How could making the laterns into func_illusionary help the efrags problem? I'm still not 100 percent certain what causes efrags in the first place. 

well, according to aguirre, it seems to me as though it has something to do with a bmodel being in more than one 'vis zone'. i don't fully understand all the bsp stuff, but when you vis a map, each volume separate 'area' which has faces assigned to it (ie: it can be visible or not such that it will or will not display faces attached to it) would be like a 'vis zone' and entities that have a bounding box (anything that has a visible model and isn't explicitly set to be a point entity via setsize() in qc can touch more than one of these zones. this means that the entity has to be attached to more than one zone and in a visually complex area that has been split up many times by vis, that entity could potentially be attached to quite a lot of these zones. these are entity fragments (efrags).
now if you have a big bmodel (say like a really tall elevator), it could be attached tons of zones and if you had more than one of these elevators (or equally larged doors, trains, etc) you can see that it may run over the limits.

but i'm honestly not even sure what i said above is right. :S bsp and vis are not transparent subjects. :P 

But I suspect that those small cages are causing complicated leafs. Efrags is related to 'solid walls' - that doesn't mean walls, just anything that's a world brush.

This is just an idea, but maybe the flame models were causing the bug because they were too close to fiddly world brushes. If they become entities then there's no more problem since they no longer define the vis tree but are commanded by it.

In other words, they become visible or not as vis says so, instead of causing the vis to be more complex.

On the other hand, necros could well be right... although I'm not so sure for two reasons. Firstly, you've already identified the lanterns as being the problem, for some reason. The second reason I'm just pulling out of the air and half-remembered conversations, but typically when you've got a large bmodel that's producing the efrags bug it's also subject to entity flicker (becomes visible/not) because it's residing in multiple leafs.

The lanterns are small... so I doubt that's the case. But I could be wrong. Those bars though are already producing multiple additional leafs though - the viz zones Necros mentions.

Either way, small brushwork tends to produce these types of problems and bump your compile time. It's a habit but I tend to avoid using such and go for alternatives. With a hack you could put the Nehahra lantern model in there instead. Not sure which hack though. 

Open the map up in Fitz or Quakespasm and use the command called r_showtris 1 (I think that's what its called) which will show you exactly what viz is allowing to be drawn.

If the lantern cages are creating the efrags problem then you'll see wierd effects there in comparison to the rest of the map.

Won't be easy to see though since they're small.

En fin. My advice, so you don't have to do too much work or a visual change, is to group the bars of each lantern into singular func_walls - func_illusionaries being slightly cheaper.

If it doesn't work at least it's a simple change to test, and should speed up compile anyway. 

Which flame entities did you try it with - yellow or white? I can't imagine small_yellow to cause problems if the inside of the lantern cages are at least 20-24 units high. 

So much work! It's getting close though. I have to fix the lighting on some of the meshes, especially in the third shot, but I'll lump that into my upcoming mega-epic clipping brush pass.

http://www.wantonhubris.com/L4D2_Shots/busstationofdeath0000.jpg

http://www.wantonhubris.com/L4D2_Shots/busstationofdeath0001.jpg

http://www.wantonhubris.com/L4D2_Shots/busstationofdeath0002.jpg 

L4D city environments always remind me of Tony Hawk games. I wanna ollie on that pavement.

It's only missing the bums and destroyable fire hydrants.

Looks good of course. 

Lookin really good, can't wait to get my grubby little hands on it. It's scavenge right? Or are you going to turn it into a campaign or some such? 

Survival. I don't have anywhere near the time necessary to do a campaign. :) 

... does it mean your q1sp is cancelled or just delayed? 

"does it mean your q1sp is cancelled"

To be honest ... yeah, probably. I just can't work up the energy to work in Quake these days. It's too limiting and I find that I'm just plain tired of the monsters. Maybe I'll get that spark back some day in the future... 

oh well, good luck making bus stops! 

Nice shots - your rockwork has never looked better :)
Also the lava falls are really cool looking. And the whole map looks very organic - like it is falling apart. I'm only gonna say that perhaps the lighting looks a little bright. It would be very atmospheric if it was a little bit moodier and darker, with some dark shadows for monsters to lurk inside :)

Willem:
Also cool shots :) I would like to see more of a distinct theme, like a specific location. Although I understand that you are finding your feet with the L4D style. And I also kinda understand that "generic suburbia/city streets" IS L4D style, so, er....... I dunno. Just seems very well built, but a bit samey. 

orl, I really like the looks of those shots and am looking forward to messing around with those textures myself. I love it when people expand on quakey themes like you seem to be doing! 

Looks okay but I would prefer more visual hooks. I liked that untextured building shown before. I think with all the props and detailing and effects and shit, the importance of impressive structures can be lost these days... 

quake does more with less. 

Some screenies of VeniVidiFuzi in beta.
I am almost there.., as I use a "dutch" QuakeAnnivers of 2010.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/fitz0003.jpg
http://members.home.nl/gimli/fitz0004.jpg
http://members.home.nl/gimli/fitz0013.jpg
http://members.home.nl/gimli/fitz0019.jpg 

looks cool 

the city street shot looks really nice. i like the variations of roof heights as it makes it look like more than just a sky brush on top. 

i like the variations of roof heights as it makes it look like more than just a sky brush on top.

i agree, however i cannot say the same about the rock-tops in shot 3.. they seem a bit uniform. otherwise very nice though 

Slowly but surely you are becoming an 'on grid' kind of guy ;)

Nice shots! 

Thanks for you're answer!

@nintin - crunching my first terrainmap. It was a big chunk of Quakers outmeal, before I had the hom undom.

@necros - I would like to make them deeper in the horizon to enhance the feeling of depht.
But this map is so large I can't do anything more or I hit warnings.
32719 clipnodes.

@rj - strange, I added mdl-rocks to break up the uniform structure. Someone else complainted about the severence of uniform appearance.

@generic - I'm playing my wits to get it done! 

Are those hand rails .mdl? Personally I'd remove the blue dots and just leave them black all over - the blue dot looks stretched.

The rocky areas could do with some green stuff - especially in the last shot there's green in the skybox whilst the terrain the player will be exploring is uniform brown. .mdl trees, moss, plants or bushes? Doesn't need to be much, would just be a nice tonal offset. 

and play it, see for yourself in the newspost.
My greatest concern was to get the texture of the endboss in the same value as the brushtes.

But as models are lighted different then plain brush texture I gave up. More from the point of vieuw that every engine has its own light specs. GlQuake suits more, Fitzquake less.
Telejanos blackens out, etc. 

i would say you succeeded, actually. i didn't notice anything until the thing started moving. :)