OK, all of you who are saying some got disqualified because of Bungie's performance tests, because they would have screen lag for splitscreen. But yet, only 1 person is aloud in the playlist per locale console? For example: Ladnil's Genome obviously has no screen lag with 1 person, as more than likely most of us have experienced by playing his map. I doubt it has screen lag any with 4 to be honest, but it got disqualified. Anyone have an explanation?
Anyone notice the huge amount of Z-fighting in alot of the maps that are on the community playlist? I don't think there was one that I played where I didn't notice it somewhere
First off, you can't be too overly cynical with Bungie, but I still love em and their games. Wow, you actually had a map tested by bungie, kudos - even though you didn't make it, perhaps I should say you have my condolences, that would hurt. But I wanted to say that what you bring up about object density dove-tails with an idea I've been thinking about regarding forge. I cant remember what it's called but theres a graphics technique that games use where game objects and textures are swapped out with lower resolution copies that get lower in resolution the further they are away from the point of of view. And I think there is a set number of these differing levels of resolution so that every object and texture has a number of renders of differing levels of resolution and this frees up alot of processing power for other things. And of course bungie has taken this up another notch in Reach with their imposturing system, I'm sure people here know what I'm talking about and could perhaps explain it better than me. So anyway I've been working on a map that is quite large, has lots of objects and uses all the budget, plus I've got some things on there that people have told me produce screen lag, but I've never had any lag or performance problems on it. But it has simplicity aswell, I guess what I'm trying to say is that every forge object is well spaced-out from every other object. So that at any place on the map, the majority of what you're seeing of the map is further away and being rendered in lower resolutions or "imposter mode". That could be called a low object density right? It still mightn't pass bungies tests but I've really had no problems with it. So maybe with higher object density you've got too many objects that are close to you and are being rendered in the highest level of resolution. I have experimented with this only a tiny bit and my gut reaction is that it is only the highest resolution renders of objects which are the gremlins in the system, perhaps to fix this problem doesn't require as much "spacing-out" (expansion?) as we might think, of course there are other factors affecting performance to consider such as don't use too much glass,etc. If I am right about the highest level of resolution being the culprit, then it might be possible to work out the distance at which most objects switch down to the first lower level of resolution and at least that would be some sort of a yard stick. Perhaps a formula could be made: use no more than x amount of budget per y of cubed grid space. I also think it's good to block off alot of forgeworld and just have the above-the-map and in-the-distance lower-resolution scenery viewable from your map - they look much the same as the in-map geometry at long distances anyway. If this theory is right (and I'm not saying it is, its my best guess) then wouldn't the Big Team maps actually perform the best in the performance tests? I don't know that what I'm trying to describe is fully coming across, it's hard to write about things that are going on in three dimensions. Anyway, I've written way more than I intended to, what do you all think? I guess it might all be a moot point because how could we really know if a map could pass bungie's tests? PS thanks for sharing what you know, Ladnil
Impostering is great, but the objects have to be far away for this to work. If you go to your own Forge map and start to pull away from it, it actually takes quite a distance until it renders them at lower levels of detail. All of the maps thus far have been no larger than the Coliseum, so impostering won't improve any really dense structures for these maps. For BTB, that's another story. I have some experience with 3D modelling so I'll see if I can't explain this well. Then again, I'm not Bungie, so I may be wrong and correct me if I am. It's simply the number of polygons the engine has to render, not just the textures. Let's take a 1x4 block - a pretty basic column. In an efficient Forge space, this model would have 6 faces, being a rectangular prism, but if you look closely (inside the block particularly, where there's the glass and the divet inside), there are much more than 6 polygons. To be fair, let's say there are 20 polygons on a 1x4 block. A "skeleton map" (a term that seems to have been adopted for the maps thus far presented in the Community Playlist) would simply have the column. Bam, 20 polygons. Reach can render that no problem. A more advanced Forger might take this column and rotate it a bunch of times to get a roughly cylindrical column. Let's say they place a 1x4 block every 30 degrees. For a complete cylinder, they'll end up having 12 columns. That's 240 polygons. Get a few more structures like that, and Reach's engine will be having problems. That's just with a simple column - the more complicated structures might have 40-80 polygons. Rendering things through windows burdens the engine even more so, and Forge World being a few kilometers across doesn't help (that whole environment takes a heck of a lot to render). The column example is kind of stupid, some maps have a lot of phasing going on and when you phase an object, it has to render the whole thing, not just the inch that's actually visible in your structure. So there's that too. Okay, end of long speech and time for something useful: BWU 10/22/2010 It took me a long time to dig this up, but scroll down to where it mentions Forge and they explain it much quicker than I do... Here's an excerpt from urk's update: Note that right now we are playing unaltered maps, so maybe we'll be seeing some gems later on that Bungie took and edited to meet whatever standards they have. Just some...extended thought. tl;dr: It's not textures, it's polygon count, and phasing 20 blocks together to get one fancy-looking structure will disqualify any map from Bungie's standards. Impostering will help, but only at a distance.
Well if Bungie wasn't making their ugly pieces so over complex with the geometry, we wouldn't have that problem.
Easy solution, when forging avoid the use of certain pieces. Also avoid merging if possible. Keep things simple and clean. Easy said and easy done. If you can't manage, you can't forge. 'Nuff said.
That's because the "platform, ramped" is not symmetrical. It seems like they did everything possible to make both sides the same, but with all the other problems with this map (including flow worse than a clogged toilet) that's not much to complain about.
Except that almost all of the maps are quite small and very, VERY cluttered. One has a base structure made from the Bunker round and then 6 blocks to make the roof flat, which it still fails at because they overlap horrible and were not layered evenly to reduce bumps. Very few of them have space you can walk in without running into the side of a bridge or a railing or sudden random path direction change. The map makers also used objects that have far more than 20 polygons. Some are in the upper hundreds. So in terms of object density, I don't see how these maps could have passed because they oaf more objects closer together and phased together than damn near every other map I've played on.
...well the maps are cluttered but not because they crammed too many objects together. The maps are bad because of the kinds of objects they placed and the positions they placed them. There really is only like 30 or so actual objects on any of the maps. Most of them make use of the Bungie areas for boundries (either Colosseum or the upper part above it). The problem is that with those 30 objects they used large building pieces and lots of railings and pieces that took up space and reduced movement. Object density is definitely not a problem with any of the 9 maps and none them have frame rate lag so anyone saying they do might just have a bad connection... Again what they suffer from is just basic level forge stuff. Spawn systems, weapon placement/timing/ammo, Z-fighting, general sloppiness (most of them are bumpy and objects are not even with other objects), bad sight lines (if I can see the other team spawn right from the start, that is bad), horrible camping spots and height dominance (Titmar is right, getting rid of the jetpack would fix a lot of that problem) Point is that it really seems like the creators of these maps made them and submitted them to the contest without any play testing themselves and that really is a shame because I'm sure all the people that did make nice symmetrical maps and did take the time to fix all that basic forge stuff I talked about and play test their map got shafted because even though the map functioned fine with 10 players over customs, it had the slightest bit of lag during a splitscreen session where one newly hired Bungie employee said, "Hey, I think my screen lagged there for a sec, next!"
I really wish these creators would have kept in mind exactly what the jetpack brings to gameplay and designed their map with some restriction and discipline for that, as opposed to simply tayloring certain areas to suit that single style of play... it's very annoying that the only way to top level of Elevation for Lockers and Sprinters is that crappy lift in the middle. What makes it worse is that the walkways guide you straight into juicy camps that you are cut off from without wings. I've pretty much had it with this batch. The problems jetpacks present to these maps are worse than anything those bnet squirts ***** about all day long.
Basically. It's not even worth it to pick any AA other than jetpack on most of these maps, because it's so over-powered.
That's the thing, isn't it? I've been trying to revamp one of Titmar's maps as of late and I thought I had it down until I remembered jetpacks, which completely ruined my view of how the map would play.
The maps on the playlist wouldnt be as bad if is werent for Jetpack. You just fly up, kill all and leave. Theres a decent amount of cover at ground level for every map, but when Jetpack is considered, the map may as well be completely open. Some of the maps have decent gameplay value, but are pretty damn boring. Also, I saw something about people mentioning forgehub maps earlier on and need to comment: The maps posted here are the exact same as the maps anywhere else. The maps vary from ridiculously bad to god-like. And while on Bungie.net, ive seen more than one person say "They should have taken the maps from forgehub" or "Why didnt they try the forgehub maps". It makes it seem as if this place is purely for those who are gods of forge, and every map that comes through here is the best map ever. Anyone who regularly looks through the Reach custom content will find that that isnt true. Its great to know that this playlist is only the first, and that it doesnt reflect the winners. The maps arent great, but certain ones, such as Enclosed, could have fine gameplay with a few tweaks. Im looking forward to the next playlist.
LMFAO! And the hubris at RP and MLG FF is that FH maps have a tendency to blow something awful. Hell, I bash on the bulk of FH maps on a daily basis while testing new maps with my gaming buddies... Not to say there aren't good maps here of course, but there is a massive sea of medeocrity as well... If mediocre is "god-like", I wonder what these b.net kids think of actual good maps.
LOL I had to think what RP was for a minute. Reaching Perfection? Are you serious? I care 10000000x more what xF has to say than what AZN FTW thinks of anything. That's a joke. MLGFF has some great forgers, but there is a lot of potential being squandered because of some MLG ideals. However, I've been liking the creativity coming form people like Nexn. I'm not defending FH either..there is a lot of junk here but that's what you get when you are the biggest forge site out there.
Theres a lot of junk, yes, but there are also some incredible maps here that no one should go without playing. Hell, I suck at forge, but I can tell whether a map sucks or not. You dont need to be a decent forger to know how maps should (or in this case shouldnt) play.
Eh, Azn FTW is a cool dude. I don't care what "wrongs" he's committed in his past here at FH. He's been cool to forge with and runs a pretty cool site. Regardless of any negativity from his past, I'd consider him a positive asset to the forging community. However, it's not him who bashes on FH. Just FYI. XF I couldn't care less about... Although their staffing is a lot better than ours (obvious personal oppinion), I don't like their site layout. Lol. Yes, trivial reason to write off that forum, but thats me for ya. MLGFF does have some great forgers... But there are also a considerable number that have their heads up their asses. Same goes for some notable members of FH. Apparently once you become a "famed" forger, your without err... Or to say the least, only other "peers" are able to criticize you and no other forger is on your level until they've been around long enough. It's the elitists that write off "noobie" forgers that really hurt the community. As for the junk here, your statement is spot on. When the flood gates are open, you should expect a lot of good along with the bad. But the beauty of having an open community is that we can share our knoledge and ideas and hopefully make better forgers out of the newbies. I've learned a lot since joining here, and I'd like to say I've come a LOOOOOONG way since I started forging a couple months ago. Of course the learning curve is considerably harder for most, but the fact remains that any one can improve and become "top tier" forgers. The main issue is the "elite" of the forge community learning to accept new blood into their ranks.
The unfortunate thing about the elitism on this site is that although most of the "famed" people have improved their attitudes and actions in recent years, cutting down on the elitist bs and trying to give more new people a chance, that bad reputation from our past will forever stick to us. Maybe i havent been paying enough attention lately? I havent noticed much elitist bashing of lower members here in a long time.
I think more of it is passive aggressive rather than flat-out aggressive. Rather than bashing the unwashed masses, there's just a sort of unspoken agreement to ignore them and only give each other the love. It doesn't help people get better at forging and I think it fosters some ill will toward the site once newer members realize that's what is going on. I don't think it's conscious or malicious, it's just a natural (and unfortunate) outgrowth of the way people communicate. It's easier to talk to and praise your friends. And given a flood of forge creations, many of which are crappy, it's easier to focus on stuff from people you know will make something decent, than to check out maps from people you don't know at all.