I'm sure most of you know what Roombounds are and they definitely help optimize a cell, but my God are they the most frustrating thing I've played with (except Papyrus, but I'm not much of a scripter). If the cell your using is an easy square, by square room layout they may not be bad, but anything outside an easy layout like that can cause problems.

The house mod I've been working on for sometime now is using the interior of a wooden ship (not giving much away, its based off of the Red Wave ship, but the interior was recreated using different set pieces since Red Wave was actually just one huge ugly mesh). This creates a lot of problems for me because ships aren't just a room, by room interior. I have some rooms that retreat past the walls of another room (so interlocking rooms were there not simply rectangles, think Tetris). When I go to create roombounds if I don't overlap the bounds then the floors/walls/roofing won't appear, but if I overlap them it creates other disappearing problems. Small roombounds caused to many issues so I tried making larger roombounds to cover more area, but again I run into problems with certain pieces disappearing. Ontop of that, since they are larger, there is less optimization and more lag.

Does anyone have any tips/tricks for Roombounds? I can't release my mod if walls are just disappearing for the sake of performance, but I can't release it with bad performance either. I've tried a lot of different shapes to get these roombounds to work, but they simply refuse to cooperate. The only solutions I have are: 1. Redo the interior so that its easier to optimize (but this will add lots of extra work to the project), or 2. move the rooms into different locations of the cell and simply link them through teleporting doors (loads will be instant, but it still messes with the flow of everything). I'm leaning towards option 2 as of right now, but I would really rather not have to do that.

I wish I had tips for roombounds. They annoy the fire out of me too. I feel your pain.

Roombounds aren't hard, for one if large object are disappearing it's likely their center or pivot point is outside the bound. You can also join two bounds together to get a odd shape bound (Like T or L shapes). Make sure all bounds are surface to surface the pear into each other. And don't move bound or portals after your linked them to another bound as that creates errors.

Roombounds are a hell of a lot easier then how the Valve Source SDK handles it.

Wait... How do you merge two bounds together. That will make things soo much easier.

Just because your experience with roombounds may be different from mine does not mean they aren't difficult. You have yet to see the interior of what I'm working with, so its hard for you to say what is/isn't hard. I'm gonna take a look at them again and try some new stuff, but they are not easy. I'm gonna need to mess with my preferences too because they don't allow for fine tune moving of my roombounds (they try to lock in, but not with each other).

I only thing I know of and what I think he's referring to is the button three squares to the right of the P in the box (portal button). Its two diagonal boxes and says "Join rooms" or something when you hold your cursor over it. They don't really merge together either, there still separate blue squares.

You can link two or more Bounds to act as one room to fillout a large or odd shaped room you do this by selecting the bounds and click the Join Rooms (The two cubes with a redline connecting them) button.

I have not solution, let me admit that. I do however have a problem and wonder if roombounds might be the problem.

As basis for an interior I use the bards guild interior cell I've added a small corridor and an elevator (as door to new cell). when moving from the room to the corridor I see blank space, only when I pass where the wall was I see the new corridor, whenl looking the other way I only see part of the interior of the bards guild.
I've tried with and without a door in place. I can just walk through it and I can activate the door onthe ootherside even if I just see that brownish wall of nothingness.

I '' ve not yet messed roombounds but could that be the problem? I know one of 2 of the CK buttons deal with roombounds and linking them. WHat do you need to do exactly?

Well as I said I know nothing about it, but I DO know there is a button with 2 rectangles and a line between them that implies it would do something of the sort.

I assume you have the Bard interior in one bound and the hall in another with the door as the joining surface.
1) Make sure they'er lined up and don't overlap (snap-to-grib should stop this).
2) If you have a portal on the door surface once connected to two bound you can't move it, unlink it and relink to the bounds to fix.
3) You could join rooms rather then use a portal to have the game view it as one room and draw both if the player is in one or the other.
4) Also make sure the player cam can't leave the bounded area by rubbing walls, so seal in all of the walls.

Thanks, that should make room bounds much easier to work with.