Hi, I'd just like to know some things about Hammer. First I'd like to know the maximum map size possible. (What I found so far is roughly 10 by 10km or 32000 by 32000 foot.) I kinda get the feeling that most Empires maps are not that big. Is that just my gut being wrong or is there some other limitation I don't know about?
~32000 hammer units squared (from -16k to +16k and its maximum height aswell) https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dimensions thats ~600m per side, 850m diagonal - so about 0.4kmĀ², a bit less start a listening server and set emp_sv_netvisdist_player* to something >= 32000 (45000 to see along the diagonal) and see yourself how small empires maps really are. (default is 10k, servers use different values for buildings, players, vehicles and whatnot but not more then 15k or smthg, trickster knows more) *not sure if _player is sufficient, there is one of those cvars that controlls it alltogether, up them all if it doesnt show results instantly
good that you usually dont have to run across half the map map size is really dependent on player counts and vehicle availabilty. for pure infantry combat empires maps are way too big and cover is way too far spread out (even though you can build walls)
If Empires maps were slightly bigger they'd actually start getting all fucked up. Strange things happen near the borders of the hammer workspace. Anyways I take it you want to make map sized models like in other engines?
yeah, you want to avoid grid edge if at all possible. Hammer won't do anything outside its grid area. But you would never want to push the issue.
Note that, if we don't try to get aircraft working with it, we can scale down everything down to 16x. I played a 8x scaled-down version of emp_district, which already makes everything FUCKING HUGE.