Yea I want to try to get a full VVIS done soon because thus far the three times I've tried, its just gone on for hours and days. I dont have any lighting in yet though, not going to work on that until later.

ok thanks guys, i didnt see "watch this topic" in big yellow letters at the bottom, DOH! =)

Orph: yeah im not a regular, so having "watch" or "subscribe" function available jsut makes it really eazy for me to keep up on topics on various forums

Regarding fast vvis, i find there is no real savings in the long run, and normal vvis SAVES you on errors and catches things that fast won't. PLUS, your lighting will look entirley different from fast to normal vis. (for these reasons i never use it anymore) Just more food for thought, but it is VERY encouraging you have good fps at this stage, i must say1 =)

I null like a banshee but i'm beginning to think it's largely a waste of time, e.g., on my nuketown map i nulled like 2000 faces and saw not a bit of improvement to fps, but of course i still null wherever i can by principle because it's just cleaner that way.

Haven't really tried so I dunno if its still working but, if you watch a topic, it should email you that something new is posted. Otherwise, it takes 3 to 6 seconds to come here and look. shrugs

I know I know.. (that was for Orph)

[edit]
Hey Captain Terror, nice post. You can "watch" a topic. If you do a reply there's a checkbox 'Watch this topic'. Not sure if you can subscribe another way.

I've found that using actual scales and measurements that there are some aspects - like you mentioned horizontally - that seem to feel a bit tight, but its hard to tell. Vertically though, the scale feels too large. But at the same time, the blueprints call for the heights from frame to frame, and then you add the floors and ceilings, which I havent really accounted for yet.

I've propper'ed staircases at this point, to avoid engine limitations, but once the basic layout is complete I do plan on modeling a lot more. Boilers are going to be a good candidate. They're by far not detailed, but they're 22 brushes each on the double boilers, and 24 of them, thats a lot of brushes. Im realizing though I'll definately have to cut up the ship into two or three maps for the final builds.

Im planning when the layout if finished, to paint all brushes with null textures and then go over and texture better. I think that BSP automatically nulls out any faces that arent visible, but Im not sure. I dont think it used to be that way.. (in HL1)

I'll check out the fog stuff, never played with that. My FPS has actually been surprisingly good, despite fast VVIS and VRAD compiles, but I know that will change.

I had tried the compiler that omegaslayer gave me but at the time I ran into errors. I havent tried it since, I should give it another shot soon though. Im at 8262 brushes right now :P

holy cow you've made some beautiful progress since last i was here! It's so cool to see you're still working on this

(is there a way to subscribe or "watch" for thread updates?)

I just skimmed the entire thread, and i must say, there is A LOT of good information and tips in here for building big maps in source! (More than a couple things i've read here i'm going to try immediately in my 747 map, like changing brushwork to displacemens.. very obvious but i woould have never thought of it to save on map planes and brush sides!)

A couple thoughts i have from the things i've read:

Scale
Hammer scale doesn't really mean anything imo, but i would agree with Haymaker you are gonna want to scale things up for the space to "feel" the right size, and then again even more to make some areas more playable. E.G., i started building a map of a WWII destoryer(the sullivans) to scale from blueprints, and in the end, i had to scale everything up(1.3 to 1.5 i think) to make the interiors of the map not feel like a small closet

VVIS running for 4 days
Ya this is in no way acceptable, not for you or your map! Change everything not sealing off the map to groups of func_details, propper prop_statics, and displancements. You can also try func_lod/propper lod, which are like prop_statics with a fade distance, except they are brushwork.

I understand the concept of visblocking, but in source, your compile will go on for eons and eons with too many worldbrushes in your map, MOST ESPECIALLY a map of this size.

max map planes/map map brushsides
A lot of times if you ever get this error, it dosn't mena you have literally run out of brushes, but that you have one or more really messed up brushes from a VMing error. (i know you have a lot of brushes in this map, but just food for thought from my experiences)

propper and prop_static models
Propper is amazing tool, and allows you to go way over the "brush limit" than you ordinarily would, but having too many models in your map will cause a major hit to fps, regardless of max/min view distance, so don't go crazy with models.

clipping
Clip out every non-enterable floor space to make the smallest "footprint" area hammer compile has to make calculations for. (i'm sure you already know this)

fog
Down the line when you have a playable demo, you might try this to increas your fps. I have yet to experiment with it personally.

Question:
Did you ever try the compiler the one bloke mentioned about increasing the hard limit on brushes in hammer? Really curious what the implications would be on performance!

Phew! sorry about the wall of text =P GOOD LUCK on your map and i look forward to future media! =P

You Dillweed. You are in Florida and you are working on a map? You really need to look up the word "Sightseeing"

Had the chance to work a lot today, added a lot of the layout on F Deck in the forward half of the ship. You'll note some of the locations added from the screenshot below: The swimming bath, the Turkish baths, First Class baggage, Third Class Dining Saloons, the larger individual boiler casings.

The Ash Ejectors and Coal Chutes are located on F Deck but there wont really be much to be built for these. A few of the ejectors are in rooms that are accessible and those will be built.

The current brush count is nearly 100% now at 8181 brushes, though once I model the boilers, that'll eliminate about 500+ brushes. I'll be making good use of Omegaslayer's compiler. We'll see how that goes. Though being already at over 8100 brushes, and none of the passenger rooms are built, I'll have to split the map at some point.

Or maybe Source 3 will come out and the performance restrictions will be raised hehe.

Here's the shot from tonight:

I haven't posted a screen shot in a while, so here's one from tonight. Over the last two days I've been able to make a bit of progress. After getting the whole errors and model stuff out of the way, I've completed the layout of the spiral crew staircases all the way to the Tank Top, and I've also enclosed all the Boiler Rooms and designed basic boilers.

The isn't a whole lot of information about how the boiler rooms looked like and how the escapes up the fidleys to the boat decks were laid out, so there's going to have to be some guess work there. But I cant really build the escapes, or the boiler casings, until I finish building F and G Decks, so Im going to focus on that now. Once those are one, I can do the boiler casings, and once that is done, I can do the fidleys.

So, here's tonight's shot: The brush count is back up to 7643, mostly because of the boilers, each double ended boiler having 22 brushes, and there are 24 double ended boilers, and 5 single ended boilers on the ship. Those will get modelled later. At 22 brushes a piece, they're by far not detailed yet.

I've made another "quick" video of the new sections that have been added since the last Youtube last month. You can check it out here:

http://youtu.be/T4Z9mdRj3Yo

I actually talk in this one.. I got tired of making labels.

Got it. Turned out I had to give the entity a name and then set that name in the Physics Mesh parameter.

So before the limited use of Propper I've done, my map had some 7456 brushes, and now with most of the staircases converted (Grand Staircases, and both Second Class staircases are not yet) the number of brushes has dropped to 6989. And the model limit per map is 1024 so I think this will help a lot.

I havent had a lot of time to work on this over the last week so the overall progress hasnt really advanced, but at least now Im back to a state where I can keep working.

One area which I've had to deviate from the blue prints are the spiral staircases which allow crew access from D Deck to the Tank Top, because if I base myself on the plans, its too small for the player collision hull. Im still in the process of making it big enough to permit the player to use them.