What's up people, I'm new to the HEK and before I bring it on myself to explore it in more depth I am very interested
in having a general sense of what I can versus what I can't do with HEK. For example,

How complex can textures be, to what degree am I limited in geometries/shapes, why are there so little objects in many maps e.g blood gulch, No way out mad? Is it time-consuming. And sorry about this noob question but has anyone ever tried a jungle themed map. Why:why not?

Textures can be unlimited in size, though the biggest I would do is a 1024x1024 due to space.

Multiplayer maps can only have 128mb of tagspace in them, while singleplayer maps have a unlimited amount of space.

Models can be detailed as much as you want, but it would be smart to conserve polygons due to performance issues by using good shaders and textures.

Shaders are what create the beauty of Halo. They use multipurspose maps that tell them what parts of an object are brighter, darker, use a different texture, or whatnot. Limitations are seen on non-bsp models, which cannot use bumpmaps.

Overall, there are few restrictions to the content you create for Halo CE, but they still exist. Keep awares and good mapping!

I think there's a 22mb limit on tags, (which may not sound like a lot, but its a ton). And like mooseguy said, there's no mapsize limit on single-player.

Textures must be smaller than 4096x4096, and must be a power of 2 dimensions.