{"id":104,"date":"2022-09-16T18:23:44","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T23:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/?p=104"},"modified":"2022-09-16T18:23:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T23:23:45","slug":"forerunner-map-development-log-3-reaching-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/16\/forerunner-map-development-log-3-reaching-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"Forerunner.map Development Log #3 – Reaching Limits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So I’ve got good news and bad news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that the second beta release of Forge World Ultimate is now available, and includes a handful of new terrain objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bad news is that I’ve run into a few issues that are going to likely force me to limit the scope of what I offer within the map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Controllable Bipeds Online<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first thing I found out is that, when I tested controllable bipeds online, it was causing other players to crash. I at first assumed this to be an issue with the map somehow – however, these all worked perfectly when playing alone and when using splitscreen (which is possible on PC within the development tools)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out, however, that this is a known issue and is an actual limitation of Reach itself – controllable bipeds will cause desync between two clients, and seemingly that desync results in a crash. I explored converting the biped tags to vehicles – but the trouble is that when doing so, the bipeds were stuck being ragdolled and were essentially dead – so that was no good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I added a (CRASHES ONLINE) warning to the category name – and for now at least, plan to keep them available as an option for players who may find them enjoyable or useful in single player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this issue is nothing compared to the much more crucial issue, and is why I say that the plan is to keep them available “for now”…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cache File Limitations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I have found out that there is indeed a hard limit as to how much content a cache file can contain. How did I learn this, you may wonder?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well – when compiling a level at one point, I was met with this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not what you generally want to see when building a level. I’m not sure if the limitation has to do with actual file size, or if its simply a hard limit on the amount of tags which can be loaded at any given time. In either case, there’s a limit somewhere – and I’m currently balancing right on the edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do plan to do a few optimizations to some of my custom objects – which, really, should’ve been done regardless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First and foremost, the terrain flats are going to be optimized – the current version of them uses far too many triangles – as at the time, I thought I had to in order to have the model look smooth. Turns out, however, that isn’t the case – the issue is just that I had neglected to use “Smooth Shading” within Blender prior to exporting. After doing so and re-exporting, the model will still have smoother shading – even with a minimal polygon count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, I’ll be simplifying some other models – mostly for aesthetic reasons. The cliff wall objects I put together are okay, but the heavily jagged nature of them causes them to be lit in a particular way where they have quite a few dark shadows – and they just end up looking terrible. A similar issue happens with the terrain slopes – this can be hidden by placing flats on top of them, but still – it’d be a lot better if they looked decent out of the box, right? As such, both of these will be simplified to some extent – not heavily, just enough to make them a bit prettier and less polygon-heavy. Ideally, I want to make sure they still line up with their old physics models – because manually configuring collision and physics models is a fairly tedious procedure, and I’d love to not have to do that again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

That being said, let’s go over some of this new content – even some of the stuff that looks less-than-perfect currently:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
<\/i> New Objects<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
<\/i> Example Build<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

You can expect the appearance of the slopes and cliffs to be improved a bit – and I may attempt to touch-up the crystal formation shaders as well, but otherwise – that’s the bulk of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My hope is that the optimization will allow me to both finish the core planned content (large ship scenery, additional natural objects, etc) without cutting any existing content – however if I am unable to do so, it may be necessary that some or all of the controllable bipeds be cut – simply because they already won’t get much real practical use outside of machinima as it is, and if I need more space – that’ll just be the first to go by default. But as I said – I’ll be doing my best to ensure that as much content remains in at release as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At any rate, if you’d like to download this release (or any past releases of course), check the download portal – linked below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Forerunner.map Download Portal<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that the second beta release of Forge World Ultimate is now available, and includes a handful of new terrain objects. The bad news is that I’ve run into a few issues that are going to likely force me to limit the scope of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forerunner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haloman30.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}