Custom Boosters for VBSP/VVIS/VRAD

I might have gone over the top but I'm a speed freak so I can't help it. I wanted to see if anything could be done to (automatically/seemlessly) boost the processes VBSP/VVIS/VRAD since they default to a NORMAL priority. Since during builds each process is using the system mega-hard (and using TASKMAN to close it is a very rare (or never) requirement under normal conditions) I went ahead and created 3 boosters for them.

BoostVBSP/BoostVVIS/BoostVRAD. These are dotNET console apps that integrate seemlessly to the Hammer console build output window. A simple, single INI file (section per program to boost pointing to its location) is used and you just point Hammer to the C:\BuildBoosters\BoostVBSP/BoostVVIS/BoostVRAD.EXE files instead of directly to the non boosted versions.

Each console app internally loads the target and kicks it into max overdrive mode. The results are decent. So far the most noticable speed bump comes from VRAD. On a sample build that consistently takes 1min 21sec it consistently takes 1min 15sec when using my booster. Although I'm to impatient to actually find out (until I finally finish my map and do production/max build options) this should translate in maybe a few minutes (or more, possibly a nice amount more) of time shaved off in the end builds, though that's simply based on theory and not tested facts. Basically, the longer the build takes under normal circumstances the more time that 'should' be shaved under boosted conditions. It could also prove more noticable on slower rigs. My dev rig is 3.0C @ 3.3, 1Gig Corsair Twins DDR500 so for me to see a small difference makes me think slower machines might benefit more.

I did these for myself but the results (3, 10K to 16K console apps) are suitable to run on any machine with dotNET framework installed. Also, since they use HIGH instead of AboveNormal they'll run on a Win98 rig without problems. Win98 doesn't support AN/BN priorities. I would normally use AboveNormal so the TASKMAN (HIGH) can still be responsive and not directly compete with the app, however the game supports Win98 so that's why HIGH was chosen in the distribution builds.

Anyway, just thought I would peg to see if anyone is interested. I don't have a site to host them for download but I'm sure something could be figured out since they are micro-small.

Sorry if this wasn't the place to post something like this!

All you have to do is use the -high command switch to make them high priority...

lol nice. Didn't know that (obviously!). I'll chalk it up to just some more fun programming to my belt then. Admin should just kill this post entirely.

Or if you get tired of waiting and want to do other stuff while it compiles you can set it to -low, hehe.