Unsure if this should be posted in Q&A or in Suggestions, but I posted it here. I joined this server after not playing Garry's Mod for a few years and noticed something interesting; all of the maps on this server are recompiled (and have _ahg as a suffix to indicate this). Generally this seems to come with more issues than benefits in my opinion, so I'm wondering if there's something that I'm missing. As far as I can tell, the maps are edited to
I'd consider making an album noting the differences between the original maps and the edited versions in terms of what's there that shouldn't be, but there's a large amount of maps, a large amount of differences, and the recompilation affects all of the maps on the server in one way or another. If the maps are being recompiled just to add weapon and player spawns, that's a huge waste because the creator of TTT actually has a tool on the workshop specifically to help with this, and it's beyond trivial to add weapon and player spawns with it, without recompiling the map. There's a similar tool for adding prop spawns to the map as well (it's advertised as being for Prop Hunt but it will work with any gamemode).
- Add new props
- Add new weapon spawns (and potentially player spawns, but I can't say one way or the other)
- Remove offending content(?)
- Things show up when they shouldn't, such as brushes that should be hidden
- Props and some entities might be shifted from their original placement (as well as geometry, in some cases)
- Lighting throughout the map might be incorrect in some way
- Sounds might not be present from the original map (noticeable in the Al's Toy Barn map, which plays music at the spawn location in the original map but not in the recompiled version)
- Cubemaps won't be loaded properly, leading to checkerboard patterns on glossy/reflective materials and props. Note that this is not an issue with not having certain games mounted, and will happen regardless of the games mounted.
- Noticeable performance issues due to various optimizations not being carried over from the original .vmf to the recompiled version
I'd consider making an album noting the differences between the original maps and the edited versions in terms of what's there that shouldn't be, but there's a large amount of maps, a large amount of differences, and the recompilation affects all of the maps on the server in one way or another. If the maps are being recompiled just to add weapon and player spawns, that's a huge waste because the creator of TTT actually has a tool on the workshop specifically to help with this, and it's beyond trivial to add weapon and player spawns with it, without recompiling the map. There's a similar tool for adding prop spawns to the map as well (it's advertised as being for Prop Hunt but it will work with any gamemode).