Unexplainably long map compile times..

[bpoag]

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Your map is leaking."

Nope. No leaks reported in the logs.

Here's the situation.. I've got a map that will render within about 10 minutes w/ the "Fast" settings turned on for vbsp/vvis/vrad. However, doing a full compile (again, just the normal full compile, nothing weird added or changed..) it takes upwards of a week!

I've checked my map top to bottom, and found nothing wrong with it structurally. I've even resorted to the "put a box around everything" noob trick, in the event that there WAS a leak that wasn't being detected! No such luck.

The map itself is fairly large, and contains about half a million square feet of lit surfaces. It's an indoor map, with 7 floors worth of platforms that overlook lower floors. Some parts of the map have large areas of empty space for dramatic effect -- Lighting wise, there are approximately 80-90 lights, all quadratic, and none of them dynamic. Lots of light_spotlights, all checked off to make sure they're not being rendered as dynamic lights.

My map uses alot of entities, but nothing anywhere near pushing the limit of the engine or compiler. Breakable objects, moving objects, physics objects, stuff like that.

I've walked the whole map with mat_wireframe turned on, and while showing leafs, and I've hinted off everything that should be hinted off.

I've tried converting lots of stuff over to func_detail, but it hasn't had any effect on compile times.

Here are some screenshots..

http://home.comcast.net/~bpoag

I can use some advice, if anyone has any.

Cheers,
Bowie




Cheers,
Bowie

 

[madking]

have u cut the brushes at the edges just after the point where each lighting effect hits.

ie... one long brush. first 20 meters has 4 lights hitting it. 4th light doesnt meet first 3. cut the brush so that where the 4th light hits the brush, its actually a separate brush.


P.S. that looks real nice.

 

[bpoag]

have u cut the brushes at the edges just after the point where each lighting effect hits.

ie... one long brush. first 20 meters has 4 lights hitting it. 4th light doesnt meet first 3. cut the brush so that where the 4th light hits the brush, its actually a separate brush.


P.S. that looks real nice.

1) Thanks.

2) The work required in subdividing brushes to fit lightsources would be too complex.. And there aren't that many in this map that could benefit from such a technique.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

DO A BARREL ROLL!!

kthxbai

 

[Skywarp]

Slow processor?

 

[Unarmed]

Hmmm...

You have a nice map there and it looks to me like there should be a LOT of things in that map that should be func_detailed anthough I don't know if you've done that or not.

What I would like to see is what I call a blank compile. Alter your visgroups so that all func_details, brush based entities and props and all other stuff like that will be hidden and thus ignored during compile.

Then show us some screens of that and tell us whatever happened to your compile times. Its a pain in the arse for you and I understand that you might not wnat to do it but I would like to see the results anyways.

Oh and IMO that horse statue should go. It doesn't look as though it belongs in there.

 

[ATIX]

As you know it the source engine isn't really built for big environment, though I'm sure valve is already working on that since they said in episode 2 they will support big environments. As a matter of fact they recently added gordons new ride if you haven't seen it, an old muscle car tweaked out so its going to need a big map to ride in that vehicle. I'm a mapper myself and currently working on www.hsrmod.com which is a GTA/NFSU style of gaming and it requires big maps I have a hard time compiling maps myself but our coder fixed the big map crashing problem, still compiling times wont go away, for now all we can do is wait till valve releases their new EP2 content.
here is my wip maps http://www.box.net/public/qqn7l2crqa

 

[Hiro_Protaganist]

having just got back into mapping after a long break(anyone remember Cold War: Melting point?) I'm not sure if there is a better method I used to have this problem with really long compile times on large outdoor maps. Make sure all brushes that can be made into func_detail are. This will cut your compile time in half if not more.