Vis Stuck? Created 17 years ago2007-11-20 15:00:01 UTC by Kill_the_Bug

Hi,

This may have something to do with my texture problem but not sure.

1. Using Valve Textures - the water looks great but walls, floors look crap for some reason. Don't know if it's just my graphics card - it might be.

2. Ok compile time vis goes to 4... and then sits there - just sits there for 8 hours - I terminate it(via task manager) and rad runs super quick and I get the map look I want.

Any idea what's going on - vis does my other maps just fine but sticks on my canyon map.

Its most likely the opposite. The walls and stuff probably look crap because VIS isn't running properly.

The way I understand it is that VIS compile times can vary according to detail, map size and other such things. If this is the same with Source as it is with GoldSource then VIS is the longest part of the compile progress. The only suggestion I have is try to find a way to break it down. Use 3d skyboxes to render the out of reach spaces. Also (if this is for singleplayer) try breaking the canyon up into 2 or more levels.

I don't have much experience with Source however so I could be wrong.

I've never seen vis crash totally (I'm not saying it can't possibly, just that I've never actually seen it happen) but I have seen it take ridiculous amounts of time on maps which have many small visleafs. This is even more true if you're building a large outdoor map.

Recently I had a map which got to 8...9... on VIS pretty quick, but then sat at that point for almost 3 hours before finishing. I got pretty worried around the 2 hour mark, but I left it alone and eventually it finished.

I'd say that it's probable that eventually the VIS pass would finish -- but I realise you're not going to sit and wait for 10,20,30 hours for it to do so.

Vis pays no attention to textures as such, and so I doubt it's a texture problem.

How much have you optimized the map for VIS? Is it a large map? What are your 'canyons' made out of exactly, and how complex are they?

Here's the link to the "finished" map

http://jecphotography.com/gamestuff/Frenchy-DL.htm

You can upload and give it a spin - and give me suggestions.

Currently it has no Vis but looks good in terms of lighting - it's what I want. So Basically I should do my vis and come back next week?

What if vis actually doing? I cancelled vis - rad worked fine - got the result I was looking for - map seems to run fine - why do I need it?

Tks

In basic terms, VIS calculates which areas of the map can be seen from which other areas. VISibility

If you don't run VIS, then every single part of your map will be rendered by the engine at all times.

Obviously, this is very bad for large maps.

I'll have a look at the map shortly.

I had a look.

It's impossible to be sure without seeing the VMF, however it seems to me that you have made pretty much everything out of world brushes.

This map performs worse for me than all of the official maps, but looks no better than an original TFC map. I was in the red on the FPS counter much of the time. And that was when I was the only player. This is not good performance at all.

I'd say your long VIS time is simply caused by this being a poorly made map.

Sorry.

I suggest you load your map in Hammer, and then use the auto visgroups to turn off props, func_details, and all other entities. Then look around your map. This is how VIS sees your map (more or less). Remember - slopes are bad. Ideally, you want VIS to only see 90 degree angles.

Hey thanks Playbus would it make a difference if I made them displacenets for the slopped sections?

How do you get the fps counter working?

We played it at 24 players and no one mentioned any performance issues.

Yes, displacements are not seen by VIS and so using them to make the sloping bits is a good idea. But they can't seal your map so you must have solid walls behind them.

You can get the fps counter working by typing

cl_showfps 1

in the console.