Save my Map!

its_me

L1: Registered
Apr 19, 2009
7
0
This is the first map i've made for TF2, and things were going well. No lag, no glicth, no crashes, but now I would be likely to be able to run it! It all when down hill when i added water (water is not the problem but let to it)

At firsts the water was invislbal, and by asking on a thread, I was told it was because of a leak. This was true, but my problem that i have now maybe cause's by the way i fixs it. After trying to fixs my skybox over and over again, I'd thought it would be better to make a new, holes one. I did this by frist deleting the old one, makeing a brash around the area with 3D skybox texure, then makeing it hollow (32 units).

This Is when the shit hit the fan. When I try to "Run Map" it gets to "potralFlow0...1...2" and stops. I where back some Saves before the problem, but it soon gets into the same problem.

If the skyboxs is not the cause, then it mased be the shape of the map and that thing call "Visleaf" and what not. But frist I want to know if its the skybox.

I hope I can save my because even though it's not texured, it goes Good.;)
 

MadMax

L1: Registered
Mar 25, 2009
32
20
try and run the complile on fast vis , might chuck up some problems in the compile log, dunno if you have tried that yet
 

MungoKing

L3: Member
Jul 12, 2008
148
47
You should never use the "Big Skybox brush around my whole map" Method. It leads to a bunch of open space. This may not sound like a big deal, but when your map is being compiled the compiler is calculating vis leaves in things in these big open areas that players can't even get to, causing your compile time to increase drastically (and possibly crash), and decreases performance in your map. You want to seal the map as effectively as possible, aka put your skybox brushes right next to your "cliff" brushes, or walls .etc. Here is one thread on visibility control which is important in optimization. Here's another on more advanced optimization techniques (you should still know them at this level though) Unfortunately the large HL2 Optimization Guide site died recently, so I can't link you to that. Just take my word for it, DO NOT use the big skybox method. It is a bad way to map and creates many problems. Hopefully just that is your problem, good luck :)
 
Apr 19, 2009
4,460
1,722
Try doing this the next time you test your map:
trythis.png
 

its_me

L1: Registered
Apr 19, 2009
7
0
New thing. i'd tryed makeing the skybox small and only where needed(on walls etc) and it helped, but it stail takes to long or fail. When i tryed turn off BSP, VIS, RAD it came up with "Fail to load the launcher DLL: The specified module could not be found"
 

Vigilante212

L420: High Member
Dec 21, 2008
481
33
Check "Don't run the game after compiling" at the bottom of the compile options window, and then open the game manually after the compile is done. Also it wont run if the game files arent up to date..
 

Apom

L6: Sharp Member
Sep 14, 2008
366
65
You need to run VBSP on normal if you want a map! Only VVIS and VRAD can be left aside.
 

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
Yeah, just run bsp, don't go in game.

That should be fast, real fast. Like under a few minutes. If not something is wrong (the skybox issue would be a major thing too [in most cases])

If that goes fine then do it with vis. This'll take quite a bit longer, but probably only 10 min max. If not you may still need to enclose your skybox more. But if there are no leaks it should finish fine.

Then do those with vrad. If you have alot of lights and a large map this can take along time (shouldn't be over 1/2 hour). If you have alot of dynamic lights or run -final it will take longer.
If the message window seems to stall (not responding or vis 0...1...2...) don't worry, Hammer takes ALL the resources so your computer can't even refresh the compile window.
Just wait it out.

If you want to force it to stop ctrl-alt-del and look for vrad in task manager.