So i was just looking at the extinction revamp thread, and a thought came to mind. What if you scaled a HUGE BSP down to 1/8 - 1/16 the size that it should have been for the players to use in-game in modeling, and then in-game using the (object_set_scale <object> <real> <short>) command to tone the size of everything down to match. Then change things like jump height, camera height, crouching camera height, contrail size, particle size, damage effect radius, ect.


I mean it'd be a lot of up front work, but once you got it all to scale it'd be done and you could make maps much bigger because you wouldn't have to worry about compiling this huge BSP. And then just make a script like this

(script continuous shrinkage
(object_set_scale (unit (list_get (players))) 0.1 1)

And then name all of the vehicles, scenery, ect in your map and use the same command with their name after it. With everything scaled down your BSP is smaller and easier to compile, you can make bigger maps and have them less lagy because halo doesn't have to render things as far. Let me know what you think of this idea, weather it would be worth the time and effort to do all of that or not.
Edited by grunt_eater on May 20, 2012 at 05:13 PM

I don't know if it would work since the ''Camera size'' cannot be changed. I had this discussion with Bacon a couple years back on ''how much'' you could actually scale down things to create larger maps. Never got to actually try it...

No it wouldn't be low poly, go into halo in dev mode and type in (object_set_scale (unit (list_get (players) 0)) 0.1 1. Then use dev cam and look at yourself in third person, doesn't look low poly to me :P and i don't get what you mean about scaling the players, if you scale their collision as well then it should match, also since you're smaller and moving at a lower speed, in theory, it should have less lag, because you're actually moving over a smaller space over a slower amount of time. Let me know opinions.

Not the player, the camera. You can't scale down the camera as far as I remember. While it seems like it wouldn't be an issue in most cases, in some others I'm pretty sure a too small map would have clipping issues caused by it.

This is when we would need to make a 3rd person app come in handy, if we could shrink the camera than yes this could be physically possible. but theres no way with CE's engine that we can. The game is still an old engine you have to remember that it can only handle so much, but there are loop holes in this that we have found out and thats what makes this community and game so great, I'm sure we can find a way.

You'd have a tiny tiny body and regular sized hands, right? At least from the first-person perspective. It'd be like like connecting your camera to your shoe on a regular-sized biped.

1: open up a biped tag and scroll to the bottom, you see that? camera height. Bam camera shrunken 2: if you shrink the weapons as well then i think the hands would shrink too, as is if you just shrink the character your right hand will stay the same size as normal.

I doubt that would actually help. All the information to make the map would still have to be there despite the change in size (which is relative anyway). Also like others have mentioned it would mess with a lot of preexisting constants in halo such as: ai, fp camera, speeds, animations, bones, ect...
Like you said a lot of work upfront, but possibly no gain.

@grunt_eater camera height does not change feild of veiw does it?
Edited by jawa on May 20, 2012 at 07:36 PM

Oh, you meant the FOV, scroll up to the units section of the biped tag, see that? field of view. Changing this will give you the results you're looking for.

And why would AI matter? as far as i know SP maps don't have a file size limit, so you don't really need to change the file size, MP maps, however, do have a file size and if you can shrink that then you could add more content to your map.
Edited by grunt_eater on May 20, 2012 at 07:47 PM

The only possible thing this might fix is the clipping issue that is seen on Hugeass and Extinction, etc. Other errors would still persist, such as map size limits. Even if you scroll all things down, the bsp limit will still be in place and if you make the map bigger you will still be utilizing more triangles/polygons.

What do you mean by that? "utilizing more triangles/polygons". What is this meant to mean?

Basically, like Tiel said and (I believe, havent read all posts) others said, it would still theoretically be the same. Your still using the same amount of trainlges as before, and if you make the map even larger, you will be just using more. There isnt a difference, all your doing is scaling everything down than what it use to be. Once everything is scaled all the way down, it will then be virtually the same as it was before.

Exactly what i was saying, if it's exactly the same as it was before then why is there a problem? It'd have the same amount of detail but cover a smaller distance.

The same amount of detail would mean it takes up the same amount of space in terms of memory.

^ and just becuase it covers a smaller distance dosent mean you can literally make the maps larger. Like I said previously, the only thing you'd be able to fix is the distance error. If thats what your aiming to fix, then go for it. But thats about all that it would do.

As for the ''It solves the clipping distance issue", I beg to differ. There is a Halo script command that does Exactly that. I fail to remember it at the time, perhaps our own Kirby could answer this one?

As one said, size is relative. If space battles in Halo were to work decently, this is the only purpose I could find to this scaling down project.

Okay, if the only thing that makes a maps size is the amount of faces, then why is h3 sandtraps so big and maps like infinity can have a tone of stuff in them? Which do you think has more faces?
Edited by grunt_eater on May 20, 2012 at 09:53 PM

There is a command for render distance, but it still has its limit. There was a program that could bypass it, I don't know if that was ever included in OS or not, try checking your setting xml's to see if its in there.

Go compare the BSP tags then. See which BSP tag has more triangles, listed materials, portals, etc. Just because the complete map is a different size, it means nothing about the actual BSP. If you have a model that is just 5 vertices, one copy where its scaled at 5000 feet, and one at 0.5 feet, they would take the same amount of space. Each vert would have a x/y/z, each of these would be represented by numbers. These numbers are stored as the same byte length. While one may say 5000 and the other says 0.5, they are still stored like 0005000.000000 and 0000000.500000; the same amount of digits saved in both even if they aren't used.


And comparing map files *sigh* there is more than map file, there is sounds, bitmaps, etc. Go grab all the tags for a default SP map, compile it, compare it's file size to the HPC version. The default maps are always smaller because many of their tags are in bitmaps.map and sounds.map. The HPC SP maps just don't happen to have that stuff in the HCE bitmaps and sounds; That's why HPC SP maps can be 30 MBs, and HCE versions are 120 MBs. Same happens for any non-stock map, more has to be stored in the maps themselves. If you want to save the space in a similar fashion, OpenSauce has mod-sets where you can store common files in special maps, that are used by other maps.

Map size is determined by the size of the bsp and the tags in it. In multiplayer there is a set max size for the map. In single player, the max size of the map is determined by the size of the bsp.
Infinity is small because it uses stock tags which have their bitmaps stored in bitmaps.map while H3 sandtrap has many custom tags and bitmaps.

This is exactly what I was thinking. 2 triangles will (surprisingly enough) still be 2 triangles when scaled up\down.

What about death cameras? What about the fact that when you group many things into a small area on the screen you might get visual lag? Say Bloodgulch is rendered all at once with full detail because the map is right in front of you at a small size, it's like rendering the normal BG all at once (not to mention vehicles, weapons, ect.) Don't even get me started on LODs.

There's a lot you haven't considered people.


GRABBITY
Edited by Jesse on May 21, 2012 at 12:09 AM

Okay, i understand what you guys are saying now.

@Jessy: How would it be any different from being normal size? if you change your size and fov then you'd be looking at the exact same amount of detail as normal, despite the fact that it's in a smaller space.

camera is only probable problem, although you might have some physics problems and stuff.

i see how it could work like grunt eater says
one way keeping make same way same bsp or two make map smaller with less triangles which would allow make more things but wouldnot work in covies and Foreruner structures
and i agre with abkarch physics problems would be obvious

What's the point? It's not like everyone's going to start making maps that are even larger than coldsnap or extinction.
You even said the detail is the same, everything looks the same, except the world units are smaller since EVERYTHING is scaled down. That's something like an ant looking at a pencil standing vertically and a human looking at a tall apartment building.

Okay, the point when i made this thread was i thought that if you scaled down the BSP it would save file space, so i thought you could have more content in your maps, tags, scripting, ect. So i thought by doing this you'd be able to out more content and make maps more legendary, i didn't know it would change a thing. Now i do, so sorry for my ignorance. But hey, you live, you learn.

Its always good to share ideas, dont feel bad.
But as Kirby and zx707 said, the reason that bungie's maps are small is because a lot of the information is held in the shared maps (bitmaps/loc/sounds/ui .maps)
Open sauce can make new shared map files i think, that would lessen the size of your map.

It's fine, as long as you understand from the beginning to the end. Yes, even though shrinking down a BSP appears to "lower space", there is still the same amount of triangles (just rendered smaller) and that would still be the same size. It's not how big in size something is physically (in terms of what we were talking about), it's how much there is together.
Edited by XlzQwerty1 on May 21, 2012 at 11:03 PM

I fully understand now, but again my computers overly crapyness rules out any plans of using any OS features. But thanks for the info, it could be helpful to others