@negke - The map was made playable and only had the textures unfixed. Last testlevel4 was 12 houres, so I thought it would be a short job. After three days today there's no change.

@necros - I almost pearced my eye out getting textures fixed, but I howl on a 3d fucking quark viewer.

I remake the pipes in QRadiant. It seems a pretty sharp carve editor. The more I use it the more I get frightened from Quark. 

except Trinca maybe. And Spirit?

ps - I'm a luddite too, stuck on WC. 

someone seriously needs to build a faster vising program. 65 hours of having that shit running on your computer is enough to put off any newbie mapper. 

someone seriously needs to build a faster vising program. 65 hours of having that shit running on your computer is enough to put off any newbie mapper. 

Or someone needs to get better at mapping. 65 hours, to me, means the map was built in an incredibly non-Quake friendly way. 

.. I am the most friendly-less mapper ever... (i.e ref to CDA) :P 

If your map takes days and days to VIS, using a modern VIS program and a decent machine ... then I'd say, yes, you're not building in a Quake friendly manner. :) Just seems logical... 

There's nothing WRONG with that, but it does seem to be evident... 

.. 1218 hours ? And what if the result is worth doing it ? Basically, the result is more important to me than the way to achieve it... though I admit it is better to ease our life sometimes ;) 

It almost says, to me, that you're mapping for the wrong game. You want something that Quake wasn't designed to do! 

support willem here 

some of the most acclaimed maps in the last few years have been 100+ hour vis monsters, and i'd argue that the vis-unfriendlyness of the layout was worth it for the final effect.

I'd hate to have been denied the masterpieces of tronyn, necros, and the like just because of some arbitrary (and utterly inconsequential to the end user) constraint like how long a compile tool is allowed to take to do its job. 

"utterly inconsequential to the end user"

By that I mean: does anyone here even have trouble running a map in fitz at anything less that 72fps? No matter how big/complex it is? 

everyone is free to map whatever they like. i's just my opinion: if you use certain engine you ought to follow its limitations. i choose this way because it's more fun to map having such limitations and no restrictions on user end. ^_~ 

... despite with CDA, I decided to say: "fuck the limitations"... well, Quake can be happy I am patient, and the map deserved it at this time

http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.fr/Screenshots/CDA1.JPG
http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.fr/Screenshots/CDA4.JPG
http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.fr/Screenshots/CDA5.JPG

... maybe not the better shots but... anyway

Globally I think limitations suck, but with such "old" game, it is obvious the mapper need to deal with it... i was a too young mapper at this time to think about that... hence now I know to occlude in better ways my maps... though... the next project I have is also "wide open"... but far away to be completed actually :P 

split the map up, does it really have to be so complex and big? Most of the original ID maps are short and sweet. Also the texture alignment in that top down screenshot is horrible. You don't need 100+ compiles to fix that, it can be done in the editor!
@JPL, your screenshots are way too dark and flat in contrast.

Taking good screenshots is time consuming and most people spend little thought to the process. A screenshot is the selling point, it should grab the viewer and make them want more! 

Is there any consensus on what wpoly count is acceptable these days?

It strikes me that this entire issue can be settled if we know what our poly budget is, i.e. what r_speeds numbers are "too much"?

It is rather hard for me to gauge if something is too complex when playing it, considering I can run (the accidentally unvised) Arcanum 4, or the open-plan madness of Unforgiven 1 and 3, on this 5-year-old laptop without it ever dropping below 72 fps in fitz. 

Was gigantic, and took 12 hours to vis. TBF I was using multi-threaded vis on a 5Ghz quad-core.

DirectQ is super-super fast anyway :) 

to have tools made to optimize content for 90s computers grind to a halt when a modern computer could most likely display the entire map more efficiently if it wasn't touched by those tools... 

Heh, I've often had that thought.

Have any modern Quake engines ever tried just ignoring the VIS tables and just throw every poly in the BSP at the card each frame - compiled into buffers and whatnot for efficiency? 

some numbers:
interior map in ne_ruins takes 3 hours to vis on a dual core 1.8ghz.
it also hits the absolute maximum # of faces allowed in standard bsp format.
size (and even detail) != vis time

also, don't forget, cda was vised on a single core system, so vis was nearly ~1.75x slower.
AND it was released in 2005 so cpus were slower in general.
might be interesting to see how long cda would take to vis on a modern (>3ghz) 4 core system.

but anyway, remember to take into account tech differences. :) 

oh, re 8290:
i believe darkplaces doesn't make use of (or at least, does not requires) vis data. it culls stuff on the fly and is actually pretty darn good. i've loaded unsealed large maps in DP and the culling does a great job even with non-optimized areas (rooms open to the void allowing pvs into areas that it wouldn't normally). 

one issue with the darkplaces method is i think it adds quite a bit to the map load time as it generates the necessary data. I think I suggested to LH that he cache this on disk somehow, not sure if he ever did that. 

ah ok... not sure how i feel about it now because i detest how long it takes to load maps in DP. :( 

what's the maximum # of faces allowed?