Quake Editing Digest Volume 1 : Number 15

Published in

· 20 Apr 2024

quake-editing-digest       Friday, 22 March 1996       Volume 01 : Number 015 

More Visibility Progress 
RE: Visibility Lists Revisited 

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From: etherton@megatek.com (David Etherton) 
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 23:13:19 +0800 
Subject: More Visibility Progress 

Okay, here's what I've been able to nail down. 

- - If a leaf's visibility offset is -1, this means that it can see all 
  other leaves.  Likewise, all other leaves can see this one.  I determined 
  this by setting every leaf's offset to -1 in test1.bsp and then noting 
  that the reverse BSP draw now showed the entire level (and the framerate 
  dropped even more). 

- - The visibility list is 1-based, not 0-based.  Furthermore, individual 
  bits are encoded using (1<<((offset-1)&7). 

With this new formula, I was able to finally verify that every leaf's 
visibility list does indeed contain its own leaf.  So, in other words, 
the visibility list 

10 ff 00 03 7f 

"unpacks" to 

10 ff 00 00 00 7f 

Leaf 5 is visible because 0x10 & (1<<((5-1)&7)) is true. 
Leaves 9-16 are visible, leaves 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,17-40 are 
not visible, and leaves 41-47 are visible.  Leaf 48 is 
not visible either.  (It's almost midnight here, hope I 
didn't screw that up). 

Hope this helps, 

- -Dave 

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From: Olivier <montanuy@lsun80.lannion.cnet.fr> 
Date: 21 Mar 96 10:31:43+0100 
Subject: RE: Visibility Lists Revisited 

>Olivier has probably already figured this out and written it up in 
> the specs, but just in case... 
 Yeah, but I found out only this morning (because I wasted time trying 
 to check if it was related to BSP trees, as experiments seems to show) 
 You're first to claim. 

>It looks like the visibility lists are RLE compressed. 
 I confirm this. My explanation differs a bit though. 

>It seems like RLE compressing 0xFF's as well as 0x00's would work 
>well, but who am I to question to id gods? :) 
 I think they DO NOT DECOMPRESS the visilists in memory. 

 The WinTex visibility list viewer just decodes the visilists each 
 time it's needed. If you test for zero, and unpack on the fly, you go 
 faster than if you read the unpacked visibility list, even from the 
 processor L2 cache. BTW, that's would explain why only ZERO is tested, 
 two tests would slow down the processor too much. 

>I hope this furthers the Great Hacking Effort... 
 Sure justify a mention in upcoming specs 3.1. 
 Nice to see I'm not the only one hacking levels to death. 

 Well, now the spec is complete. I just have to correct it and publish. 

          --------------------------- 

 BTW, anyone has already swam into acid? it hurts. less than lava, though. 
 Leaf code for acid is -4 

 Another trick: if you put a leaf code of -3 (water) in a leaf, then 
 the player inside can swim, but his vision is blurred. whereas players 
 outside the leaf can see him as usual, not blurred. Now that's a deadly 
 deathmatch trick :-) 
 I love that concept of water appearing by surprise in the middle of nowhere. 

  Olivier 

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End of quake-editing-digest V1 #15 
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