Going out on a limb with this question for mapers....

[o_paddn ur stats]

What enables some games like Farcry to have huge maps and other games like HL2 become so restricted? If, somehow we could blend a few of the Farycry map idea for the A&D with a few tweekes as needed 33% to be exact, I think theyd be a blast. I degress, for another that owns Farcry and has HL2 that maps, could u answer my noobish question?

[o__thursday_]

Directing this at coders may be best. It's the way an engine is coded, HL1 was made for indoor environments, HL2 has tried to balance outdoor and indoor environments.

I can't explain much more except "its coding". I think its how polygons are rendered or something similar. Don't trust me on this, ask a coder.

[o_valk]

i was under the impression that hl2 mod maps could be made for 128 players on the server

[o_billdoor]

HL2 maps can't really be much more open than HL1 maps. The underlying problem in both is that they use a BSP-based visibility and ordering system, that lends itself naturally to less complicated map architecture and small, confined spaces. BSP-based engines such as Doom and the Quake series are very fast for indoor environments but suffer a lot as the map gets bigger and more complicated -- this is part of the reason that HL1 and HL2 maps (especially HL2) have such tiny levels between loading pauses.

The terrain system in HL2 isn't a true terrain system. It doesn't affect visibility at all and is more of a modification in how surfaces are rendered (and collided with). In other games such as FarCry and Toque engine games, the terrain is a fundamental part of the engine, and peaks and troughs in the terrain work to block visibility. Also, in Torque at least, the non-terrain geometry is reduced in detail when it is very distant, and each "building" has its own BSP tree, keeping them simpler and faster.

The biggest reason you can't have open areas in HL2 is that terrain doesn't block visiblity. The problem with this is that if you are in a huge room with a terrain floor, and there are 5 players behind a hill that you can't see, the engine will still draw those players and the game server will still send them to you. This amount of overdraw and bandwidth usage would make the game pretty unplayable compared to games that are built with terrain-based maps in mind. Don't let the displacement maps and "highway 17" levels fool you; HL2 is still an indoor FPS engine and the terrain system has to work within those limitations.

[Defrag]

Valve did most of the outdoor maps using entity occluders, displacement maps plus one huge box. I'm not sure how realistic that approach is for making multiplayer maps (as SP doesn't have the network conundrum... MP maps are a different kettle of fish). We can test it, no doubt. I wouldn't be surprised if the end result was all the entity data being sent regardless of whether it was being occluded. This would probably just lag everyone out.

I'm also fairly sure that farcry requires mappers to manually insert their own vis blocking

Like bd said, the engines are rather different to one another.

[o_saintgreg]

I'd just like to add in that Far Cry also uses Level of Detail based heightmap terrains, which are not implemented in source, so outdoor landscapes can be large and detailed. Im not sure of models have any LOD on them, but I suspect they do, as trees revert to sprites after some distance. It would make sense if they went through a low detail level before reverting to a sprite.

EDIT: also expanding on what billdoor said, in doom 3, and I suspect far cry too, after the bsp process is performed, all clusters between portals get grouped into 1 node, which stores all the vertex/face information for the world geometry, and any detail geometry that is in the sector is also stored in there, and also probably any point models. So since the outdoors environment will typically not have any portals except as borders to buildings and stuff, all of the outdoors will probably be one node as "outdoors".

The way I see it, almost anything that can be done with precompiled bsp/vis (like quake) can be done better by placing portals and culling per frame to the portal. Plus you can do more with portals. And anything you can do with portals you can do nearly as good or better with occlusion culling, plus occlusion culling makes dense outdoor areas, for example a large city, much easier to do, since portals are tough to place if you want to be able to have motion anywhere (like from above). Plus occlusion meshes can often be calculated not made by hand.

Also, as billdoor mentioned, the bsp system is old old old. They are just not that good for outdoor environments where LOD is more important. They were good for quake, when rendering a single face was somewhat costly. But now, much better to partition space into nodes that index 100's of faces at once, as taking the time to cull away less than that woul just take longer than just rendering them.

Billdoor - as for terrains in HL2 not blocking vis, you could just put nodraw text'd world brushed underneath it giving an approximate shape, although that isn't that great of a solution either.

[o_paddn ur stats]

So if Farcrys maping system is "better" why hasnt that mod community taken off ? The cult like following of HL/HL2 burys the competition and thats the only reason why ? I really enjoyed the Farcry maps but the classes sucked ass. Ask yourself whats more annoying than a sniper ? a soldier with his armor and health camping like a sniper shooting rockets thru a scope, then going back to the respawn for more rockets. Heh shit like that made the multiplay for me really dislike it.

[o_darkgamer]

The Source Engine *should* include mappers with the ability to add anti-portals to reduce rendering problems, but it dosen't... The one game I know of that has the best map editor so far is UT2004.

[o__thursday_]

Originally Posted by paddn ur stats

So if Farcrys maping system is "better" why hasnt that mod community taken off ? The cult like following of HL/HL2 burys the competition and thats the only reason why ? I really enjoyed the Farcry maps but the classes sucked ass. Ask yourself whats more annoying than a sniper ? a soldier with his armor and health camping like a sniper shooting rockets thru a scope, then going back to the respawn for more rockets. Heh shit like that made the multiplay for me really dislike it.

The HL community didn't just suddenly take off. Farcry came around during a time where communities were large and where next generation engines were being released. Its hard to overcome the already established and still yet further growing communities, such as Quake/HL/Doom/UT.

Quite simply people don't want to learn new tools, hence why the 4 communities above remain the largest. The tools have remained the same, for example Quake has used Quark/Radiant, Half-Life has used Hammer.

[o_saintgreg]

Far cry is like the ultimate platform to make a single player fps, but then for a multiplayer, its doesn't set itself out.

Another reason I think the far cry modding community is so small is that HL2 and DOOM 3 were hyped to be such great engines, that alot of people planned on modding for them. After they came out and people realize that for the most part they are nothing special compared to this game thats been out 6 months, they are stuck with the somewhat/vastly inferior 3d engines. Plus far cry isnt as popular of a game so the audience would be smaller.

[o_sobe green]

Originally Posted by billdoor

The biggest reason you can't have open areas in HL2 is that terrain doesn't block visiblity. The problem with this is that if you are in a huge room with a terrain floor, and there are 5 players behind a hill that you can't see, the engine will still draw those players and the game server will still send them to you. This amount of overdraw and bandwidth usage would make the game pretty unplayable compared to games that are built with terrain-based maps in mind. Don't let the displacement maps and "highway 17" levels fool you; HL2 is still an indoor FPS engine and the terrain system has to work within those limitations.

This is also the reason wallhacks work so well under both engines. Right?

[o_silver]

that is true. thats what alot of anti cheat progs tried to eliminate
like hlguard

[o__thursday_]

Originally Posted by SoBe Green

This is also the reason wallhacks work so well under both engines. Right?

Its the BSP format I think.

[o_sobe green]

Well from what I've always understood is that the engine draws the players but tells the client "Hey that player is there but there is a wall that you can't see through so don't show him". Wallhacks make the walls transparent so you see the actual players since they are drawn regardless. I can't explain what I mean but there was an OLD OLD OLD article written by the author of C-D. If you can find it, it is actually pretty neat.

[Mulchman MM]

What sucks with games that aren't Half-Life-ish (or based on quake) is that the movement just feels terrible. I can't stand playing Farycray because it's just not smooth or fluid - the same goes for Unreal/UT (and this isn't a framerate issue or anything).

[o_silver]

i did alot of tests with cheats back in the day, just to familiarize my self with how they work/ how to combat them/stop them. some anti-cheats, C-D i think was one of them, wile insted of getting rid of unshown models, would insted misdirect the client into thinking they were behind him at all times. there were some crazy shit that could be done with those cheats though, and it seemed once a anti-cheat was updated, the cheat would be updated. after awile i just said "f this" and stopped trying to stay on top of them. most of the people who used the multi-hacks weren't too hard to spot for someone who has used some cheats before and knew what too look for. of course if no admin was there its a prob but hey w/e. never had to worry too much about it except 1 night were some clan member woke me up at 3 am to come kick some hacker off the server.

[o_sobe green]

Before VAC was released I had a friend show me how easy it was to bypass anti cheats. All he done was alter one line of code. It was really just shocking to see how easy it was. Of course I don't know if its still that easy. It definately is a scary thing to think about if its still possible.

[o__thursday_]

Originally Posted by Silver

i did alot of tests with cheats back in the day, just to familiarize my self with how they work/ how to combat them/stop them.

Like we believe that

[o_sambo4283]

sil = ultra hacks

[o_anshinritsumai]

Originally Posted by Mulchman MM

What sucks with games that aren't Half-Life-ish (or based on quake) is that the movement just feels terrible. I can't stand playing Farycray because it's just not smooth or fluid - the same goes for Unreal/UT (and this isn't a framerate issue or anything).

Indeed. I felt that way as well with Unreal Fortress Evolution 2004: Rocket Arena. It didn't feel anything like playing a solly in any quake-based engine, be it Quake or HL.

Originally Posted by DarKGamer

The Source Engine *should* include mappers with the ability to add anti-portals to reduce rendering problems, but it dosen't... The one game I know of that has the best map editor so far is UT2004.

Indeed, the engine is so much better. Instead of requiring a pre-compiled map which doesn't allow for much customization other than what is given to you or developed in more coding; the Unreal Engine 3.0 is going to offer everything Source can, and more. Go look for the Unreal Engine 3.0 Technical Demo and you will see everything. If only we had that engine, but with the solidness and "feel" of Half-Life 2 gameplay, then we'd have one of the best games ever made. Since the maps aren't compiled in the UT engine, they can be modded at any point in time; which is a very good thing in some terms, but can also resort to piracy from other users work (which seems to be the ONLY problem).