.Map :: MoHAA Mapping

Say I have a large open area, but I want the FPS to be good. I want to limit how far the player will see (how much is drawn by the graphic engine), but I want the area to move as the player moves.

Just for the fun of it, I tried maeking a bunch of 6 sided boxes with area portals, but I got what you would expect, I couldn't see anything .

Tuts on main page, Look at area portals and vis_leaf groups.

Area portals won't help without structure to put them in look for targeted vis_leaf groups .

That is what "farplane" is used for. It is fog, any color you want, that follows the player around and keeps its distance constantly. It can be set in worldspawn or in the maps script -- see below.

$world farplane 1800 // cutoff distance in units
$world farplane_color (0.03 0.05 0.09) // rgb color (blueish gray)

I had read the area portal tut...missed the vis_leaf one. This will help in a few spots.
The worldspawn is what I was looking to do.

Thanks all for your help

The trouble with fog is it looks bad with some skys . Well most skys . You have to caulk your skybox with skycaulk for best results . If you want a nice blue sky then it will be tricky but you would need to use other means like vis_leaf groups .

For the sky I was going to go with an over cast greyish look ( I used sky caulk and textured the visible side). I added some smoke just below the sky box in a few places to simulate clouds.

You didn't need to use skycaulk on the sides you can't see . You see the thing about skycaulk is it isn't a true caulk because it takes on the farplane color thats what makes it a good choise for fogged maps . You will just have to try and see how the grey sky looks it if does not work out then you can always use skycaulk on the sides you can see and set the farplane color to a grey color that will work too .

The grey looked ok, but I will try it with sky caulk and farplane to see how that looks.
The funny part, I made a couple buildings...thought, ok this is great, I will be done in no time. Then changed this and that, oohhhh, didn't know I could do that, what if...hey I'll read some more tuts, oooohhhh again.

It should be done in a couple years at this rate. But this is the fun part

Click on my www. below. Goto the mohaa section and look for "alod". It was the second map I ever made and was made using skycaulk.