dealing with VPOs

OK people, I really don't understand VPOs much and hence am having trouble combatting them. The only thing I know to do is to avoid making several rooms in view at once. And of course remove detail, but what kind of detail causes the biggest problems? What kind of stuff do you people do?

And please, don't say "use a source port".

The best thing to do is probably to study some of the more detailed vanilla maps out there. Darkening Episode 2 for example.

One tip: avoid excessive use of pillars - they can cause VPO alone. (I once had a level with 10 or so sectors, no isolated sectors merged, that VPO'ed because of the pillars).

So would merging related sectors help reduce visplane count?

sargebaldy said:

So would merging related sectors help reduce visplane count?

No, I was just clarifying that there were few visplanes. It's perfectly possible to have 10 sectors and 1000 visplanes, but that wasn't the case for the level I mentioned - it had 10 sectors and probably about that many visplanes.

Merging identical sectors reduces sector count without affecting the visplane count.

Pretty much the definitive guide to VPOs :)

The most important thing imo is planning the layout (if you are going to make a detailed vanilla map). Use height difference and clever ways to connect rooms to make them look good without having too much stuff in view at once.

And as fredrik said, darkening2 is a good place to look for cleverness in the design.

Nope, as when you do that the merged sector is made up of segs, which also count towards the visplane limit.

Visplanes are to do with sectors that have different properties, but a general rule is to watch the visible sector count - that's sectors the player can see, not you (ie. the player sees all sectors that are invisible to the eye). Putting pillars in the way of the offending lines-of-sight definitely helps, but don't use them too much as Erik said.


(BTW, if it's your CC2 map, then use a source port...)

It's not my CC2 map and I'm well aware that set's for boom :P

I deleted a couple of pillars and am OK for now :P