Hints


(morphdoc) #1

I have been reading a lot about Hints brushes, but I still cannot understand it’s use. I have a map with quite a few open spaces, do I place my hint brushes everywhere, so that BIG OUTSIDE EMPTY space is occupied by it?

So confusing…


(KeMoN) #2

As I have painfully experienced myself, you are currently facing the hardest part for your map.
I also learned the hard way, but it is crucial to plan your layout (-VIS optimization) before you begin with the actual map-development.
Hint brushes are a tricky thing, but once you understand the concept of them it is fairly simple.

You can’t simply put hint brushes randomly in your empty spaces. This is more or less the function of the _blocksize key in worldspawn.
You have to carefully think about hint-brush placement.
I recommend the following two tutorials and also the external links in the second one.
#1: Tremmapping
#2: Openarena

Most important considerations:

I hope you find these helpful and good luck to you!


(acQu) #3

What Kemon said +

do I place my hint brushes everywhere, so that BIG OUTSIDE EMPTY space is occupied by it

No, not generally. The structural brushes are what you should focus on understanding first as a beginner. Your structural brushes are basically subdividing 3d space into smaller chunks. The compiler then drives the edges of each chunk and at every point on one of those edges it asks: “can i see chunk X from here?” and if yes it compiles into bsp this information so that if you later stand at that point as a player, you can see chunk X and everything in it from this point.

If you understand this, then you understood the basic algorithm. Hints are then just a piece of cake to understand. Hints just are … erm … “hints”. Hints to the compiler. They are used if your initial structural brushes do not subdivide 3d space optimally and you need to create further divisions with hints. The difference is then only that you can’t run your head against a hint brush, cause it’s completely not there for you later as a player. Against structurals you can bash your head all day long :slight_smile:

hope that helped a bit


(Yatta) #4

To be fair I dont think Hint brushes are relevant nowadays.

First of all they are used to help the VIS process, which role is to help the rendering engine chose what to render to keep performances high. This process will still do a good job without hint brushes to help it. I doubt you’d notice any performance improvement when using hint brushes, as even a half-decent computer should be running any map well over 60fps nowadays.

That being said, even if hints are barely usefull now, VIS is still an important process. But to get it right, just managing your structural vs detail brushes is enough.


(Mateos) #5

[QUOTE=Yatta;520298]To be fair I dont think Hint brushes are relevant nowadays.

First of all they are used to help the VIS process, which role is to help the rendering engine chose what to render to keep performances high. This process will still do a good job without hint brushes to help it. I doubt you’d notice any performance improvement when using hint brushes, as even a half-decent computer should be running any map well over 60fps nowadays.

That being said, even if hints are barely usefull now, VIS is still an important process. But to get it right, just managing your structural vs detail brushes is enough.[/QUOTE]

Oh, I can assure you it helps in open spaces, experienced it enough ^^’

See (the page): http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/32682-MAP-1944-Huertgen-Forest-(Final-2)-Released?p=511644&viewfull=1#post511644

There’s also a PDF from shagileo:
http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/20555-Hint-brushes?p=213673&viewfull=1#post213673

Edit: Plus I know Canyon Depth is mainly played on Beta 4 because Beta 7 has low FPS for instance ^^’


(Teuthis) #6

most of it has already been correctly been pointed out above. Importantly, hints work by cutting the vis blocks and if you have an open area where you put your hints, they are useless because the engine renders the blocks a Player can see. so if you can see the blocks you want to use hints on, the hints get useless, which is why you don’t see them work. Generally, you Need to check your structural brushes and place the hints in a way that you cut your vis blocks between the structural brushes in a way that you can’t see Block A when you are Standing in Block C. This sounds a bit strange but if you look for some tutorials on TWT Website you will find beautiful examples of how to put your structural brushes first before you can place the hints in a useful manner.

In teuthonia I needed to add quite some stupid structural brushes just to avoid that the area is too open and only after this was done I could place the hints in a way that I cut vis data size.

so you Need to get familiar with Detail/structural brushes and then Comes the hint stuff. It might well be that you have to make your make less open, otherwise it won’t work.

that’s why Kemon said you have to think about this before you make an open field but it’s not too late, you now just Need to go the painfull way :slight_smile:


(Mateos) #7

It’s not the player sight, it’s the leaf node in which the player is which matters: any other leaf node you can reach with a line from any point inside the leaf node in which the player is will be rendered. This is what is tricky, cut the leaf nodes to avoid having too big ones to reduce this behavior effect :slight_smile: