VVIS, and why i hate it.

Garry's Mod mapping
#1

I just recently finished my first big map, it’s a fair size and all, and it’s heavy in the buildings.

so 3 days ago i was about to leave for a camp, and set it to compile, knowing how long it takes.

i come back and portalflow is only at 4…

it’s a Gmod map, so it has a big skybox for aerial vehicles, apart from that i Func_detaile’d many things, all the nodraw and hints ect. but no areaportals (can’t get the bastards to work)

as far as im concerned, it can’t take that long! my map isn’t that detailed. and my only worry that something ive done makes it screw up like that, big i’m 100% certain it’s leak free to an extent because the under-side of the big skybox box is all nodraw, and on the surface it’s relatively sealed.

and if i’m doing things right, isn’t there some server i could send it off to be compiled? because on a 3.8 Ghz, pentium 4 and 1gb RAM, it’ll take years anyway.

and if i do not compile it with VVIS, it runs a bit laggy with Cclient renedebles list group 7 error, i don’t like that.

#2

What VVIS Does if I am correct. Is it optimizes your map for you.

#3

thats correct, thats why its good to do it your-self.

#4

use lots of hint brushes and func_details.

even the simplest map can turn into a nightmare to compile if you don’t properly set it up for vvis. it all comes down to optimization.

#5

you still want compile your map?

i can use my servers to compile vvis under VMPI,
VMPI + vvis work on OB, but VMPI + vrad doesn’t

#6

Wrong. VVIS determines visibility based on portals that VBSP creates. If you skip VVIS, or your map is terribly built, it will force the client to render huge portions or all of the map, even if the player can’t “see” the areas in question.

VMPI isn’t a crutch for bad mapping techniques. Also, VRAD does work on OB with VMPI, you just have to use a specially modified vrad.exe for it to work.

#7

is it huge? get the hacked bsp compiler which makes the standard portal size larger. Alternatively, use a func_viscluster to group together portals you know are going to always see eachother (like large open areas.)

#8

http://rvanhoorn.ruhosting.nl/optimization.php

#9

Any empty space also takes time to compile, seal off any space that you won’t visit as a player (like behind and under displacements for example).

And visleaf boundries are automatically rendered on the brown lines of the grid in Hammer, build your map so walls are on the brown lines as much as possible.

#10

a bit late for that

#11

You could perhaps take the boundaries of your map and move them along a brown line. This would fuck up your skybox, but oh well.

#12

Vvis, and why i love it


Without it, it would take hours to render each frame, okay maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but still

Just optimise your map.
I would advise remaking it, with good optimization
Usually attempting to optimize something that isn’t doesn’t end up with great optimization.

#13

You could play most maps for gmod at about 30 fps rendering everything, much higher when vis is compiled. It’s really bad how source handles visibility. They should just do it based on screenspace instead.