(Was originaly meant as a reply to the Pro's anc Con's of DoomIII vs Half-Life 2, but it's scope grew beyond what I expected.)
Attention non mappers of the Half-Life engine! Stop complaining about water not falling out of a box when you shoot it. This is not true, the fact is that this effect is up to the level designer. Half-Life 1 had areas where water leaked out of broken pipes and it looks just as real as the surrounding water. Just because the physics engine can't emulate the effect real time, doesnt mean mappers cant 'script' the event.
Since you will undoubtedly have very very few instances where one would find himself with a wooden crate filled with water, of the single time a mapper actualy does make one, the burden of scripting the water effect would be well worth the effort, since he would only have to do it once. Infact, once the level designer created the effect, he could create a prefab of the entire sequence for later use. And guess what? The average player can't tell the difference between scripted special effects and physicaly emulated ones unless he was specificaly saving, triggering the effect, then reloading and trying it again, inspecting every aspect of it. Which is a complete waste of time, when they should be trying to complete the level designers creation as intended rather than debug it.
If anyone here remembers my HL2_TechDemo.bsp map I released on PlanetHalf-Life.com a while ago, you'd notice how well I scripted events that emulated physics seen in Half-Life 2 using the HL1 engine. Now imagine (besides all the already existing havok physics) what I could emulate with an engine as powerful and dynamic as Source! To think, one day I would be mocking Half-Life 3 with intuitive scripting work in a Source map.
The potential of Half-Life 1 just recently met its maximum. It took 5 years for modders to push Half-Life 1 to its limits (And even still theres more that can be done). I've made a 14 meg map that goes beyond what HL1 supports by custom and complex compiler settings myself. Half-Life 2 is not even out yet, and it blows away Half-Life 1. The future looks bright for the HL community and its developers. Many challenges, less annoying limits. Are you ready? Good, now end the box and water complaints. (Please???
)
Attention non mappers of the Half-Life engine! Stop complaining about water not falling out of a box when you shoot it. This is not true, the fact is that this effect is up to the level designer. Half-Life 1 had areas where water leaked out of broken pipes and it looks just as real as the surrounding water. Just because the physics engine can't emulate the effect real time, doesnt mean mappers cant 'script' the event.
Since you will undoubtedly have very very few instances where one would find himself with a wooden crate filled with water, of the single time a mapper actualy does make one, the burden of scripting the water effect would be well worth the effort, since he would only have to do it once. Infact, once the level designer created the effect, he could create a prefab of the entire sequence for later use. And guess what? The average player can't tell the difference between scripted special effects and physicaly emulated ones unless he was specificaly saving, triggering the effect, then reloading and trying it again, inspecting every aspect of it. Which is a complete waste of time, when they should be trying to complete the level designers creation as intended rather than debug it.
If anyone here remembers my HL2_TechDemo.bsp map I released on PlanetHalf-Life.com a while ago, you'd notice how well I scripted events that emulated physics seen in Half-Life 2 using the HL1 engine. Now imagine (besides all the already existing havok physics) what I could emulate with an engine as powerful and dynamic as Source! To think, one day I would be mocking Half-Life 3 with intuitive scripting work in a Source map.
The potential of Half-Life 1 just recently met its maximum. It took 5 years for modders to push Half-Life 1 to its limits (And even still theres more that can be done). I've made a 14 meg map that goes beyond what HL1 supports by custom and complex compiler settings myself. Half-Life 2 is not even out yet, and it blows away Half-Life 1. The future looks bright for the HL community and its developers. Many challenges, less annoying limits. Are you ready? Good, now end the box and water complaints. (Please???
)
