Large maps

[[Dragoon]]

Would it be at all possible to create large, seamless maps? So far the only possibility I've come up with is cutting it into smaller pieces, and continually loading the next segment of the map as you come into visual range of the edge of the map segment you're on, but I'm not sure if this is possible with the Source engine.

If it is possible, how hard would it be to do it without any noticable loading?

 

[sabre0001]

well i think you can create a map thats 64x larger than HL maps but this will rquire a LONG compile time for you and a hug map to download by the end of it...Also will probably run slower as you will need to optimise all of it very very well...

 

[The Dark Elf]

Would it be at all possible to create large, seamless maps? So far the only possibility I've come up with is cutting it into smaller pieces, and continually loading the next segment of the map as you come into visual range of the edge of the map segment you're on, but I'm not sure if this is possible with the Source engine.

If it is possible, how hard would it be to do it without any noticable loading?

stick to the smaller more details sections that load the next one. It's how the engine was made to deal with it.

Each map can have a maximum number of sprites, props, npc's, brushes, displacement maps. The larger the map, the sparser its going to look.. You can according to Gabe make them 100+ kilometers, but its gonna be very empty, not only that but the physics wont be as accurate neither.

If you do smaller sections, you've less space to fill, so you can put more detail into it.

If you want seamless seamless maps that are very large. Your better off either using the torque engine, or the morrowind engine, or writing your own. That way you can code special features in for loading things on the fly before you see them. You could do that with Source too, if you bought a licence for it so you could play with the source code itself.

In source you can still fake it easily, the 3dskybox makes it even easier now to appear like a long continuous map, except for the loading times per map which are likely gonna take ages for quite sometime.