Okay, I've read that, if brushes touch on say a 90* angle, it will CUT the brushes, resulting in higher R speeds... is this true of any angle? If so, how is this prevented???

When brushes meet they are in-fact cut, because Half-Life works in polygons, triangles.

To see what is happening in your map type, "gl_wireframe 1" in console. Try "gl_wireframe 2" as well.

EDIT: Prevention, func_walls don't make any cuts in geometry or just have the brush be 1 unit off of the other brush.

~ DarkATi

what dark ati said was true and as for the 90 degrees is better to do than lets say 32 or 43 beacuse to make the brush fit in triangels it will have to creat more than just 2 or 3 biger sized ones and as for polys if the poly is not broken its in a square fourm and repeats when the texture does so think about scaleing to

ah... aha...

so... walls should meet in what fashion? like, the external walls of the map (the ones in the void)...?


and all internal walls should be 1 unit off, or a func_wall. Gotcha


Damn, that shouldnt be like that tho... meh... maybe HL2 will change it?

The outer hull of your level is discared during compile (assuming no leaks) so its shape shouldn't matter too much.

Always make your inner walls touch and don't make them func_wall. This is required to properly calculate the visibility of your level, increasing perfomance a whole lot more then the few polys you can save by not making them touch.
The 1-unit-gap or func_wall method you explained should only be used for small detailed objects that don't block visibility, and even then often the small advantages don't warrant the disadvantages such as bad lighting, fewer discarded polys and additional entity load.

Here's something interesting for you boys and girls that I think you might find interesting and useful:

Func_walls whilst not cutting up the touching brushes (that aren't part of the func_wall) - if you have 2 or more brushes in a func_wall, they will get chopped up like normal brushes if they are touching. So if you func_wall a pipe and a flange (for example) where the pipe and flange touch, they will be cut up. This doesn't occur when the parts are seperate func_Walls - so maybe for some of your more complicated func_walls, you might want to seperate them into 2 or 3 func_Walls to save further disections

Cheers

A further note on Func_Walls... they ARE entities and therefore lights see "through" them and likwise they cannot be touching or within the void. Also, large pieces of geometry that are transformed into func_walls may lag your map because of their size. HL draws all entites that are bigger than (insert x amount I don't know off the top of my head), Like I said earlier, use gl_wireframe to see what is and isn't being rendered by HL.

~ DarkATi

Ahh Yes...further to func_walls, as DarkATI so keenly observed, unlike normal brushes which are drawn based on visibility (as controlled by the PVS list which contains all the BSP leafs - or the little chunks of the map which say "if you are here - you can see to here") func_walls are an all or nothing ordeal. If you see one bit of a func_wall - you see the whole 9 yards of it. Add to that - you see both sides as well - so make you func_Walls carefully or the results could be lag-city

Cheers

Oh... okay...

Now then, the problem is, I can't get gl_wirefram to WORK... it says can't use gl_wirefram in multiplayer


what the hell? I can use Developer, but not gl_wireframe 0o'

A note on func_walls and r_speeds. As people have said, dont use them too much. For squares, and walls, its really not worth it. The engine doesnt recognize them as walls, and then it makes your game render everything behind them and blah. The only time its really useful is for things like cylinders and off-angle shapes that might come from the evil "carving" etc. Other than that, just steer clear of them, theyre evil

And I dont know why your gl_wireframe 1 wont work, are you sure youre tryping it right?

Bullethead, start your map via the console not by selecting it from the multiplayer list.

1. start NS
2. open up the console
3. type: developer 1 or create a shortcut with '-dev' as extra to the command line
4. type: map yourmapname
5. when your map is loaded type: gl_wireframe 2 in the console

Note on shortcut:

you can also add '+map yourmapname' to the shortcut command line to start you map instantly after loading ns

rofl, I was loading the map THEN doing the developer XDXDXD