I have a vague theory about this, wildly speculative, but who cares? Valve can effectively replace the entire engine, piece-by-piece. That way, the game code is mature and stable, the renderer can be updated to current tech, all while (and this is the important bit) *maintaining compatibility with mods*
HL's single-player rasied the bar for all FPS games, but the mods are what really made it. Allowing those mods to grow *with* the engine increases the longevity enormously. HL2 and TF2 could just be content add-ons, effectively mods. I could be completely and utterly wrong. Then again, I could be right :) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sebastian Steinlechner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 7:48 PM Subject: Re: [hlcoders] 1000+ are nice? > > yeah i guess they are, but by the time CZ comes out Unreal2 with its > > 5000+ tri models and 100,000 wpolys (that's on a geforce2 even) will be > > out too... > > Actually, you can't tell me there are really 100,000 polys on the screen. > But it looks like. I guess the biggest thing why the HL engine is outdated > is the fact that it does not support LOD. Take Serious Sam as an example. > There you can define that e.g. stairs automagically reduce their poly count > when you move away from them. You don't really notice it, and it saves a lot > of polygons. Same with models. Though you can implement a simple lod for > player models in HL (just as HolyWars did, IIRC). > And HL still supports full software rendering. You can image that eats a > hell lot of cpu time. Even if you are in hardware mode. > > I might be wrong with that, but that's how I see it. > > cya, > TheTinySteini > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders > > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
