Quest Mod Made A Petition
Dirty_Harry_Potter
Join Date: 2002-11-21 Member: 9500Members
Join Date: 2002-11-21 Member: 9500Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">to valve about expanding the hl enging</div> <a href='http://www.petitiononline.com/limitshl/petition.html' target='_blank'>the petition</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->To: Valve
I created this petition to pursuade Valve to raise their engine limits for the game Half-Life. Currently, there are several limits in the engine. These limits range from the maximum size of a level, to the amount of sounds and models that can be pre-loaded.
The Half-Life engine is now 7 years old, and still used widely by a lot of people. It's also the engine that drives one of the most popular games, Counter-Strike.
Half-Life's restrictive limits for entity counts, model precache counts, and sound limit counts, commonly known as the "Out of SFX_T" crash, have put a serious damper on the creative efforts of Half-Life Modification programmers and developers. Especially those working on big, prestigious projects.
Valve however, after being emailed a few times, responded with that if they would raise the limits, the game would no longer match the system requirements on the box. This however, has already been long done, and they're just estimates. And on top of that, nearly all of those that play and mod Half-Life have way better systems anyway. And adding to that, the requirements would only go up if you would make the levels, objects and programming to use all of the space provided.
I would like to see all those Engine Limits either made dynamic, or moved to the moddable dlls so The Modification programmers can raise the limits for their mod if they feel they would need that. This would not raise the system requirements for already existing and released games, nor limit mod authors to make their mods much bigger then currently possible.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i dunno if this would help the NS team, but it would make it more possible to have more interesting mods, and it's possible that the quest really needs this, to have a good resuslt. - by the way they making a MMORPG for the hl engine...
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->To: Valve
I created this petition to pursuade Valve to raise their engine limits for the game Half-Life. Currently, there are several limits in the engine. These limits range from the maximum size of a level, to the amount of sounds and models that can be pre-loaded.
The Half-Life engine is now 7 years old, and still used widely by a lot of people. It's also the engine that drives one of the most popular games, Counter-Strike.
Half-Life's restrictive limits for entity counts, model precache counts, and sound limit counts, commonly known as the "Out of SFX_T" crash, have put a serious damper on the creative efforts of Half-Life Modification programmers and developers. Especially those working on big, prestigious projects.
Valve however, after being emailed a few times, responded with that if they would raise the limits, the game would no longer match the system requirements on the box. This however, has already been long done, and they're just estimates. And on top of that, nearly all of those that play and mod Half-Life have way better systems anyway. And adding to that, the requirements would only go up if you would make the levels, objects and programming to use all of the space provided.
I would like to see all those Engine Limits either made dynamic, or moved to the moddable dlls so The Modification programmers can raise the limits for their mod if they feel they would need that. This would not raise the system requirements for already existing and released games, nor limit mod authors to make their mods much bigger then currently possible.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i dunno if this would help the NS team, but it would make it more possible to have more interesting mods, and it's possible that the quest really needs this, to have a good resuslt. - by the way they making a MMORPG for the hl engine...
Comments
/me shrugs
what you shoot the guy and you get his gun/armor/nades?
sounds dumb!
meanwhile I be <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> a couple of <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif'><!--endemo--> maybe even a <!--emo&::onos::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tiny.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tiny.gif'><!--endemo--> and having "fun" <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Like one said. It's better to have played 1 game of NS then a entire year of CS.
what they are doing is that they are making multiple servers, each hosting one area of the world, so when you leave one area you join another server, and for some areas they have multiple servers, so the player limit isn't going to be too much of a problem. but they could get rid of the multiple servers for one area thingy(if they don't lots of players could be in the same "area" but not be able to see eachtoher, 'cos they're in different servers.
and it's set in a fantasy medieval age, read the <a href='http://www.planethalflife.com/quest' target='_blank'>Site</a> for more info.
Hands up all those people who don't already meat the box by about 7 times whats mentioned.
Hmmm where's my Half-Life Generations box..... ahh here it is.
System Requirements:
Pentium 200 | <span style='color:yellow'>I have AMD ATHLON 1400</span>
32 Meg RAM | <span style='color:yellow'>640 here but 256 seems to be the average</span>
2X CD-ROM | <span style='color:yellow'>48x on my main drive,</span>
400 MD Hard-Drive Space | <span style='color:yellow'>60 GiG</span>
125 MD for Opposing Force | <span style='color:yellow'>See above</span>
SVGA High Colour | <span style='color:yellow'>If you can read these forums you're fine</span>
Win Compatible Soundcard <span style='color:yellow'>SB Live 5.1</span>
Mouse, Keyboard | <span style='color:yellow'>Think we all have these anyway</span>
Half-Life supports a variety of video-cards, but one is not needed. | <span style='color:yellow'>YAY</span>
Looks like VALVe need a few more excuses.
Since when does reality have <i>any</i> influence on court descisions? All it takes is one anal person with the recommended system, that d/ls the 'engine update' - patch, calls a lawyer, and forces Valve to shell money out. I for mine can understand why they're not jumping to change stuff.
System Requirements
Minimum PC Requirements
Intel Pentium® 233 or AMD K6® -2
32 MB RAM
600 MB HD Space
SVGA, high-color (16-bit)
Win-compatible Soundcard
2x CD ROM Drive
32-bit Internet service provider with 28.8+ modem or LAN
<a href='http://valve.speakeasy.net/survey/' target='_blank'>Valve HL Survey</a>
CPU Speed | Number of players | Percentage
Less than 200MHz 2196 0.2
200MHz to 300MHz 16448 1.6
300MHz to 400MHz 61731 5.9
400MHz to 500MHz 136081 13.0
500MHz to 600MHz 120328 11.5
600MHz to 700MHz 109367 10.4
700MHz to 800MHz 156958 15.0
Almost 20,000 player at or below the minimum specs.
Another 600,000 just barely double the minimum cpu specs - to around the 700-800Mhz range. (and almost certainly out of reach of some of the proposed changes).
1.0GHz to 1.1GHz 65478 6.2
1.1GHz to 1.2GHz 16092 1.5
1.2GHz to 1.3GHz 34834 3.3
1.3GHz to 1.4GHz 33581 3.2
1.4GHz to 1.5GHz 35543 3.4
1.5GHz to 1.6GHz 13909 1.3
1.6GHz to 1.7GHz 7426 0.7
1.7GHz to 1.8GHz 4829 0.5
1.8GHz to 1.9GHz 1577 0.2
1.9GHz to 2.0GHz 957 0.1
Greater than 2GHz 282 0.0
Percentage over the (now rather outdated) 1Ghz range? A mere 20%. strictly minority stuff here...
Now, this data is rather old, but it's the only reliable data anyone has on this user community (until the next patch, which will gather the data again). Also, while some areas of the survey may have changed (such as the Graphics Cards and other peripherals), the core of a system - its processor - is far more likely to be the same at this point, as it's much more expensive to replace.
I'm not arguing for or against the petition, I am just trying to fill in the missing info. I'm also surprised that no one here pointed out that making the HL engine much more capable might have some negative effects on the sales of HL2 and TF2, hmmmmmm? Food for thought.
but yah know what? they aint gona do it.
There is no real reason for them to do this. They keep on releasing patches b/c the game has not been droped yet, however if they ever want to release HL2 doing this would compleatly destroy their plans.
meh, I think its a fairly stupid idea basicaly b/c valve probably will never do it.
Hands up all those people who don't already meat the box by about 7 times whats mentioned.
Hmmm where's my Half-Life Generations box..... ahh here it is.
System Requirements:
Pentium 200 | <span style='color:yellow'>I have AMD ATHLON 1400</span>
32 Meg RAM | <span style='color:yellow'>640 here but 256 seems to be the average</span>
2X CD-ROM | <span style='color:yellow'>48x on my main drive,</span>
400 MD Hard-Drive Space | <span style='color:yellow'>60 GiG</span>
125 MD for Opposing Force | <span style='color:yellow'>See above</span>
SVGA High Colour | <span style='color:yellow'>If you can read these forums you're fine</span>
Win Compatible Soundcard <span style='color:yellow'>SB Live 5.1</span>
Mouse, Keyboard | <span style='color:yellow'>Think we all have these anyway</span>
Half-Life supports a variety of video-cards, but one is not needed. | <span style='color:yellow'>YAY</span>
Looks like VALVe need a few more excuses. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
The minimum specs on my box are Pentium 133 minimum, and i have the half life generations one
So it looks like they've got away with it once already!
I think that some of the more simple changes could be done to HL that wouldn't cause these problems:
- add TRUE 32bpp color, including 32bpp textures. This would be a pretty easy change too, especially since internally HL handles some things as if they were 32bpp already from what I understand.
- speed up the renderer. This would let us have more detailed environments/models w/ less of a speed hit. Therefore, you wouldn't have to raise the system requirements, as things are just running faster, which is good for everyone...
- raise engine limits on certain technical things. The min sys. reqs. only apply to the Valve stuff anyway, mod makers are not bound to them. If these limits were raised just to let mod authors go nuts, that would be fine by me.
But we all know this won't happen. Or maybe it will. After all, HL did have a complete overhaul of netcode, and coming soon is that new splash menu along with what is so far the biggest engine change (and its still not even that big): Model additives/transparency...