don't know what your brushwork is like, but tidy brushwork can make a big difference. However, I suspect that in your case it might take a long time to vis because the areas in your maps tend to be large.

My latest map is 8500 odd brushes, but it only take 6 minutes to compile everything. I suspect it is mostly because the areas are not particularly huge, but also because the brushwork is quite clean.

I wonder how long Marcher or masque took to compile. I think Tyrann's still unreleased base map was taking him around 2 weeks to fully compile or something crazy like that. 

Alot of the spaces in warp had the classic flaw of wide open areas - they should have been shrank so the detail wasn't so lonely.

The biggest area I think was maybe half the size of Marcher's open canyon / fortress frontage (warpd) but I didn't really suffer any slowdown on compile. Less than half a day, I think.

The low detail definately helped, but I think that the vis-blocking was the big factor. That same level in warpd originally looked alot more interesting because there were arched windows everywhere, until I saw the projected vistime, that is. 

Yeah, one of the biggest advancements in Quake2 was the concept of the detail brush. Taking small detail brushes out of the VIS equation helped SO much. Of course we ate all that time again on the radiosity lighting but what-ev-ah! 

Use func_illusionaries for details of any kind of complexity. If the details are "out-of-the-way" then put a simple clip brush over them to stop monsters and players from walking through them. If they have to provide cover then use another model as a func_wall and use a skip tool to make it invisible.

The only problem is that after you put a load of these in you can hit the "efrags" limit, and you get annoying messages on loading the map like "too many efrags" and some of them will dissappear some/all of the time.

But thats only if you use fucking loads of them, and they tend to be made up of spread out brushes. The further apart the components of the func_illusionary are, the more likely they are to cause the efrags bug. 

I don't map very long, but I have a couple maps that I just abandoned. Most notably the qexpo map. Sielwolf, negke and ijed, iirc, tested it and basically found it acceptable - but somehow I can't be arsed to sit down with it. It's Quoth, with relatively hard combat (Trinca: "Impossible") and it's a fun doom-style blast, but not more. It uses some hackish stuff with info_notnulls etc. and that's just a horror. I'd code a proper switchable teleporter and marshlight for example, but obviously I can't. Also, after activating that angled ammobox function, most items fell out of the map, and replacing them all is apparently non-trivial. I can't go back to the old way easily, because I already replaced a large amount... not always successfully...

and then I just got pissed. :) 

"Use func_illusionaries for details of any kind of complexity. If the details are "out-of-the-way" then put a simple clip brush over them to stop monsters and players from walking through them. If they have to provide cover then use another model as a func_wall and use a skip tool to make it invisible. "

The trouble is that func_'s don't cast shadows and you can only have a certain number of them in a map. The detail brushes were way handier. 

The solution is to put a simplified normal brush inside your func'd complex geometry that casts the shadows.

So an organic/bulbous pillar would have a jacket making the organic effect but a simple cylinder inside to cast the shadow.

Not perfect, but I gauruntee most people wouldn't notice. 

madfox, what kona map? anyways yeah i'm surprised that quake vis times, 13 years on from the crapass computers we used to use, are still huge. 2 weeks vistime? that would have been like 6 months back in 1996. surely these levels aren't THAT much bigger now? maybe we need to stop pushing the boundaries on map size all the time, if its meaning we're not completing it?

oh back to topic, i want to see all your almost finished mappage please tronyn :D
i never really had unfinished map problems, i basically released everything i made, apart from 5 or 6 maps with just 2/3 rooms. oh and a halflife episode which i got 4 maps into. but hl is horse piss. you've just got to be tough on yourself and stick to those 80-90% complete maps... do one map at a time and don't leave it until it's finished. and for the love of god don't start a new map lol 

Kona - I was reffering to a map post#8007 in mapping help of the vis test fom Spirit.

He used a map called Koohoo, so my scraggy mind made it a kona map. 

I've got something like 10-15000 brushes of unfinished work that's accumulated over the years, spread across several maps of densely occluded medieval city architecture. The oldest parts are at least nine years old, there were screenshots on the old Pipeline, and I may have shown a few parts on #terrafusion at one point or another. I map slow, real slow.

Will it ever be finished? Maybe someday, I honestly haven't laid a brush in months, it's gotten so complex that my brain hurts every time I look at it. I'm not sure what exactly the point of this thread is, but inspiration is good, I'll grant that. 

Unfinished maps appear when you (or anyone of us) plan to make a giant map. I think small or medium maps almost never stay unfinished cuz they cause less problems and do not take that much time to bore you. But there are some people who make mostly (only) large maps. Therefore they always have a lot of unfinished projects. As for me, my arcanum map was started in the mid 2004 

The oppertunity of making a map more interesting by adding parts and sections is a chance the game gets more exciting.
Bad part is the enhancement can give hard compiling time and errors.

The hardest part to me is keeping in mind that the world I'm creating is unique and becomes a part of my own investement, a place that really excists for me. The time of construckting can make it a ruined proof of my patience, but it also keeps me on my toes for accomplishing it.

And that has brought me on many deadend strees, with a leak here and a hom there, and my scraggy stubborness to complete what I have started. 

I guess not that many people have stuck maps - I'm surprised, I suspected that plenty of mappers had quite a few 90% maps that had been sitting around for years. I do, but they are being finished.

Masque actually took under a week to compile; if you can believe it I could have cut the fullvis time to about two days, if I was willing to sacrifice the rocketlauncher window. But I figured whatever, I want that sense of vertical progress. Masque was very neat and tidy, in contrast the NSOE maps were very messy (they had to be, there was no way around it with all that manual brushwork for rocks and terrain) - thus the two worst offenders, nsoe3 and nsoe6, both topped 300 hours for fullvis.

Before I just make another thread, I want to know if this is a good idea: obsessive themes. I say this because I kind of assumed that people would be able to relate to stuck maps, but most people are smarter/more reasonable/productive in that case. But anyway, my idea (maybe I could just change the subject of this thread) is a discussion of themes that as a mapper (or even a visual artist, writer, musician, etc) you keep returning to. My first example in my own case, is Soul Of Evil - I couldn't leave that theme alone, apparently. 

During Christmas holidays, I visited some family. My nephew is a hard core dice and character sheets type of roll play gamer. One of his paper bound modules had a very nicely detailed schemata with a lot of game play ideas for a haunted pirate ship. I grabbed a dozen sheets of paper and spent the next few hours copying the schemata and noting those ideas that interest me.

I don't think I am through with either boats or Zerst�rer as far future mapping is concerned. 

Yeah I keep returning to metal, I love it and still aren't sick of it - not until the ultimate metal map has been made! 

(and runic) are, to me anyway, one of the best texture sets ever. it's incredibly versatile and can be draped over almost any kind of brushwork. 

is also such an evocative concept. I've often imagined the Netherworld extended to Quake 2 lengths where the Strogg are essentially replaced by an alien race similar to the Githyanki from the Fiend's Folio of the old AD&D rules. 

the only map i had stuck i delete it!!!

because was to old and to noobish... was only 500 brushes, no big deal... 500 brushes is 2 hours of mapping is these days. 

Is a bastard.

With good points.


I have five metal betas. 

questions, you can thank spy.