[question] Merge levels?

[Cloaked Thargoid]

My understanding is that the sublevels in Daikatana are completely separate maps, that just seem to flow as a single level, due to the placement of level transition points and the duplication of certain rooms.

I imagine it was done because of the limitation of old computers. But, given that systems are much more powerful now, would it be possible, in theory, to merge all these sublevels into a single huge level, for each map, and eliminate the transition times? Or would the Q2 engine just crumble to dust with maps this size, no matter how powerful the system?

Do there even exist tools that can cut-n-paste entire levels, and "stitch" them together at predefined points?

[Американский Шпион]

I actually thoght exactly the same. Q2 engine allow to build quate a large maps - there is even 64 players dm maps released by id, one of which is a full first unit of 3 maps glued together. however, doing a large mp map is ok, but sp map may be a complete disaster - engine has a very tight limits for what can be placed on the map. unless dk1.3 team didn't already raised them. about cut-n-paste - as long as editor supports prefabs or multiwindow work it should be possible. but the problem will probably arise with hundreds of misaligned textures around the pasted segment. futhermore, I don't know, how exactly level transition in dk works, but if it uses global coordination system, it will probably cause problems too. the only way to know is to try and see for yourself

[Knightmare66]

While this is technically possible with IonRadiant, it most definitely would not be worth the effort. Merging the maps would require lots of prep work to prevent brush and entity overlap, and the result would likely have many conflicting target and node names, as Radiant automatically generates these when linking entities. The amount of testing and fixing required after such a merge would be very high.

Furthermore, the time required to VIS each map increases exponentially (something like O^3) with map size and complexity. I tried merging entity-pruned versions of the 3 sublevels of E3M1 to create a large DM map. The resulting combined map took over 8 hours to VIS on a 4-core AMD CPU, whereas the 3 separate maps took a combined 68 minutes to VIS.

Finally, some levels, such as E2M4, have maps that are simply too large to merge (in both data/brush size for DK's BSP format and in being able to fit on the +/-4096 unit grid).

[Cloaked Thargoid]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. :)