5.6.11 Tips for Map Creation

Here are some general tips for creating maps to use with Crystal Space:

• Try to use only textures that have sizes that are a power of two: 128*64 would be okay for example, 192*32 is not good. Crystal Space can handle any size of textures, but textures that are a power of two are most efficient. In particular, non-power of two textures are scaled to a power of two size, so expect degraded quality when using such textures.
• Avoid open spaces. You will get best performance, if you have lots of occluders in your map.
• Check your map while you create it. If there are spots that do not perform very well, try to change these areas. Often it is enough to close an opening in a wall to get significantly better performance.
• Use textures for details. It is a common error trying to model every little detail with brushes. Often it looks better and is much faster if you paint the details on some texture and apply that texture to a plain wall.
• When adding lights to your level be sure to make use of the entity "light" rather than "light_spot" and "light_environment". If you use the latter 2 you will experience problems running your level under OpenGL rendering under Crystal Space.
• Align your textures properly. While working with normal brushes make sure, that "texture lock" is not enabled. Enable "texture lock" only, if you are moving objects, that have been thoroughly aligned (usually only some decorative stuff).
• Read the reference section for `map2cs' (see section map2cs Manual (Quake Map Converter)). `map2cs' provides quite a few features, that have not been covered in this tutorial, such as mirrors and volumetric fog.
• `map2cs' will remove faces with certain textures (aaatrigger, clip, common/caulk and others. See the `map2cs' source (`CS/apps/import/map2cs/texfile.cpp') for the complete list. Assign such a texture to faces that won't be seen--like polygons facing "outside" the level, or faces adjacent to a wall etc.

If you know other tips, send them to the Crystal Space mailing list (see section Mailing Lists).

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