Now this is a question more then anything and I was wondering also if anyone had tried it themselves.

I was thinking of making some maps that are as realistic as possible in the way they look etc, ie larger areas, plenty of cover etc. But I know by doing this that the maps won't be easy to make playable (which doesn't worry me)
Basically I just want to see how close to real life I can get the map. Then I was thinking I might release the .rmf to anyone who asked me if they wanted to down size what ever map and try and make it playable.

How far have people gotten trying this?

The old Half Life engine really shows its age when you try to make some real-life architecture, especially a fullscaled map. You'll run out of clipnodes, faces, you name it, before you're even halfway done with your first room :P

Heres a small thingamabob I made when I was bored, used 16% of the faces available in the HL engine (!!).

I bet you could get even more detailed by using a ton of custom models. There is the # of models limit, but you could some how skirt around that if you stuck multiple models into a single model. It would take alot of skill though.

Originally posted by Jello_Biafra
I bet you could get even more detailed by using a ton of custom models. There is the # of models limit, but you could some how skirt around that if you stuck multiple models into a single model. It would take alot of skill though.

Models don't cast shadows though.

I had a notion like that, where you use models, clip them, and have the clip with opaque-ness added to them, or if that doesn't turn out too well (which has been the case for me usually) just have a shadow brush that is just barely inside the clip of the model. So basically your entire map would be models and clip. It's not great for playing, but it would be nice to see how this would work.

you can shadow with null textures

You could use materials textures for shadows. Either way you will quicky hit some HL limit. In theory you could make a city map using HL2 style - totally plain flat walls with custom modelled details for every face. Huge number of work but you would quickly hit precache limit with models or FPS would be killed due to very bad/slow model drawing procedures in recent Steam versions of HL.

Originally posted by Gorbachev
I had a notion like that, where you use models, clip them, and have the clip with opaque-ness added to them, or if that doesn't turn out too well (which has been the case for me usually) just have a shadow brush that is just barely inside the clip of the model. So basically your entire map would be models and clip. It's not great for playing, but it would be nice to see how this would work.

Models don't cast shadows or can have shadows casted on them. You can have NULL or opaque entity invisible non-render brushes cast shadow over brush-based surfaces. Normally, u would use models that usually don't have much shadows cast upon them. Snow is an example, which is usually consistent white. Same for trunks. Then again, the lack of trunks casting shadows when necessary (if yr floor is also an .mdl), may look weird too.

Models add texture memory. Good thing though...just count the no. of unique textures used per unique model.

So, use a series of submodels to share 1 texture set to save up on texture memory. Have 1 .mdl generate tons of stuff for the map...so u use less entities. Eg. 1 mdl to generate an entire woods. . 1 mdl to generate an entire snow terrain and scenery.
It has been done before long before Version 1.0.

I am aware you can use brushes to cast shadows for models. Using brushes to cast shadows somehwhat defeats the purpose of using a model, to stay in the limit. You will still hit max planes very fast, making all the shadow brushes.

we need hl2

Originally posted by Jello_Biafra
we need hl2

@Flo, that courtyard looks pretty dam nice :)
Sucks with the Limits that the HL engine has. I'm still going to give it a crack and see what happens though. I'm sure there would be ways to make things look just as good with out using as many brushs as I figured there must be in that courtyard of yours Flo.

Also in regard to the Tex mem alot of surfaces on buildings/roads other things have pretty much the same look to them, for instance look at an old styled building (I'm talking pre-1950s here) and you'll see what 2-4 different colors at the most? And alot of the buildings in the same street will have very similar or the same colors, so in that regard you could use the same textures on a few different things and not be getting to high a tex mem problem.

Anyway I'm going to give this a crack when I get my other comp back from the computer shop seeing its buggered at the moment and has all my hammer/dod stuff on it. Then I'll start on something and see what everyone thinks :)

Flo :confused:

Anyways, that scene right there has 1750 wpoly as well as some epoly. Of course its far from optimized, and wastes faces all over the place.

But if you wanted to create a "real" world, each building would have to be unique, not just in architecture, but in looks (textures) as well. Reusing textures would be harder (except for the generic rubble, grass and road textures) without breaking the illusion of a real place.

Ah well, good luck :)

I don't think you would have to use unique textures for every building. In towns, many buildings are similar, in cities buildings are typicallt larger (wider). Texture could be less detailed (so usable for more houses) and you make difference by different brushes, modelled details, different window styles, etc. Looking at Red Orchestra sshots could give some idea how DoD2 will look like.

As I recall, there was a CS mapping contest about this purpose that created some very realistic looking maps.

Originally posted by Cheeto
As I recall, there was a CS mapping contest about this purpose that created some very realistic looking maps.

That was just a scene-making contest (ie. make a map that looks good in one screenshot taken from a predetermined position), and all the maps had rspeeds around 3-4000.

I didn't even think it was possible to get them up that high:rolleyes:

Originally posted by Instacrome
That was just a scene-making contest (ie. make a map that looks good in one screenshot taken from a predetermined position), and all the maps had rspeeds around 3-4000. I remeber those, they made my old p3 550 slow to a crawl. lol

how long would those take to compile? :eek:

Originally posted by TheNomad
how long would those take to compile? :eek:

Well it would take as long as most maps would most likely a few hours. WIth making such a detailed map it would cut down on the size of the map dramatically and would have the same amount of planes/faces etc as any of the larger dod maps do now.