I’m working on a detailed map here and I have finished about 1/4 of the map.
I currently have 3 rooms, each with about 10k PortalPassageFlow thingies. 30k in total. It takes hours for this thing to build in ‘Q3Map2: (final) BSP -meta, -vis, -light -fast -filter -samples 2 -bounce 8’. While ‘Q3map2: (single) BSP -meta’ does it in 5-10 seconds.
I have a few questions:
Is this normal?
What is PortalPassageFlow?
How do I reduce this amount?
Thanks in advance 
Are all the brushes in your rooms ‘structural’? You can check this by pressing ctrl + d (filter detail brushes) - if no brushes disappear, it means that all of the brushes are structural. Structural brushes create portals.
Make sure that all ‘details’ inside a room (chairs, wires, tables, boxes etc.) are set to ‘detail’ - you do this by selecting the brush, right-clicking on the overview window, and selecting ‘detail’.
You can search the forum for more in-depth detail/structural brush tutorials.
Well what is detail? I barely have any of the brushes you enumerated. This room is like wall only, except for two models.
I will post tomorrow. I’m making this map in separate files, because the converting was really getting ****ed up.
I took the last file I was working on as example, which had 10k PassagePortalFlows, about 650 brushes and 2 models.
this forum is completely incompetent. please help this guy faster next time instead of trying to fake-promote your own persons with your noob stolen mods or anything else…
@justice: portal passage flow is where it stucks ? well. to explain this shortly: q3map2 is your compiler. q3map2 converts your map into bsp format. q3map2 does this in 3 separate phases: -meta, -vis, -light. All the other options are only the salt, but these three are the core units.
now when you compile your map and you get stuck somewhere at “portal passage flow”, you are stuck inside the -vis calculation phase. what is -vis responsible for ? well easy: it takes all the information beeing calculated by the -meta process and calculates the “visibility” of the map. that specifically means that it calculates which spot of the map is visible from where in the map. to calculate all this it uses portals. portals are created by structural brushes and a special kind of brush with a special shader.
your task now is to research this topic. but be warned. its bad ass, especially for beginners.
an immedieate solution is the following:
good luck
this forum is completely incompetent. please help this guy faster next time instead of trying to fake-promote your own persons with your noob stolen mods or anything else…
@justice: portal passage flow is where it stucks ? well. to explain this shortly: q3map2 is your compiler. q3map2 converts your map into bsp format. q3map2 does this in 3 separate phases: -meta, -vis, -light. all the other options are only the salt, but these three are the core units.
now when you compile your map and you get stuck somewhere at “portal passage flow”, you are stuck inside the -vis calculation phase. what is -vis responsible for ? well easy: it takes all the information beeing calculated by the -meta process and calculates the “visibility” of the map. that specifically means that it calculates which spot of the map is visible from where in the map. to calculate all this it uses portals. portals are created by structural brushes and a special kind of brush with a special shader.
your task now is to research this topic. but be warned. its bad ass, especially for beginners.
an immediate solution is the following:
good luck
[QUOTE=aaa4;248083]
an immediate solution is the following:
good luck[/QUOTE]
LOL 
:stroggtapir:
So the PortalPassageFlow calculates and removes all the textures which are outside of the map or in another brush?
That kinda makes sense.
I am so sorry for all these questions, I thought this map was way to hard for me in the beginning anyways. But now I’m this far, I’m not going to give up, as in my opinion I did a great job this far structuring the map.
But what do you mean with brushes limiting my map? Those which show up outside the map?
Also, I’ve noticed ET mapmakers are strict in respecting other player’s creations, which do not allow ripping without permission. I admit I am recreating the Heroes Guild from Fable: The Lost Chapters for this map, should that be a problem? What I am most doubtful about is that I’ve ripped 2 models from this game, as it was impossible for me to recreate those. Should that be a problem?
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16432&highlight=portals
There’s a kind of relevant topic.
Let me try to explain the -vis process again 
it tries to calculate what is visible to players in a certain area.
So if you’re standing in the allied spawn on oasis, then your computer isn’t rendering what’s going on at the guns (to make an extreme example).
When you’re at the forward flag then your pc is only rendering what’s happening in the area around the forward spawn.
These areas (or portals) are calculated in the -vis stage.
Best way to see this effect is to run around in a map with r_showtris 2 then you see everything your pc is rendering at that moment. As you move around you’ll notice things disappearing and appearing, this is based on how the portals are setup.
Now you’re problem is the creation of the portals. portals are created on the edges of every structural brush and by default every brush is structural. So let’s say that you have a table in the middle of a room, by default it’s structural and will split the room into tens of unneeded portals. This only decreases your FPS and increases the -vis compile time.
So the solution is to make things like this detail.
For another example if you made a house then everything inside the walls would be detail (beds, plants, chairs, tables,…) and you can even make some walls detail, for instance it’s not much use giving 2 adjacent rooms 2 portals, but if they are separated by a hall then it would be appropriate. (simplified example)
Aaa4 was giving a very simple solution, but a very impractical one. He basically said turn everything into detail except the outer walls, the outerwalls are what separates the inside of your map with ‘the void’. In radiant the void is the grey stuff outside of your map.
If you make the outerwalls detail then the map won’t compile.
The problem with this is that then you pc has to render the full map at all times = crappy FPS.
Don’t mind aaa4 though he’s a bit of a ‘funny’ guy.
Aah, now I get it. That’s why all those good maps have invisible brushes all over the map.
Now you see, the problem is my map is way to detailed. Here’s an example:
This is one of my three rooms and it’s pretty open. I can’t just make stuff detailed as everything is somewhat visible from every spot. I bet the only things worth to be detailed are the models and the wooden bars.
Like I said before, this room has 650 brushes and 10k PortalPassageFlows.
well I’m not sure how you built it in radiant, but I’d enclose each room with caulk walls (just make them squarish) and join them together with square doorways out of caulk. (so a very simplified version surrounding what you have now.
Then make everything inside them detail and make the caulk walls structural.
That would leave you with 3 rooms atm and cut the portals down by a lot.
The crazy amount of portals is probably caused by the arched doorways you made out of brushes.
EDIT: Just to clarify caulk also creates portals, even though it’s ‘invisible’ to players ingame it’ll work.
Ok, I will. But didn’t you just clarify that Aaa3 did the same and caused lag to players in-game?
Anyways, thanks a lot everyone of you. This topic has taught me a lot and showed me there’s a lot more to maps then just a few shapes.
that part of the map is not too detailed (if u re talking about structural/detail system). i could say it’s pretty much basic. for sure engine can handle it.
Yeah, there maybe some tiny brush or so lurking around with many sides to it, the area itself doesn’t look to be overly complicated.
Shots of the grid view on all 3 axis maybe of interest so we can help you.
Cool room by the way.
[QUOTE='Just!ce.;248131]Ok, I will. But didn’t you just clarify that Aaa3 did the same and caused lag to players in-game?
Anyways, thanks a lot everyone of you. This topic has taught me a lot and showed me there’s a lot more to maps then just a few shapes.[/QUOTE]
I suggested to spit this particular case into 3 rooms, if you expand the map, then you create more rooms etc…
aaa4 suggested to make 1 big box around the whole thing. Bigger map - bigger box.
http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3620
detailed info about vis and related things… an in depth read if you like so
edit’ d’oh seems all links inside that post are broken in the meantime 
These areas (or portals) are calculated in the -vis stage.
portals are no areas and portals are not calculated in the vis phase. doesnt really seem to me like you know what you are talking about…
The problem with this is that then you pc has to render the full map at all times = crappy FPS
he spoke about this here:
- open your map
- deselect all
- press I
- hit the drop down menu under ‘select’ and there ‘Make detail’
- deselect all
- select all the brushes which are limiting your map
- hit the drop down menu under ‘select’ and there ‘Make structural’
the benefit from this is that you have a very clean map related to vis, since everything is detail except the skybox. in addition it will spare you some work, since you have to convert a less amount of brushes from detail to structural then having to convert from structural to detail. understand this: a map in general consists of less amount of brushes beeing structural.
in addition, when you take your actual map right now and try to make it ready for a good vis calculation, means going through your map and try to make everything detail which needs to be done in your eyes, you will most likely simply forget a brush, and that one will in the result cause additional, unneccessary portals, messing the fps of your map in general when you compile it this way.
therefore again, my advice actually had very good reason and if stealth is not able to see the benefits, then its his problem. he probably didnt understand that it wasnt meant to be a final solution, hence the word “immediate solution”. some people just think what i write is trash…
here another link: http://www.nibsworld.com/rtcw/tutorial_detail_and_hint_brushes_part1.shtml
These areas (or portals) are calculated in the -vis stage.
portals are no areas and portals are not calculated in the vis phase. doesnt really seem to me like you know what you are talking about…
The problem with this is that then you pc has to render the full map at all times = crappy FPS
he spoke about this here:
- open your map
- deselect all
- press I
- hit the drop down menu under ‘select’ and there ‘Make detail’
- deselect all
- select all the brushes which are limiting your map
- hit the drop down menu under ‘select’ and there ‘Make structural’
the benefit from this is that you have a very clean map related to vis, since everything is detail except the skybox. in addition it will spare you some work, since you have to convert a less amount of brushes from detail to structural then having to convert from structural to detail. understand this: a map in general consists of less amount of brushes beeing structural.
in addition, when you take your actual map right now and try to make it ready for a good vis calculation, means going through your map and try to make everything detail which needs to be done in your eyes, you will most likely simply forget a brush, and that one will in the result cause additional, unneccessary portals, messing the fps of your map in general when you compile it this way.
therefore again, my advice actually had very good reason and if stealth is not able to see the benefits, then its his problem. he probably didnt understand that it wasnt meant to be a final solution, hence the word “immediate solution”.
here another link: http://www.nibsworld.com/rtcw/tutorial_detail_and_hint_brushes_part1.shtml
Well feel free to enlighten me, that way I know for the next time.
As for your way of doing it, it’s perfectly logical and in other map editors all brushes are detail by default. Actually interesting since then if you make a mistake and don’t have a big box surrounding everything then the map won’t compile and you’ll see what went wrong.
I just assumed you were trolling as usual since you post started so nicely.