HL2 Map Size
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DrDevin
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If you make a full size half life map it would be so big that it wouldent be fun. In fact it stops drawing things after a certain distance so you will never need more space unless someone does some kind of crazy map! For example your character is 32 units wide and the maps can be 32768 units wide!!!!!
edit: if you use a 3d skybox things are rendered to 16X scale so you can actually have maps 32768 X 16
edit: if you use a 3d skybox things are rendered to 16X scale so you can actually have maps 32768 X 16
ComradeBadger
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Wrong forum.
Moved.
Moved.
sabre0001
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i think one guy had the chart and the hl2 map is about 16 times the size of HL1 map - in all dimensions...Maps now are HUGE!!!
I am in the midst of building a map thats fairly big and was concerned about space - this had affected me in edits for Quake2 and Hl1...But my map is tiny in comparison with the space that is there.
Remember - if you're running out of space, you have too much of an area. it could take hours just to travel your map (and compile times!!!)
You could prop fit several single player levels inside the one "map"
I am in the midst of building a map thats fairly big and was concerned about space - this had affected me in edits for Quake2 and Hl1...But my map is tiny in comparison with the space that is there.
Remember - if you're running out of space, you have too much of an area. it could take hours just to travel your map (and compile times!!!)
You could prop fit several single player levels inside the one "map"
FictiousWill
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The engine is not designed to do large areas such as ut2k4 and battlefield, not to mention far cry.
HL2 can have medium sized areas, but it takes much fiddling with maps and horribly long compile times.
HL2 can have medium sized areas, but it takes much fiddling with maps and horribly long compile times.
PvtRyan
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Depends Will, displacement maps hardly have any compile time, outdoors combined with some indoor bits will do fine, but doing a full grid city map would be horrible. But the developers of Twilight War managed to create a 200km² map with Source.
i actually wanting to see a very large city map. i just dont know how it would work out. would it just be extremely laggy or what?
anyway, what if someone wanted to make a mod with scenes similiar to battlefield or something of that sort. DoD is too small scale for me but something like bf on the source engine would be awesome. i dont know how the whole process works though.
anyway, what if someone wanted to make a mod with scenes similiar to battlefield or something of that sort. DoD is too small scale for me but something like bf on the source engine would be awesome. i dont know how the whole process works though.
sabre0001
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large areas will probably get laggy with a lot of players, especially if the scenes are detailed...the only way to really know is to test (or ask someone that actually knows, which isnt me...sorry, this was a bit of a pointless post...)
pur3r4ge
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I'm trying to build a large ruined city for a mod that requires bigger spaces then HL2DM. Currently it's about 20,000 units by 7,000 units. Keeping compile times under control as well as performance means spending a lot of time learning how to properly use hints and architecture. You can go pretty large, but be ready to really tweak your map a lot in order to make it happen.
RoyalEF
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The space of HL2 maps has increased from 8092 cubed to 32768 cubed. Thats 16 times larger area and 64 times the volume. But I feel the expansion was done to give space to drive about it, not to fill with buildings.
The engine still has much lower limits of what can be included in a compiled BSP and limits to what the HL2 engine can dynamically show. The BSP limits did not increase by 16 or 64 fold, more like 2.
Models 400->1024
planes 32767->65536
vertexes 65536->65536 **no change**
nodes 32767->65536
texinfos 32767->12288
faces 65535-65536
leaves 8192->65536
surfedges 512000->512000 **no change**
edges 256000->256000 **no change**
I think the big leaves increase is to handle wide open areas, and I'm betting it assumes you clean things up to include large leaves(a leaf is a realtively simple, empty 3d airspace).
There is no CLIPNODES any more in the fullness chart. For every large complex map I did this was the first thing that was exhausted. Followed by leaves, planes, and models. Planes has doubled so I'd say it is fair to say the largest HL1 map could be twice as complex before you might run out of something. Mind you most HL1 maps did not exhaust HL1 fullness. I had two that did and they were very large with lots of varied rooms. Both were far too big for 32 players--you had to look for others to fight.
I did find the HL2 engine will only show 32768 vertexes from any POV, if during play your map exceeds this, HL2 will crash. I see this daily right now cause a fast vis doesn't hide enough on a map I'm practicing with.
King's House (inside, left side of entryway)
King's House (inside, high up)
What I haven't figured out is the impact of props vs. brushes for engine capacity/speed and I've done nothing with displacement yet. Without a doubt HL2, like HL1 cannot handle clear open areas, or buildings with lots of windows. You still need to VIS off areas or the engine will be overwhelmed and play will suck. This was evident during HL2 play--winding canyons, tunnels, twisting around to cut off view of one area to the other.
I have noticed that there is, what I can only term, a lighting bug. When the player steps into a patch of light (light_environment shining through a window/door) all func_details the player is looking at become illuminated by the patch of light he is standing in. So if you stand in a light patch in the middle of a dark room, suddenly all the func_details fixed in the dark parts of the room start to glow with a much brighter light on them. That's just not right. MY weapon/carried prop should receive that lighting boost, but nothing else.
The engine still has much lower limits of what can be included in a compiled BSP and limits to what the HL2 engine can dynamically show. The BSP limits did not increase by 16 or 64 fold, more like 2.
Models 400->1024
planes 32767->65536
vertexes 65536->65536 **no change**
nodes 32767->65536
texinfos 32767->12288
faces 65535-65536
leaves 8192->65536
surfedges 512000->512000 **no change**
edges 256000->256000 **no change**
I think the big leaves increase is to handle wide open areas, and I'm betting it assumes you clean things up to include large leaves(a leaf is a realtively simple, empty 3d airspace).
There is no CLIPNODES any more in the fullness chart. For every large complex map I did this was the first thing that was exhausted. Followed by leaves, planes, and models. Planes has doubled so I'd say it is fair to say the largest HL1 map could be twice as complex before you might run out of something. Mind you most HL1 maps did not exhaust HL1 fullness. I had two that did and they were very large with lots of varied rooms. Both were far too big for 32 players--you had to look for others to fight.
I did find the HL2 engine will only show 32768 vertexes from any POV, if during play your map exceeds this, HL2 will crash. I see this daily right now cause a fast vis doesn't hide enough on a map I'm practicing with.
King's House (inside, left side of entryway)
King's House (inside, high up)
What I haven't figured out is the impact of props vs. brushes for engine capacity/speed and I've done nothing with displacement yet. Without a doubt HL2, like HL1 cannot handle clear open areas, or buildings with lots of windows. You still need to VIS off areas or the engine will be overwhelmed and play will suck. This was evident during HL2 play--winding canyons, tunnels, twisting around to cut off view of one area to the other.
I have noticed that there is, what I can only term, a lighting bug. When the player steps into a patch of light (light_environment shining through a window/door) all func_details the player is looking at become illuminated by the patch of light he is standing in. So if you stand in a light patch in the middle of a dark room, suddenly all the func_details fixed in the dark parts of the room start to glow with a much brighter light on them. That's just not right. MY weapon/carried prop should receive that lighting boost, but nothing else.
PvtRyan
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Royal, I doubt you run into brush limits as quickly as in HL1, because what you did in those screenshots, would work many times better if you had made custom meshes for all the archs and windows and used them as prop_static. You didn't have that oppurtunity in HL1.
RoyalEF
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That's my assumption at this point. However I have no clue what load converting them generates or what limits those objects have. I'm basically working out architecture and proportion. I will then tackle learning to create models and meshes and displacements for appropriate items. It will be interesting to see how far I can take the map by replacing basic brush architecture with the new features.
