Why do my cathedrals take so long to compile?

[AluminumHaste]

How do you guys make a cathedral? I've done things like converted almost all the patches to func_statics, tried cutting up the large open area with vis portals, and stuff like that.

The compiler seems to take a long time at a particular spot, in the console it says, PutPrimitivesInAreas. Is there a way that I can speed this up or am I just building this wrong.

Here are some screen shots for reference to size and scale and geometry layout.

 

 

Or are cathedrals just not viable with this engine?

[SneaksieDave]

I'd say how it plays is more key to it being "viable", then how long it takes to compile, eh? I mean, you could throw a billion polys at it if you wanted to, and if it took a day to compile but played great, would it matter much? Doom3 actually compiles quite fast compared to engines of the old days (thanks, I assume, to realtime vis). To cut compile times as you work, you could compile sections at a time by themselves, with regions.

 

Have you tried realistically lighting that yet? Might be in for a shocker.

[AluminumHaste]

I'd say how it plays is more key to it being "viable", then how long it takes to compile, eh? I mean, you could throw a billion polys at it if you wanted to, and if it took a day to compile but played great, would it matter much? Doom3 actually compiles quite fast compared to engines of the old days (thanks, I assume, to realtime vis). To cut compile times as you work, you could compile sections at a time by themselves, with regions.

 

Have you tried realistically lighting that yet? Might be in for a shocker.

 

Well I thought the main reason was because doom 3 does not calculate lightmaps any more because all lighting is calculated realtime?

As for lighting all I have is 8 omni lights, and 1 ambient. I will add some more to see how it looks.

[SneaksieDave]

Yep that's part of it too, in fact that may be the larger part. I'd say as long as it runs well, you're golden. It currently takes my slower system almost a half hour (I believe) to compile greebo and angua's WIP, but less than 10 mins on my faster system. Hell, it takes 10 mins to load on my slow system.

 

How long is your map taking to compile?

[Fidcal]

If you are just testing and don't need the AI characters for now then try dmap noAAS mapname which is faster. It doesn't calc the pathfinding though so any AI may walk in circle or get confused. You can calc the pathfinding separately later if you want using runAAS mapname. It might be the pathfinding is overcomplex anyway. There are different techniques for simplifying the pathfinding.

[AluminumHaste]

Yep that's part of it too, in fact that may be the larger part. I'd say as long as it runs well, you're golden. It currently takes my slower system almost a half hour (I believe) to compile greebo and angua's WIP, but less than 10 mins on my faster system. Hell, it takes 10 mins to load on my slow system.

 

How long is your map taking to compile?

 

According to the console, about 300 seconds (5 minutes). Which seems like a really long time to me considering this is just a bare bones map so far.

My specs

 

Core 2 Duo @ 2.4 GHz

4 GB DDR2 800 MHz

2x200 GB 7200 rpm 8 MB cache in RAID 0

2xNVidia 8700M GTs in SLi (AFR2)

 

It runs very smoothly for me, but my last cathedral that I posted screens of here, didn't at all. This one is alot smaller.

[Tels]

How do you guys make a cathedral? I've done things like converted almost all the patches to func_statics, tried cutting up the large open area with vis portals, and stuff like that.

The compiler seems to take a long time at a particular spot, in the console it says, PutPrimitivesInAreas. Is there a way that I can speed this up or am I just building this wrong.

Here are some screen shots for reference to size and scale and geometry layout.

Or are cathedrals just not viable with this engine?

 

Holy load of polygons, batman! That's a lot of tris I'd say cutting down the number of polygons on these round/half-round support bars on the very top could be done - they are far away, so the player won't notice if they are not exactly round.

[AluminumHaste]

If you are just testing and don't need the AI characters for now then try dmap noAAS mapname which is faster. It doesn't calc the pathfinding though so any AI may walk in circle or get confused. You can calc the pathfinding separately later if you want using runAAS mapname. It might be the pathfinding is overcomplex anyway. There are different techniques for simplifying the pathfinding.

 

Yeah doesn't placing monsterclip around complex geometry say a circle of squares is kinda complicated, so you would make one 8 sided poly and put it over the other squares which would greatly reduce aas complexity right?

Well the aas part is last in the compile process or seems to be, and that part only takes about 10 seconds.

[SneaksieDave]

300 sec... pssh. *remembers vis and light for quake often taking hours*

 

The supports could even be "square cylinders" (it's a patch primitive type), because they'd still be lit as if round, and the illusion works. For instance, the gate bars in rain/snow.map are rectangles, but appear to be round because they are square cylinders.

[SneaksieDave]

Example of lighting on square cylinders for those who might not know:

[jdude]

It's simply taking long to compile because of your lighting, vis portals and the complex geometry, there's nothing you can do about it Just go make a sandwich or something while it compiles. This is why it's a good idea to create large maps in seperate .map files so you can readily and quickly test particular areas. After when you are happy with the result, put them all together into one.

[AluminumHaste]

300 sec... pssh. *remembers vis and light for quake often taking hours*

 

The supports could even be "square cylinders" (it's a patch primitive type), because they'd still be lit as if round, and the illusion works. For instance, the gate bars in rain/snow.map are rectangles, but appear to be round because they are square cylinders.

 

My longest compile time for a quake 3 map; 36 hours.

[AluminumHaste]

My longest compile time for a quake 3 map; 36 hours.

 

Okay I just changed all the upper ceiling supports to square cylinders and they work great. Compile time: 15 secondsish and it runs better to boot.

The reason for that is that this mission starts the thief near the ceiling and the player has to make his way across the support beams to the front of the cathedral (many guards patrolling down there ). Using rope arrows in the wood supports and stuff like that will enable the player to get across without being too difficult.

 

This is fun, with the new mantling technique it makes it very realistic to mantle over the pillars and very natural.

 

I LOVE THIS MOD!!!!

[AluminumHaste]

Whoops double post

Edited April 3, 2008 by AluminumHaste

[SneaksieDave]

Niiiiice, sounds like a great improvement.

[jdude]

Yea I remember I had a halflife map in the works a long LONG time ago that took 15 hours to compile. Oh dear, brings back memories. But Doom3 can compile huge maps in under 15 mins for me, perhaps patches increase the time longer.

[Komag]

Even Dromed used to take an hour or two if you had a large map and do the good quality lighting pass. I wonder how much faster it would go on today's modern PCs?

[Tels]

Example of lighting on square cylinders for those who might not know:

 

Oh interesting. I never noticed their square bottoms...

[SneaksieDave]

It worked!