hl2 map scale

the problem you will have is if you choose 1/4th you can ofcourse make the brushwork only 4 times bigger/unprecissuser

other than that it is no problem as long as your exporters/modellers do know what scale to use.

I think it'd just make a lot of things harder to scale down an entire mod. The Source grid is pretty big, unless you're planning something really big like an rts?

Just mapping alone you'd be making things very hard for yourself. If you used a 1/4 scale, any small detail that would normally be less than 4 units you would have to model it. This might be okay for a lot of things but it'd drive you mental if say you just wanted e.g. a brushwork window ledge or doorframe or smooth arch etc. etc.

Also I think the fact that Source engine brushwork cuts up each other when touching has been fairly well mitigated with displament maps should kind of make this problem moot but obviously depends on what you are trying to do. I think this may be better for the Engine forum so gonna move it.

From what I understand, you'll also face precision problems. The bigger your game world (relative to the default 1 inch = 1 unit), the less precise things like physics/collisions etc. become.

Quote from clankill3r

I want to solve the problem where HL2 cuts large faces up into smaller faces.

Of course you do, perhaps you could share your new-found knowledge with valve

I might be wrong but I am fairly certain that the scale of your textures determins how often the faces are split up. So, reducing your map to a 1/4 scale while also scaling the textures down would be a futile act; it would just give you more map space to play with, but not solve any problems with splitting faces.

Quote from merkaba

I might be wrong but I am fairly certain that the scale of your textures determins how often the faces are split up. So, reducing your map to a 1/4 scale while also scaling the textures down would be a futile act; it would just give you more map space to play with, but not solve any problems with splitting faces.

nowais. i thought it was like that too, thats how it works in hl1. but i fiddled a bit with stuff and found out that:

in source, what determines the number of subdivisions on a brush face is the lightmap scale.

The tessellation is related to texture size and scale iirc. this is true for both goldsrc and source.

Something apparently inherent with source engines. O_o

I suppose generally it's a good thing for culling, probably the only reasoning behind it.

how many source engines are there?

well if you like to use the dicky term 'goldsource' for half-life 1, then there are kinda 2... :roll:

:wink:

well that's goldsource, not source. but aaanyway

but source is derived from goldsource which is derived from quake so they're technically still quake engines! They never even adopted any quake2 or quake3 standards and such even.

and such

Quote from cnflkt

The tessellation is related to texture size and scale iirc. this is true for both goldsrc and source.Something apparently inherent with source engines. O_o

I suppose generally it's a good thing for culling, probably the only reasoning behind it.

the thing is - in goldsource, when scaling the textures, you scaled the lightmap along with it. but in source you can handle both scales separately. that's why a lot of mappers put lightmaps with HUGE scales on ceilings and surfaces with less lighting contrast - you end up with less world rendering load and a lower filesize for the map too