how to show outsides of distant testrooms
You must trust me when I say I have been googeling this for at least three hours and came up with nothing...
I am trying to give my map(s) this grand feeling of being in a huge area (don't we all), with in the distance these huge structures, outsides of test-chambers etc etc. Now I think these rooms are created via a 3D skybox? if not no harm done, I got my 3D box up and running though, took a bit of work but got there in the end. I was now hoping I would just be able look for the correct textures to put on the walls of this skybox to finish the job, and this is where I am stuck, I can't find anything in the standard library... so, my question is how to you create this lovely environment, with a bottomless pit, some fog thrown in for fun, huge test chambers glowing soft blue in the distance etc...
Cheers
Simple as that: It isn't a 3D Skybox. Take a look at sp_a4_laser_catapult that came together with Hammer as an example map from VALVE. It is basically an incredibly huge room around the testchamber filled with func_details as these giant grey cubes and prop_statics as cube corners and these blue-white roboter arms. The fog distance is something above 3000. While I am surprised that this does not affect performance on bad computers: If you want to map such an environment, your Pc had better be good.
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The only time in the official campaign that they actually used a 3D skybox was the part where you and PotaDOS are in that funnel and you see Aperture collapse from Wheatley's stupidity. You see a pretty colour and and an transparent texture which appears round the direction you will look at.
FOG: will hide objects past the max distance
Visibility and optimisation: will keep your map free of lag
Designing correctly by creating optimised layouts to begin with: will improve performance overall.
Brilliant gents! thanks
I fear I might be getting some performance issues soon then, if I have to create everything in a huge room. I still have tons of stuff to learn and ask, but I will crack on with it. I'm looking at a lovely row of arms now, just freshly inserted via a prop_static, looking good!
I see a lot of implication that 3D skyboxes are always better for performance than having the same geometry in the level itself, but I don't understand why. The only thing I could find on the wiki related to performance is this: "Due to their scale, 3D skyboxes have much lower lightmap and texture resolution. This makes 3D skybox geometry less expensive performance-wise than standard world geometry." Ordinarily you should decrease the lightmap resolution and stretch the textures of far away surfaces anyway. Is "texture resolution" something separate from the scale that is only changable with a 3d skybox?
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I have seen 3d skyboxs used alot of times in official maps. Eg; the hotel map, and the tartarus map.
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The only real reasons I can think of to use a 3D skybox, is if the surroundings of the map are too big to be built at true scale (like the citadel in Half-Life 2), or if I want to use some decoration prop that is designed to be used with one. (I.E. scaled down to 1/16.)
Or, in very specific cases, using a 3D skybox may be beneficial if it allows the main map geometry to be simpler. For example, if you can eliminate a big volume around the map, it may help reduce the number of visleaves, since the map will straddle fewer 1024-interval grid boundaries.
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