The FX engine

[Thothie]

How large can Half-Life maps get without causing really bad gameplay issues, Thothie? This is probably unrealistic but is it possible to merge preexisting maps into one larger map? Like, is it possible to connect Edana and Thornlands into one map?

It'd be possible, if I wanted to tweak out the compile settings and split level it. No map, save maybe Blood Rose, takes up more than a quarter of the space available, but it isn't worth the instability it would case. Thornlands has more than the healthy number of entities and brush models as it is (could use some thorough optimization, but the source we have is rather dated - be a pain to update).

Even in MSS, assuming they want to fancy up Edana and not par down Thornlands in turn, I think they'll find they still want to split the two for sake of performance.

 

[Crow]

I just have a thing for 3D skyboxes <3

 

[Thothie]

They ain't the 3D skyboxes ye be thinking of... I think I saw some mod somewhere they pulled that off though, just can't remember which... There's that ruski Paranoia mod, but all they really did there was stick some models around the edge of the sky - no code change, just mapper made illusion.

On the plus side, MiB has discovered we had a model scaling function all along - just Dogg set it up wrong for some reason we've yet to figure.

 

[The Man In Black]

Oh, sure. Go with the giant treasure chest instead of the ROUS ;-)

 

[Sabre]

Good, now someone do Shrinkspell.

 

[FER]

On the plus side, MiB has discovered we had a model scaling function all along - just Dogg set it up wrong for some reason we've yet to figure.

simply awesome, do scaled models get they hitboxes screwed too?

 

[Age]

Now we just need to be like Blizzard and reskin/resize every single enemy we have, yay!

 

[The Man In Black]

Only the model itself scales. Everything else can be changed later, though, I think.

 

[Thothie]

Oh, sure. Go with the giant treasure chest instead of the ROUS ;-)

The Rodents of Unusual Size?

I dont believe they exist.


Well, this system works fairly well for scaling up monsters:

//JAN2010_29 spariment
{ ext_scale //<ratio>

	local MY_WIDTH $get(ent_me,width)
	local MY_HEIGHT $get(ent_me,height)
	setprop ent_me scale PARAM1
	multiply MY_WIDTH PARAM1
	multiply MY_HEIGHT PARAM1
	width MY_WIDTH
	height MY_WIDTH
	setvard MONSTER_WIDTH MY_WIDTH

	setbbox npcsize

	if PARAM1 > 1

	if ( BASE_MOVESPEED equals 'BASE_MOVESPEED' )
	{
		setvard BASE_MOVESPEED PARAM1
	}
	else
	{
		add BASE_MOVESPEED PARAM1
	}
	setanim.movespeed BASE_MOVESPEED
	movespeed BASE_MOVESPEED

	if ( !NPC_RANGED )
	{
		local RANGE_ADJ_RATIO PARAM1
		multiply RANGE_ADJ_RATIO 0.5
		if PARAM1 > 1
		multiply ATTACK_RANGE RANGE_ADJ_RATIO
		multiply ATTACK_HITRANGE RANGE_ADJ_RATIO
		multiply MOVE_RANGE RANGE_ADJ_RATIO
		multiply ATTACK_MOVERANGE RANGE_ADJ_RATIO
	}
}

But the hitbox, save for melee, suffers. Severely scaled monsters are very hard to hit with bows, although if you keep it within reason, you can still aim at their centers fairly reliably.

Collision boxes work okay with the above system though:

Ride'em ratty!

It'd be kinda nice if our projectiles didn't use the hitbox system. It's so much extra strain on the server, and if it just used the basic bounding box, targets would be easy enough to hit. Sure, you wouldn't be able to shoot between thing's legs, but wtf cares?

 

[FER]

Could this make orion bow expanding mana ball look better? Wouldnt add much more strain since Orion bow already does.

 

[villager]

Will this scaling stuff save you guys model space? O:

Gargantuan dewm-plants please.

 

[Thothie]

Not in the short term, but maybe, somewhat, in the long. Hitboxes for some of the scaled models are messed up already, so it likely wouldn't make things any worse, but again, ideally, we'd abandon the hitbox system altogether which would be reliable with this sort of adjustment and save bookoe server calcs.

Could this make orion bow expanding mana ball look better? Wouldnt add much more strain since Orion bow already does.

Ehh... Maaaybe... It's tricky. The way the current Mana Ball works, it's an NPC that spawns in front of you and reads a var from the player the Orion Bow increases over time. It reads this every second or so, and boosts up a size at the appropriate moments. Be tricky to turn that into a smooth inflation, but, on the other hand, it is already eating server cycles by snapping to the user ever 0.1 seconds. Be better if it were a client effect rather than an NPC, but that's tricky as well. Also not sure if MIB's scale fix works on CL tempents.

Originally the bow was just supposed to attach an expanding sprite to an arrow, but the CL effect caused said sprites to attach to all projectiles in the area, before and after being fired.

 

[The Man In Black]

IIRC, there MAY have been some overlapping with .scale with tempents. I was tired, but I do remember thinking, "Eh, we won't be scaling tempents, anyway." So, you can try, but I don't remember how bad it will mess up >_>

 

[Thothie]

Scaling tempents would be very useful. Sprites already scale, but not models - already had to do some crazy stuff to deal with that shortcoming. Hope this fix doesn't mess with sprite scaling - but I think I woulda noticed already if it did.

Enabling scaling the player model might lead to some comical opportunities too. Potion of Giant Strength anyone?

 

[Stoned]

WEll at least this thread lead to the discovery of model scaling