This is for those of you who hate waiting for hlvis to complete.if you have access to more than one computer (on a home or school network) you can speed up the vising process prodigiously with one of Zoner?s standard tools. Netvis.exe is easily overlooked but turns out to be an invaluable tool. I run netvis through the DOS command prompt, though you can probably set it up with one of the compile managers such as HLCC. In any case, I?ll be explaining the DOS procedure.

First, you need to have both netvis.exe, and CCXX32.dll in the same folder on the server system as the *.bsp to be vised. You also need these two files on the client computer. The *.bsp, however does not need to be copied to the client.



Now, start command prompt and cd to the pertinent directory.
Type: ?netvis ?server mapname? (without quotes) this will start the server as shown.



Dash across the room to the computer you are going to be using as the client, cd command prompt to the directory where you placed the two previously mentioned files and type: ?netvis ?connect servername? (without quotes) to initiate the connection. The server name can be either an IP address, a network ID (computer name), or a domain name.



That?s it! For some further information, refer to the netvis.html ?mini-manual? that comes with the tools. There isn?t much more info here besides what is in the above mentioned *.html file, but if nothing else this tut should call attention to netvis. I know I overlooked it for years.

Hmm, im impatient, but this has helped greatly! got this running between my athlon64 3000+ and my athlon 2000+ and its drastically reduces the time!

It would be good if there was a netrad. Security breach has minimal vis times and high rad times.

could be useful , i've never seen vis take much more then an hour tops tho so i just leave my comp for a while

This is a useful tool for larger maps, despite what some might think...

Nice tutorial , but you should have told the poeple wich dontdidnt know if you have to do CSG,BSP & RAD before the Netvis or , Netvis before CSG,BSP & RAD.

Very simple tutorial, so nothing breakthrough here, but then it doesn't need to be does it

Jinx - HL2 has networkable tools for the entire compile process it seems, so that suggests compiling takes even longer than in HL1

If HL2 and the new Hammer are so advanced, hopefully you'll be able to compile your map in-editor in 10 seconds like in UnrealEd. HL2 being similar to HL1 is not a good thing since HL1 is based on ancient Quake 1 tech. I hope they got most of the "quake" out of the HL2 engine... :/

Hmm, maybe vis requires significantly more RAM than the other compile tools. that would explain the discrepency in our respective observations. I've never run with more than 256 MB on my machiene.

Jinx, lets just say that HL2 is HL1 based... and they've been hard at work programming a better netvis....

whoa. even on my old P2 400 with 384mb ram, my biggest, most compicated maps only tooka 3-4 hours total compile time. sounds like there is something screwy with your maps, or they are just insanely huge/complex I guess. and every map I have ever compiled took at least twice as long for RAD as VIS.

I have an Athlon 2700+ and 1GB ram; Temple takes maybe 15 minutes total compile time on -low. More RAM makes a huge difference in compile times.

I guess if you have big maps, and another computer handy, this could be useful though