Map app (TSF Mason)

[MasonKW]

-In-game name on all servers you play: Mason Weskier

-Steam ID: STEAM_0:1:1737529

-Age: 30

-For how long have you played on our servers?: on and off for maybe a year, started getting on more often lately.

-What country are you from?: US

-Time Zone: Pacific Standard Time (PST)

-Do you have a mic?: Yes

-Is this your first application for Mapper? If not, link previous ones: Yes

-Have you received any bans?: No

-How confident are you with Hammer (Rate yourself 1-10 using rating guide): 9, theres always something or someway things are done different or better. No such thing as a 10 in an SDK that has no official how-to or guide. Since working in Hammer from 2014 till now, its just how it is.

-Do you have previous experience as a Mapper for GMod?: Yes

-What source games have you mapped for and used the content of?: Counter Strike Source and Garry's Mod. CSS was for a friend, i dont have contact with anymore.

-How many hours can you commit to Mapping per week?: 4 or more.

-Why do you want to be a Mapper? What can you help us with?: Overall, as my track record shows and the maps i have fixed up or created. I generally prefer to have people be satisfied or happy within the content i make. As much as a commission helps, i do usually ask for said map to be made public eventually. Though, i know what i will be doing here is closed to CN only. But there is enough people for me to feel that contributing will be fine.

-Which server(s) on Civil Networks do you play on and which ones would you most prefer to map for?: SCP US server.

-Have you made & edited any map before? if so attach some images showcasing your map & edit: Yes. people had called me the Map Doctor for a while.

-List any ideas of new maps/map edits for CN that you would like to work on: I play on the SCP server; iv noticed that there is a swelling of sub-departments and lack of rooms to house them within their wing. I am a part of the research department and noticed there is an issue with lack of areas for not only non-SCP testing, rooms for their sub-deps, but some other rooms that could help. A few blank multipurpose rooms for study or what not.
Additionally, my specialty is map optimization. I can feel the lack of it when traversing through the halls of the map. Id like to dig into the SCP map a bit and start expanding out department sectors and optimizing the map the best i can, sector by sector. Though, it is a large and active map, the best way to do this, is throwing in bits of optimization along with additions or changes to the map as is. I am a person that prefers to focus on the overall target i set, then wrap down to the little things that pop up.
Further, a big part in how i map, is feedback. as long as requests, thoughts, ideas, what-ifs, and how abouts exist and are visible, i can do it. within reason of the Hammer gods. Running this as an in-game, in-RP style i can work with 100% as well.

 

[Harry]

+Support

Been a long time since I posted on the forums since I left but this looks like a highly skilled developer. You appear to be humble and obviously have a good level of skill when it comes to hammer, one example I would suggest using to better your application is posting photos of the Optimisation you have mentioned or examples of such within the actual hammer editor. This allows Judge and Ventz to gain an idea of your skill in terms of optimisations instead of just a wideshot of the Y plane, your Intricacy looks good and what they would need to help on future projects. I believe though that it is in your best interest to post examples of your acclaimed skills within a more finite space instead of an expansive surroundings. As you may or may not know, optimisation is a huge process that is very time consuming and needed for the server to function to a good level, however, if designers create the map or new sections with optimisations in mind, it would definitely enable the maps to be created quicker.

TLDR: Post examples of optimisations such as visleaf optimisations or considerate geometry in order to show off your skills to a higher level.

Good luck ,
Ex-Mapper Harry

 

[MasonKW]

Sure.

Most if it is explanation, ill try to provide examples of how to optimize visleafs. But, there is no one blanket system to do this. Its alot of finding things to change to func_detail, when to use visclusters correctly, and the notion of hint/skip being understood. A good misunderstanding is that EVERY room must be a world brush enclosed area. But, if the area is not looking to be super heavy with props or entities, then it is okay to make 'sectors' that comprise of rooms where their protruding walls are func_detail. Essentially just making one big room for the engine.

Ill use my very old map from 2014 as an example. Back when i was out of highschool and stupid.

First.
Hammer prefers to render things in rooms. Every 1024 units a visleaf section is made. The compile makes its own virtual visual rooms as part of VBSP for VVIS. Its mostly not an issue to have visleafs. its an issue to have them mismanaged and influencing a player's render point of view.

In pic.1 and pic.2 there is a mess of visleafs. All of this occurs because of weird angles, unchecked brushes that could be func_detail, and dead space that have a visleaf calculation coughs.
The second image shows only the world brush, with props and func_detail disabled. The highlighted part is the outlier issue. You may also see the orange rectangle there too, that is a ladder brush to allow players to navigate ladders more effectively without having to activate them or get tripped up by them, this does break visleafs itself, but i do think its a preferred quality of life system that is essential over the older mount/dismount ladder systems.

What you do here;
You see the room protrudes through the bulkhead main wall into, and back past the bulkhead.
You would first patch the bulkhead with a hint/skip. This adds a dedicated visleaf section in-line with the bulkhead, seen in pic.3. This will prevent visleaf leaking into areas beyond the bulkhead for each side. The world brushes in this sense cannot be trusted to handle this visual optimization on its own.
Next, im going to turn these into a func_detail. no cutting the brushes. ANNND, in pic.4, the visleaf cough has cleared up.

The rest of the hangar? pic.5
I should just hint/skip it all right? or viscluster it because its supposed to be all one open room? No. while hint/skip helps control the visleafs, and viscluster forces visleaf render zones, these can both break occlusion and rendering from angles that should be away or not rendering things from.
What I will do is take a Viscluster, and fill the open center of the bay only. Add hint/skips to all openings and doors to enforce a visleaf portal. And that leads to pic.6

Now the Cove-bay here in pic.7. it has some messy leafs and can cause rendering and hiccupping in player visual render/derender depending on where they look. so, ill add a hint/skip wall. you do NOT want to fill this with a hint/skip because it leads to the ship's side hangar bay, which can cause occluding issues if this is all just one big hint/skip. So, we set up a render 'split here' wall with hint/skip. This is acceptable in this case as the center most area of this hangar bay is not to hold props or entities (or very few), its just a transition location or 'filler'. But the coves have been used to place props and entities before.

After fixing this, the number of visleafs increased very slightly as seen in pic.8, but in a uniform set now, this is good for optimization of rendering things placed in these side coves and limiting occluding of props or what not transitioning in the main bay area from other points of that section of the ship.

All other visleafs you see in pic.9 are to remain in place as they would be better untouched for render optimization, and dealing with them can just be added more unnecessity to the total map assets.

That is mostly it for visleaf tackling for this map setup. Though it was just one part of a larger map, also cut down a bit for this example. I went from:
7661/65536 Leaves and 14458/65536 Vertexes to
7591/65536 Leaves and 14239/65536 Vertexes.

This is just a rough example of visleaf tackling when things are already func_detailed. This example was mostly relating to dealing with brushes and misbehaving visleaf sets. Every map will have something completely different and have different takes in doing optimization.
Not every map needs that 'split here' wall assist. not every open large room needs a viscluster. some hallways can get by with a hint/skip on the doorway. or if they are essential render points, then an areaportal system (not just a single areaportal brush) will need to be used to enclose a multi-enterable area so portals dont loop back on themselves.

It all depends on the setup of the map.