I think they might not bother. Depending on how "deep" they make the effect, it could be possible to make it not solid without looking daft. If it DOES have collision, then it could cause potential problems; for example infestation in an air vent might make it too small to go through.
Posts by ReNo
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Well "lightmap size" should really be called luxel size as far as I'm concerned (as in setting your lightmap size in hammer to "4" means that each luxel is 4 units in size - the size of the overall lightmap depends on the size of the surface surely) but I guess you are right - bringing in another term isn't gonna help cut down on the confusion! As luxels are the individual components of a lightmap, however, it isn't always possible to use the two interchangeably.
CJ you are right, small luxels = more memory = more lightmap details. So using a lightmap size of 4 is a lot more detailed than a lightmap size of 16, but it also uses 16x as much memory to store. When you get down to using a lightmap size of 1, you are using 256x as much memory as you would with a lightmap size of 16.
Thing is, does that 256x as large really matter? After all, if something is tiny in the first place, it might still be tiny after making it 256x as large. It's something I planned on looking into a while back when I was writing a fairly in depth article/tutorial about lightmaps in Source, but I never ended up finishing it. Another thought is that with HDR, each luxel requires more memory, so that should also be a concern.
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That is seriously cool! I really hope they can pull it off; it's a neat effect that feels very bleeding edge and is a great selling point (alongside the proven gameplay of NS of course). I do worry about how it's gonna handle more awkward geometry, however. It seemed to handle those trims and beams perfectly which certainly bodes well, but curves and of course props could be an issue.
Oh, and just to be a pedant; somebody needs to teach that guy how to say "selection" rather than "section"
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You can use the texture budget panel to give you an idea of how much memory you are using with textures, and there is probably a way to get the entire gfx memory use too. Think the texture budget panel gives figures for different texture types too, so you see how much is being eaten up by diffuse/normal maps/specmaps/envmaps/lightmaps individually. It's not something I've ever really bothered checking as I was normally running and testing on a 128mb card; if it was running fine on that you probably didn't need to worry. Now I'm on a 256mb card I might start paying it more mind however.
And CJ, I guess you mean you rarely go ABOVE 8 units per luxel? As in, you using 16 unit luxels is a rarity, whereas using 4 unit luxels is more common? It's annoying how whether people are talking about resolution or size means you have to switch words, despite the fact you are talking about exactly the same thing. Gets so confusing
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Quote from atrocity
Those light map scales you see on blast pit are usually 1 or 2 I believe. It's part of his style that he works with.
Seriously man, that's not "a style", its more like cheating
Seriously though, I'm sure that using 1 or 2 unit luxels frequently is gonna take its toll on performance for a lot of people. I've yet to go below 4 I think. -
Wow, extremely nice work all round! A well deserved pat on the back to all involved; I'm getting a lot more excited about playing through a modernised HL1 than I thought I would
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I had fairly high hopes for Blazing Angels and was certainly considering getting it, but the demo put me off the idea completely. Shame - I really enjoyed Ace Combat 4 and Crimson Skies, and I was hoping it would provide me with another decent console flight sim (not that any are really attempting to be sims). Shame MS have shot down any hopes of another Crimson Skies game - it took a really neat approach to flying games. Screaming through a city at street level trying to lose your tail in a dogfight, or navigating through ancient caverns and pulling fancy maneouvers between stone columns, isn't an experience many other games can provide. Give us more Crimson Skies MS/Fasa - nobody really seems to give a shit about Shadowrun.
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Oooh best of luck mate, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you
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Just had a few games of the Lost Planet multiplayer demo and I really enjoyed it. Took a bit of time to get used to the controls again - they really do feel wierd compared to most games of the sort - but once I did I found it very accessible and addictive. The level played nicely, despite being a level from the single player game, and the grappling hook is a really nice feature for getting around the place. Not sure about the VS (mechs) though - I died without killing anybody when riding them pretty much every time, so I guess there is either a knack to it or they just flat out suck.
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Less big words dude, less big words. Just focus on getting the little ones right first
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Wow, those are two very conflicting posts
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Yeah, these delays kinda suck
Is quite humorous that Valve wanted to do episodes so as to get releases out every 6 months, but it's looking like it might be a yearly thing instead. Not that you can really complain nor blame them when Ep2 comes with Portal and TF2 -
I'm still worried with how the picture comes out on an HDTV. Anybody able to ease my fears on this? Will it look as bad as other standard definition content does, such as my original Xbox or PS2 games? Or will running through component cables make it look acceptable?
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Multiplayer absolutely kicks ass. Sadly I was on a server where we seemed to be having real problems with the mics - nobody acknowledged they could hear me, yet I could hear other people saying "Hello, can you hear me?" quite a few times, so god knows what was going on there. Despite the lack of communication though it was great fun. It's great to see one of these games actually retain the hugging cover feature in multiplayer since the ubi games tend to remove it.
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I'm fully planning on getting one, but probably not for a good few months after (UK) launch. US launch sounds like its a bit of a poor showing - with the exception of Resistance and some cross-platform titles, they seem to be scoring fairly blah
It's gonna be hard for me to resist the lure of Motorstorm for long though...it looks so yummy -
How long did you play it for Rick? I was left kinda thinking "good, but nothing special" until the first half hour or hour, but the more I played the more impressive it became. What begins as pretty much out and out shooting becomes more tactical and teamwork oriented, and the put in some really nice combat areas that allow different approaches, particularly when playing with a friend in coop.
Dux; huge screen or no, the split screen feels very limiting. I was playing on my 32" HDTV, but its not the size thats the issue, its the aspect ratio. Splitting a widescreen TV so you've got the full screen width but only half the height feels very restrictive. It was the right choice I think - it matters a whole lot more in this game that you can see whats around you rather than above or below - but it still doesn't feel natural.
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Played some coop yesterday with a couple of mates, and absolutely loved it. Wasn't 100% sold on it at the start - it was certainly polished and a solid shooter, but the relentless shooting just felt a bit repetitive. Half an hour in, things started getting better. An hour in, things were fucking awesome. Once you get some teamwork going and come across some of the different enemies it's a really special game, and even though it is fairly by the books, it still feels really fresh. Looking forward to trying it out single player and multiplayer too - split screen coop is great fun but the tiny vertical area each player has really limits the how impressive the game looks.
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I just threw down some cash for a new system, but I've not got it all setup with a fresh windows install yet so I don't want to judge it prematurely. It's currently running on a windows install for a totally different system and, I'm guessing as a result, it's not all that glorious in Windows. That said, it does run the games I've thrown at it with ease.
Core 2 Duo 6600
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
2x 1Gb Corsair PC6400 C4
Western Digital Raptor 150Gb
ATI X1900XT 256mb
I'd say wait for the prices to drop on the new DX10 cards - they are ludicrously expensive at the moment, with the lowest spec models costing just about more than the highest spec current gen cards. Get something like a 7900GS/GT, or the same card as I grabbed, which is sadly becoming difficult to find I hear. The new X1950 pro's are apparently great value for money and give good performance in any current games too, although they aren't quite as good as the X1900XT.
Here's a good guide to help you on the graphics card front...
Dual core is definately worth putting down the cash for in my opinion. Benchmarks show that the Core 2 Duo's pretty much decimate all of the competition, and with more and more software and games supporting multi-threading it makes sense to jump in. The lower spec C2D's perform mighty well and apparently overclock exceptionally, and the E6300 is priced very competitively too. Of course the motherboard and RAM you need to go with it aren't so cheap
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I really enjoyed the demo - was one of those ones I can't help but show off to mates when they come around. If the game lives up to that demo I'm thinking this is gonna be my favourite R6 yet, even if it does feel a whole lot more action driven and less tactical than previous entries. Congratulations on it going gold Klein, we should get some Mapcore multiplayer sessions on the go when it hits
