Detail brushes

[lukeskywalker1]

k, i know they make your map compile faster, but do they slow your frame rate down. You see, i have like a building structure in my map, and be4 it didnt affect the frame rate at all, then i made them detail, now when i look at it (in game), it slows down, and the music starts jumping... or whatever. If i make them structural will it fix the framerate, a fast compile isnt worth a bad framerate.

 

Any other ideas are welcome

 

thanks a lot.

 

-lukeskywalker1

[rgoer]

Your intuition is correct: make that building back into structural brushes. Structural brushes create portals in the VIS process; portals decide which triangles to draw, and which triangles to ignore. Detail brushes get ignored by the VIS process, so no detail brush will ever create a portal. That is, if you build a building with complete interior, but make the exterior walls of that building into detail brushes, everything gets drawn all the time: stuff outside gets drawn when you are inside, and stuff inside gets drawn when you are outside. Make those walls structural, and (assuming there aren't any holes in your structural shell) your framerate will definitely improve. You're right: fast compile time isn't worth crap fps.

[lukeskywalker1]

Thanks

 

heres a screenshot of my building

 

 

I made the inside and outside detail. it has about 5-6 rooms. Ill do what you said, thanks again.

[wedge2211]

Here's a good rule of thumb...

 

Make "major" walls, floors, and ceilings structural. The purpose of struct brushes is, as rgoer said, to block visibility in-game. So any large brushes or groups of brushes should be structural, so you won't be able to see what's behind it. If the brush is small, or if it alters the basic shape of a room, it should be detail. Tables, consoles, windowsills, doorframes, and support beams should be detail. If you hit Ctrl+D, then all you should see are the bare walls of the rooms.

 

So, you don't want that building to be all detail or all structural. You want the outside walls, and any major inside walls, to be structural, and all the "details" to be detail brushes.

[lukeskywalker1]

hmmm, ok, ill do that, cause i have a lot of stuff in those rooms, thanks wedge.

[EK-sama]

what happens when you make detail brushes (that aren't touching the void) and the map becomes uncompilable? I've tried following these ideas but changing my brushes screws with my maps in horrible ways >_<.

thx!

~EKsama

[Eldritch]

If your map becomes uncompilable, you need to give a specific error, otherwise we can't really help that much.

 

It could be that you do have a detail brush touching the void (which would cause a leak, and stop a compile). Like Wedge said, if you hit CTRL+D, it will remove all detail brushes from view, and you'll see only the structural brushes. If you spot a leak, fix it and you've solved your problem.

[lauser]

In my case with the if_bespin map I had to make 75% of the brushes detail just so I could have a somwhat playable map. I still get 30+ FPS looking towards the centre of my map. But because it's such a large area with a skybox surrounding it.....there isn't really much I can do. I have improved the framerate....But not to my liking..LOL

[lauser]

If I can get my .prt file to match my .srf file in file size or get it at least close

example: prt = 580Kb

srf = 671kb....

Which I notice in the DEFAULT maps is pretty close together...then I think the FPS will go up. But I can't seem to get the darn srf file to go down..LOL

[lukeskywalker1]

yeah, my maps got a huge outside area too. i guess the skybox takes up fps huh? well.... i made them structural but the FPS is still low.... :(

[lauser]

My suggestion would be to use NO CLIP brushes on top of all your buildings that touch the sky. So if your building is 24 units from the top of the skybox...throw a NO CLIP brush in there and make it structural. And if your skybox is too BIG cut it down in some places that players won't notice the difference. Trust me..you don't want a huge skybox!!