Can the Source engine do REALLY BIG battles?

[GetCool]

One of the coolest parts of the game was toward the end when you participate in the all-out battles between the Overwatch and the Resistance. Seeing all your followers fight alongside you gave the game a lot of atmosphere, and the big battles made it feel like big events were actually happening.

But could the battles have been made even bigger? I mean, could this engine do HUGE battles, with armies of troops fighting? Of course, the more NPCs on a given map, the more CPU horsepower it will chew up, so I'm not talking impossible amounts of troops. But the game's big battles seemed like they could have been even bigger. How cool would it be for you to lead an army into battle?

 

[red_LED]

Using the spawn npc cheat, I've created my own armies of citizens (20+) vs armies of Combine soldiers (20+). I've even had them fight antlions and manhacks and other npcs. Its certainly possible, but because the ai is really nice and the models are so detailed, it kills your frames and anhiliates your CPU. I can create approx. 10 new npcs on screen without a very noticeable drop in frames, but when you get to 15 people... then 20... then 40, your left with about 5-10 FPS. The specs for my comp are in my sig if anyones interested.

So, yes, huge battles are possible. But not very reasonable. Valve must pay respect to those with slower systems, and I consider my system average for the all-around gamer out there. You would need probably a 3.4-3.6ghz machine (intel at least, probably around 3ghz AMD), 1 gig of Ram minimum, and one of the newer video cards such as the nvidia 6800gt/ultra or a X800pro/XT (must have 256 ram!) That would be a good requirement for battle scenes of like 30+ people, considering theyre all rendered to their fullest extent and ai capabilities.

Unfortunately, the average person would need these sorts of requirements before Valve or any other company produces a battle like this, at least on the SOURCE engine. I wouldnt tap your hopes thinking Valve will put a battle scene like this in one of the upcoming expansions :hmph:

 

[WhiteZero]

Indeed, Source could probably handle almost any size of battle, the thing is that most players PC's could not.