question about compiling
 

does this sound right, my visdatasize is 340000 and it takes over 4500 seconds to compile, just want to know because i'm new to this.
thx

Sounds OK to me!! My map TheStorm1 took about 12 hours to compile with the following set in the Mbuilder:

BSP: -fulldetail -blocksize 2048
VIS: -verbose
LIGHT: -final

is it ok to leave them setting in mbuilder blank?

When compiling your map for tests (not release to public) then use -fulldetail or -verbose as BSP option. Use -fast for VIS and -fast for LIGHT.

i tried fast for vis and light and i got a error but went back to blank it ran fine? any ideas, so when you want to release it put the settings to what

If you got an error write down what it says and fix it. It would not give an error unless somethings wrong in the map. When compiling the final version and using Mbuilder I use these settings:

BSP: -fulldetail
VIS: -verbose (alot of vis data can make the map compile for several days)
LIGHT: -final

leave it all blank
for your final compile

thx guys

i been leaving it blank even for testing the map

for testing I suggest:

bsp as it is (blank)
vis: -fast
light: -fast -bounce 0

-bounce 0 makes it very fast!
I´ve compiled DesertBase-final with:
bsp: -blocksize 512 (the -sand version with the default 1024)
vis: (blank)
light: -final -bounce 0

I´ve chosen bounce 0, because the regular final produced unwelcome light fx. Touching brushes, although with the same texture on it, didn´t look like one wall. You could clearly see where the brushes touch each other, arrrghh. With -bounce 0 this effect was reduced. These light errors aren´t visible with -fast but -fast has bad shadows and doesn´t compress the light that well (also bad for performance a very little!? - but no idea why!)

Time to complete: I had around 410.000 vds for the -sand and approximately 2 hours for the vis compiling. The -final with blocksize 512 took 18hours vis compiling(1.800.000 vds).
Nothing compared to my first attempt back in may: 4 days for 275.000 vds!! It´s very important how you build a map, and not only how large is the vds.

Crizz