http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?doc=1054706261-80130200

What is the maximum map size for Half-Life 2?

The maximum map size is currently set at +/-16384 (16x the horizontal area of Half-Life 1, 64x overall volume).


http://collective.valve-erc.com/images/hl2/faq/area_hl1_vs_hl2.gif

i havnt seen it but ive read it, it will be sooo cool to make a map dat large.. if i got my hands on it, i would build the ultimate beach map!!

wow....
now thats cool......

@azncoolteen : BEACH MAP !!!!!!! with that lot of space we will be able to recreate 6th june relatet places like the WN 62 in 1:1 that will be soooooo damn cool...

I cant wait for that.... Why dont they release the new hammer editor right now ??

I'd seen it but that picture is so needed to puncuate just how freaking massive the levels are!

lmao, i wonder if they could fit the WHOLE HL1 single player into 1 HL2 map!! :p

Yeah, it'll be awsome. 64 times bigger than what we have. That could be a whole city my friend. My guess is that there will be a terrain generator/manipulator becuase my guess is that the HL team didnt make those big ass outdoor levels brush by brush. That would take forever.

It'll take forever anyways.

It would be great in like a 64 person server 32 is too small youd be looking for everyone the whole time.

huh? i hope i can get a better connection and the servers to ... 128 players.... to make it realistic.... unless you want 1 man to cover 1 mile of beach :P

Mmm....sky diving mod any one.

Yeah, jumping out of planes could finally be implemented convincingly. An advancement of paratrooper maps in DoD perhaps?

*stirs up ideas for the whole invasion of europe campaign...
now we can actually do the normandy landings with real paratroopers!!!

if they did parshute properly you'd need to watch out for me sniping. oh the hilarity of thta big a turkey shoot :D

Imagine mapping for HL2 while still being limited to....

~500 entities
32767 Planes
32767 Clipnodes
5MB Texture Memory
900 wpoly/5000 epoly

:P

I'm sure they've raised the limits quite a bit :)

Oh my sweet jesus.

You could remap the entire Normady Landing, every beach to :eek:

But yah I would love ot see some 128 person servers, and city large maps!

What is the reletive size of a BF1942 map compared to this?

Well, if you've got such big maps, you would require 500-1000 players to fill up the action.

Then, you need a mega-server that is stored in a building.

THen, you need to do scripting to allow the mega-server to keep track of all the 1000 players. This mega-server building will house many thousands of other subservers to manage all the various intricacies.

Then, maybe you've got a full fledged ww2 game spanning 160km by 160km. It would be the best game in the world. It would also cost a bomb to run, so chances are you've got to host such a competition on a certain special day and charge pple big amounts of $$$$$$ for it.

I think maps that are of the playing size of INvasion NOrmandy CLose Combat 5 (small maps similar to DoD, only slightly bigger) would be fine (with all the various interesting lines of fire and elevations) or DOD_Campagne's overview with its outside terrain and spoof drawings or DoD_Anzio with outside spoof terrain shown on its overview,etc. It would be similar to DoD but only slightly bigger with various extensions, and would allow you to select on the map various areas that you can respawn (based on territory/borders that you own and the type of squads set up at each control pt, whether it be a MG squad, a Rifle squad, a Command squad, <- notice its all pure infantry etc.), so that's how you ensure people work together as a squad and can respawn nearest to the conflict or in valuable positions if conditions allow them to. Some ai controlled tanks may be included, including maybe some manually controlled tanks and vehicles, and these will prove crucial at times, but won't be the main interest of DoD....but may be a good way of moving slightly faster....though going on foot won't be that bad 'cause the map sizes are actually very small (same as DoD only a tad bit bigger). When you respwan, you will be told what squad you belong to. Not only that, your class selection screen would involve selecting classes for each squad that you happen to belong to. When you respawn, it provides a sense of belonging to that squad that you belong to. Squad ranges from 4-8 and can go up to 12 men. Servers can support up to 64 players, so a 32 vs 32 battle would mean the entire team should be seperated into various squads each fufilling their necessary roles. Buddy tracking allows you to track your friends (which squad they belong to), and allow you to select the area they are in, allowing you to respawn with them as part of their squad. It would provide the best of realistic infantry squad combat.

lets keep our feet on the gorund here. i dont want dod to turn into battlefield 1942. i dont really want to see vehicles. the only thing id be good with is drivable landing boats on the d-day landing...maybe some parachute drops...

dod is a small close in action game. i dont think any dod 2 maps will use up that huge volume of space. teh game has to stick to its roots. and making a huge map isnt dod.

Originally posted by Angry Beaver
if they did parshute properly you'd need to watch out for me sniping. oh the hilarity of thta big a turkey shoot :D

Make it dark and hard to see. WIth HL2 i think the lighting features hopefully can simulate this. Also, it ain't easy to shoot a falling target.

Um...


Just think how long it takes to make a good city map at the moment, one that fills most of the grid.

Now times that time by 64......

Us mappers are gonna be working for a long time on a map.

hey GL, why dont we make one super big texture that was 512000x512000 and slapped it on a block of land in the new hammer that was almost the full map and scaled to fit... then it wouldnt take as long :p

hey, lets make a pact, how about every mapper in this forum join together, we work together each of us working on sections of one big map, woudnt that be super cool!

thats the way gbw created dod_norway and dod_feud. ;)

Well, I have posted this before but still no one sees that we have math problem with all these HL map sizes.

HL1 map = +/-4096=8192x8192

HL2 map sizes:

1) +/- 16384 = 32768x32768 = (4x4) = 16 times bigger map (not 64)

2) on this pic there is shown that HL2 map is 8x bigger in each dimension - 8x8 = 64.

So which values are right ?

/Me Mistaken.

Actually, the max. area is only 1.6km by 1.6km. Your map dimensions is merely 4x bigger (HL1 is 0.4km by 0.4km). Your map area is merely 16x bigger. Your map volume is 64x bigger.

It isn't as big as bf1942...thankfully.

But 1.6km by 1.6km is pretty okay in my opinion. It's only 16 times more work u need to do if u want to fill up the map to be as big as possible. Plus i'm sure its more productive with the new tools that allow you to vertex manipulate terrains and bumps easily with no trouble. BUt of course, if u are designing large long roads and large scale-ness, there really isn't much work needed and you realise you'll end up filling 1 by 1 km of land before you know it!! So, the 16x more work argument is pretty invalid. It all depends on how you map and the style of yr map! Come to think of it, it isn't very big. You still need to split the entire Omaha beach to 2 .rmfs for HL2, Omaha east and Omaha west. Pointeduhoc and its inland areas(heheh, you got it! the answer to my description), requiring about 4, 6-8 rmfs for HL1, would only require 1 rmf for HL2!

Can anybody say realistic ramelle?

After my feeble attempt to see if it could be done in HL1, I will definitely be able to do it with tanks and all in HL2!! Alamo, Alamo!

But what about our pact!! *sobs in corner*

dod is a small close in action game. i dont think any dod 2 maps will use up that huge volume of space. teh game has to stick to its roots. and making a huge map isnt dod.

I don't want it to be Bf1942 either - I play that and its a fun game but it isn't what I want out of DOD.

However, I do think DOD could make use of bigger maps, provided spawn issues are addressed so you don't end up running from one end of the place to another. Moving spwans like we can do now are one way, but it could be that that their are other ways of handling this that coud be coded.

I also think that some amount of drivable vehicles could be a good thing.

For example, a scenario where you have to escort a couple of tanks through a town could be pretty interesting, and the whole Ramelle scenario, with paratroops defending against enemy tanks and infantry would be very very cool.

It could be lame but again that comes down to how the vehicles are implemented. The vehicle code will be there, judging by the E3 promo and it looks sophisticated. It would be a shame not to try and use it in creative ways.

hey DMW_NZ, i gota question for ya, why would you escort tanks on a convoy mission when tanks usually escort you..
if i got the new hammer and started to map, i would build a realistic omaha and backway hedgerows and mission would be to link up wit the 101st and maybe set up a few shermans :D, taht would so own!!!

YOu can't link up with the 101st from Omaha. The nearest paratroopers to OMaha beach that misdropped was these 3 paratroopers that ended up near the village of St Pierre (can't remember the full name) just at Pointeduhoc where they met Rudder's Rangers there at the Grandcamp-Vierville highway. HL2 only provides 1.6 km of distance that can't even cover the whole of OMaha beach, it only covers half of it!.

The space provided for HL2 is only 1.6 KM!! The space provided in HL! is 0.4KM. It isn't much difference.

Personally, i would prefer a nice multiple-objective/multiple-spawn area map (like dod_zalec), but because of its multi-nature , it can support depthful interesting gameplay spanning 1.6km of action, with objectives revolving around landmarks, escorting tanks, destroying tanks, clearing road blocks, seizing streets and entryways and new spawn entries, etc. It would bring the map to new heights of realism and turn the game into a danger from any far corner and at any distance....rather than danger at every @#@# camping corner or at every typical predicatable corner. It would be a map that won't be boring, because of the variety of things that can be done and the type of longer range battles that can occur and the variety of types of engagements between infantry vs infantry. Playing area can still be kept tight and nice, but a single map with its 4x larger size, can host 4x more action if you plan carefully the sequence of fights that take place and the chokepts. This means if u plan your large map carefully (actually ALL large maps require lots of planning and sequencing on the mapper's part, just like dod_zalec), you've got a map that provides lots of action never before seen in DoD.

DoD should stick to its roots but that doesn't mean you re-make an exact replica of what DoD was by having the same crappy small maps . It should rather start expanding out from its roots, not remaining in the same old <0.4KM maps that lack any sense of variety, absorbing/strategic, depthful gameplay. If you stick to the "same old DoD's roots" like you said, you get the same old repetitive gameplay that really makes DoD sucks.

As always, it isn't that big. 1 Half of Omaha beach = 1 .rmf for HL2. You require 2 rmfs for the real Omaha beach.

But even then, it would be good for a pact like 4 mappers to work on a map, each mapper focusing on 0.4km of his assignement. Then, we can get uber quality/realism/detail beyond measure as well as scope. It would be evne more powerful than HL2's levels itself.

If you want to start creating realistic levels for HL2 like what you said with all the backway hedgerows (in all its utter realism that HL2 can provide) and such, azncoolteen, start working on the textures and such and all the necessary brushwork. We need realistic bocage textures of that WW2 era. Maybe even use models??? Whatever it is, think detailed!

I completely disagree with you. Map space needs to be much bigger. I doesn't matter what DoD now is especially that you don't have to use all available map space. As of vehicles they have to be inserted to DoD2. There is no way of avoiding it because now DoD scenarios are heavy limited because of current HL limitations. Just destroyed city or very small limited part of village works realistic, but how many times you can play it over and over again.Big open space is needed to have good maps like beach. Now beach map has beach and very small area after first line of german defences. Imagine if you could have 3 or 4 line of defences (with progressive spawns). :D
About BF42 - it could be great game if authors would put more attention to how players behave in multiplayers games now. With some added functions for promoting team play, punishing punks and some realism improvements it could be best WW2 online game. They have very little idea about multiplayer gaming when BF42 was released and haven't improved it much till now. DoD team and Valve have more practical experience in this area, so effect should be better. I hope that in DoD2 they include some good team-oriented ideas from Wolf:ET and OFP.

Do we know yet how many people will be able to play on any one map at a time .. somebody earlier mentioned 64 people!

If the maps become huge but the teams remain small, it could mean running around a large map trying desparately to find someone to shoot :( ... or the spawn points would have to change automatically so that if there were only small teams then everyone would have to spawn closer together to keep the battle areas tighter .. this would probably mean that the 'capture' objectives would have to be changed depending on the number of players .... can you imagine spawning at one end of the map and having to get all the way to the opposite side to get that final cap !!

1.6 Km you say... ever heard of "microsize"? HL-Rally is an example. Everything must be 1/10 of the original Half-Life size to make the maps scale correctly. Actually, if DoD would be using 1/10 of the original size in the HL2-engine, then we have 16x16 Km to play with ;) . Who said we must stay at the standard units? :D

If we did that, Zyndrome, the texture quality would suffer. 2048 textures would turn into 204.8 textures!!! 512 textures would turn to 51.2 textures!! 256 textures would turn to 25.6 textures!! Oh the horror! The texture quality would end up worse than what we have in DoD now. It would only work for strategy wargames where the players don't dig their face into the dirt but view everything pretty much from above..

OF cos, you can reduce it down to /4, which wouldn't be that bad and would provide more space. Just remember that DoD there's a prone option that allows u to bury your face on the ground and see it upclose. Then again, with multi-texturing support and auto-tiling of detail textures (<- if they have such features ie.) shouldn't be too much of a problem. It's more of a design consideration, actually.

Originally posted by gaspode
Do we know yet how many people will be able to play on any one map at a time .. somebody earlier mentioned 64 people!

If the maps become huge but the teams remain small, it could mean running around a large map trying desparately to find someone to shoot :( ... or the spawn points would have to change automatically so that if there were only small teams then everyone would have to spawn closer together to keep the battle areas tighter .. this would probably mean that the 'capture' objectives would have to be changed depending on the number of players .... can you imagine spawning at one end of the map and having to get all the way to the opposite side to get that final cap !!

Which is why i hope mappers can do some "map scripting" to determine what should be active/inactive depending on the no. of players online. Actually, you can do this in DoD now with maybe a dod_capture_area and let it encompass the entire map....But of course, it's very cumbersome. A scripting langugage would rule like maybe Flash Actionscript (which uses the style of C++), with various properties to use like _url, _framesLoaded, _totalframes, etc. As such, DOd map would have properties like _numberofplayersonline, etc. You can append this scripting langugage to any entity to extent its interactivity and determine its state, as well as have parent child relationships with the various entities, maybe even use it to manipulate its size real time, etc.. Every map will provide a varying experience. OF cos, the best game design structure owuld be OFP's style, which virtually allows you to produce any scenerio with that same map.

Anyway, assuming 16 players is optimal for 0.4 km by 0.4km, 64 players is optimal for 1.6 km by 1.6km and overall area and volume far surpasses what a meagre 0.4km by 0.4 km provides, it's simply great for DoD. Doesn't really need to get any bigger unless you are aiming for more than 64 players.

Has anyone thought of something other than Europe? Like...oh I dunno...Africa? ;)

My guess is that maps will remain small unit maps...maybe a tad larger but close combat being the norm with some driveable vehicles set to realistic physics (so a few MG42 rounds would destroy a truck or jeep and hitting a tank w/jeep would result in instant jeep-death) only if they are necessary for the map...some of the City17 pics could easily be named dod_hamburg or dod_caen and probably work fine.

...and then think of the possibilities...if you keep map-size fairly small you can get away with more details...so a Caen-like sized map that starts out fairly benign and fairly intact and as gameplay goes it get's progressively more destroyed...the ability to use things to block pathways...a beach map where you arrive in a higgins boat or behind enemy lines via parachute...the ability to finally scale outside environments...to build realistic woods...to build a factory complex detailed like the Stalingrad factory where the Germans had their last stand (don't read anything into this...i have no idea if the team is considering adding Russian soldiers)...the possibilities are wide open.

Actually...mapping for dod2 and hl2 will separate the wanna-be's from the real mappers cause my guess is that despite the "it's going to be easy" comments I've seen regarding the new tools...the level of detail and realism required (a building will need fairly real architecture) will drive a lot of the junior mappers away.

The key will be to keep gameplay as good or better than it is now...if not we'll just be another bf1942 clone. Also...my guess is that it will take a year or so to get a fully functional retail dod2 out the door...so I bet that there will be periodic patch and map releases for dod1.X to keep things fresh.

I think the best way to put the big sized maps to use is to have campaigns within one RMF. Like the whole thing is one huge connected map of say a small village a surrounding forrest/country land. Then there are seperate objectives within the map. Example: Allies must advance from the forest into the village and capture it, while the axis must defend the village. If allies win, the next round would start with allies spawning in the village, and the axis spawn would be pushed back further into the map. If the Axis won, maybe they would spawn in the forrest and the allies would need to push forward to recap the forrest. The whole map would be open to explore, but all the opjectives would be concentrated in one area per round so all the action would be concentrated. Am I making sense? In a nutshell, it would be campaigns within one map, and the whole map is open the whole time, just objectives and spawns move around.

Originally posted by Glidias
If we did that, Zyndrome, the texture quality would suffer. 2048 textures would turn into 204.8 textures!!! 512 textures would turn to 51.2 textures!! 256 textures would turn to 25.6 textures!! Oh the horror!

Ever heard of scaling down the textures? I mean you dont scale down the textures in the WAD-files, only in the editor. Hardware-rendered textures blend into the nearest neighbors, which means each neighboring pixel! You can fit a 512x512 texture on a 16x16 surface = 32 pixels per unit!. And no quality suffer, because of how the hardware renders. If you scale a 16x16 texture on a 1024x1024 surface, the texture will just look really bad, like a big blob. That is 64 units per pixel!. I bet there are some geeks out there that has knowledge about hardware-rendering. I guess my theory is correct, or?

hey DMW_NZ, i gota question for ya, why would you escort tanks on a convoy mission when tanks usually escort you..

For the simple reason that urban environments are not a tanker's best friend. Getting a tank across an open field opposed by infantry is one thing. Weaving it in an out of a few city streets where evey window can have a guy with a bazzoka pointing down at your vulnerable top armour is another matter entirely.

Infantry - at least in WW2 - are the eyes and ears of the tanks. So an escort tank mission makes perfect sense to me. You wouldn't term it "escort tank" but the result would be the same. To complete your mission objective you've got to get the tanks from point A to point B without them getting bazooked to hell. The tank's main gun is of limited support value in crowded streets.

Think of Jagd. Now instead of the Allie having to grab some documents, make their mission to escort those 2 Churchhill tanks to the other side of the map, while the Axis tank hunters actually get to be tank hunters ....

HL has a 240 subdivide that gets scaled with the texture if you scale down so does the sub divide. this means you have the w_poly you would get with 1 unit 1pixel as with the texture scaled down on a smaller brush.

DMW_NZ if you do this kind of map I'll be glad to help ;) Just send me the brushwork :D

Originally posted by Angry Beaver
HL has a 240 subdivide that gets scaled with the texture if you scale down so does the sub divide. this means you have the w_poly you would get with 1 unit 1pixel as with the texture scaled down on a smaller brush.

Heh, I forgot to mention that. Thanks :D

In cities, the infantry moves in first and the tanks follow behind.

In the outdoor areas, the tanks move up first and the infantry follows behind.

Yea, i know about scaling down textures. I do it sometimes in Hammer and always in Modeling programs to get as much uber sharpness as possible, It is a common practise for me to scale down textures even for Hammer provided it doesn't increase wpoly because the surface dimensions that has a texture being applied on it should be = or less than the net resulting subdivide dimensions after scaling. An example is the FOlgore sign where i scaled down the Folgore sign texture down to be extremely sharp (0.25), with a resultant chop that is 60x60, but thankfully the overall surface being textured is less than these dimensions, so it makes no wpoly difference. Also, I'll leave it open for texture artists and hack jobbers to do a version of my map that would include high res snow textures for very high end users that can afford the exorbitant texture memory, that can afford 512x512 textures to be squeezed into a 256x256 spaces of that 3d model for ultimate sharpness. As for Hammer, it isn't reccomended to scale down textures as that would basically decrease the subdivide as well and increase the wpoly. Of course, we don't know how HL2 might work but most likely the engine already supports true texture tiling (like hopefully in any 3d program that renders models) and therefore it may be possible to scale down the textures like you said, let it tile, and let the overall polycount remain the same.

Do you scale down much of the textures in HLRAlly?? If you did that, it would make laggy HLRally maps. Most of the textures certaintly don't look scaled down to me from the screenshots. But it doesn't matter 'cause HL rally is a car game and u dont see the textures upclose. BUt with HL2, i guess its different and hopefully you can scale down textures with no strings attached. (ie. hopefully without some subdividing going along with it)

OK then, you win. HL2 can have 160km maps that looks great, okay??? To be honest, it would be great to have 160km of space or even more as that would be ww2 realistic, but that might be a different mod for HL2 (more like OFP) and u can compile and produce a bunch of tight scenerios/engagements in eveyr realistic space and area of Normandy,Africa, Sicily, etc.. Once the entire 160km world is created, the mapper would simply just need to define sets of the mission areas,objectives and enttiites. Tons of historical scenerios can be refought within that single map!

<offtopic>
Here is a snippet from the HLrally.net website:
Half-Life Rally uses Micro-Technology, which means that everything is approximately 1/5 of the size.
Ok, I said 1/10, but I was just too lazy to check things up (you can slap me now). So when you are saying that the textures in the screenshots of HLrally doesnt look scaled down, is because everything else is scaled down too.
</offtopic>

Dont bother more about this, lets talk about something else for a change ;)

For those who don't want to download 600Mb videos:
http://www.planethalflife.com/half-life2/screenshots/ Very impressive.

We see that the mapper did not create a very large map,
but a very detailed one, with textures coming from the real world.
Ideal for DoD?

Can't wait to see a convincing Trench system battlefield with a smokey atmosphere, battered no man's land, barb wire and tank traps, mud filled craters, artillery barrages..

with forced attack/defend/counterattack gameplay :)

yeah i hope fog can be map specfic now. i always hated no fog or always fog. what if i want to do a dense orest map hey? lotsa fog elimantes w_poly prob.

Originally posted by Angry Beaver
lotsa fog elimantes w_poly prob. No it just hides popup.

what i mean is u can drop the render distance to near nothing so you can have a super high detail forest.

Near nothing would be a problem. Why have detail when the player cant see it. but i know what your thinking, and surely therer will be a fog limit. AFter all, even though its HL2, there is only so much it can render in outdoor areas.

You guys keep applying the rules of HL to HL2's engine. We know that it has automatic LOD scalability, and I imagine it has a polygon drawing system that also incorporates a ranged system as well as line of sight like the current VIS. Meaning that it won't be rendering trees that are 5 miles out since you wouldn't be able to see them that far.