Technical - how to increase number of "active" items on the map?

[Fryziu]

 
Hello everyone, i'm new here, so please be forgiving.
Quake 2 maps have a limitation of active items on the map, resulting in buffer_overflow (if i'm correct) if it's exceeded. (about 130)
Every button, elevator, laser, weapon, armor shard (and so one) takes a bit of it, and if i want to make fancy multi-wing doors with laser traps, elevators, moving walls, explosions (and other stuff), there is no place left for players
And for guns...
Is there an easy way to increase this number (preferably on server side only).
...
Recently (with invaluable help from author itself) i have compiled (copy-paste of commands) yamagi version of Q2 to run as a server on linux virtual service .
connect railgun.pl
It is my first step into "serious" tinkering with Q2.
But there is a problem, after connection, one need to wait ages before map will download, on windows server it goes far quicker.
What's the difference, how to fix it?

Thank you for coop 8-D

[QwazyWabbit]

I think you are referring to MAX_EDICTS, which is 1024 in the server. As for special entities, there's a special flag for config strings called CS_GENERAL that many modders, including myself, never or seldom utilized at all or correctly and it allows up to 512 strings of up to 64 bytes each.

Max clients, images, sounds, models, light styles, items are set to 256.

If you're getting buffer overflow it might be something else entirely.

[Fryziu]

Thank you, i don't know what are you writing about, but if you could direct me for some reading it would help. Right now i'm trying to return to my passion, and looking for active (and recent) pages, where i could improve my skills. Many old links in my archives are 404, dead, or last updatet in ancient times.
(...)
I remember that some time in history i have seen some mod for placing models .MD2 on the map (i can recall pictures of muschrooms on q2dm1 but i cant find it.

Thank you for your Coop

[QwazyWabbit]

There is very little official documentation on Q2 but the game code has served for many years. If you hack C you can browse the code. The game limit constants are in q_shared.h. These are unchangable or you break compatibility.
As for adding items to maps, q2pro and r1q2 servers allow override files to be added per each map without needing to modify the game or the maps. I think there is information here on TS forums. I know I've discussed it with others here.

[Fryziu]

Thank you, but my C knowledge is very limited...
Map override is interesting, but for now very cumbersome. It would be great to have it as an vote option on various versions of item placement on the server, with original hull intact.
https://r-1.ch/r1q2gen.php
(...)
When new map is created, i can use just about 120-130 items
https://postimg.org/image/s8r78su05/
Weapons
https://postimg.org/image/n1644cdet/
or monsters
https://postimg.org/image/w6egy7gth/
but when they start to fight
https://postimg.org/image/ns3fnv55x/
more often than not i get
SZ_GetSpace: overflow
If one makes a multiplayer map, it's best (to be safe) not to use more than 100 items.
I have round doors  with 8 point mount, few lasers weapons, shards, switches and so one.
100 is a very small number, very limiting.
Maybe one day i will grasp C well enough to fix this, but for now i just have to despair.

Thank you for coop

[PANTONE 7717C]

Ok, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do here but I'm certain you can have more items in a map, just not all at once in one area.
I've seen singleplayer maps that were huge and consisted of one bsp (spogsp1 comes to mind) which has over 200 monsters in it, but of course they don't all spawn at once in one room.

If one makes a multiplayer map, it's best (to be safe) not to use more than 100 items.
I have round doors  with 8 point mount, few lasers weapons, shards, switches and so one.
100 is a very small number, very limiting.

This totally depends on how you build a map. I've made maps that had many more items, no doubt about this. But you have to know about the PVS (what's visible and being drawn at any moment) and how to properly set up your structural brushes, the ones that actually block VIS and lines of sight.
For example if you want to make complex doors with many fancy moving parts and other stuff you have to make sure that you don't put 20 of those doors in one big open area, and then fill that area with 50 monsters and whatnot. You'd have to spilt the area up in smaller parts and connect those using hallways or corridors, so the q2 engine only buffers a relatively small amount of entities at once. Do whatever you can think of to block the player's line of sight with structural brushes or better make use of Areaportals, so that once you're in one area, the engine will completely ignore the entities in other areas of the map.

Perhaps you've seen them before but if you haven't here is a collection of old q2 tuts that might explain things better.

http://panjoo.tastyspleen.net/rust/quake2tutorials.html
http://panjoo.tastyspleen.net/rust/tutorials/errors/qbsp3.html (<- see "MAX_MAP_" values at the bottom)

[QwazyWabbit]

Thank you, but my C knowledge is very limited...
Map override is interesting, but for now very cumbersome. It would be great to have it as an vote option on various versions of item placement on the server, with original hull intact.
https://r-1.ch/r1q2gen.php
(...)
When new map is created, i can use just about 120-130 items
https://postimg.org/image/s8r78su05/
Weapons
https://postimg.org/image/n1644cdet/
or monsters
https://postimg.org/image/w6egy7gth/
but when they start to fight
https://postimg.org/image/ns3fnv55x/
more often than not i get
SZ_GetSpace: overflow
If one makes a multiplayer map, it's best (to be safe) not to use more than 100 items.
I have round doors  with 8 point mount, few lasers weapons, shards, switches and so one.
100 is a very small number, very limiting.
Maybe one day i will grasp C well enough to fix this, but for now i just have to despair.

Thank you for coop

Pan's analysis is correct. You are creating a visibility problem by designing maps such as these. This is not a limitation of the game but a demonstration of the problem of simple box maps. There's a reason maps are mazes, the walls (brushes) control the visibility of objects so that the server doesn't have to process and transmit too much information to a client at any instant.

SZ_GetSpace: overflow means your server has been forced to create too large a message block to send to the client. This is due to all the activity of all the entities visible to your client at the same time. You are not seeing a limitation of the number of entities in the map, you are seeing a limitation of the size of the network message that the server can send to a client.

[Fryziu]

I cannot disagree, but creating a maze will always give similar overall design, and this i don't like.
On multiplayer map, taking into account players, dropped weapons, and other stuff, limiting number is around 100 (if map supose to work without overflowing a buffer)
For single-player map i could put more troops ("active elements") but they become invisible

https://youtu.be/bGPqftIUnOQ
or broken in other way (doesn't matter how)
It is well known that strength of Q2 is in angles, corners and jumping.
This little see-through small windows between arenas, this visible only for split-second head you can rail, or "pond" you can flood with grenades, those boxes you can jump on if you know how.
So i have some ideas, and it's hard to realize them in actual version of Q2, and i'm just looking for changes, i can't make them on my own, and clearly ther is noone who can.
Work has stalled.

https://youtu.be/Thg2hVW91xU

Thank you for coop