Breaking Team Fortress

Three Million

L4: Comfortable Member
Jul 2, 2015
197
75
I had a map idea that would attempt to push the limits of the Team Fortress 2 engine. How much stuff could we put in a map? My original plan was to combine koth_trainsawlaser and koth_wubwubwub_remix_vip together with more stuff thrown in. Thoughts on this?
 

Malachite Man

L6: Sharp Member
Oct 16, 2015
345
198
That
I had a map idea that would attempt to push the limits of the Team Fortress 2 engine. How much stuff could we put in a map? My original plan was to combine koth_trainsawlaser and koth_wubwubwub_remix_vip together with more stuff thrown in. Thoughts on this?
That would not break the engine that would kill it.
 

Startacker!

WANT ME TO BE REAL? MAKE ME.
aa
Jun 15, 2013
647
1,197
I don't even think you would make it to the compile process if you combine trainsawlaser and wubwubwub together.
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
aa
Jul 22, 2014
1,257
999
Two issues that should not be blamed for each others causes of instability:

1. Reaching the maximum number of networked edicts a server can handle, or the 'entity limit'.
TF2 server can track 2048 things at a time. Things are player models, cosmetics, weapons, projectiles and dynamic brush, point and prop entities. In any typical 24-player game of TF2, before you take the map's entities in to consideration you're going to have an average number of edicts in use; a factor the map maker needs to consider when building their map. Snowplow uses a lot of edicts because Payload maps have a lot of path_track entities which the cart follows, and it's a large map. On a 32 player server running the map there is a good chance the server will crash.

2. Excessive amount of stuff on the screen.
The more brush faces and models the player's game renders, the slower their framerate will be. In extreme circumstances, at some point the game will probably quit with a memory error.

3. The hidden category! Doing dumb shit in your map.
TF2's engine is like walking your non-tech mum through fixing problems with her computer over the phone. If you get ahead of her and give her more things to deal with than she can handle, she will get completely confused and just give up, asking you if you can come and do it for her. It's about feeding her a steady and small amount of stuff to avoid going over her limits of comprehension.
Let's say you have three or more different-coloured lights hitting multiple faces and you want to turn them all on and off individually. NOPE!
Let's say you want to put an env_glow and a point_tesla inside the bounds of a prop_dynamic. NOPE!
Let's say you like to make your own func_doors but you like to sticker them with info_decal. NOPE!
Follow the Stone & Parker rule and KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid.
 

Three Million

L4: Comfortable Member
Jul 2, 2015
197
75
Let's say you want to put an env_glow and a point_tesla inside the bounds of a prop_dynamic
This actually gives me a good idea. Make a giant moving plasma ball or something, in like a giant lab. Some Half Life stuff right there.
HL3 confirmed.
 

Three Million

L4: Comfortable Member
Jul 2, 2015
197
75
But when Source 2 comes out its gonna solve all of these problems right guys haha
When Source 2 gets ported to Team Fortress, it won't be the same. Sure tf will be optimized and fix all of our problems, but it's those problems that we love to hate. Like that old clunky car, sure it's not the best and not the most reliable. But when it works it's pretty solid.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
Nothing's getting ported to Source 2.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
Pretty sure I remember someone from Valve actually saying they had considered it and decided not to do it.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
I'll put it this way: I've never known them to say they're not doing something and then turn around and do it.
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
aa
Sep 20, 2015
1,308
2,743
if u want a masterclass in breaking tf2 try and run safteyhazard (the map disqualified from DCP) on a server w/ a few people

physics just stops working after a bit