Mattn:
I removed approximately 1/3 of my lights. I got negligible size difference in the .bsp. Which ones did you pull?
I've combined some brushes and the like, I still need to do the stairway but there were a few wall pieces that I cleaned up, as well as the repeating brushes. Think I knocked off about 100kb with these modifications (lights and brush combination).
For the above brush that you're showing with the alpha test, how would you control it to 'sit' on the stairs between the railing and the stairway (only way I can see it looking clean would be to overlap)? Does the transparency allow small shots to fly between the rails, or is it a solid brush to the universe? I'm not exactly looking forward to stripping out my poor railed stairway. I worked so hard on that. XD Was the centerpiece of this map. Oh well, it'll never be seen when the map doesn't work.
I'm still working on it, but this information would help. Thanks in advance.
[EDIT:]
WOOT... finally got this puppy to function... apparently the lighting really did a number on it. Needs some tweaks and SHOULD be good to go. (WITH stairway! muahahahaha!)
Xav: I ran into the same problem with stacked stairways. I think the problem is in how the stepon brush operates. It can't handle the two levels of stepping, and you can't split the brush because you need it to be able to cover the head of the unit below. I think I might be able to make it work though by angling the top of the lower brush to go against the bottom of the upper brush, I'll try it out and let you know.
Up for public consumption once I finish off the tweaks and final walkthroughs.