Blocking Vis

Terrain maps still have to follow the rules that apply to all Q3A engine maps. There’s only so much that you can allow to be seen at one time, or the game starts slowing down. The good news is that the engine will only draw the terrain triangles that are in the player’s PVS (potential visible set). It doesn’t have to draw all the triangles in the terrain entity just because part of the entity is in view.

At first, most of the usual bag of tricks that mappers use to create vis blocking structures in architectural maps don’t seem to apply to terrain. But that is not the case. If anything, you NEED to think of terrain in much the same way as you think of buildings. You are still dealing with open spaces that could be considered corridors and large rooms … even though they look like large valleys.

In fact, it would be best to plan out the layout of your terrain BEFORE creating your height map. If you know you want to block vis, you can design your terrain to work with vis blocking techniques and avoid the agony of having to go all the way back to the start when you discover that your killer terrain map lets you see too much at once.

If you want the player, even in spectator mode, to be able to fly everywhere and see the whole world laid out below him … an unrestricted vista, so to speak, you’re going to be much more limited. Every single triangle in the map will essentially be viewable at any moment in time. However, if you’re willing to place restrictions on your players - limit how high they can fly or climb, you suddenly have more options for blocking player visibility.

First, the terrain entity is entirely detail content, so it doesn’t block vis. That’s a key part of how this whole process works. Otherwise, vis time would be measured in eras (not minutes or hours) and visdata size would be very, very large.

To block vis in the terrain, start by creating simple vis-blocking structures out of caulk texture inside the forms of the terrain (they are not part of the terrain entity). You can try to match the silhouette of the terrain, but in the end, you may only end up complicating the visdata without gaining any real benefit.

Next, and this is going to sound strange, build thin walls of caulk that follow the divide line (where the terrain falls away on both sides) of the highest mountains, buttes or hills. Only do this where you know that you will not allow the player to move over or see over

that part of the terrain (we’ll talk about clipping real soon).

Other Tips:

·

Sky Texture in Place of Caulk: You sometimes want to apply the sky texture to some of the surfaces of the thin walls used as vis blockers. This can remove some HOM effects. The caulk brushes that block the vis around the bases in mpterra2 have sky texture painted on the surfaces facing the base.

·

Hint Brushes: Use these extremely sparingly and only after trying to solve the problem in other ways. Hint brushes can add hours to vis compile times. Even so, they can make a difference. One trick you can try is to put a horizontal hint brush at a point about midway up the slopes of your terrain. It can add some additional vis break points.

·

Adjusting Terrain: Vis times totally depend on the placement of your vis blockers. Vis times are not affected by modifying the terrain surfaces (terrain entities are detail content, remember?). With that being said, you may want to modify the terrain to allow you to more effectively position the vis-blockers.

Back - Table of Contents - Clipping the Terrain

-18-