Huge landscape possible?

[Corv]

I´ve looked but found no real answer to this:

Is it somehow possible to make real huge landscapes like Morrowind? If not directly - is it possible with workarounds - like automatic (fluid) teleporting to the next square - in a way the player doesnt realy notice it?

Would be important for a real RPG mod.

Thaks for the answers!

 

[dawdler]

Its not designed for it, but it should be possible. But will probably be problems (unless you plan to rewrite it in the source):
Levels will take a long time to load if you use it all. (you could use a small part of them, and have alot of these).
Enemies will probably not carry over, when you load the level you load it as a new map. Meaning, in large open areas you will have problems if you decide to suddenly load a new area.

However, I see a very simple solution:
Think Zelda (I'm thinking Ocarina of Time, as that's the only one emulated I've played )!!! It uses RPG style enviroments, yet it could easily be done with source, no problems.

So creating a map like Morrowind? I wouldnt advise it for Source. But creating a map like Zelda OOT? Hell yeah! You could do it 10x more detailed than Morrowind too! (Morrowind is very generic as it is REALLY vast... A system like this makes you focus on the areas).

It depends on what you want in the end of course, and what compromises you are willing to make.

 

[Corv]

Thanks for the detailed answer!

Well, I was modding for Morrowind some time now and liked it but the engine (scripting) is quite limited so I hoped to be able to make my mod with the source engine. Doing it the Zelda way would of course quite change the whole concept but I think its worth it.

I plan to add in a lot of Ultima and Arx Fatalis-like possibilities. Combinig things and so on. Lots of riddles. I hope its possible to make a good RPG-like interface with inventory and so on... phew.. thats going to be a hell of work...

 

[The Dark Elf]

Ok I know the rules, no talking about the beta thingy or whatever its called this week. But I noticed something in it which might be useful for you. One of the maps included is large, and I mean large. Now granted it appeared to use a few tricks such as looping back on itself a little in places to make it appear bigger, but at the same time it was still a massive map, also it had interiors aswell as exteriors and many small objects. Which makes me think perhaps the engine doesn't load anything in until its needed then does it before you see it or something. There also seems to be some kind of clipping going on (probably only noticable because I have an old card) judging by that. What you suggest could be possible to a point. Though if you want better performance it might be wiser to do as Dawdler suggests and go for a Zelda style. Or instead of having interiors within a map have them load when you walk into a door or something, help cut down on the amount of detail per map. In HL1, when you were editing that, you could move from map to map and return to find it in its previous state, with monsters and decals where they were before you left the map. So in _theory_ if you do a mix of all the suggestions so far, I think you could pull off what your trying to do.. Incidently, you might want to have a look at the spirit of half-life. I remember there was one test in that which had a seamless teleport effect, in the example given it would basically loop in a corridor so you'd go down the corridor only to appear where you originally came from with no noticable change (unless you make some decals on one wall and then you'd notice the change) Granted its for HL1 but perhaps the same rules they used to get that might apply in HL2?

Also another trick you might be able to use, is something someone suggested once about HL1 editing. scaling down the size of everything, I dunno how complicated or time consuming this could be, or how many problems it might introduce. But were it to work, you'd be around the size of a rat, so from the perspective of a player the map would be four/five times the size. Change everything else to reflect the new size and it just might work. Not sure what effect it would all have on multiplayer though, and could involve a ton of coding. Maybe ask someone in the coding section about doing that in HL1.. if its simple enough in that then it should be just as simple, maybe moreso in HL2?

Good luck anyway, would be interesting to know for sure if what your planning could be possible, might come in handy for a few of us

 

[Corv]

Yeah - the down-scaling is a good suggestion! According to the FAQ its save to scale down to 1/32 - and thats already quite small- also the maps of hl2 got MUCH bigger. Alltogther one map would be already a huge landscape - Islands could be done. So the teleport thing would only be in water - would also be some change in concept but I think that could work!!

Cant wait to get my hands on the SDK to see if its possible....

 

[The Dark Elf]

Also for that extra optimisation, consider Level of Detail (LOD). Now I don't know how far it can go, if its just various levels of geometry detail, or if you can actually replace the lowest LOD with a single poly with an image on it. Like many engines do (so its assumed Source can do it with single poly image maps, I know it can do lower geometry lod's) If you did that with all models and props (wouldn't work with actual mapping geometry as that seems to be .bsp based like before, or a variation of it) but the other stuff quite possible. The lowest LOD would be very quick to display single poly's with static images on.. viewed so far away the difference between image and geometry wouldn't be noticable, and would further increase the amount of detail you could have in each map, such as tree's for example. say 10 LOD's perhaps the last three as images only (or billboards I think the proper name is) maybe at different image resolutions aswell, 128x128, 64x64 and lastly 32x32. Then the closer LOD's would be various 3D models with different amounts of polygons, lots for the closest LOD, much fewer for the more distant one. The chance of full thick forests to stalk your pray through or to see some castle beyond, becomes more of a dream and closer to being possible, and from the view of the player they wont notice the difference, other than things move very fast with what appears to be tons of detail on screen.. Could use it for rocks and other objects. And if your doing huge islands then its going to save you a lot of headaches later on. and also mean people without top of the range systems can still play it without worries

..and it could mean you might just get an Island per map afterall.. damn HL2 is gonna be cool

 

[Corv]

You´re absolutely right - definitely a thing to take care of.
:cheers:

aehm... any new release date? ....

 

[The Dark Elf]

all I'm hearing is 2nd April 2004.

 

[Corv]

AAAHHHHHH NOOOOOOOO :x

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by Corv
AAAHHHHHH NOOOOOOOO :x

Don't worry, start planning your mod now and getting all the boring annoying bits out of the way, by the time their done you'll be about to install the game and can straight away start trying out the fun stuff. The time will fly by, before we know it it'll be April, I'll be a year closer to retirement and the forums will be silent while everyone plays the game completely forgetting about the months before

 

[Corv]

hehe - well good point. But it would be cool if I could start already.

Hmmm... I think I´ll play around with the HL1 SDK in the meantime - its said that the one for HL2 works quite similar - is that right?

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by Corv
hehe - well good point. But it would be cool if I could start already.

Hmmm... I think I´ll play around with the HL1 SDK in the meantime - its said that the one for HL2 works quite similar - is that right?

the coding side of things, i haven't a clue. the world/map side of things, if their using hammer then I imagine its similar enough just likely have way more options. As for models, I'd probably suggest leaving those alone until we know exactly whats required for them


I'm still hoping that with HL2 they'll allow the option of building maps in a proper 3D app and then sorting out the other stuff in Hammer. I don't like hammer all that much, or any of the others, I'd be much more at home building maps in XSI converting them to map files then doing the other stuff, textures, entities, traps, events and so on in hammer

 

[PvtRyan]

Scaling down is a possibily but you would need to change a lot of stuff in the physics, quite some work.
And it also brings the problem of reduced precision, HL2 physics are precise up to 1/32 of a unit (I thought a unit in HL2 was an inch, could be wrong though) and when you scale everything down to 1/32th of it's size, than the precision is reduced to 1/1 of a unit, very inaccurate.

 

[dawdler]

Originally posted by PvtRyan
Scaling down is a possibily but you would need to change a lot of stuff in the physics, quite some work.
And it also brings the problem of reduced precision, HL2 physics are precise up to 1/32 of a unit (I thought a unit in HL2 was an inch, could be wrong though) and when you scale everything down to 1/32th of it's size, than the precision is reduced to 1/1 of a unit, very inaccurate.

The precision thing would come up, but not the physics, they said in a chat (I think it was a mirc chat) that it scales automaticly.