Hmm, A Thing To Ponder...
Cyborgguineapig
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3233Members
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3233Members
Yes we already know that HL2 will rock but the major question, no...CONCERN of mine is if HL2 will implement nice terrain features. From what I've heard and seen it looks like HL2 still lacks large outside terrains/ as in rolling hills, grassy plains, mountains. We cannot know for sure but if HL2 uses just an advanced version of Hammer then I am skeptical wither or not terrain can be created without drawbacks all the way back since HL1.
Supposedly their will be vehicles in HL2 with much more advanced coding to make it feel as if your actually driving a vehicle and not a square cube brush like HL1 vehicles tend to feel like. If so, how can these supposed vehicles be used to thier full potential without a large environment to move freely about.
If you look at the City-17 preview map you will notice that the fact of the matter is, the map isn't really that big. the map is of-course very detailed and nicely built to achieve a nice city look but its not truly that big, therefore I wonder if R_speeds are still a leading conflict in HL2 map building and still an issue with the newer engine. If so that kinda sucks.
just imagine the possibilities if 1 square kilometer terrains were possible in HL2. Engines like Serious Sam can support very large environments and in my experience, large environment capabilities lead to some awesome game-play. Also wouldn't it be great if some coding eliminated the whole sky brush effect to make what in HL1 engine a " fake" sky into a real outdoor environment? No painting a brush with a texture to fake a sky but make real outdoor lighting, just a more advanced skybox in that matter. Just think, No more Clip/skybrush issues with lerks as maps would have the capabilities to make the sky surrounding the level thousands of units high without the loss of framerate/render speeds.
There are questions and I guess we just have to wait and see what HL2 has in store when we get our hands on it...
Your opinions please surrounding HL2 and outdoor environment implementation...
PS: also, you would think that Valve would release some more SKA goodies and stuff as it wouldn't just suddenly let the mod community down by suddenly screwing the community over with no release of code. You'd also think they would be more than generous with this as the mod community alone is what makes HL breath. But again, we just have to see.
Supposedly their will be vehicles in HL2 with much more advanced coding to make it feel as if your actually driving a vehicle and not a square cube brush like HL1 vehicles tend to feel like. If so, how can these supposed vehicles be used to thier full potential without a large environment to move freely about.
If you look at the City-17 preview map you will notice that the fact of the matter is, the map isn't really that big. the map is of-course very detailed and nicely built to achieve a nice city look but its not truly that big, therefore I wonder if R_speeds are still a leading conflict in HL2 map building and still an issue with the newer engine. If so that kinda sucks.
just imagine the possibilities if 1 square kilometer terrains were possible in HL2. Engines like Serious Sam can support very large environments and in my experience, large environment capabilities lead to some awesome game-play. Also wouldn't it be great if some coding eliminated the whole sky brush effect to make what in HL1 engine a " fake" sky into a real outdoor environment? No painting a brush with a texture to fake a sky but make real outdoor lighting, just a more advanced skybox in that matter. Just think, No more Clip/skybrush issues with lerks as maps would have the capabilities to make the sky surrounding the level thousands of units high without the loss of framerate/render speeds.
There are questions and I guess we just have to wait and see what HL2 has in store when we get our hands on it...
Your opinions please surrounding HL2 and outdoor environment implementation...
PS: also, you would think that Valve would release some more SKA goodies and stuff as it wouldn't just suddenly let the mod community down by suddenly screwing the community over with no release of code. You'd also think they would be more than generous with this as the mod community alone is what makes HL breath. But again, we just have to see.
Comments
In my opnion Id love to see a NS map outside on a planet, omg that would be so **** hot, including if the person making it was very good at it.
You may have seen this in games like Red Faction and Serious sam games and it allows for many detailed models to be onscreen at the same time.
This procedure can be applied to terrain too as in games like UT2003 the levels are created in 3D software packages and therefore, the entire terrain is in fact a giant model, which can be split up and LOD'd. With LOD it doesn't really matter how high detailed or big a model is as you are ensured to still get great performance.
There are also things like Zoning and maybe the HL2 engine has a newer, better equiped zoning code. In many of HL's current mods maps have to have many twists and turns to prevent rendering of the map behind walls but to my experience, the VIS is quite innacurate at times and seems to bleed around corners. maybe HL2 will have a much more advanced VIS.
BTW, its really cool to see that map making for HL2 will be an easy process since it works around Hammer likeness and Hammer/worldcraft pro's will be able to create custom maps in a short period of time, compared to if HL2 required us to learn a whole new editor.
In short, those two things I mentioned are only two performance enhancers and with the leaps in gaming technology currently being used/created, future games will keep getting more performance friendly. They may get more graphically intense and require better hardware, but the pace of Hardware to performance shouls slow down with better graphics technologies and drivers like future Directx.
They will breng a SDK out for the modders earlier then the release on 30 sept so mods will come out almost when HL2 is in the shop (atleast thats what they said).
[edit] also I wanted to add: this game is in dev already 5 years or something, they wanted to make all their next generation games on this engine, I would bet my *ss on this that its gonna be good <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
I agree with that, lets wait & see