Detail questions:

[tltrude]

Questions:

If a player turns the level of detail down to nothing in his game, will everything you made detail on your map vanish, or look bad?

I was told that making things detail only effects compilling time, but why is "full detail" an option in the compilers?

My map complies (4.8Mb bsp) in less than 8 minutes, so why do I need to make detail brushes?--fast light and nothing in the other two.

Please add your questions or answers.

[McBa1n]

Turning down detail in game just cranks up the texture mipmap scale, making things look crappier...

Going full detail just provides cleaner graphics and looks better slightly. Your compile time will be more, but for those out there with high end systems, they'll get a nicer product to look at.

I don't know for sure if it is at a slight cost of performance, although, I think a full detail compile does run a bit cleaner.. At least it seems that way, but I have no hard data to back it up.

[Moal]

a Lot of guys holler make everything Detail
but it makes for a poorer lookin map like McBa1n said
Detail tells q3map and mohlight "Don't touch this Brush I have already detailed it"
it only helps if you have a little over 2 meg VIS-date
the size of the BSP dont seem to reflect VID-data size
I have one map 10 meg and a little over 1 meg VIS-data
if your map compiles fast then dont detail anything
also I would turn off -fast light unless by doing so you change the affect
you were trying to achive -fast light also lowers light quality

some people seem to be more interested in turning out maps
and maps are like most things if you try to rush it you end up with a lower quality
I seen one guy (quake maper) post that if you make a map in less than 7 days it aint worth nothing
well I'll go one father if you make a map full compile in less than 30 days
then it's aint worth much and probably small and of low quality
I have seem maps that were made in a week or 2 and they dont hold up to maps that the maper takes pride in making and pride in how it plays
and looks and took approx 30 days to make and compile
and that inclueds some of my first maps

[tltrude]

I made a slight error, it is vis that is on fast and not light. Anyway, it is nice to be able to complie fast to test updates. I turned off fast vis once and the compiler said it was going to take 14 hours to compile my 1Mb of vis data. Needless to say, I quickly turned it back on. I'll save that for the final compile.

Here is a horror story for you... The other day I put in a trigger to send a massage when tripped and added quotes around the message text. After I compiled it, I noticed that all the trees and patch work bowls were missing from my map (about 80 objects). So, I opened my map with the editor and found they were gone from there as well. A small, worldspawn, untextured box near the center of the map was all that was left of my trees and bowls.

Wait! wait! It's not over yet! I deleted the little box and added a few trees back in the map and compiled again. This time the compiler said there was an incomplete line at line 20700 something in the map file and refused to compile it at all. I don't have a word processor that numbers the lines, so it took hours of deleting and compiling to find the line. Have you guessed it? Yep, it was the trigger message!!!! I deleted the extra quotes that I had added and it compiled just fine.

If anyone wants me, I'll be be on the computer making fire bowls and trees for days!!! The moral of the story is of course, "Back up your map file before you start work each day and NEVER delete any little blue boxes near the center of your map"--it was just a line error, doh!

[McBa1n]

omfg dude
i had a similar problem with a trigger.. it seems thats always the damn case. Thankfully all the non-static items (doors/trigger items) were done first, making it less painfull to correct.

Also, doing a FULL compile is nice to do overnight while sleepin or while you are at work... But, balancing when you pick your spots to do this is tricky, because I've found that doing full compiles with max quality options on uncovers more bugs than anything else. Additionally, for some reason, radiant will create dupe brushes now and again or change geometry on you now and again... And it seems random as to when it will do these things - and beyond that, just because you get a bug with dupe brushes or multiple brushes on the same plane (it gives a weird look to things, you'll know when you see it) doesn't mean it will render it as an error on every compile. So, I guess what I'm saying is, full rendering after you create an area and polish it off is a good thing. The more full compiles, the better chance you have of saving time when you get down to the end on spending it on compiles..

I did 3 full renders in 2 days with my most recent map, and each time there was a BRAND NEW error brush. I went back and added some models to the map and compiled and MORE new error brushes occured. It drove me simply crazy.

I think the best rule of thumb is that your map doesn't hit 'final' til the 2nd or 3rd full compile, however, if you can do it in 1, you're one lucky SOB and I hate you=)

Sorry to hear about your troubles, details are so nice for adding map ambience - and having to redo them is a pain in the ass. Who knows, maybe that happening will help you better optimize how things look and give you a different take on placing things. (Sickly, sometimes there are positives in such tedious negatives).

I did quite a bit of design/architectural studying for a mod I was doing with the Quake 2 engine a long time ago, and your design has striking resemblence. I'm really looking forward to seeing your finished product, it's looking really cool so far man from what screens you've posted.