Hello all,

I just purchased the comercial version of 3D Game Studio with the intent of buying multiple Professional Licenses in the future.... so I really want to use this engine.

However, during some initial testing with the Trial Version we found that using just a few included Prefabs (1 Altar "altar01" and 1 Plant "Tree01") inside a normal hollowed out Primitive Cube, the build times can be excessive... like 6 - 10 minutes. The Portal count was only 1130. One of my development team members created a test "Church" scene with 6 hanging lights, an altar, and some other various Prefabs and it took about an hour to build until he finally cancelled it...

We ran the tests on a P4 1.8Ghz machine with 512MB RDRAM and Windows2000 Pro... is this not enough? Thus, we assumed it might just be a problem with the Trial Edition. We received the Commercial Edition today and the problem still persists.

Is this a normal behaviour for only 1130 Portals (6 to 10 minutes build) ?

If not, is there a fix? We have already installed the latest update.

I can just image how long it will take for a "Real" game level...

Note: It is in the calculating visibility portion of the build that it slows way down.

I would very much appreciate any help one can offer.

Thanks,
Ron McCann

have you made sure that there is a **solid** hollow box surrounding your level ? this is required, and in neglecting to do so, will mean large build times, as well as horrible in game effects, basically make sure that around your levels there is some solid geomitry with no holes. hope this solves your problem, i should imagine that is the reason for your problem
chris

Ron:

One of the build options is 'preview'. Check the 'preview' box and the visibility calculation will not be made resulting in a much faster build time. I suspect your 7 - 8 minute level will only take a few seconds. You only need to do a no preview build once when you are ready for the final level compile.

The 'preview' build will typically run a little slower but that is of little concern when when you are still developing the level. Faster build times results in much greater productivity.

Somehow my earlier post got lost, so just a short addendum to the previous posts :
Preview mode also reduces the lightmap quality (and calculation time). If you want to have no visibility calculations, but original lightmaps then deselect Preview and activate Testmap instead of Levelmap.
Also when you're done building level geometry and just moving entities/lights around, select Update Entitites/ Lights to only recalculate that information.

Thanks guys.. that solved my dilema.. I now understand that Preview is the most basic compile with Test Map falling somewhere in between Level and Preview...

lol... and yes I have the hollowed out solid box around my entities / models... thanks for the tip though.

- Ron McCann

Ron, I just realized that my post did not vanish- it was just in another forum. So let me make this clear:
DO NOT CROSSPOST !

We do have a number of different forums. Please choose one that's appropriate to your question. If noone is able to answer your question there in a couple of days, even though it's well formulated then try another forum. But don't send the same question to three forums at the same time- this just clogs things up !

I have tested this also!
On my PIII 800mhz / 380meg Ram
it takes me 4.5 hours to compile 3900 portals
with 5000 portals it takes me over 5 hours to
compile the level... yeah it sucks! but the
level looks great
All in all, I average 1 hour for every 1000
portals... just to give you an idea that you
haven't endured the worst of it by far!..
I also hope for a fix! This is just too long
to wait! At this rate it will take me 5 years
to make a full game..lol

Which hollow box do you mean?
A premade hollow box object, or a box hollowed by me? Lame question I know, but want to make sure I'm using the right type...