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Title                   : Nukesville II - Volcanic Action
Game                    : Sin
Add ons                 : Wages of Sin
Mods                    : none required.

Author                  : claudec
Author Email's          : claudec@ripco.com
Author Web Site's       : www.ripco.com/~claudec/
Feedback                : I encourage you to send it.
Release Date            : 6/4/99 nk2a - original
                          6/30/99 nk2b - version b replaces original
Files                   : nk2b.bsp, nk2b.scr, nk2b.txt           

Description             : You loved "Nukesville I".  You bought 
                          the book, you saw the movie.  Now play
                          "Nukesville II - Volcanic Action". Love, 
                          Adventure, and Total Nuclear Devastation.

****************************************
* Play Information *
Single Player           : NO
Deathmatch 2-8 Players  : YES
Difficulty Settings     : No
New Sounds              : No
New Graphics            : No
Demos Replaced          : None

****************************************
* Credits *
eutectic - for his help with so many questions

BlindTypist - for his suggestions on how to fix the
lag problem the original version had.

Joker [TKCS]  - for his help in testing the revision 
to this level.  He provided a server and got his TKCS
teammates to help in testing this level.

Thanks also to the other TKCS members who participated
in the tests.

elmagoo - for his great explanation of epoly and r_speeds
that was incredibly helpful in fixing the lag problem.

And, thanks also to everyone else in the Sin editing 
forum.

****************************************
* INSTALLATION *
Place nk2b.bsp, nk2b.scr in base\maps directory
be sure to put BOTH files in same directory or game
won't play properly.

****************************************
* Construction *
Base                   : New level from scratch.
Construction Time      : 5/9/99 - 6/3/99,  nk2a - Original
                         6/4/99 - 6/30/99,  nk2b - Version B
Editor Used            : SinEd
* System * 
Asus P5A 100MHz Motherboard
AMD K6-2 350MHz Processor
128 MB Ram

* Compile Data *
Version B
---- qbsp3 ----
no arguments
6 seconds elapsed

---- vis ----
no arguments
 486 portalclusters
1998 numportals
Average clusters visible: 315
Building PHS...
Average clusters hearable: 371
visdatasize:53378  compressed from 62208
writing C:\Tools\sin\base\maps\nkii245.bsp
8234.0 seconds elapsed



----- Radiosity ----
-bounce 2 -chop 128 -extra 
 951 seconds elapsed


* Known Bugs *
NONE
* Design Philosophy and Discussion *
NK2A ORIGINAL
The IP36 is a mis-understood weapon.  Many claim it is 
unbalanced.  I think the weapon is quite well balanced.
There is a long time between firing.  The range is limited
and it can easily hurt the shooter.  And of course there is
the noise.  

NK2B
I started out with the idea that it would be an ethereal look.  Like the scene from apocalypse now where martin Sheen comes upon a camp and encounters a guy very stoned soldier who then fires a grenade launcher into the distance targeting by sound only and hits his target perfectly.  It is that bombed out foggy spotlights roaming around type atmosphere that I wanted.  I did a bunch of light texture tests and size tests and realized that I was probably not going to get the look I wanted.  So I decided to go for a dorky B rated look.  I figured if all I could do was dorky B rated designs then I would aspire to be the Roger Corbin of dorky B-rated level designs.  After a bit more experimentation I came up with textures and lighting that ended up looking pretty cool.  

I did keep the wpoly down but overlooked epoly.  In the end the level wound up being lagged out due to the high epoly.  I had searched for an a good explanation of epoly before and found very little except discussions that spoke mainly about wpoly and mentions in an "Oh by the way" that one should watch the epoly but never any mention of what limit to keep it whithin .  All the while the answer was under my nose.  A thread in the Sin Editing forum at ritualistic.com titled "r_speeds" initiated by Tatuone contains a great discussion about epoly. Elmagoo gives info I have never found anywhere else on the subject of epoly. Armed with this info I set about to revise "Nukesville II"

First the epoly was too high and it was made worse by func_exploders that were set to big explosion.  This caused the explosions to use models instead of sprites.  Set them to sprite based explosions and reduced the frequency of their occurrence and increased the time delay between explosion so they don't overlap.  (the exception is the big series of explosions over the main volcano in the center.  That sequence ends with four going off at the same time.  I chose to leave that in because it was a nice effect and only occurs once in a while.  It also worked when tested online.

I also had some bouncing betties in there that added quite a bit to the epoly even when they were just sitting there. So I got rid of the betties. 

I had to get rid of the lightning (It turns out that a big func_beam shooting from sky to ground (three of them actually) generated a huge epoly. It caused a sudden increase in the epoly by about 2500 - 3000. I also had the sky texture lighting the level and a lightstyle controlling it. The lightstyle started at d and I set it to z in sync with func_beam lightning to make whole level flash bright when lightning struck.
I discovered that this light flash lagged the players out and even worse the strobe effect made the lag seem worse than it really was. 

I also did  a series of tests to measure the epoly of health, armor and weapons.

I originally thought it was to simple a layout to necessitate an entity placement chart.  I thought I could keep it in my head.  When it came time to cull the entities I decided to do an entity placement chart.  I found out I was wrong about doing it in my head.  I could run around the level and visualize it all I wanted but I didn't get a real good overview of my entity placement till I did the chart.  That's when I noticed that things could be laid out better and that I had a few things bunched up.   Using the entity placement chart I culled a few nuke ammos  out and it helped me realized that I needed to hide the nukes themselves.
(From now on I will always do entity placement charts.)

I also changed the 100 health to 50 in the center as 100 health has an epoly of 150
whereas the 50 has an epoly of 44 (lookslike it would be better to use 2 50s rather than 1 100). I changed another 100 health to Easter candy.  This is a neat way to get 100 health on the level at minimal epoly.  It is a power up that when activated by player it gives them 100 health.  I also moved the cloaking power up (another high epoly item measuring 160 while the other power ups range from 28 for the Easter candy to 108 for the goggles) off of a highly visible ledge to the roof top of one of the structures.  Based on my experience in trying to build epoly hiding huts described in the next paragraph I dougbt this move did anything to lower epoly in main area.  However it was a better place for the power up. It is a little hidden but people find it fast enough, and it is equally hard to get at it without someone nuking you or knocking you of course with concussion gun.  I just like it better there.

I experimented in a small level with  sky textures all around except on the floor. I tried building various structures in the corners (like little shacks) to try and come up with a design for some kind of shack or hut that the nukes could be placed inside.  Thus hiding their epoly from the rest of the area.  It didn't work.  All I can say is that it seems as though blocking epoly is different than blocking wpoly.  I noticed this in "Deadmans' Garage" where it seemed that epoly was not as predictable as wpoly.  i.e. in places where I thought it was should be lower it was higher and vice versa.  I guess I don't understand how VIS /epoly/game engine work when it comes to epoly. I wound up creating separate starting rooms that contained the nukes, ammo and some health. This gave me the last bit of what I needed to lower epoly in the main area. 

I also increased the scaling of textures and that resulted in a big decrease in wpoly.  This is not just a tweak technique it results in a major difference.
I also found a server admin (Joker [TKCS] who was willing to help me test the level as I got close to completion.  His help was quite beneficial as it allowed me to gauge what I was doing and allowed me to adjust the special fx script to an appropriate level. THANKS JOKER:)

Joker helped me discover that when anyone is on a WOS rope that person and possibly others are lagged out.  So the ropes where removed entirely.  One was needed to get to the monster power up.  I merely made the pole the rope had hung from climbable and made a minor adjustment to the platform the power up was on to facilitate it being grabbed while climbing  pole. 

The resulting Version B is no longer lagged out. It has been tested a number of times through its' development.  The highest wpoly I see on the level is 465 the highest epoly is 2205.

I think I covered most major points.  I haven't gone into to the topic of music selection as its just to much to write up for now and I plan to come up with a better way in the future if possible I will put a console in my light Studio  that will allow for all music in game to be selected from menu.  This will make it easy to go through all the music to find the one that best fits a level.
("Claudecs' Light Studio" is a level under construction to be used for texture and lighting selection and testing. It has light syle controls under console control and few different labs to experiment in. I am working on the interactive scripts)

* Copyright / Permissions *
Feel free to post and play this level.  Please do not change
any file associated with this level.