I...somewhat agree. But with the way forge is made and the limited resources you are given to build with. Sometimes you are stuck with using objects that will 'Z Fight'. Being symmetrical as possible is more important than not having a couple of 'Z fighitng' issues. Of course it would be ideal to be symmetrical with no 'Z fighting' but sometimes it really isn't possible w/o changing up the entire map.
Don't really agree with that. You can bump any piece up, down, or sideways a millimeter and avoid z-fighting without making it obvious what you did. Lots of times I can't even tell if two non-overlapping pieces are perfectly lined up unless I turn into the monitor and zoom in point-blank (in other words zooming in more than a player ever would in a real game). There are ways to make merges like the screenshot work in the map's favor, aesthetically speaking, but true z-fighting always hurts my eyeballs and makes me want to exit the game. Flickering textures = bad.
I think you missed my point. There is a difference between aesthetic and visually clean. A visually clean map means that player paths are easily seen and the player can very quickly tell which way they need to go to achieve their goals. Aesthetic means that it just looks pretty for the sake of looking pretty. Being able to see the top of the curved ramp is not clean. it might be ok if you have one or two spots like that on the whole map (and I wouldn't even allow that many to be honest) but if it is around in a lot of places then the map is very visually confusing. You might have the smoothest running map ever and people will still say it is **** if they get a headache trying to figure out what is a path and what is just sloppy forging. And as far as z-fighting, my advice there is if you have no other choice than to have a bit off it, keep it small. As in don't have two Colosseum walls phased halfway into each other with the over lapping bits fighting. Large areas of z-fighting will cause lag,
thanks ok guys, first of all let me thank all of you for providing so many helpful solutions. Seriously, I haven't been to a forum where people were this respectful and constructive in years. Anyway I tried a lot of different things to solve this problem. First I tried tilting and while that did technically work, I just couldn't let anything sit at an improper angle. Next I tried placing an object over the protrusion, just something to cover it up. Again, it worked but it just felt too simple, plus there was definite z fighting going on. Finally I tried out a suggestion by Mallias and struck gold...maybe silver, anyway the point is I found a decent solution. Mallias said: So I raised the entire floor a couple inches, and started trying out ramps, Cover worked great just like Mallias said but it was too big. After trying several different objects I finally settled on the Window. It's the right size and it works very well. Check out the screen shots below. See, no more wall protrusions, (and yes it was still protruding through the 4x4 corner piece when the floor was lower) And here I put a Window beside the window I actually used, at the same height and angle, so you can see how much of it is hidden. So now I've got a level floor, with a smooth, ramped transition. Myth busted. Seriously though, thanks to Mallias and everyone else. The discussion informed the solution, so thanks.
afterooster, glad that worked out. The only reason I prefer using decoration objects vs. walls is that I get a lot more of them... I tend to use up the 50 walls fairly quickly...
I only read the first page, please don't crucify me for it. As long as there is no Z-fighting, I'd be okay with your initial example. I might, however, tip the staircase and use a bank to eliminate the slight bump where the walkway actually is. It would really depend on how it made the piece fit with everything else I was surrounding it with. If that's the whole platform right there, and you're not trying to put anything behind the staircase (visualize this -C as the staircase and the hyphen is where I'm pointing) then I would totally tip it by a degree or two and use a bank to eliminate the bump it would cause where the stairs meet the platform. Yes I know they're not really stairs. edit: So after reading the last page, you've been given an ingenious solution. Kudos to you an Mallias for being creative on that one. "Large areas of z-fighting will cause lag," Does it actually cause real lag, that is, console-to-console latency, or does it just make your framerate plummet? I mean, not that either one would be acceptable on any sort of competitive or casual map, I just wonder about it actually affecting net traffic.