Mapping:Mindriot hinting

Mindriots Hint tutorial

Hinting guides the compiler in portal/node creation. Why is this done? The goal is to limit how much the engine draws based on where the player is currently in the map. This is an important method used to improve FPS.

Hint brushes must touch structural brushes on all sides for hinting to work properly. (Although it is possible to pull off hinting without hint brushes touching structural brushes, it has no benefit and is not recommended because it could just as easily not work during another compile.) All brushes should be detail unless they are part of the structural hull. Think of the structural hull as the frame of a house which you never see. The detail brushes would then be the painted drywall.

What is drawn is not based on the player line of sight, but on all possible lines of sight of the node that the player is in. So it's all about what nodes each node can see and those relationships are built into the bsp. Example: The player is in a node, which I'll call the active node. Every node that the active node can see is now valid, so everything (brushes, patch meshes, entities, etc.) within those valid nodes is drawn.

I'll start with version 6 and show how blocking is not achieved with this configuration.

[Download version 6 here.]

This is the hallway with structural and detail brushes visible. It's best to do all hint work with detail brushes filtered - CTRL-D.