Massive .bsp file

[ilpo]

Yo! I've been having a blast with TrenchBroom these past few days and ended up making a map of my hometown. I know everyone's first map is usually pretty crappy (this one included), but honestly I'm super proud of it. The thing that bothers me though is the .bsp file size. It's around 9 MB, and I've seen maps that are way bigger in terms of playable space, but somehow their file size is smaller. Maybe I went too hard on detailing? Not sure.

Another thing I don't really know is the etiquette and "rules" around releasing maps. Like, what's the proper format to share them in, and is there anything that's considered off-limits? For example, can you use old textures from other maps, like something from Murder or from the one and only WizardExt? Right now I just packed everything into a single .pkz that includes /env/, /textures/, /sound/ and /map/. The skybox is straight out of a tutorial Mikota made on a TrenchBroom thread (here: viewtopic.php?t=77).

Back in the days when you grabbed maps from random directory listings on the internet, it wasn't rare to see lots of different folders inside /textures/. I'm guessing times have changed since then, but I honestly don't know what's the "right" way anymore.

So yeah, tl;dr: If any of you more experienced mappers could take a look and tell me how to get the file size down, or if there's anything else I should do before actually publishing it, that'd be awesome. I'd love to put this out for everyone (which I guess I kinda just did), but I'm open to improvements. Also, side note: is there any way to hide the HUD in screenshots on Q2Pro? cl_drawhud 0 doesn't seem to work.

04200.pkz

(9.44 MiB) Downloaded 360 times

04200.pkz

(9.44 MiB) Downloaded 360 times

https://maps.app.goo.gl/VNL5P9VKPPGciCD66

Also, let me know if you need the .map for further sherlocking.
Thanks!

[darksaint]

Hey, welcome to the forums. We have a lot of strong mappers in the community who would be great resources for you. I'll add you to the Discord channel, feel free to ask any questions you may have. What was your Discord name so I can add you to the channel?

[mikota]

With a BSP that big, you probably have a leak. In TrenchBroom, go to File->Load point file, find the file named 04200.pts and load it in. Then, go to Edit->Camera->"Move to next point" (or something similar, don't remember how it's called exactly), and follow where that takes you, until you see a leak (a hole that leads to the space outside your map), and plug it. Try compiling again, the filesize should be way smaller. If not, you may have multiple leaks and will need to repeat the process (each time you compile, if there's a leak, the compiler will generate a new .pts file).

Otherwise, the map looks great. Well, except for the poor fella in the bar..

As for the packaging, it all works out the way you've done it.

If you care, I'd recommend adding sunlight to the map. It's good to do even for a nighttime map like this. You can check my tutorial.zip map and copy paste the light and info_null entities from that map directly into yours to get it working, then change the light/color values to fit your map.

[ilpo]

Oh wow, thank you so much for that! I had no idea the holes actually matter, or that they could affect the filesize that much. I guess i was just trying to get the brushes as neat as possible since dumtruck_ds complains about them a lot in his videos, and that ended up leaving me with a bunch of tiny leaks. After patching them the filesize dropped dramatically 2 megabytes, which is great, but still 7mb feels kind of large. Most of the maps in my /maps/ folder are less than 4mb, but i kinda get it since i have so many small things hanging all around, like that poor fella in the bar. Good catch man ;D

Its also crazy how much longer the Full VIS compile takes. With leaks it only took a few seconds, but now its easily 15–20 minutes.

As for the sunlight, right now i only have very dim settings:

Code: Select all

"_sunlight2" "40"  
"_sunlight2_color" "0 143 252"  
"_surflight_radiosity" "1" 

Anyhoo back to the drawing board, maybe tweaking some brushes i can get extra 1mb out of the file size.

[mikota]

Yeah leaks make the filesize go up. You mention your full vis taking a long time, and that's normal. But, vis is another thing which makes filesizes go up. Make sure you're setting the "detail" contentsflag (in the sidebar under the "Face" tab) on brushes which are details, like the benches you have running along the street and such. This is equivalent to "func_detail" entites in Q1 that you might've seen in dumptruck_ds tutorials. If you put the detail contentsflag on a lot of the little details, your vis times will go down and the filesize will go down with it.

Other than that, I wouldn't worry about the filesize much. It's probably also due to geometry mistakes, like this one:

These kinds of weird minigaps and off-grid geometry can trip up the compiler and make the filesize go up. Also, if you noclip under your map, you will see that the floor is still being drawn, whereas in other maps, you'll see that it isn't. This is also partly to blame for the filesize, as it's making the lightmap bigger.

Anywho, you should fix some of these problems to better learn how to make optimized maps. But in the end, it doesn't really matter, everyone's first map is kind of like this. My first map was 10MB in size before I fixed it. It's because these modern compilers (ericw-tools) and clients (aqtion/q2pro) let you get away with these tiny mistakes which would cause older map-compilers and clients to crash and freak out, and so mappers in the old days were kind of forced to make the simplest possible maps when they were starting out, and only when they got more experience on how to build things 'cleanly' would they be able to make more complicated geometry without crashing the compiler/game. So I'd recommend fixing it up for sure, but also kind of not worry about it, since it'll probably take you more time to fix everything than it would to start out a new map which you will probably make cleaner with the knowledge you have now.

Also, _sunlight2 is great, but it's meant to be secondary sunlight along with the main light-entity based sunlight. You can check what I mean visually under the sunlight section at https://ericwa.github.io/ericw-tools/.

[ilpo]

I cant thank you enough mikota! Thats really good stuff to know and understand. In just a few hours (okay, took me whole day) i already got the file size down to 5.23mb. Still a lot left to do tho, when i have more spare time ill try to push the whole package under 5mb with textures included. And yeah, most likely this whole process would have been faster if i had just started from scratch with the info i got from you, but on the other hand fixing and testing these things is also good practice and a reminder not to mess it up next time when i start a new project. Oh and i also need to make sure the map works fine with older clients like aprq2.

You mentioned that when you noclip under the map you can still see the floor, thats odd because i cant? Do you think it would make sense to place a sky brush at the bottom and clip everything that comes over it, would that solve it? Anyway theres still a lot to optimize and fix, like for example this skybox bug in the video. After i made some changes with the compiler i ended up with this glitch and cant get rid of it. Any ideas?
https://streamable.com/gzgulh

Again, thanks a lot.