Benefits of changing player hull size Created 4 years ago2020-05-06 05:40:34 UTC by dpezzella

Hi all,

I remember The Specialists and Earth's Special Forces back in the day creating these massive maps; these things were HUGE compared to what was possible in other GoldSource mods. The secret I was told was changing the player hull size and scaling down everything else relative to the player. Does anyone here have experience doing this? If so is my memory accurate -- changing the hull drastically increased what was possible for the map size?

The entire premise of my question may be wrong. Again, I'm faintly recalling something explained to me 16 years ago.

Thanks everyone!

The Specialists definitely didn't change the player hull size.
I dunno about ESF though. I still don't quite think that's the case.

Creating massive maps needs 3 things: changing values in delta.lst, changing a couple of things in the HL SDK code, and using custom compilers that support this new boundary. Or, well, 4: a map editor that can place brushes at these large coordinates.

My latest test involved making a map that is about 57k x 57k units and it worked just fine in my mod.It wouldn't work work in vanilla HL, that's for sure.

Also, if you're thinking of decreasing the hull size, I think you're gonna have to do 2 things: use a custom hull file while compiling your map (which defines how large the hulls are, while generating cliphulls) and make modifications to the HL SDK.
I've never done it personally, because if you decrease the player's size, then you have less room for detail. 1 unit will look like 2 units to the player, or even worse, 1 unit will look like 4, depending on how much you decreased the size. So if you want it to look like 1 unit to the player, you'd have to somehow make 0.25...

Natural Selection also did this thick for one of the aliens. The maps in HL could be really big, My zion map occupies almost all available space in the editor, and de_caceres (an old map I´ve done in 2002 for CS) occupied ALL the availabe space, and it did not cause much lag.

@abbadon : Y u no upload your maps to the map vault?

Because all stuff in the Zion map is made of cyclers. The map is not but a big container for all the props that made the map, I have used the way the scenes are done in movies. For the map de_caceres I must do a research, I have tons of old CDs and many of them has not any indication of wat´s into, but as soon as I find it, I´ll upload it on the vault. Of course, I can upload other maps I have, they´re quite big, and unoptimized, shame on me.

Also, there are notes about on Github about some function in the Half-Life SDK having the wrong signature which you'd need to fix to change the hull size.

@abbadon : Do share your stuff Who knows what tomorrow will bring.