About newskip. Is it normal that it doesn't remove all faces when running it once? I mean I can't find any visible instances, but when running it a second time, it says that another six faces were removed that it apparently didn't catch the first time. 

Marksurfaces isn't influenced by VIS either. Although it's not a bad idea to at least run "vis -fast" for WIP compiles, this isn't the cause of your problem. The only two reasons I can imagine are either a leak (so QBSP didn't remove the outside or backsides of brushes), which you said there isn't, or excessive detail made of world brushes. The latter sounds odd since you mentioned the map was fairly small and plain. 

with no leaks by doing the following:

load the map into your engine
bring down the console and type:

"gl_clear 1" (this makes the engine draw the void outside the map each rendered frame as a grey colour, so you dont get the "hall of mirrors" type effect you would normally get when outside the map)

then

"noclip" (so you can walk through walls)

You can now move outside the map. If you can see the outside of the map's brushes then you know there is a leak.

Another way of identifying errors would be to post the entire QBSP log onto this thread, so we can look at it :) 

.. if the compiler claims the map leaks, then it generates a .prt file. Type "pointfile" in the console, and a white doted-line will spot where the leak is, at least the first detected leak by the compiler... ;)
Enjoy ! 

The map complies fine, no leaks. Sometime, when I add or remove stuff and there's a "hole" in the map it won't compile, but it's not the case this time.

I'll try tommorow the func_ilusionary trick, I think this will help in other areas too, some shadows casted on small polys look bad, so I hope that converting those brushes into func_ilusionary will help me get rid of that. 

Entity brushes don't plug leaks. They can be outside the map no problem but won't stop a map leaking on their own. 

The marksurfaces are not truly removed, just moved to the end of the list.

So, during a second run it will find the same six marksurfaces, and again move them to the end of the list (but they were already there so it's not changing anything.) 

... but, i can see the message is misleading, theoretically it could be smart enough to notice that those marksurfaces were already "hidden" and not re-report them. 

func_illusionary dind't work so good :(
Compiling the map before generated this warning:

WARNING: Marksurfaces 35716 exceed normal engine max 32767

But the map compiles ok and can be run without any problems, I get the same error in Quake engine when the map loads, but no other problems.


I take some small brushes (they are also duplicated and mirrored) and I put the brushes inside the func_illusionary.
Then I compile the map again.
This time I get two warnings in compiler :

WARNING: Models 520 exceed normal engine max 256
WARNING: Marksurfaces 33494 exceed normal engine max 32767

So, I still exceed the marksurfaces and I get a new warnig, that prooves to be fatal in engine, because when the map loads I get something like :

Excessive marksurfaces (33494, normal max=32767)
Excessive models (520, normal max=256)

Host_error : cl_parse_static: too many (256) static entities, max = 256

So, the marksurfaces dropped a little, but the func_illusionary caused a MUCH worse error...

I don't know what to do now, I'm really frustrated, my map is not very big, nor very detalied (ok, it's not plain floors, walls and ceil - I have some decors, but nothing TOO fancy)

I saw maps MUCH bigger and with a lot more details that didn't seem to exceed limits...

Any other ideas ? Please. 

To take a look. Its odd that didn't work, but there's a lot of stuff to get used to with bsp.

I can't take a look because I'm going away in two days, but someone on the board should be able to help.

In fact, send it to me anyway - the email is in my profile. It should just be a case of looking at it for five minutes.

Try not to get discouraged. 

the map.
send it on email. 

You say you put the small brushes INSIDE func_illusionary. Don't do this! Instead, group a bunch of these small brushes in a common area, and while all selected, turn them into func_illusionary, or func_wall, or even func_door. Any entity will do, with func_door you can make them move if you like. 

20 brushes made into 1 func_illusionary = 1 model.

20 brushes made into 20 func_illusionary = 20 models.

func_illutionary can spread over a wider (larger) area and not disappear from view. func_doors on the other hand can disappear from view if spread all over an area.

Also, I make sure that all my entities are inside the level. 

ijed, MadFox - you want the bsp or the map file ? Anyway, I want to work a little more on it, right now it's very raw in some areas, then I will send it or upload it here.

roblot - the problem is that I don't have 20 brushes, I have (for example) 1 brush that have applied a basic duplicator (x5), then everything is mirrored, so I end up with 20 brushes in the map. If I will put the brush AND the duplicator and the mirror inside func_illusionary - will it be ok ?

I ask this because the duplicator and mirror is also used for other things in the map (too big to make them illusionary). So I need to take out the small brusesh, put them into the func_illusionary, then create again duplicators and mirror for them (inside the illusionary). 

The bsp will give a good idea what's going wrong and the .map will allow to give a specific 'this is why'. 

duplicator. 

just compile the source .map file of corse. 

If you want. Im a little confused really :)
I would like to see what is going on.....
You can just email it to me if you like:

trowbridge (dot) richard (AT) googlemail [dot] com

.map file and/or .rmf file are what I need, the BSP too if you want, but not necessary (unless you are using a custom texture wad) :) 

By the way, Fitz and Aguirre's gl engines has a 64,000 Marksurface limit, and warnings can be ignored as they are just info for developers. If your map is small and you are hitting limits, something could be wrong.

To reduce Marksufaces according to what people say here, select the brush and the duplicator and the mirror (any number of brushes) and make them into 1 func_illusionary entity. It does not need to go into another func_illusionary brush. A func_wall entity maybe a good choice also because it is solid.

If your map gets real big with lots of these multiple brush entities you could get the error:

Too many efrags

If so, just reduce a 20 brush func_illusionary to something like 15 or 10 brushes to make the error go away. 

I'll just cut some areas from the map for now, I have a lava cavern that sucks, it looks very bad... 

what's a duplicator? 

Yea, just upload the .map and people will help alot. Maybe Quaketastic's temp folder?

duplicator:
1 brush duplicated 5x and then all mirrored = 20 brushes 

ok, but is it an editor feature or something? Pretty sure Radiant or Quest don't have a "duplicator". Of course I can do that sort of thing in Radiant as well, I was just wondering if this is a special editor function.

It might end up to be a Quark problem... 

I think RaverX speaks another language, so instead of saying duplicate, he said duplicator. Quark might also have mapping instructions in many languages, thus making it popular around the world. I don't know though. 

one of the things quark has over every other editor out there is that objects in a map are visible in a tree list. you can click and drag brushes and entities into folders as well to organize things (much easier to see that wc's visgroups and radiant's non-existant groups...). there's a special folder called a duplicator folder (may have changed since i last used quark for mapping which was like 10 years ago) which essentially copies everything in the folder X number of times. it also allows you to mirror the brushes and rotate them.

the closest i can think of would be if you're working with instanced geometry in a 3d editing package. you change the original and all other instances are updated to match.


...at least, that's what i remember of it. :x