So yeah, I had this huge list of changes I was gonna make.

Most of it's done. All that's left are to add a few teleporters, fix some texturing and minor bugs, and then just start adding random shit until I run out of brushes again. I reworked the lighting system in the PD tunnels. That alone freed up a few hundred brushes.

Some tunneling was removed for normal tunnels.

As far as the main issues go, the biggest "Fuck No" responses were for small apartments and gang bases. I guess the medium size housing is actually decent according to survey responses. So yeah, I will be adding some more small sized apartments, like plenty more. I will also add some mansions I guess. Some complaints were that the buildings were a little blocky. Sorry guys, but I can't do much about that if I'm going to add more apartments. I know it causes the map to lack some of the artistic style, which I am trying to give the map some of, but please understand that people want stuff like more apartments, more of this, more of that, etc. As of now, the real bottleneck is brushes. I am at 7748 out of 8192 brushes, so 444 remain. Entdata is also high, but not that much higher than it was in the currently active map version.

Once the above stuff is done, then I will send off some pictures to a friend of mine. I'll see if she'd be willing to maybe draw over those pictures some suggestions to make it look better, which I could then implement in Hammer editor. Just remember guys, Source Engine is a piece of shit with many unnecessary limitations that I can't help, so I'm doing the best with what I have. I will put a decent amount of detail into the mansions because everyone wants the mansions to be nice, so with the new small apartments I'm gonna add, those buildings are going to be very very simple. People want some artistic detail, more apartments and gang bases, etc, so it's all about balancing the remainder of my "budget" across those features based on a large number of variables that I must consider.

Below the quote, every line is the answer to the adjacent line of your list of q's.

Koala wrote:

Are 'brushes' saved by chucking half the unused rooms at the PD?
Resources saved by reducing the PD weapons?
Resources saved by removing a lot of suit machines?
Chuck a bogload of annoying doors - like the bank ones ?
Did you remember the gap under the door of the big house atop the dock houses?
Did you remember the shoot-thru doorframes and windows at same house?
Did you remember the shoot-thru doorframes at the Luxury Apts?
Would reducing the number of slit windows adjacent to VIP apt doors help?
Reduce the number of double doors? [bunker, vip, underwater.. etc]
Can you make floors and ceilings out of the same 'materials' as walls [they behave differently with some weapons it seems].
Did you remember the non-locking problem at door from sewer tunnel to PD Dock?
There is/was a problem with a small door in the PD garage [furthest from PD].
Spiral apts door opens outwards.
Spiral apts rooms and inner doors far too bright.
Ramps are lagy/glitchy/staccato whatever.
Auto-closing door for VIP banker and NPC [get rid of one door]?
Autoclosing door for vip teleport?
Can you make a mirror so that the players can see how cute they look in their purchased skins?

Shout when you want to do a [longish] test at another server. Like last time, I am offering to spend ages if needed.

This ents topic worries me - If the ents are crashing the server [and various people , like Syle say they are] then please address that. Maybe that ref BobV posted will help. Maybe realistic prop limits will help. And maybe that bit of coding to only load props associated with ingame players would help - but the time frame for that?
Please do not underestimate the value many players put on being able to fiddle the props in their houses. It is a big part of the game for some of the players.
I have heard you explain that there are ents and there are ents :-), but if chucking the bathroom decor etc at various apts affects the results then lets go for a minimilistic map.

-Yes, but negligible.
-Yes, but negligible.
-Yes, but negligible.
-Yes, but negligible.
-Yes, fixed.
-Yes, fixed.
-Yes, fixed.
-Yes, but negligible.
-Yes, but negligible.
-Some textures are considered wooden, plastic, plaster, etc. by source engine. Hence the different bullet effect.
-Yes, fixed
-Small doors in PD garages no longer allow rebels to open them.
-Door opening outwards. Unknown cause. Not significant enough to investigate further.
-Brightness reduced greatly.
-Don't know which ramps you are referencing.
-It's supposed to close itself as well as lock itself. This is added protection from non-vip invaders.
-Same as above line.
-Mirrors can be made, but will not reflect the player. It will reflect other players, and yourself if you are in 3rd person mode, but not yourself if you are in first person mode. Therefore adding mirrors for this reason is pointless.

Entdata isn't much of an issue as long as you don't go above the 250% or so mark. The real enemy is the actual number of edicts. Of course if I can actually figure out how to write a metamod plugin then I can fix the issue of the engine not using the lowest unused index which will make this problem disappear overnight.

Yes.

Ramps can sometimes be iffy. The movement is only weird on the ramps themselves. Not in the actual apartments.

I'd have used stairs, but........ brush limits.

Seriously, Valve thought a 16-bit short would work for the brush face ids. They also thought randomly assigning entity ids rather than the lowest null index. They thought a max index of 2047 for entity indices in an engine that crashes itself by randomly assigning an out of bounds index. They thought 2048 brushes would be enough for map makers to design a detailed map/work of art.

Ffs, nothing about Valve and their ideas for Source Engine makes any goddamn sense.

So, since I received a lot of low ratings for number of apartments on my map (namely the small ones), I would like to post a count of the number of apartments currently on my map.

Small Apartments: 58
Medium Apartments: 25
Large Apartments: 21
Gang Bases (REALLY large Apartments): 8
VIP Apartments: 12
Shops: 6 + 2 tables for vendor NPCs

The only type of property that is REALLY lacking are gang bases and VIP apartments. Since VIPs can choose standard apartments when all of the allocated VIP ones are taken, then I will be focusing the remainder of the resources into bases and secrets, and decoration.

Dane Vogel wrote:

Downsize the size of shops that don't display items.. IE: medical supplies and shit like that. The only store that should be large should be the furniture store so it can display the items.

this might save space..

It's not space I'm tight on. It's the number of brushes and brush sides and t-junctions (creating func_detail is a HUGE part of optimization, but it creates what are called t-junctions). As far as brushes and brushfaces go, it doesn't matter what size they are. Each one counts as one, and that's it. That is, unless you make the brushes insanely huge to the point that vbsp auto splits the larger brushes into smaller ones, but we're talking much larger than what exists on my map.

Yes I know I made the map a night time map. Just experimenting with different ambient light values. I'm going to release a day and night version of the map.