Optimization Created 17 years ago2006-09-05 15:04:56 UTC by Exos

I just finished my Half-Life 2 DeathMatch map and it kinda has low FPS. I usually am pretty good with optimizing but nothing I try works. Here is a picture of my HL2DM map from an overview.I have made just about EVERYTHING that is worth being a func_detail a func_detail and no I didn't do overboard. I even tried areaportals, but they arent working! Here is what I tried. The redish line represents a big areaportal.For some reason they didn't work. I check in "mat_wireframe 1". I want it so when you are at the one end of the map (Bottom in the picture) the other end of the map (top in the picture) isnt rendered. The areaportal I used was "always open". I put HINT brushes but I am still a little sketchy on when and where to place them. Can anyone give me some tips on a better way of optimizing. I even turned the lightmap scales down on the textures! (By down I mean made the number go up )

I thought your not supposed to use areaportals because when you can see into the portal, it renders the area for every other player aswell.

I didn't think "always open" areaportals did that, but Okay. I need some ideas on how to make the FPS better.

Why don't you try diagonal hint brushes?

Actually kasperg I did that EXACT thing. Although I didn't think to mention it. It still renders the whole thing.

ALTHOUGH! I didn't texture the entire brush with the HINT texture. I am a little confused on which sides to texture HINT. Right now only the sides are textured with HINT and the top and bottom ones are skip. Is this right?

I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to make the FPS any better. Because of the reason that it is Donut shaped. If it was single player then I could use areaportals, but it is HL2DM. The worst it gets is 30 fps :(. Thanks anyway you guys.

Hint brushes should only have the hint texture on ONE side. The rest should be textured skip.

I am a bit curious though... is the map bigger than what the layout suggests? I'm working on a remake of suspended which consists of a big main area and some side rooms, and the Source engine seems to have no problems rendering it.
If you have a lot of models, I would suggest using occluders. Even though people say models are cheaper to render, that's not entirely true. In my PC, they always have the biggest hit in performance (+showbudget command)

Hmm, I'll check it out, if I remember correctly when the FPS first started to get low, I had just added this destroyed building. It has a lot of vertex manipulated brushes. They are all snapped to the grid, I made sure of that; but It is still alot of brushes. Maybe that is the problem? But I don't want to get rid of it.

ALSO, Which sides whould I texture with HINT?

One of the 2 largest faces. Doesn't matter which

Wait, can I put occluders in A multiplayer map? Because in my budgets highest bar is "Model Textures"

lol, you made this error too.

+showbudget is the correct command for performance.

Show_budget_textures only shows how much memory your textures are taking up.

Ohh yeah!! Thanks man! I'll check it out now.

EDIT: THe highest is world rendering, the second highest is Static prop rendering and world prop rendering. So maybe an occluder will still help. But I don't know if you can use them in multiplayer.

why would they work differently in multiplayer?
Occluders just tell your CPU and GFX card what the engine can see or not. It has nothing to do with the rest of the players as far as I know...

Okay I'll test it out. Thanks.

It definitely incressed my fps. But it increesed it by like 10, but I am happy with that. All I need to do is regular compile, i'll do that tommarow.