R_SPEEDS - Part 1

 

R_speeds eh? You may of heard of them, you may not. What ever happens they are one of the most important parts of editing. All they are is a way of telling how much detail is in your maps at one time.

Bring down the console and type R_SPEEDS 1 and then look at the wpoly and epoly. The wpoly is what people quote when they tell you how high their r_speeds are. Mine are 1738 there and that is very high. Valve kept theirs under 800 because they made it for software mode as well and if the r_speeds go over 800 things disappear. But in this day and age of 3D cards I it doesn't affect you too much if you are making a SP map. They need to be low on CS maps tho because of lag and the face that people expect to be able to play that in software mode.

If they are really high then your map will slow down on some PC's. There are some tricks to lowering them and have lot's of detail. Let's look at those now:

Ok first of all we have a pipe touching the walls, a very common part of maps.

Notice the steel flanges on the pipe. These can either be your worst enemy or your best friend. Let's take a look at the right-hand side one.

All looks normal so far. They are all World brushes there and what is happening is the pipe is cutting into the flange and the flange is cutting into the wall. To see what I mean bring down the console and type GL_WIREFRAME 2. What this will do is display what the engine is well erm displaying.

ARGH! Look at how it is cutting the wall up into slices! That one cylinder becomes many pieces as does the wall. Simply eats r_speeds for no reason. Now let's look at the other end:

With GL_WIREFRAME 2 turned on you can immediately see the improvement. How? Well it's a well known fact that enitities don't break up walls like world brushes do. So just make the flange a FUNC_WALL and then the wall remains normal as does the flange itself. Cool huh? Leave the actual pipe itself a world brush because entities don't block light and shadows always look cool so use flanges.

Check out part 2