The FX engine

[PBarnum]

Stoned, you cannot.... CANNOT decompile a map, then recompile and have everything be sunshine and lollipops. Does not work that way. And my MSS reference was just a lol coinciding with what Oyster said.

 

[Stoned]

Stoned, you cannot.... CANNOT decompile a map, then recompile and have everything be sunshine and lollipops. Does not work that way. And my MSS reference was just a lol coinciding with what Oyster said.

You also left out what else I said. I said ADD and CHANGE things then recompile it... :|

 

[Thothie]

You can't recompile a decompiled map. They don't work like models, only the visual planes and clipnodes are contained in the BSP, not the structural data, so all you get is a bunch of pieces of cardboard that do not a house make.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Stoned, you cannot.... CANNOT decompile a map, then recompile and have everything be sunshine and lollipops. Does not work that way. And my MSS reference was just a lol coinciding with what Oyster said.

You also left out what else I said. I said ADD and CHANGE things then recompile it... :|

I'll put it into a visual perspective:

If you decompile a map (any map) you get something that looks like this:



And if you then recompile it (even after adding stuff), it looks like this:



So that's why you can't decompile maps to add stuff and recompile them.

 

[Stoned]

Stoned, you cannot.... CANNOT decompile a map, then recompile and have everything be sunshine and lollipops. Does not work that way. And my MSS reference was just a lol coinciding with what Oyster said.

You also left out what else I said. I said ADD and CHANGE things then recompile it... :|

I'll put it into a visual perspective:

If you decompile a map (any map) you get something that looks like this:



And if you then recompile it (even after adding stuff), it looks like this:



So that's why you can't decompile maps to add stuff and recompile them.

Ok....then what about just adding some features like the skybox and lighting effects?

 

[Dridmar]

My god... did you HAVE to find a high quality turd picture

 

[PBarnum]

Stoned, please try to understand this. The only way. The only way. The only way to add/delete anything to an existing map, is to add/delete in the original source. The only benefit of decompiling a map is to understand how the original mapper made something in it.

 

[Stoned]

Alright, I understand. But I want to know is will I ever see some Spirit features in MSC?

 

[Thothie]

I doubt you'd recognize them if you did. ^_^

 

[Jelly]

Stoned, please try to understand this. The only way. The only way. The only way to add/delete anything to an existing map, is to add/delete in the original source. The only benefit of decompiling a map is to understand how the original mapper made something in it.

RipEnt?

 

[PBarnum]

The brushes would be the ones to suffer.

 

[Thothie]

Thar be limits to what you can do with ripent. Can only move/remove/duplicate entities and entity brushes and alter their properties, and tack on new point entities. Canna do nuttin to solids.

 

[Crow]

I would really really really really really really really like to see 3D skybox added in. I really would. Like, really.

 

[The Man In Black]

I think we can safely say that Crow is against the idea of 3-D skyboxes.

 

[Stoned]

It sounds like you hate the spirit of half-life stuff? That doesn't make sense to me because it has better features then the regular old gldsrc engine.

 

[Dridmar]

Stoned, you assume we can easily implement this stuff into the game. Maybe MiB doesn't quite know how to so it would be better keeping the game as is. I personally don't care if it gets upgraded or not.

 

[The Man In Black]

Maybe MiB just has a full plate at the moment and SOHL isn't on the top of my list >_>

 

[Thothie]

We're always eager to enhance the game... Been doing it for, what, over three years now? There are simply limits to what we can do and what we can borrow from the rather poorly commented SOHL code.

I would really really really really really really really like to see 3D skybox added in. I really would. Like, really.

Should point out that said 3D skyboxes aren't the kind you see in HL2. At best, they'd be a replacement for the day/night system we have now, and I suspect they'd cause issues of their own. Looking at the source, I can't for the life of me tell where the code for them is though.

 

[Gurluas]

I would also like dynamic skyboxes and simple physics though..

 

[Borya]

I'd rather see engine mapping limits removed than any sort of eye candy.

 

[Stoned]

I'd rather see engine mapping limits removed than any sort of eye candy.

I would want to see this more than 3D skybox to, I think RPGs need huge worlds to explore. But ok I understand that it might be a tough job and he could be really busy.

 

[FER]

One thing that would help MSC is a way to stop overflows by overusage of models.

 

[Thothie]

Both the mapping and model limits are engine side. SOHL ain't gonna help that, not being an engine. I don't think HLFX would either (might make things worse, actually, depending on how it gets the resources for what it does.)

The model limits are annoying, as they force us to do this crazy consolidation stuff, but that's the only work around we have at the moment. Albeit, the submodel scramble bug makes that less effective than it should be. The viewmodel scramble bug doesn't help either, and the only work around we have for that is a bit ugly.

The mapping limits, on the other hand, aren't that bad... You can make friggen huge maps, that take maybe hours to explore, provided you don't go crazy with the details or ents. Folks working under the Source engine don't seem to make maps much larger, despite the more laxed limits - largely due to the fact that it just isn't humanly practical to do so. Maps that do hit the engine limits, are usually the result of poor mapping techniques, overzealous brushes, or the mapper trying to create a design that the engine isn't designed to handle.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

How large can Half-Life maps get without causing really bad gameplay issues, Thothie? This is probably unrealistic but is it possible to merge preexisting maps into one larger map? Like, is it possible to connect Edana and Thornlands into one map?

 

[The Man In Black]

Thornlands takes up the entirety of the HL grid. It may not look like it, but it's a HUGE map.