So I’m taking a break from other stuff to do a bunch of level work. Just as a point of reference in terms of world size, I was wondering if anyone had any information about the number of level files in TQ? GD is currently built out of all 128x128m pieces but I know TQ used a lot of irregular sized levels. I’m just looking for a rough estimate though. Has anyone ever opened the TQ world map? Is that even possible?
Lol, kind of strange that I should be asking you guys but though did a bunch of level work in TQ, I cannot for the life of me even remember how large Greece is and we don’t have access to any TQ content.
I’m not sure how to open the original TQ map, however IIRC there were mods out there which were exact copies of the main quest. So I take it those guys managed it. Those mods would also be easier to open for us simple modders I guess…
I’ll try it myself actually…
That said, this is all from memory, which I’ve noticed hasn’t been working dramatically great lately…
I counted 487 lvl-files in vanilla TQ and only counting first-floor maps, no dungeons.
But as you said, there’s quite a variety of sizes and lots of trims.
K, there’s almost 1000 .lvl files. I have 999 in my folder, and I do have the ones from the Underlord map mod included, so the real count is probably somewhere around 950. (including all dungeons and underground areas)
Greece alone has about 244 .lvl files, not including any UL maps.
As for the sizes, like you said, there’s a bunch of irregular shaped ones, there’s lots of 128x128, and then some 96x128, 64x128, etc.
Now, what accounts for the disparity of 487 and 950? Assylum does your estimate include Immortal Throne?
Ok if Greece is 244, then I think I’m on track for relative world size. I think we’re looking for the initial world to be about comparable to Greece in TQ, maybe a bit large, but we’re trying to build in more quests and replay value.
At this rate actually it seems like it might be significantly larger as I’m already up to around 75 128x128 and I only have about 25% of the world laid out. Also, given TQ’s linear design, the playable area per level is much smaller since so much of the level-space in TQ was dedicated to creating boundaries and unplayable vista areas.
I’m curious, why don’t you guys make much use of 256x256 tiles? I’m generally finding working with larger tiles easier, especially since lvl boudaries seems to be generally pretty fidgety with a lot of things. However I’m not concerning myself with performance, so I’m sorta wondering if the large lvl tiles take big performance hits.
Yeah larger levels pieces can be rough on performance since the game loads things on a level by level basis. So smaller levels allow the game to load and unload assets in smaller chunks.
If you just linking a bunch of 256x256 pieces end to end it wouldn’t be too bad but you’re still basically loading the equivalent of 8 128x128 pieces at once when the player walks over the level boundaries. If you had a larger area where, say, three or four corners might meet, when the player walked near where all the corners met, it could cause a noticeable slow-down. In that cause you could be loading the equivalent of 16 128x128 pieces at once.
I always offset my rows of level pieces so that I only ever have 3 corners meeting.
The level boundary problems are a thing of the past. We’ve fixed all those issues for GD. We got rid of those tile objects that stitched into a terrain as those caused a lot of problems and were pretty bad for performance. Now we have objects with pathable surfaces that you can just shove into the terrain any way you want and the pathable surface auto-magically links up with the levels mesh path wherever it intersects. They work fine across level boundaries.
With stitchable objects you mean the magnet pieces? I’ve had so many things go wrong with those…
Even though I never brought out a mod, I’ve used the modding tools extensively. I stepped down from using the easy 256x256 tiles to make smaller tiles just for performance sake. And magnet pieces were a pain to use…
I think its worth mentioning that as I’m typing this I’ve just crashed the editor for a 4th time trying to place Orient C cliff near a level boundary. Those changes spell relief.
I guess I’ll have to tend toward small tiles from now on to keep performance up then.
Its also good to see that GD might end up being somewhat larger than anticipated, since I’ve generally found greece to be pretty short (Maybe only a few hours of gameplay). A less-linear world should certainly get you more bang for your buck though, in addition to being more engaging.
Yeah there is nothing in GD that will cause an editor crash when moved across level boundaries. The editor almost never crashes now. I think the only times I’ve had it crash in the last few months have occurred as soon as the world loaded due to some asset being improperly configured. I can’t remember the last time it crashed while I was working.
Medierra, in your opinion, would it be worth it for me to take the time to use the TQ editing tools with an eye towards modding Grim Dawn, or has so much changed that I would be just as well off waiting for the new tools?
I’ve worked on mods before, but I never modded in TQ. I’m not sure if being familiar with the TQ tools would translate well into GD modding.
The GD tools are very similar in terms of all the fundamental stuff. They just have some improvements and additional features. The one thing that will be completely new is the quest editor and the conversation editor.
I don’t think there’s too many, and most are 128x128 iirc.