Best way to deal with portal flow

[MrAlBobo]

so...yeah, my portal flow refuses to run through all the way
thus far to fix it ive:
shrunk the skybox to fit as close to the map as im willing to have it
turned alot of things into func_details, and used nodraw to fix any visability issues
removed alot of things that used alot of brushes and used significantly less to build it again
i also tried out some area portals but that seemed to give me errors
overall, this changed my portal flow for freezing at 2 to freezing at 9...

so...at this point any input would be useful

right now i am contemplating removing the entire deck of my ship level and replacing it will about 15% the number of brushes that are there now, but that is a rather large project and id like to avoid doing that again...


edit: my map essentially requires at least 3 large open areas with minimal division between them

 

[shpladoink]

Do you get any leak errors when it compiles? Does it just take a really long time to compile, or does it completely freeze?

 

[MrAlBobo]

i fixed the only leak i had, so none of those
well...
from 1-5 it takes 3mins, from 5-7 it takes 20mins, from 7-9 it takes 50mins from 9 to 9... it takes 2 hours
im thinking thats a freeze <_<

 

[Earl]

Go to your visgroup panel on the right, and uncheck all entities, props, tool brushes, and detail brushes, leaving only world brushes and sky. Of what you can see, turn everything that is not orthogonal (not square) or does not effectively block the view of another area into a func_detail.



(Also, remember to re-enable everything in the visgroups before you compile. I once spent an hour on a full final compile of a map, only to realize i hadn't compiled the clip brushes with the map.)

 

[Scotland Tom]

The compile can look like it's frozen even though it's still working. At this point I always personally assume that the compile process is running unless it specifically stops and tells me its failed. I've heard stories of people (with highly UN-optimized maps) allowing days for their compile to finish. Nope, it doesn't look like it's doing anything, but it probably is.

Most likely your map needs some optimization. In my sig there's a link to another thread that can guide you to some great optimization tutorials. They're worth checking out, and may very likely help you with your problem.

 

[phatal]

Put all brushes that form cylinders or are not 45 degree angles in a visgroup of their own. Disable this group and compile, I'll bet you have no problems.

With this knowledge narrow down which of these angled brushes are more erratic and start including them with the compile until you find your culprit.

 

[Baysin]

Just to add my thoughts, it may very well be as everyone is suggesting.... 2 hours is entirely possible and doesn't mean it's locked up. Furthermore, it's not always clear, to me at least, exactly what causes the compile process to speed up or slow down. I mean, a lot of things are known, but the other day I was working on my map and noticed that the compile process actually sped up after I'd worked on it for a couple of hours... adding lights, brushes and props, mind you, not doing optimization.

On a side note, I would assume that your processor speed or maybe memory would also influence compile time? What about multi-core vs. single core? Anybody know for sure?

 

[MangyCarface]

All I know is I've got a quadcore processor and I still have massive slowdowns on vvis. I think your graphic card is involved somehow because I've had my video driver fail before on compile. However, I have noticed that my quadcore makes a full light build blazingly faster than my old single core computer. Just not as much for vvis.

 

[MrAlBobo]

if it matters ive got an intel quad core overclocked to 3.2Ghz, 2 gigs of ram at 800Mhz, and a Nvdia 8800 GTS
so...if anything slows down my computer to a point that i can't do anything at all, i assume something is wrong
and...2 hours is a far too long time for compiling, especially if it literally sucks up all the computers resources, and even so...it was 2 hours to go from 9 to 9... that is too much

my map is still in the fairly early stages and i do not have anything even remotely cylinder

and now...a new question based on what i have read...how do i set visgroups?

 

[Narkissus]

Im pretty sure its not built to make use of a quadcore.. Hell even a dualcore. But, yeah i have a map that is pretty darn big and it takes like 10 seconds to do VVIS, I just optimize as i go, it seems to be the easiest way to do it.

 

[MrAlBobo]

yeah...my 1st map...didn't find out about optimizing until later <_<

and that is exactly my point, there is no way hammer should be using all 4 of my cores to full extent, and that should still allow me to do other things on my computer

now i have got a new error message, as the portal flow runs it says that "areaportal is not connected on two sides, and i have checked the area portals up and down, they are all touching the wall around them with no space in between, and not overlapping into the walls, oh wait...a thought just occurred...a func detail can't seal that space can it?
ill throw around some no draws to test it out

 

[Koei]

Hammer gets both my cores to 100% when compiling (C2D@ 3.4 + 2gb +8800GTX). But even then I can still browse the internet without problems (opening new programs and screens takes a bit longer than normal, but browsing itself is fine)

 

[Earl]

All the compile tools are written to use multiple threads, and therefore multiple cores. They're even designed to be distributed over a network. So it will utilize all processing power, even on a 512938123 core system OC'ed to 8.1337 THz.

However, if you don't want it to lock up the rest of you computer, you can give vvis and vrad the "-low" parameter in advanced compile options, and it will give them low priority in the windows task scheduler.