it would honestly be foolish to expect any BfNP map content to put in an appearance prior to the release of RD anyway. This way, if this all goes ahead, you will get a better quality and more coherent gaming experience, potentially considerably more quickly.

[Mister_Prophet]

Any playable release of the existing BfNP content would require considerable time and effort to produce anyway. Developing the content for RD, on the other hand, would offer the advantages of there being a substantial game framework already in place, a degree of additional urgency to motivate work and, potentially, additional manpower (not least Prophet himself), not to mention commitment in general from an existing dev team.

Based on our previous BfNP-related announcements, it would honestly be foolish to expect any BfNP map content to put in an appearance prior to the release of RD anyway. This way, if this all goes ahead, you will get a better quality and more coherent gaming experience, potentially considerably more quickly.

Exactly my stance as well. The current policy regarding BFNP before this thread was "shelve it until RD is released," in which case it was understood between team members that content inbreeding was going to happen anyway to complete the project, in theory. But this was a couple years ago, the member merge did not do even remotely what we hoped it would for RD's development, and to be honest...a full BFNP pack in its original scope and context just isn't going to happen.

The subleveling system is obviously the more cross platform-compatible solution. What concerns me is that a lot of the BfNP maps that are cresting the node limit can't actually be subdivided in that way - in pursuit of conceptual grandness, they are often conceived as a single interlinking place rather than a series of places, and some have a non-linear layout.

Proph - I'm trying to achieve a build of the Coastal Fortress with nothing invisible / missing, but I'd forgotten just how bad things were getting, node-wise. Fingers crossed I'll be able to do it.

There's always going to be a case where a map is designed in a way where it can't be split up. There are a few hefty RD maps that are like this, where they were constructed early in the development and were done so in a way that the layouts have to stay as is. In my experience, there are always ways to get a level to work the way you want it to.

As for the Coastal Fortress, I eagerly await a viewable version

[Hellscrag]

As for the Coastal Fortress, I eagerly await a viewable version

Hmm, yeah, I'm having some trouble with that. I've achieved a version of the map where most of the Movers are visible, but I've had to bring the node count well below the maximum limit to achieve this. Since I've never seen Movers disappear like this on any other map, I have to assume that there is some vestigial bugginess / leftover, unwanted information from when the map had dozens of Movers used for decoration.

I decided that the best way to get around any such bugginess would be to copy and paste everything over to a new map, and I've tried that, but now the map is OVER the node limit, even though I haven't changed anything! Brushes that were hidden didn't copy across.

So, I can either send you a working build of the map with several invisible Movers, or I can keep trying to bring the new version down below the node limit and see if that helps.

[Mister_Prophet]

Well I can take a look at the working version and see what's what.

[Hellscrag]

Well I can take a look at the working version and see what's what.

I don't suppose you have BfNP-TerraTex?

If not, there are some dependencies I'll have to fix first.

EDIT: I have removed the dependencies; will send you the file shortly.

[ividyon]

I just recently hit that mover disappearance bug when I tried to make a kind-of-destructible environment. I think the Unreal Engine can only show like 10 movers at a time. When I moved some of them out of the map, others randomly started disappearing...

[Mister_Prophet]

I just recently hit that mover disappearance bug when I tried to make a kind-of-destructible environment. I think the Unreal Engine can only show like 10 movers at a time. When I moved some of them out of the map, others randomly started disappearing...

There are mover limits. Though, I don't know if it's what's in view as much as it's a general mover limit.

[Hellscrag]

I just recently hit that mover disappearance bug when I tried to make a kind-of-destructible environment. I think the Unreal Engine can only show like 10 movers at a time. When I moved some of them out of the map, others randomly started disappearing...

There are mover limits. Though, I don't know if it's what's in view as much as it's a general mover limit.

The number of movers in the map at the moment certainly don't exceed the limit, whatever that may be. However, they probably did at one point. I continue to suspect that my problem with this map is caused by some bug, such as a bunch of keyframes still stored somewhere that are no longer attached to a Mover actor. That's why I tried copying all brushes and actors across to a new map and ran into my new problem (the change in the node count).

[Enigma]

Mike, if you want to upload the map to the bfnp ftp I'll run it through my tools and see if I can clean it up for you.

[Hellscrag]

Mike, if you want to upload the map to the bfnp ftp I'll run it through my tools and see if I can clean it up for you.

Thanks. I actually uploaded it to an http site so that Prophet could download it - I'll PM you a link.

[Enigma]

I ran your map through my standard unr analysis tool, which outputs the contents of the unr file as a human readable text file and then renders the map and brushes and hit two problems. The first was that the map crashed my tool. This was due to a WetTexture who's first mipmap was empty. It's possible this is indicitive of corruption but it's also entirely possible that this is perfectly valid and just not a situation I had encountered before.

Having diagnosed the problem and fixed the tool I now find that some of the geometry is corrupt. Again, this could be evidence of corruption in the unr file or a bug in my tool but I don't have problems rendering any other maps.

I'll continue to investigate, but it may take some time. My next step is to sum up the number and types of objects in the export table and see if anything is obviously wrong and then try and track through the bsp tree to see where I'm getting the geometry wrong and why.

[Hellscrag]

I'll continue to investigate, but it may take some time. My next step is to sum up the number and types of objects in the export table and see if anything is obviously wrong and then try and track through the bsp tree to see where I'm getting the geometry wrong and why.

Thanks for investigating, Paul. I'm reluctant to have you spend too long on it, though, before I've spent some more time myself on reducing the node count of the version of the map where I've copied everything across. I can do that by hiding part of the map, and it may well fix the problem.