FlesyM writes...

See, yea... that's where I'm having trouble. I haven't even begun my first map, to be quite honest, but the idea of portalling the outdoors is daunting to say the least. I mean, on a hill-type map where would you place the portals that it would make any difference at all for someone at the top? Of coarse, if there's plenty of buildings this may not be such an issue, but for the map I have in mind there may be plenty of issues making it work the way it's supposed to.

I take it this way :
you can increase the fps of the players down hill, so do it. for those on top ... and let's pretend you don't want to change the layout ... well too bad, they'll have to live with fps drops. that's when you have to be carefull about details: in areas where portaling don't do much good, then be carefull not to put too much details there. in other words, what we're trying to do here is limit the amount of stuff drawn at once. portals works, but simply removing stuff also works

From a design perspective, you could always put treelines and caulk brushes on the hill to help with viz. For example, you could create "points of entry" near the bottom with tall tree brushes/textures, and then have offset ones halfway up in a staggered and overlapped fashion.

This would create "pockets" of areas that are open, but not to the whole area below, so long as the brushes are tall enough that you can't see from that particular vantage point. So, in effect, you are creating a "winding road" or staggered approach up the hill. From a gameplay perspective, this is not much different than SP Hill 400.....you wrap your way up around the hill, not just run straight up a blank incline. That is not very good gameplay in my opinion.

Careful design will not only make your gameplay more fun, but also better on the performance (ie-fps) of your map.

I am running into this exact same problem myself, so I am having to take the same approach, but on a smaller scale. And when you reach the summit of the hill, tree brushes block your view for the most part over the crest of the hill.....most people won't even notice....to them, it's a great hill, strategic, fun, and good fps.

Just my $0.02 worth, but I think good design can help solve alot of issues. Not always, but quite often.