Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by mazemaster on Wed Jan 5th at 6:52am 2005


12 hours vis and still at 2 bars past 8? You'll be there for about a week! You do realize that vis gets exponentially slower as it goes along... A map I was just compiling took the following times:
50% - 5 mins
80% - 15 mins
90% - 1 hour
90..% 2 hours
<sleep overnight, wake up the next morning>
90...% - 10 hours
100% - 14 hours [addsig]




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Yak_Fighter on Wed Jan 5th at 7:38am 2005


What the hell kind of maps are you people making? The snarkpitcrew map only took 10 hours to compile. My current HL2 map only takes 12 minutes to vis and it has one big open area that lets you see almost 70% of the map at once. [addsig]



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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Mouse on Wed Jan 5th at 7:57am 2005


Seriously, dm_casual took 6 minutes to compile. RAD ran for about 4 minutes of the 6. VIS was a breeze, especially compared to the maps I did for HL1, dyshysteria took an hour and delirium3 took 25 minutes.

12 hours and you're not even done? Maybe it's time to rethink the strategy.




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Jan 5th at 10:20am 2005


? quoting Yak_Fighter
What the hell kind of maps are you people making? The snarkpitcrew map only took 10 hours to compile. My current HL2 map only takes 12 minutes to vis and it has one big open area that lets you see almost 70% of the map at once.

pitcrew took just a shade over 2 hours on my comp. perhaps its one of those "AMD vs Intel" things again

when i made false_accretion, it took me about 10 hours to compile on my K62 400, it took Doomdog less than 1 on his PII 450.. same map and only 50 mhz difference in speeds on chipsets.

*shrugs*

[addsig]




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Yak_Fighter on Wed Jan 5th at 11:19am 2005


but Orph, you didn't try compiling after I tried to double the size of the map [addsig]



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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Jan 5th at 11:23am 2005


? quoting Yak_Fighter
but Orph, you didn't try compiling after I tried to double the size of the map

well, it would help if you added that small omission before.

doubled huh, so now its the size of Texas instead of Vermont?

[addsig]




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by ReNo on Wed Jan 5th at 1:50pm 2005


Echo takes 2 minutes to compile fully...but then its still nowhere near finished
[addsig]




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Neo on Wed Jan 5th at 3:29pm 2005


I first started compiling my map on my second PC (server if you will), and in the final stages it started taking up to 12 hours getting up to %90.
I thought that was rubbish and decided to try it on my main PC, it took under 3 hours for a full compile.
Now for the system specs:

Server: AMD 2600+, 1GIG DDR, VIA KT400A

Mine: INTEL P4 3GHz, 1GIG DDR, Intel 875P

My P4 put the AthlonXP to shame!

I've finished my map and I sent it 2 ago from now, I'll update my map and post the best screenshots tomorrow (going to bed).




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Gwil on Wed Jan 5th at 3:52pm 2005


? quote:
Architecture courses' most common quote in use here me thinks...

"If only we had one more week..."



One more week? Architecture!? What happened to the "3 more years even though I won't be a doctor OR have a masters"

Lazy building designing youth of today, eh?

Edit: I doubt i'll be finished on time, far from it. I'm aiming for a polished first release rather than rushing it to meet the deadline.
[addsig]




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Cash Car Star on Thu Jan 6th at 6:23am 2005


I haven't read the contest rules, mostly because as a non HL2 owner, I really have no vested interest, but is the deadline a "receive" deadline or a "postmark" deadline? The latter seems much more fair to me.



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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Mouse on Thu Jan 6th at 6:58am 2005


In the rules it says that all entries must be recieved by 11:59 PM on January 15th.

Makes me wonder if someone's going to rush in there 30 seconds before midnight to hand in their entry.




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Cash Car Star on Thu Jan 6th at 7:21am 2005


In that case, if I had a better connection, I'd offer to do some mailers next week for the international brethren concerned about arrival time. Unfortunately, the time saved by having me mail it would currently be lost by the time spent having me download it. I'd expect there's others around here that could help a brother out, should it come to it.





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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Mouse on Thu Jan 6th at 9:15am 2005


Dude, our avatars are dancing in synchronization. That's pretty awesome.




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Gorbachev on Thu Jan 6th at 9:20am 2005


And my Athlon XP apparently beats out many P4s. It's all in your settings. You have to use the tools to their abilities. The power is already under the hood.

Especially with the spec's you people are posting there must be something horribly wrong with your mapping. It just doesn't make sense that it'd take that long. I've made maps that max out on 4-6 of the limits and they still take a maximum of an hour on my old 1.33GHz T-bird. And my 2500+ Barton compiles any source map I've thrown at it in under 2 minutes so far. (The comparable HL1 maps take about 30 mins, so it cut time in half roughly.)
[addsig]




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by ReNo on Thu Jan 6th at 1:15pm 2005


I reckon people aren't using detail brushes and hint brushes to full effect - if you make the world as simple as possible for VIS to calculate by ensuring leaves are decently sized and well laid out then its ultra quick. Echo might be be very big but VIS compiles it in 2 seconds. I took a look at another map made by a relative newcomer to mapping, and managed to cut compile times down vastly by spending a few minutes optimising it. You can help cut down RAD times by applying nodraw to any faces that will never be seen but would still require lighting calculations being made for them (ie. faces inside the hull, but never in view of the player).

Its most likely I will need a few days yet on Echo, so if anybody in the US is feeling generous I might appreciate a more direct send on.
[addsig]




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Agent Smith on Thu Jan 6th at 11:08pm 2005


The reason my map is taking so long to compile is because:

1. The whole map is essentially in one giant outdoor area, and therefore can see most of the map at once.

2. Most of the surrounding area is constructed using displacement surfaces.

3. Despite optimizing the map in every way possible, it is still essentially inside a giant sky box (of course, not a kill box).

I had this same problem and similar compile times with my snarkpit mapping competition entry Paralaxion, as the whole map was contained in a large open box and you see the entire level at once. I should have some screens up soon of the basically finished product. Obviously I would have liked at least another month to completely perfect the map, but its finished enough to play well with but a few minor glitches, and hopefully no big ones.

I know a lot of people are preferring to skip the competition and produce something really polished, but I think the whole point of the rediculous deadline so soon after the full SDK release is to see if people are capable of producing high quality work in a limited space of time, with a loosely assigned theme. If this is the case there might, might, be the possibility of job offers to those who can perform such a feat, and also have a previous portfolio of high quality work to back it up. Thats my hope and dream anyway. I'm probably dreaming, but there is a possibility I might be right.

And anyway, if your map doesn't win you can finish polishing it later.





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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Mouse on Fri Jan 7th at 1:04am 2005


Indeed, detail brushes are amazing things. I used them for trims, entire buildings, walkways, stairs. The whole gas station in my map was all detail brushes. Also, the whole broken building, which is actually about 7 or 8 different brushes, is all func_detail.




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by SuperCobra on Fri Jan 7th at 1:11am 2005


? quote:
I first started compiling my map on my second PC (server if you will), and in the final stages it started taking up to 12 hours getting up to %90.
I thought that was rubbish and decided to try it on my main PC, it took under 3 hours for a full compile.
Now for the system specs:

Server: AMD 2600+, 1GIG DDR, VIA KT400A

Mine: INTEL P4 3GHz, 1GIG DDR, Intel 875P

My P4 put the AthlonXP to shame!

I've finished my map and I sent it 2 ago from now, I'll update my map and post the best screenshots tomorrow (going to bed).


cause u got a weak mobo for the AMD amd owns intel
and also intels are for servers not amd
[addsig]




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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by Leperous on Fri Jan 7th at 1:13am 2005


? quoting ReNo
Its most likely I will need a few days yet on Echo, so if anybody in the US is feeling generous I might appreciate a more direct send on.

You do realise that getting someone in the US means they will have to forge your signature on the print-out form you're meant to attach (which Valve will be able to tell by the postmarks etc.?)





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Re: Valve HL2DM Mapping Competition Submission
Posted by ReNo on Fri Jan 7th at 1:20am 2005


Argh, I forgot about that :S I'll just have to hope the post office website estimate of "3-5 days" is kept to and sending it on monday morning gets it there on time. Might go for that "airsure" thing that makes sure it receives priority handling at both ends too.
[addsig]





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