Use AreaPortals or Hints?

[TwiggyTwink]

Hello Interlopers. Long time, no see. (Not like any of you know me anyway ;p)

Anyways, I am making a simple outdoor map for Zombie Panic! Source. It's basically a hold-out map where you survive X Minutes.

Here is a rough sketchup/layout of my map:




The red blocks are the doors, the blue blocks are the windows, and all the squares are "houses". For optimization purposes, I've made it so that the doors and windows don't face towards the center of map, as you can see.

Should I use Area Portals or Hints for further optimization?

Thanks guys!

[MayheM]

I have gotten into the habit of using area portals that are always open. Despite what you would think, this actually is really effective since it culls everything out of view. Simple make area portals in every window and door and make them always open. Trying to figure out an effective hint layout would be more difficult.

Give it a try and see if you are happy with the results. I was shocked when I tested this out after being told about it by MrTwoVideoCards.

[TwiggyTwink]

MayheM, I definitely believe you, because of the optimization Valve used in L4D.

If you review the .vmfs in the original games Authoring Tools, you'll see lots of doors have open Area Portals.

Thanks for your input!

[MrTwoVideoCards]

Make sure you don't have areaportals looking through multiple portals. Like say if you had a super long hallway split into segments via doorways. There is an overhead for calculating what's visible through portals,via a portal.

[TwiggyTwink]

Thank you for the heads up, my good sir.