Map compile crashing

[ZeroRaven]

So I'm attempting to compile a map so I can test it (only 25% or less finished), and during the compile process I hit an error I've never seen before.
MAX_MAP_VISIBILITY exceeded.
I'm not sure what this is or how to fix it. Map is only 104 brushes and 2 entities, though it is in a big skybox (will be a platforms map).
If anyone has any idea what this is, please let me know.

[Ramikad]

Reading around a bit, you may want to turn as many brushes as you can into detail brushes. Other possibilities would be to play around with the blocksize / chopsize values in the worldspawn, reducing them to 0 - it might make compiling VIS problematic, but since you say it's an open platform map type, there doesn't seem to be much room for culling.

[ZeroRaven]

54 minutes ago, Ramikad said:

Reading around a bit, you may want to turn as many brushes as you can into detail brushes. Other possibilities would be to play around with the blocksize / chopsize values in the worldspawn, reducing them to 0 - it might make compiling VIS problematic, but since you say it's an open platform map type, there doesn't seem to be much room for culling.

Changing the brushes to detail didn't fix the MAX_MAP_VISIBILITY error, but I changed the chopsize to 0 and changed the cull distance to the full length of the map (16,896 map units), and THAT seemed to have fixed it for now. thanks for the advice.

[NAB622]

I'm a little late, sorry.

The reason MAX_MAP_VISIBILITY exists is to save the user from loooooong looooong compile times. The more portals you have in your map, the compile will take exponentially longer. Judging by what you've said, it sounds like your map is being sliced up so much by the default blocksize that it has tripped the threshold of portals for this error. It is also possible that your map "Leaks" - and if it does, this can also cause the error.

It is always a good idea to load up your .prt file and investigate the root cause of the error. It's pretty easy once you know what you're looking for, and could be as easy as making some brushes detail, adding a few hint brushes, or fixing a few leaks.

 

On compile, a "Portal" brush is generated that encapsulates all enclosed areas of your map, and the blocksize value (Default 1024) is used to break this "Portal" up into manageable sections on every axis. Next, every structural brush in the map is CSG subtracted into these sections. Since the sections are small, it confines any rogue slices to a localized area, which prevents them from generating thousands of unwanted slices all through the map.

If your map has a very large, open area, then yes, you will need to increase the blocksize to prevent the blocks themselves from tripping the threshold - but if you change the blocksize to 0, you disable the block slices, and therefore you must make absolutely certain to use hint brushes to prevent your brushwork from making rogue slices all over the map, or this error will likely happen again in the future. And even if it doesn't cause an error, you still may suffer unnecessarily long compile times (VIS compiles should take a few minutes at most).

On the other hand, if your map leaks, then when the portal file is generated, it will not know the outer boundaries of your map, and portals will be generated all over the place and then sliced, which is also not good and can throw you over the limit.

 

Hope this helps, as there is a lot of bad info floating around out there...