Stutters on Some Area Portals & Triggers

[IrocJeff]

I've noticed that between my two maps this is an issue that is more annoying then anything. Sometimes when walking through a door w/ an area portal there be a slight stutter once when going through the door. Same with triggers. I have spawning NPC's and I can tell when I hit the area portal because I get that slight stutter. Sometimes I'll hear a crackle but I'm sure that has to do with the target_speaker nearby. 

 

This does not happen every time but it happens enough to be noticeable. Could it be something in-game, the compiling process, my video card?  

[Xycaleth]

When you go through the area portal, the game has to suddenly draw a bigger chunk of the map. This can cause your computer to pause for a moment while it processes all the new data, which can cause the screen and sound to pause for a split second. There's nothing you can do about it, apart from not using area portals, but that's a bad idea in itself.

[IrocJeff]

That's a good reason. 

[Pande]

This is a good reason for getting anal about hinting. The more you subdivide the map into tiny chunks in your control, the less tri are being added to a single frame at once. huge jumps frm 20k tris to 50k tris such as exiting a building are easily responsible for these kind of frame rate jumps. One way around this is to make the player exit a building by first following a perpindicular path between two doors, instead of just one door out, like so:

 

_____________door_______

____________|_______door_|

 

where the top door is *not* area portaled, but the inside one is. This allows for the outside area to be sequentially added to the frame the closer the player gets to that outside door from the inside door, aided even more by manually hinting on the exterior.

 

Obviously this won't always make sense, but it does work for government buildings, clubs, etc that might want to lock an inside door while keeping an interior hallway accessible and unlocked.

[IrocJeff]

This is a good reason for getting anal about hinting. The more you subdivide the map into tiny chunks in your control, the less tri are being added to a single frame at once. huge jumps frm 20k tris to 50k tris such as exiting a building are easily responsible for these kind of frame rate jumps. One way around this is to make the player exit a building by first following a perpindicular path between two doors, instead of just one door out, like so:

 

_____________door_______

____________|_______door_|

 

where the top door is *not* area portaled, but the inside one is. This allows for the outside area to be sequentially added to the frame the closer the player gets to that outside door from the inside door, aided even more by manually hinting on the exterior.

 

Obviously this won't always make sense, but it does work for government buildings, clubs, etc that might want to lock an inside door while keeping an interior hallway accessible and unlocked.

 

I'll have to add in more of those types of hallways in the next level. I wasn't aware using area portals like that with those hallway with the one door portaled and the other not. Nice to learn this stuff when two maps are done.. hehe.. 

 

Why don't you explain how hint brushes are used and where you use them since you seem to know about this stuff..