Stupid Question again

MillesManson · Post by **MillesManson** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 11:28 am

Hi all,
I have searched for an answer in the Compiling Tutorial,but i found nothing.
I have a very detailed small map but if i want to compile the vis-Part take
very long instead of the other parts.
How can i improve the Comilingspeed or which factors are important for the vis part.
I have readed something about the caulk texture,for example i have forgot to give the caulkbrush a texture??
Is this important?
Because i often give only the parts a texture,which i actually see in game.
Thx For help!
Greetz Milles
By the way,what can i do against compilerwarnings like
" WARNING - DOWNGRADING TO OLD FORMAT FOR FILE: models/static/...."?

mohaa_rox · Post by **mohaa_rox** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 11:31 am

Try this:

select some brushes, right click-->make detail

reduces vis compile time

and

select brush faces that can't be seen by player (e.g. the underside of the floor) and use caulk. Very useful.

TheStorm · Post by **TheStorm** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 11:44 am

Detail brushes will reduce VIS compile time, caulking does not reduce the VIS compile time but it reduces the number of faces in game.

Before you go on and make every brush detail you should understand what you are doing.

It's mainly small brushes in you map that should be detail (brushes that don't block any views). Railings, signs, stairs etc. It can be difficult to grasp this.....at least make sure you don't make ground, walls, floors and ceilings detail.

MillesManson · Post by **MillesManson** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 1:11 pm

mmm,it didn?t help vis compileing time is the same as before.

How long did it take to compile your maps?
My maps is 1984x2018x1024 units.

mohaa_rox · Post by **mohaa_rox** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 1:13 pm

Try reading Storm's vis tutorial. Although I don't understand it

.

TheStorm · Post by **TheStorm** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 3:50 pm

MillesManson wrote:mmm,it didn?t help vis compileing time is the same as before.
How long did it take to compile your maps?
My maps is 1984x2018x1024 units.

If makeing detail doesn't help you must do something wrong! Depening on how great you vis data is a few detailed brushes won't help that much. It will still feel as a long time. If you do it correct, detailing will reduce your vis data.

Remember that you can't compile with the option "-fulldetail" because then every detailed brush will be treated as an structural one!

panTera · Post by **panTera** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:00 pm

Don't worry about the "WARNING - DOWNGRADING TO OLD FORMAT FOR FILE: models/static/.." I think it's about the .skd model animation file. It doesn't seem to affect anything.

About the Vis compile. A few questions:
How fast is your computer?
And how long does your Vis-compile take? (A Vis-compile can take up to hours if your map is very complex and has lots of small brushes.)
One last question, what is your average fps? When it's done compiling and you are testing the map, type fps 1 in the console.

Gizzy (nl) · Post by **Gizzy (nl)** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:04 pm

hej, it can even be up to days or weeks...

Post by **jv_map** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:08 pm

Gizzy (nl) wrote:hej, it can even be up to days or weeks...

I bet you can get the same (or better) results when making some structural brushes detail. Your vis compile doesn't have to take more than about 40 minutes up to an hour.

Gizzy (nl) · Post by **Gizzy (nl)** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 8:26 am

Well, my UTAH version 2 is a large outdoor map with loads of LOD terrain. I made as much detail brushes as possible. But the final compile takes more than a week. I made the skybox as little as possible...it has a visdata size of 1mb...and the compile lasts for days...and days and days...

My BASE (Frozen Treasure part I) map lasted for 1,5 days...

My system is an AMD xp2000+ 256mb DDR 333, Win98

panTera · Post by **panTera** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 11:22 am

wow, sounds like loads of fun:/

I just refuse to let the dang thing compile for over a day. If it keeps on going I shut it down and cancel the map or make radical changes... because I just can not make real progress in that way. I believe you when you say your map takes days but omg, I just wouldn't let it. It's no fun. With such bizar compile times you can't make quick adjustments to the map and see how it turned out. I think I compile my maps about a few hundred times during the designing process. Would not be possible to do if I had such long compile times.

The largest q3 map I ever created took about 8 hours to compile (an open space floater map with large skybox) and it was the longest 8 hours ever. Only to find out the map had nasty lighting errors after the compile. I got so sick of waiting for so long I decided to learn everything there is to know about layout and vis-design. It helped a lot and my maps rarely take longer than an hour. But of course I have to cross my fingers:)

Gizzy (nl) · Post by **Gizzy (nl)** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 11:32 am

panTera wrote:wow, sounds like loads of fun:/

I just refuse to let the dang thing compile for over a day. If it keeps on going I shut it down and cancel the map or make radical changes... because I just can not make real progress in that way. I believe you when you say your map takes days but omg, I just wouldn't let it. It's no fun. With such bizar compile times you can't make quick adjustments to the map and see how it turned out. I think I compile my maps about a few hundred times during the designing process. Would not be possible to do if I had such long compile times.

The largest q3 map I ever created took about 8 hours to compile (an open space floater map with large skybox) and it was the longest 8 hours ever. Only to find out the map had nasty lighting errors after the compile. I got so sick of waiting for so long I decided to learn everything there is to know about layout and vis-design. It helped a lot and my maps rarely take longer than an hour. But of course I have to cross my fingers:)

It only takes so long with the final full compile. During development I use the "skybox hole" to reduce the compile to about 60 seconds...

panTera · Post by **panTera** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 11:54 am

ahhhhh, I see

TheStorm · Post by **TheStorm** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 12:18 pm

Don't you get a terrible light if you compile with a hole in the skybox?? I would compile it with fast VIS instead. The new mohlight.exe (that came with spearhead SKD) is much faster so light won't takt that long either.

Ofcourse you can only use the new light it if you map for spearhead!! Or...? I haven't tried the old q3map.exe with the new mohlight.exe (wonder if you can combine those two and play the map in mohaa). You can't use the new q3map.exe for mohaa maps, then you will get an version error. Anyone who have tried this?

Gizzy (nl) · Post by **Gizzy (nl)** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 12:56 pm

TheStorm wrote:Don't you get a terrible light if you compile with a hole in the skybox?? I would compile it with fast VIS instead.

Nope... with the little hole the compiling is VERY FAST...the only thing is that you get very worse FPS and very high MTEX...but for testing the things out that you've made, it is a wonderfull way of FAST compiling...