Post your compile log, run it through
here as well.
what stage is taking ages? VVIS? VRAD? God help you if its VBSP....
If its VVIS you probably need to use lots and lots of func_detail because every brush you put in will make VVIS take longer. so for little things like a doorframe or a railing if you have made out of brushes, things that don't block line of sight or are horribly curved, should be made into func_details.
Basically what VVIS does is it cuts the non-brush areas of the map up into leaves and each leave has to be convex, like a brush. If you have fiddly little brushes it makes more leaves. If you have more leaves VVIS takes longer because it has to line up every corner of each leaf to every corner of
EVERY other leaf to see if it can 'see' it or not.
If it's VRAD It could be made much worse by a long VVIS time, not too sure really, if you have multiple light entities lighting one area try to make each room lit as effectively as you can with as few lights as posible, but dont compromise on how it looks, VVIS is more important.
You should use the compile options wisely, for example VVIS I generally have turned off untill I want to make a release or I am testing optimisations. If I haven't changed lighting recently and am more interested in the world geometry stuff I leave VRAD turned off, If you want to have a look at how new lights work use the cordon tool to make a box around the area of the map you want to compile and then put VVIS and VRAD on to fast.
I just mentioned the cordon tool (the yellow and black stripe box button) drag the cordon area around a section of the map you ar einterested in to compile
just that section, its REALLY handy.
hope you can find this helpful
