Desperately need some help guys :(

Im about 70% done with my map, but suddenly the FPS has dropped to around 3 or 4. Being the noob i am, i dont really know much about optimisation. Ive read a load of tutorials, but none of them make much sense to me. They all seem to assume your map is all on 1 level, and everything is symetrical. I tried using the same idea as the Flash sample map, putting 1 huge hint brush above the players head covering the whole map, but that made no difference. Ive also sealed off all the enterable buildings with func_areaportals, but that doesnt make any difference.

What im asking is does anyone have any links to some good Hint tutorials, that I cold understand, or maybe gimme some pointers?

Remember, i have no clue about optimisation, so be gentle with me :)

grr, at least i thought i had areaportals sorted ..... now crashes HL with a error "portalnum > numareaportals" :angry:

Post the layout of your map, maybe we can help.

And yes, most optimizing tutorials are crap since they don't even consider the slightest complexity in a map.

heres a shot of what i have so far, the red blocks are buildings you cant enter, the green ones are buildings you can enter. Also, the riverbed you can see is a lot lower than the rest of the map.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stubaynton/images/topdown.jpg

i think you have a single portal brush touching more than 2 areas.

If you can find a spot where youre doing that, try cutting the brush in half at the point where other brushwork is intersecting it. be sure to select the 2 pieces individually and make them seperate entities.

hopefully that helps, good luck.

Originally posted by McJewels
i think you have a single portal brush touching more than 2 areas.

How do you mean, touching more than two areas ? Are area portals not allowed to touch another area portal ?

Yes they are, but a func_areaportal entity can only be made of a single brush. Check that too

func_areaportals are not very effective in mp games. You may want to use func_areaportalwindow instead (they are rendered client side, areaportals are server side). This is explained in the following link.

Info on areaportals, hint brushes and optimization in general can be found here:

http://www.student.kun.nl/rvanhoorn/Optimization.htm



:)

Use a fog entity and set the far z clipping to about 2500, this could drastically enhance map performance, if you don't want to play around with AP's. Also, use occluder brushes inside the buildings you can't enter just for that 1-2fps boost you can get from hiding models.
I would also recommend putting hint brushes on the side of the riverbed's walls, if players can go down there.