Riddle me this...

[Series Of Tubes]

Why are the paints for hats not a skin?
Would that not just be so easy.
That way you don't have to use hat proxy or override anything.
It seems like it would be easy for Valve to make for TF2 and SFM.

[raptornx01]

more skins means more data to load. why should it load 20 different skins for every instance of a hat everytime you play the game when most people will never use them anyway?

[6000 ANGRY BEES]

There are 36 different paint colours in TF2 to date. Completely disregarding that Source Engine models only support 32 separate materials by default (IIRC), that means having 36 different copies of the texture file. Which means multiplying the total filesize of every paintable hat's textures by 36.

You can probably figure out why this is a bad idea.

[Pte Jack]

Besides that, the source engines limits you to 32 materials per object. If you use the override materials and the $color / $colourtint_base attribubutes there are millions of colours. Same as using a paint wheel to paint your hat.

[Series Of Tubes]

I never knew that it had a cap on materials.
On paper it sounds easy.

[Pte Jack]

Yeah, I hit the cap doing the Spy heads and all the masks... I had to find a way around it

[raptornx01]

Yeah, it's easy to overestimate what source can take and underestimate how much adding simple things to models can beef up their files sizes. Like you would think if you can have numerous character models there for animating no problem, why couldn't you have one model with lots of bodygroups, but you soon find out, that makes it harder for sfm to deal with then just have a bunch of separate models.

[Bop]

We're dealing with the framework of a 10 year old game engine here. We shouldn't really be surprised about all this.

[raptornx01]

true. Once source 2 comes out, it hopefully fixes some of these issues.

Then again, on the one hand, i really want S2 for the possibilities, but on the other hand, i'm dreading it since i know my comp won't be able to handle it. I fear once it comes out, half the sfm userbase will no longer have access to the program.

[Bop]

No computer is going to be able to handle it until around 5 years later. TF2 is not a resource intensive game at all so making an animation tool (technically, manual demo creation tool) wasn't too demanding. Source 2, on the other hand, would be a next-gen game engine, where modern gaming desktops may be incapable of keeping a steady 60fps, making it quite difficult to handle an animation tool.

[Pte Jack]

What??? Are?? You ??? Talking about????

[Bop]

They're only assumptions. We don't know the full details of Source 2 yet.

[raptornx01]

http://www.gamersbook.com/News/Article/ID/378/Source-Engine-2-Screenshot

and I doubt it will be that resource intensive. They'll want it to run on the steambox. and most likely HL3 is either being made in it, or converted to it. and SFM is already compatible with it as proven by code in the program, not to mention any cinema scenes in the game will be made in sfm like all of their cinemas.

I just know "I" won't be able to run it.

[Series Of Tubes]

Time to get working on a new PC.

[Bop]

Getting it running would be possible, just quite, if not very, slowly, most definitely not at full speed. The speed would ultimately depend on the game SFM will be running at. Rendering times would be quite a nuisance too.

Edit: Considering the current SFM runs on 30-40 fps here, I would say it would take a bit of time before SFM gets the S2 engine.

Specs: 2x GTX760, 32GB DDR3, i7-3820 OC @ 4.2Ghz

[raptornx01]

I would if I had the money. Any current source game I can run at max settings. even games like DC universe, Champions or Marvel heroes. but games like planetside 2, or warframe, if I trying anything above minimum they become unplayable.

Issues like this are why I never became a pc gamer. Much prefer consoles.