Hi fellas,
I have read through the tutorials and now I am wondering whether I should try to optimize my map by using hint brushes. I checked my map with showtris and it looked rather bad (as expected ). Virtually the whole map is drawn from nearly every leaf node.
However, we tested the map on rather weak machines (Matrox G550 with 2.4 P4, LAN, 1GB) and the gameplay was fine with everything set to max (1280, textures, details ? at least 30 fps). I think most gamers will have much better equipment (at least a better video card). Additionally, the map is rather small (4-6 players) ?
I understand the usage of hint brushes in the examples but they aren't really comparable to my own map. I also checked how Spoon used hint brushes in Durango. But again, that map is quite different from my own. Since most of the buildings in Durango are ?blocks?, it is possible to create small ?chunks? (leaf nodes) by using hint brushes in order to increase performance ?
This it what my map looks like (I can't post a screenshot, so it is difficult to explain what I mean): there are a couple of buildings with windows and doors, roofs to crawl along, some cliffs ... Virtually, a player can go (and see) everywhere. Thus, I have no idea how I am supposed to use hint brushes. As a matter of fact, players can ALWAYS see the majority of the map (with some exceptions like the cave system). In this case, VIS is mostly right, AFAIK (I know that hint brushes are actually not used during VIS but they create portals that are used during VIS).
Thus, hint brushes won't be of any use if I get their usage right. I just can?t ?isolate? a portion of the map by using hint brushes.
Are there any heuristics that can help me to decide whether it is worth the work? I know that I should try to stay below 15000 triangles (taken from the nibs tutorial) but I don?t know how I can check how many triangles are actually drawn in each leaf node. I think I?ll have to redesign the map if I want to increase fps (closing windows, inventing new walls, stuff like that). I don?t really want to do that ?
Any suggestions? This is a question of imagination since you don?t know the map and I can?t post a screenshot . Actually, this post is not really useful but, at least, some traffic is generated in the editor's forum ...
Do you think that the map will be fine if it runs on machines with the specs given above?
breli