What *ACTUALLY* slows down maps?

[Hellafax]

Hey Hey,
I'm very keen on starting to map. My plan is a building, approximately one city block in size, and about 4 stories high. Is this feasable for a playable map, or will it end up too large/slow to play?

I know I'm being vague on details here, just don't want to start, and then end up creating a monster...

 

[Wraith]

you need to have it where there arent too many polygons on the screen at one time, so you need to have buildings and stuff in the way of their view, this way their computer doesnt have to render the other side of the map, because they cant see it

 

[alehm]

There are several factors that will affect the performance in your map. Here is a tidbit from Waldo (Steam Forums) that should be helpful to keep performance under control.

+showbudget
Bind some key to this. This is your new "r_speeds" display. I have it bound to "mouse4" (side button) on my mouse. This shows you a bar chart breakdown of exactly where the engine is spending it's time drawing each frame. Use it to decide how efficient your map is, and also to decide where to spend time trying to improve it's performance. If you see "world brush" as taking up too much time, you know you need to simplify or modify your brushwork. If it's prop models, you know you need to remove or simplify your prop models, etc.

mat_leafvis 1
Draws a box around the vis leaf you are currently in. Useful for hard core vis reduction work.

mat_wireframe 1
Draws wireframe lines on everything - great to show you just what is being drawn at times.

mat_specular 0
Turns off specular reflection stuff. Great to see if that is what is killing your performance. If you turn it off and your map runs smooth, maybe you've got too much specular stuff in the map?

 

[O'Neill]

And lot's of physics stuff ain't good to, i tryed to make a domino map but it slow down on my PC (heheh a 866mhz)

 

[tank]

you need to have it where there arent too many polygons on the screen at one time, so you need to have buildings and stuff in the way of their view, this way their computer doesnt have to render the other side of the map, because they cant see it

use 'no_draw texture' for the side that the player will not see...this will help greatly with the performance.

Tank

 

[poseyjmac]

a good practice is to always have no_draw texture selected, then when you make a brush, you texture only the sides the player will see, its a lot easier than doing it the other way around.

 

[socK]

Just remember any faces that are entirely in the void, are not drawn.

 

[Lobster]

When your doing complex brush work, try and keep all the points snapped to the grid, even with circular objects, and try not to carve with complex shapes to much, it creates splits all over the place in the compiled map which means u get multiple polygons and faces for no reason, its a real bitch.