map lag

Um.. well i think i should say this is pretty much my first map for hl2, and i've never actually completed an hl1 map...

that said, when i made this map the first time, i had it working, and
it compiled, quickly. i had problems with fullbright and a 2d skymap,
but i eventually fixed those. right now, my map takes 30 MINUTES to
compile, and lags slightly when running. I'm not sure why, but would a
very large big open space explain it? I have some screenshots of the
level at

http://id.yoll.net/mis_screenshot.html

These screens are not exactly what my map looks like now, but the
proportions of the buldings are the same, and im getting the same wierd
lighting effect that is on the walls as on the light posts. oh wait,
theres no picture of the light posts.. i'll post that seperately. I
read about why its bad to literally build a sky"box", so i did the
capping thing, the cieling is reasonably low..

so i guess im asking why its compiling so slow, and if its due to the
sky or the big open space. btw, it compiles slow even after
removing all lights except light_env.



one more thing - would fog improve performance on a large level or decrease it?

How much RAM do you have? Compiling takes a great deal of RAM up for all the calculations in Vis and RAD, If you dont have at least 256mb of ram ill say that you have no right to compile, 512 is good and 1 gig is even better, the more the better.

With that said what area of compiling does it take the longest? RAD and VIS are major RAM suckers, especially VIS of you have a comlex map, and RAD if you have complex lighting.

From what I saw on your map, it might take my system 5-10 minutes to compile, but I still can only tell soo much from your scrren shotts. Perhapse you have an over excess of brushes and the VIS is calculating too many clip nodes (solve this by using clip brushes "close off" the complicated brush work. Or the RAD is taking longer on individual bushes (I know that isnt the was RAD works but its the same basic princible). Have you ever used the carving tool? The answer better be HELL NO!!! Becaus ethe carving tool is pointless, its much more efficient to build an area brush by brush.

As for the lag in your game, are you running hammer and CSS? Never do that, always exit out of hammer then run your map. And as for large open maps: HL1 wasnt good at that, but I dont know about source, Ill see when HL2 comes out 2-night :biggrin: . Type in "cl_showfps 1" without the quotes, if the fps are low then your suffering a system lag, and it resides in your system. There is also "+showbudget" without the quotes which shows how much rendering of different things is going on, If most bars are filled up, then its your map taht has the problems.

Fog, if dense enough, will improve performance as long as you cant see "stuff" from far away (eg the fog covers it).

I know this is alot but if you dont want to hear me ranting on about how to make maps read some noob tutorials here, or search the internet for map optimization. eg: r_speeds (which is what HL1 used as performance indicators).

If you can give me a download spot for the bsp ill take a look at it if you want.

One of your problems may be overlapping world brushes. It's highly
important that no world brushes overlap as it makes things far more
complicated for the compiler and is poor mapping practise.

ya that too.....

thanks a lot for all the info (should be very helpful), i'll work on it.

but not for awhile of course, i got hl2 to play :smile:

and midterms :sad:

Well its compiling in about 45 seconds now... I only made a couple
changes... mainly changing some vertex manipulated brushes (which were
initially carved to create more verticies) to some new displacement
surfaces, which are soooo much easier to use and look better. I killed
a few overlapping brushes and deleted one light spot. still no
fog. Rad is what was running slow. I'm getting the feeling it was slow
because of my computer. although, 768 of ram should be enough...

anyways, thanks. And half life 2 was awesome.

You can have a lot of Ram but if you have too many programs running in the background that will slow the compile process down and the less resources the compile process has to use the more chance of mistakes happening in your map.

Yeah, i know about how ram works. I didn't know it could cause errors though. Interesting...

tajgenie said:
Yeah, i know about how ram works. I didn't know it could cause errors though. Interesting...

I just wanted to point it out for you. I know your not stupid or anything.

no worries

RAD has always been the compile step that takes far longer than all the others. I've had maps where the RAD process takes 10 times longer than BSP and VIS. You just need to have patience :razz:

Depends on the map to be honest, I've had plenty of maps in which VIS was the killer, not RAD.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting ReNo</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Depends on the map to be honest, I've had plenty of maps in which VIS was the killer, not RAD.
</DIV></DIV>
ditto..

ditto ditto

I don't see how that's possible, considering my example was the Snarkpit map. Course it may be that you people don't design maps with low r_speeds and visblockers! :razz:

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Yak_Fighter</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>I don't see how that's possible, considering my example was the Snarkpit map. Course it may be that you people don't design maps with low r_speeds and visblockers! :razz: </DIV></DIV>

true, but if you have more things to see, than light sources to compute i suppose that makes a difference.
but seriously, i have had a couple where vis was much worse than rad.

hi guys im new to this website...anyway i got the same problem like he have and i cant fix it,ti needs about 3 or 2
hours to finish compileing and im not ready to wait this long because
ill get bored,anyway i need some one to help me...and i need to know
how to make a hint brush please some one tell me
pleaseXD :] actualy the portal flow was the laggy one.

Okay you rezurected 3 different threads (one of which wasnt a question,
but an answer to a thread 9 months OLD!) please only post in one
thread next time. Granted you ARE doing what we want you to do, just
only rezurect one thread for 1 problem, not two.

Answer to yoru problem:

Post your compile log, let us see whats taking the longest (BSP, VIS,
RAD) because you didnt give much to go on when you said "ti needs about
3 or 2 hours to finish compileing". It might be that you have a leak in
your map (judging from your poor spelling you have no idea what that
is, nor do you know what to look for). And that is causing a long time
in the VIS compile process, or maybe it even that your dont have a leak
and you have a complex map thats taking vis a long time to compile,
turn stuff into func_detail without creating a leak is the simplest way
of doing stuff.

OR maybe you did everything correct and its RAD thats taking the
longest. Believe it or not RAD (lighting) does take a long time to
complete. An experienced mapper will create complex lighting that will
take a long time to calculate.

PS: for hint brushes thats a whole differnt topic, do a search for a
tutotial on the intenet and teach yourself (we only help people who
help themselves - like GOD)

---

Posting And You

I'm sure this almost certainly belongs in a new thread, but hey, I'm a rulebreaker.

The recent replies to this thread caused me to get 2 email notifications. But thats supposed to happen. Thing is the email said:

Subject: Snarkpit forums: Reply to ""

and the body:

<pre>This is a message notifying you about a reply to your topic "". Read it
here:
http://www.snarkpit.net/forums.php?forum=6&topic=2424</pre>

Just thought the admins would like to know is all. If this post really bothers you, delete it, I honestly don't care.

Fin.