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[[Rhymenoceros]]

I don't know much about heightmaps, how to make them or anything, but I once read this tut on fpsb about them and I think some of the textures in ges could use them.

A great example would be the texture of the walls of the vent above the bathroom.(Starting location of Facility in original)
I can't think of any other textures that I noticed needed heightmaps, but the facility vent one stuck in my mind.

[Ryan [Saiz]]

That goes along the lines of parallax shadering and is still very taxing on graphics. This will limit even more players that can play our mod. We have made sure all our models and textures are opimized and to the point almost anyone can play our mod. But our transition to the orange box did raise the requirements a bit.

[Jonathan [Spider]]

as cool as parallax mapping can be its a total beast when it comes to resources on a computer. theres a few bad ass techniques that are coming out for normal mapping that do full on displacement which we will see for direct X 11. but HL2 isn't really built for those kinds of uber graphics so we are just going to keep it simple hehe.

[[Rhymenoceros]]

I don't think it would really tax performance that badly if you just made a few. (1-2 a map wouldn't be too bad I think)
But that one texture in facility just bugged me, although in original ge it's worse lol.

[Ryan [Saiz]]

If you look directly at a parallax map in source your fps drops to about 10 fps and if you are in a vent with about 12 in your face good luck getting out.

[[Rhymenoceros]]

^lolz 'specially on a crappy computer like mine

I didn't know they were that taxing

[Ryan [Saiz]]

Its not just a pc its just source engine isn't great or designed to be doing them and it really taxes resources.

[[Rhymenoceros]]

idc, heightmaps was just an idea

I just <3 the way they lookz

[Konrad Beerbaum]

Wait, I'm confused.  How the heck did you guys get to parallax mapping?  Height maps are just a black and white map.  The most common use is to use them to create a bump map.  You can also use a height map and a normal map to create a parallax map, but that is a completely different thing. 

We use normal maps on a lot of our props.  Normal maps are a more complex version of bump maps, and look a lot better.  As we go through and polish up the mod, we might redo those textures you are talking about and add normal maps to them if they really need them. 

[kraid]

A while ago i did some testing with a paralax shadder the guys at RE Twilight did.
Well it worked till i tried it in a real map.
The reason for this:
While compiling all world textures have to be LightmappedGeneric or it won't work.
But for the shadder to work it needs to be MN_PrlxLightmappedGeneric.
Changing something on a world texture after compiling is a very bad idea.
For me it fucked up all the lightmaps in the map i tested.
Sometimes the map will crash on startup too. (like when i enabled the normalmap for the snow in runway without having it compiled again)
IMO it doesn't really add something to the game, would decrease the playability of it and has some graphical disadvantages too.
like when you shoot a parallax mapped surface, the bullethole decal will stay on the original surface only the texture itself will be deformed, so it seems the bulletholes are hovering in front of it.
I think that's why valve never included the parallax mapping in the Games they made.

[engineer]

L4D's iteration of the Source engine solved this with self-shadowing normal maps. They work well enough and don't rape FPS as much as heightmaps tend to.

[Loafie, Hero of Dreams]

sucks source didn't work in parallax as well as they could have, cause damn it's beautiful

[Jonathan [Spider]]

L4D's iteration of the Source engine solved this with self-shadowing normal maps. They work well enough and don't rape FPS as much as heightmaps tend to.

if we can get self shadowed normal maps in that's something i would totally consider wanting to put in.

[engineer]

If this can be replicated via shaders in the OB engine, it would be AWESOME.

[kraid]

good idea, since they have no decrase in performance compared to regular normalmaps.
The only drawback, they are harder to do.