Do I NEED to use caulk?

[007craft]

ok my level is just about done and it says i have around 2000 bruses and not once have i used the texture caulk. when i complie my level it only takes 15 seconds each time and I was wondering if i could just leave my level how it is now instead of changing all the unseen textures to caulk cause that could take forever.

Another question... how can caulk increase FPS because it has to render less? when u load a level doesent it render in the whole level on the loading screen thus caulk would only be making the level LOAD faster and not actually run faster with FPS in game?

plz enlighten me

[Ace of Spades]

Bottom line: Using caulk on everything before you texture is a good thingl. The faces of your brushes should be textured with "caulk" before adding the texture to it becuase the face is not drawn that is textured with "caulk". Which in turn will lower the amount of total faces drawn and boost your FPS. Always make sure you are using the right "caulk" texture. Using the wrong one will cause problems. Do a search on texturing with caulk and you will find some more reasons for using the right "caulk" texture. The right one is just labled 'CAULK' over the texture you see.

Ace

[tltrude]

The game runs kind of like a movie. Every frame the game has to draw texture on every brush face a player can see in his view. If there are a lot of "faces" to draw, the game will wait untill all of them are done before going to the next frame. And, that will make the frames per second (FPS) drop. Low fps will make the player's view slow down and cause lag for all the players. So the less faces that have to be drawn, the better it is for game preformance.

[Alcoholic]

Yeah it renders the level brush by brush. If you put caulk on the unseen faces of the brush, it doesnt have to render all sides of the brush, so more fps.

[crunch]

Another reason to use caulk on all unseen faces, is that your full-vis compile will not take as long.
If you have already textured unseen faces with caulk, then there are no faces to merge, and the compiler doesn't have to calculate them.

Kill Ya Later!

[Ace of Spades]

Another reason to use caulk on all unseen faces, is that your full-vis compile will not take as long.
If you have already textured unseen faces with caulk, then there are no faces to merge, and the compiler doesn't have to calculate them.

Kill Ya Later!

What he said! I don't know much about the compiling process but have heard this is true. Crunch, you the man!

Ace

[smartaiguy]

when I use caulk it is usually afterwards or after I get some done, (I know its a very bad habit, so don't do it; always texture with caulk then texture only the faces you need, it's a lot easier). I would suggest just doing the big faces that you can't see, that makes a big difference. I wouldn't worry about the ends of walls and the other super small sides, but if you caulk from the beggining and just apply textures where you need it, and it's already done!