Have you considered a new career as The One? I know it's a bit offputting sometimes when you know exactly how something works. Everyone else is like OMG THAT'S AMAZING! And you're like Well actually it's just high res cubemapping or whatever. However that doesn't bother me too much because knowing how stuff works means you usually don't have to ask other people to do it for you. You can get the game to do what you really want it to do.
Lol. Honestly though, it does feel like that whole matrix thing, like everything in the game is just a series of developed things, not an experience. That's the thing with all games, I'm alway like... "Well, the probably did this and that to get this working, and oh! That's a neat segment of thought... probably required some time to code that..." Yeah, I like being the guy helping people instead of the guy asking for help.
It's funny, but I feel exacty opposite. Knowing how the level was built and how it's working just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Okay, well, not really. But I certainly do enjoy the way it feels. BSP-based engines have always felt really solid to me, as opposed to, say, the Unreal engine, which is far more mesh-based.
HOLY CRAP. I definitly hate it when games just use Jpegs for the surroundings! It makes it feel like just a wrapped around sphere, which it is! You can spot that regardless of what you know about gaming. And I wasn't saying the sky is a box, it's a skybox. If they sky was a box, we would see lines going down the middle of the atmosphere, and edges in the sky.
Well, it depends on the shape they wrap the jpeg around, and also the quality. When it's like a poor quality, tiled Jpeg, that's wrapped around a square, that sucks.
Indeed! You guys disconnect us in District, I had like 150 points I was hoping for a medal from BSID, but now It doesn't really count ....
3D sky boxes have been there for quite some time. I think I saw first ones with Unreal in 1998(or it could've been UT one year later). There are several types of environment maps out there, the most used ones are cubemaps and sphere maps. Cubemaps are most used in games, I don't know any game that would use spherical environment maps... If the environment map is done well enough there is no way you can tell it's a cube or a sphere. Learn to live with them, they're just pretty backgrounds that don't take too much resources to render. Edit: And so that none of you would think that HL2 would use any other than cubic environment maps: Source uses cubic environmentmaps.
