So is it safe for me to use detail brushes on most of my surfaces, i.e. building fronts, my gas station, subway tunnel, etc? My compile time is going on 40 hours as we speak and I don't know if it's because I have an open area the size of a football field or what. I'm not entirely sure what I should do at this point. I hear rumors that this significantly speeds up compile times. Thanks.

http://www.snarkpit.com/forums.php?forum=1&topic=3396&highlight=optimizing&findpost=66176#post66176

You're correct. It's the VIS that's taking the longest. I've placed the nodraw texture on all surfaces that the player cannot see which cut my file size from almost 10 mb to now 6.5 or so, which I thought would drastically cut down on compile time. The main area in my map is just an open city block with a service station in the center and a subway underneath the street. I have a skybox all the way around my map and am using a 3D skybox for nearly every building model that surrounds my city block. There are maybe 3 or 4 rooms total in the entire map as most of it is just building fronts. If it cuts down on my compile time considerably, i'd like to make my building fronts (including the building trim which isn't in excess) using the detail brushes. There really isn't anything over technical in my map and 80% of the outside area can be seen at the same time, save what the one story service station is blocking. Any advice with this new information would be greatly appreciated. 40+ hours is rediculous. In the mean time, i'll take a gander at the func_wall write-ups. Thanks.

System specs:

P4 2.6ghz, 768 mb ram, ATI 9800 Pro 256mb video card, Win xp

I'll definitely do some reading up on the comile tools. In the meantime, I found this on:

http://members.lycos.co.uk/EditHalfLife/tutorials/funcwall.htm

"The func_wall entity is often used by mappers when they want to prevent polygon subdivision and encounter leaf warnings/errors.Should this be the way? The answer is not always. You can't always depend on func_wall to be your easy solution to any problems you face.

The most important point in this whole tutorial is that turning a brush into an entity means that this entity polygon(epoly) does not block visibility...VIS ignores entity polygons.Also entity polygons may not subdivide wpolys into more wpolys but you must remember that once you can see any part of an epoly, all of it is visible to the engine so all of it is drawn.

It really depends on the situation.If you have leaf warnings/errors you have 3 options,

• Simplify the area thats causing the problem.
• Delete the problem area.
• Turn it into a func_wall.

You should only use the last solution if this problem area will not affect visiblity calculations.For example things like wall brushes should never be turned into an epoly.Other brushes such as pillars really depend on their size, large(complex)pillars will in general be better off if left alone while smaller pillars should be turned into a func_wall in order to prevent polygon subdivision.

For small complex brushes i'd recommend turning it into a func_wall but if you encounter problems with these brushes (leaf warnings/errors), you need to simplify (or maybe delete) the problem.

Finally there is one thing i haven't mentioned which is something obvious but something that has to be kept in mind.Entity polygons are also polygons ie they need to be rendered by the engine."

With that being said, I suppose my building faces shouldn't be used in this way. However, the only complicated (if you can call it that) world brushes I have are probably stairs, or rotated 2x4 pieces of wood covering a window. Could this be a problem? I have my sidewalk overlapping my street, just to ensure that a player can't see through underneath the map. Can this be contributing to the VIS problem? Also, on my gas station, the roof has 2 layers butted together and are pretty thin. Don't ask me why I did that. I need to change that regardless, but I really don't know what else to say. I do have some models such as cars models in which the model box in the 2D view goes into the street, and a few handrail models that go into the wall on the 2D views. I don't know, just trying to narrow down my problem. Again, thanks.

I sound like a broken record, but detail brushes can cause face splitting in certain situations. Basically if the vertexes of a func_detail touch the edges of a natural face split between two brushes they will cause additional face splitting on both brushes.

EDIT: my little ascii drawings didn't work

Now func_detail does a perfectly fine job of reducing compile times, so if that's all you're worried about go nuts. But if you are trying to optimize your map and reduce world rendering (face splitting increases this to my knowledge) you need to be careful how you use the detail brushes, as you may not be accomplishing anything on that front.

Yes, this is true, they *sometimes* cause face splitting (to me it seems to happen most when you have some kind of wall made of a func_detail, causing the floor to be cut up) but a cunningly placed HINT brush can usually solve this.