Dynamic Terrain ?

[BabyHeadCrab]

Half-Life can do dynamic terrain..

 

[The Dark Elf]

I don't think terrain is the same kind of geometry as regular brushes.
And besides, if it were possible, the builiding/wall needs to have a high tesselation for any displacement to look nice. Which will just add to the w_poly count. And it would also seriously screw up the lightmaps, which isn't a real problem on terrain.

Source, like Quake, Halflife and others of that particular kind are based on brushes, .bsp all id's fault

Anyone who's mapped for HL1 knows what I'm on about. Because its basically just the same as before but with new features added to it, such as fog, 3dskybox, realtime shadows for a select type of objects. But the map is still brush based. It's a brush based engine, Valve "wrote" the Source engine to handle brushes (for backwards compatibility) and also allow the use of polygon based props that you could add to a map. Like some other engines have done since and before.

Sure, you could use all polygons. But that would limit you heavily, as polygons will be entities of a sort. And you wont be able to apply other entities to them like you can with brushes. Brushes remain as awkward and limiting as they've always been. It's the nature of brushes. Granted, they were fine in the past because they were the best choice on older machines that had no real help for pushing polygons around. But now their not needed.

So you could make a map entirely out of polygon objects and not use any brushes. But in Source, if you stood infront of a wall that had 20 NPC's behind it. The Engine would still see those, even if you yourself couldn't.

So you could build a terrain entirely of polygons and not use brushes. But that's a heck of a lot of polys to mess around with for the engine, without any of the optimised features of Brushes.

Granted, Valve may have fixed that, and now polygons block whats behind them in Source. But so far I haven't heard anything saying this is the case. Which is a shame, other engines don't have a problem with it. Valve simply want to make it backward compatible for loads of old mods and their old games, so they can quickly stick them in the new engine and call it $35.99

Is this a bad thing?

From a business point of view no, its free money

From the mod maker's point of view yes, ok, so you'll be able to make similar mods to how HL2 looks. But anything really different. Look for another engine to mod, or write your own.

As for displacement. I'm pretty sure Valve have already said this. It'll be subdivided brushes. But don't expect anything too fancy. The nature of brushes heavily limits the kind of deformations you'll be able to do with them. And there's bound to be some annoying limitation to it even then. I'm sure though there are some people who will do great things with it. I just think many will be dissapointed. Mostly those who've never mapped before. Veterans from HL1 will be aware of what can't be done with brushes, so will be expecting something not all that amazing from the new features in Source where brushes are concerned.

No height maps to help build your terrain like you might have in Morrowind, Unreal, FarCry. Unless you use a Max or XSI plugin to convert a heightmap into brush form (If Valve include something like this I don't know, but you can get older plugins for Max that basically does this and converts to a regular bare .map format, its not great but its better than trying to use Hammer for complex geometry). But then there will still be those limits imposed on brushes themselves. So even if you make a great looking object in your favorite modeling app, be aware that converting it to brushes will very likely change how it looks in not so plesant ways. That goes more for those who've never done it before, those who have, should have come up against the problems many times. The only fix to that is to rewrite brushes from the ground up or scrap them altogether and make a polygon based, optmised engine.

The terrain will be the same as buildings. It's all just brushes. In Source your polygons are very likely only used for props, NPC's, weapons, objects. This will help you get around some things. By carefully matching up a polygon object to a brush based part of the map, you'll be able to give the impression its all one object, when infact its made up of brushes and props.

General rule of thumb is you'll use brushes for the large stuff, polygon objects for the small stuff. 3Dskybox is different, you'll probably be able to get by without problems by using polygon objects in that for terrain n stuff. But for the actual playable map. It's brushes im afraid.

It's not all bad though. Just don't expect anything amazing from it, and always bare in mind that Valve's maps will probably contain plenty of smoke and mirrors to make things look right. For that reason, it would be interesting from a learning point of view if Valve would release their maps in an open format for people to play around and look to see how things were done, let people learn the tricks Valve used to make some particular effect work, best way to learn IMO when your starting out.

 

[Crusader]

Although all the above post is technically correct, what with the convex brushes system, that is already a limiter on deformity etc.

However, I am not quite so pessimistic

There are not really too many better systems, if you're not trying to make a fully destructable environment, so even though this is almost an impossibility, its still a good decision by Valve to use this system.

I also think that if people set out with a goal in Source, almost always they will be able to achieve it if it is not a ridiculous goal.

Nobody though things like NS, or even Half-Life rally were possible when HL 1 was released, and the Source engine has even MORE potential than that.

Soo, yeah, some people who have truly ridiculous ideas about what a computer game can do will be disappointed, but the rest of humanity should prepare to amazed.

I go crazy just thinking about the realism of games like DoD 2 and the possibilities, seeing grimaces of pain on people's faces, tanks rolling down the street. Pushing barrels down a flight of stairs to stop a pursuing enemy. Throwing a grenade down there at the hapless nazi, and finally seeing the barrels fly everywhere as the thing detonates.

Oh yes, Source is going to make gaming interesting again, for hopefully the next five years (or more if they really do continue updating it).

Wow, I just got myself all hyped again.

Edit: Btw, the new hammer has a terrain manipulation feature, so you CAN make terrain like Far-Cry etc. You just grab pieces of the ground with a little hand, and push and pull it around, rather than the old way of having to manipulate each vertex.

There was also a tool to create brush based terrain from a height-map in the original Half-Life engine, which worked well, although the limitations of the engine itself made it not particularly useful.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Although all the above post is technically correct, what with the convex brushes system, that is already a limiter on deformity etc.

However, I am not quite so pessimistic

There are not really too many better systems, if you're not trying to make a fully destructable environment, so even though this is almost an impossibility, its still a good decision by Valve to use this system.

I also think that if people set out with a goal in Source, almost always they will be able to achieve it if it is not a ridiculous goal.

Nobody though things like NS, or even Half-Life rally were possible when HL 1 was released, and the Source engine has even MORE potential than that.

Soo, yeah, some people who have truly ridiculous ideas about what a computer game can do will be disappointed, but the rest of humanity should prepare to amazed.

I go crazy just thinking about the realism of games like DoD 2 and the possibilities, seeing grimaces of pain on people's faces, tanks rolling down the street. Pushing barrels down a flight of stairs to stop a pursuing enemy. Throwing a grenade down there at the hapless nazi, and finally seeing the barrels fly everywhere as the thing detonates.

Oh yes, Source is going to make gaming interesting again, for hopefully the next five years (or more if they really do continue updating it).

Wow, I just got myself all hyped again.

Edit: Btw, the new hammer has a terrain manipulation feature, so you CAN make terrain like Far-Cry etc. You just grab pieces of the ground with a little hand, and push and pull it around, rather than the old way of having to manipulate each vertex.

Oh I'm always pessimistic, it means if I'm proven wrong its a great feeling, or if I'm proven right I've no hopes to dash :E


... well it makes sense to me so

 

[Crusader]

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Usually I take that line, too. But watching other people be pessimistic makes me sad..

 

[ShinRa]

So basically .bsp is shit? There's nothing good about .bsp or brushes? Why would valve stay with .bsp's if they were trying to create an amazing engine?

 

[kaf11]

I'd rather have developers worry about the actual story, not about the possibility of little jonny blowing a hole in a wall then going for a wander miles in the wrong direction.

thats exactly how i feel. even if source can allow us to blow holes "just like red faction" i dont think it would fit into the way valve tells a story like no other gaming company can. anything we as players do is planned and strategised by them. being able to blow stuff up is fun (and looks to be possible to some extent) it certainly dosent make the game instantly better. just go and play red faction or red faction 2 and youll see what i mean. ill take HL1 over those anyday.

 

[Wildhound]

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Usually I take that line, too. But watching other people be pessimistic makes me sad..

LoL, that's exactly the way I feel.

 

[marksmanHL2 :)]

So basically .bsp is shit? There's nothing good about .bsp or brushes? Why would valve stay with .bsp's if they were trying to create an amazing engine?

Erm... No!


BSP is a good system. It allows big performance gains because things such as lighting effects and shadows are just shown in the game world but not actually calculated at the time.


If source wasnt BSP based I would guess the map sizes would have to be cut considerably for a start.

 

[Sprafa]

Did Fenric just said that Source is not flexible?

I'm confused.....

 

[marksmanHL2 :)]

Heh, source is different to most engines.


Lets just leave it as that eh!

 

[Rupertvdb]

god i'm a cock but here it is....you said 'saying their right'...should have been they're....*cringes awaiting deserved wrath of pedantic police*

I never said whether they were right or wrong just said you shouldn't come down so hard on minions.

That said i think the limitations you have pointed out with brushes aren't going to be as significant as you say, people forget that Valve have to use the software themselves to make the game work. This would suggest they would make it as useful and maleable as possible.

On top of that cynicism at their money grabbing ways is all very well but i get the impression that Valve do care about other things than just money, i wouldn't be bothered if that was all they cared about as they long as the game made it out, but that's what i see.

 

[The Dark Elf]

god i'm a cock but here it is....you said 'saying their right'...should have been they're....*cringes awaiting deserved wrath of pedantic police*

I never said whether they were right or wrong just said you shouldn't come down so hard on minions.

That said i think the limitations you have pointed out with brushes aren't going to be as significant as you say, people forget that Valve have to use the software themselves to make the game work. This would suggest they would make it as useful and maleable as possible.

On top of that cynicism at their money grabbing ways is all very well but i get the impression that Valve do care about other things than just money, i wouldn't be bothered if that was all they cared about as they long as the game made it out, but that's what i see.

Don't push it Rupert, or I'll be forced to have you renamed as Rupret the monkey boy* :E


*for anyone who doesn't "get" that, watch Dirty Rotton Scoundrels, great film