Speed up rebuilding

[Murphy]

Hi,
I'm in the middle of replacing my two elevators with stairs, atm, and the time it takes for the "illumination occluding" phase during rebuilding has gone through the roof. This is either due to the newly added BSP for the stairways or because of the coronas I added (thanks Dest). The coronas have a relatively high radius so they can be seen from farther away but their brightness is set to 0 so they don't light up the environment. I have the suspicion that they are still treated as if they would light things up, only by the amount of 0, so they still have to be calculated as if they were giant lights.
I set them to SpecialLit already so this does not affect ingame actors like players or specimens, but does this affect my surfaces and is this what is taking so long?

It would be great if someone could shed some light onto this.

 

[JustFilth]

could you create a simple map 1024x1024 subtraction brush and just place one of the lights in there, first set it with a brightness lvl then without and see if the take the same time to build murphy? Might help to see whether the time is effected.

Cheers filthy.

 

[etikilam]

I suggest complicated or detail intensive areas should be built as independent maps and then put together at the end to minimize total rebuild time. I doubt there is any way to ultimately shorten rebuild time for a complete map. Just look at the twi maps like farm. They take forever to rebuild and if there was a way to drastically shorten this I'd think they would of done it ;p

 

[Dragonfel666]

I have the samne problem, about 10 mins a full compile. So all do is build the brushes and do a good part of the lvl b4 i add lights.
When Im testing the map, all I do is build brushes and paths.
Dunno it seems to work for me, so i dont have to build all on every test.

When i finally do do a full compile, I step away from my comp and play guitar.

I suggest complicated or detail intensive areas should be built as independent maps and then put together at the end to minimize total rebuild time...

These brushes have to be turned into objects (static mesh) in the lvl so they dont take as long. I think if you build stuff outside the lvl, you wont get the deminsions exctally to what you perferr.

we all know that we should use as few brushes as possible, so all your complicated brushes need to be objects. Aquastudy takes about 5 min for a full compile and it has 600 brushes. My new map has 2000 brushes and they are all necessary. So i feel your pain

 

[Murphy]

5 to 10 minutes is normal for a map of that size and that's what it took to rebuild mine, but since I added the coronas it takes almost an hour!

 

[Nenjin]

An hour?!?!

I thought rebuilds on Monastery were getting atrocious....but that's just insane! It's not just coronas. I've got probably at least 30 coronas in my level and occluding doesn't take that long. Then again, the radius of any one corona probably isn't higher than 200. I suspect there's something else going on.

 

[Locutus]

I have the samne problem, about 10 mins a full compile. So all do is build the brushes and do a good part of the lvl b4 i add lights.
When Im testing the map, all I do is build brushes and paths.
Dunno it seems to work for me, so i dont have to build all on every test.

When i finally do do a full compile, I step away from my comp and play guitar.

I use this same method when compiling maps for the Source engine. Always do lighting last, since things can sit around in fullbright without changing gameplay.

 

[Murphy]

I have them at 1000 and I think they are responsible. Nothing else was added that would have such a huge impact. I don't remember something similar from mapping for UT2004 though.

 

[Soduka]

What are all your computer specs? I consider my map fairly well detailed in its stages now, Lightmaps set to 4, and it only takes my about 2 and a half minutes to do full compiles.


Windows XP 32 bit

4 Gigs RAM

4850 ATI Radeon

E8400 Dual Core Intel

 

[Ricky(SCO)]

Any time I get really bad compile times I usually look for a bsp problem first. (I seem to make the BSP holes continuously)

For your own map, you could try saving your map as a different name, so that you can play with a test version of it... then select all the coronas and delete them. Then try a rebuild... See what your compile time is then like... If you have knocked a fair amount of time off of the compile time then you will know there is trouble with at least one of your coronas. (Dont save the map yet)

Open up the new version of your map again, delete maybe half of the coronas on one side of your map, and see if you can gain any improvements somewhere. You may be able to knock it down to one particular corona that is giving you grief.

Good luck.

(PS, I had a look at some of your tutorials on your site. You have some great content in there. A worthwhile visit for any mapper.)

 

[arramus]

5 to 10 minutes is normal for a map of that size and that's what it took to rebuild mine, but since I added the coronas it takes almost an hour!

OoooO

Now that is symptomatic of another issue. With spots and coronas I've certainly noticed longer build times but more like 5 minutes.

If you want me to try a compile from my rig to see if I duplicate the issue then let me know.

 

[zYnthetic]

You could hide sections of the map you're not currently working on. This will speed up rebuild and performance in KFEd because only things that are not hidden will be built/rendered (everything else will be a void). You'll want to unhide everything, do a full rebuild and check for errors before playtests.

 

[rallfo]

Does it happen with just Coronas? What about a ScaledSprite with a translucent blending mode?

 

[Nenjin]

Man, thanks for the tip about hiding actors/brushes reducing build time. This has really cut back on the amount of time I stare at the screen doing nothing.

 

[DeeZNutZ]

I've seen this 1 hour build time on a couple of occasions in UT2K4 maps.
Did you check your pathing and run the "Check Map for Errors" tool?
Both have come up in past creations of mine.
All the pathnodes in the map seemed to link back to a single pathnode on one of my maps. Some weird UED fixation on that pathnode caused me serious heartache until I found that problem.
(In the textured viewport, right click on the grey bar and click on "show paths")

The "Check map for errors" tool is one that is overlooked by many mappers, and could save the server admins lots of disk space and decrease server crashes.
(Under "Tools" at the top of the editor you'll find "Check Map for Errors")
Floating and imbedded pickups cause the MOST errors on any server - right above "accessed array out of bounds".
Those are the ones that spew out thousands of these messages:
(Function KFMod.KFGameType.MatchInProgress.SetupPickups:023F) Accessed None 'AmmoPickups'
I've removed more maps from my server rotations because of this than I care to think about.

Just a couple of things to check, and my 2 cents worth.

DeeZNutZ