hlvis / rad lockups Created 17 years ago2007-09-18 17:30:08 UTC by nakarah

hmm.. well i recently found some of my old unfisnished maps, and i coudlnt recall why i didnot finish them. well i took one of my small ones (crowbar only) and realized why i never finished them... HLVIS comes up to leafthread... stops.. nothing appears after that... i click to move the screen then it says (not responding). i wait a while.. still shows it... so i ahve to goto task manager and processes .. its taking up 99%-100% cpu usage... so i end it.... not tomention it goes from 6k memory to about 500k and keeps increasing. then hlrad starts doing the same thing. exactly!. so i end it... then the compilation claims to finish.. even with lights in the map, it tells me theres no lights, so direct light is used., doesnt say anything else. ><. how to fix this?

How long do you wait? Because some complex maps take a while for vis and rad to run. Compiling maps is quite a burden to put onto a computer.

Often Hammer will stop 'updating' the GUI to save processing time, and instead devote that time to vis and the other compile programs.
I have, however, noticed that if windows goes into screensaver mode, that can screw with whatever compile tool is running at the time.
If you are having problems, leave it compiling overnight, with screensaver turned off. If the app still wont respond in the morning, THEN we will cross that bridge.

It hasn't locked up it just takes a while to compile it. Make sure you don't run any programs in the background since the compile tools needs all of the RAM available to compile the map. You can also speed up the compile(as long as it is not a final compile) by setting VIS to "Fast".

Long compile times are often the result of a poorly built map. Make sure no brushes are overlapping, tie complex shapes (like cylinders) to func_wall, never use the carve-tool and don't create a giant skybox around your map.

Also, use Nem's Batch Compiler instead of Hammer.

I use Zoner's HLvis, HLrad... and his other tools because of the speed and NULL textures.

Yeah... the VIS and RAD take long... but the VIS in particular.

If you have a lot of small objects, angles, or other complex non-box objects all over your map, your VIS compile time can take a very long time.
Also, screen-saver will screw things up. I always set mine to "turn-off-monitor" instead.

Anyways, I did such a modification to my map, and my compile time went from 1:45 to almost 6:00 because I added one small Kawasaki ATV to the map.
I use an AMD-64 3200+ over-clocked with 1.5GB of RAM.

The final BSP file was about 2.6MB in size.

So yeah... if you have a farily slow computer, this might take even up to 30 minutes or an hour, depending on how big and complex the map is.
My RAD usually finishes with 1:30 total.

Oh... if you do "End Task", make sure you end not only VIS and HAMMER, but also RAD as well, because those are all separate programs.

Hope that helps a little to see how long it will take to compile.

well i let it run over night. was hung up at the same spot (note it did NOT goto screensaver. or hybernate), so obviously its locking up. i use a laptop though. 2gb ram, nvidia 6800 geforce ultra. so :/.

If you really wanna get it to run as fast as possible you could generate a batch file to compile with and run it after rebooting in safe mode, although you should probably just try optimizing your map. Also, I'm pretty sure your graphics card has nothing to do with compile times.