Will combining 70 small brushed into one massive one help at all?

reducing the number of brushes is always good, but you'll still have poly/node count to worry about as far as framerates go. its a good thing to do where you can because it simplifies the geometry so youre less likely to get bsp errors (all else being equal).

Actually, in some cases, especially with really complicated brushes, doing what you just did *can* be the source of BSP errors. Doing what you said is great for decorations and things like that, but if you did proper intersection/deintersection on the original brushes (and it plays fine in the level), I'm tempted to give you the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I know what you mean though...it's nice to tidy things up like you mentioned, and I do it on occasion...just make sure you fully test the map afterwards and save a copy with the brushes still intact so you can revert back to it if needed.

Jeff

Yes, if you can do that and get no adverse side effects, then by all means, conglomerate as many brushes as you can. Just remember to do two things:

1) Make sure you're done with basic editing (i.e. if you combine a room with comlumns into one brush, you'll have a very difficult time moving the columns around afterward since they won't be individual brushes anymore).

2) Test your level thoroughly afterwards to make sure you don't have any probs...and keep as many backups as possible, so if you ever have to revert back for an unexpected reason, you won't lose too much work. I always start my levels off with a unique name like Test001.unr, and increment the counter by one digit after every couple of hours I invest in the level.

Jeff

I've mused muchly on this.
On one hand, DOM-Sesmar uses an hugely complex brush for the building around the Ankh control points. DM-Morpheus makes each tower out of a single complex semi-solid. Try opening the level, it's very strange!
On the other, in DM-Curse][, the u-turn bit you pass on your left when you're going from the big lift to the SB, that's made from 4 sub. brushes, where 3 or even less would have done. But then CliffyB uses complex semisolids for the torch holders, and for the corners of the main corridor.

It's certainly nice to know it seems to make a difference, and good news for my map (600 brushes, and I havent yet made the red base...).


PS add a number to the counter after every couple of hours? sheesh, either I'm paranoid, a pessimist, or you've had far fewer bad experiences with computers that I have! I change the number after 30 mins or so, and save every minute or so in between!
Nothing makes you wary like 3 hours of page layout on Quark XPress and somebody catches the plug with their leg... wail!