Implemented Add the Prop Resizer addon for both performance increase, creative freedom and lore accurate building.

[Chris]

Apologies in advance if I've posted this into the wrong sub-forum.

would like to suggest adding this following addon:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2197220204&searchtext=resizer

I believe this would go a long way in opening up the ability to decorate the otherwise large empty stretches of the sewers and other areas of the map while keeping the prop count down. I also think that the creative team and event management would be able to benefit by being able to use props that are otherwise just slightly the wrong size. Donators also could make use of the addon so they can add their own personal touches to their various builds.

It also has the potentially to cut down on existing builds by replacing duplicate walls with a single one which will improve performance when looking in the direction of the build and also free up more of the prop count for the event team to use in the admin boxes the map comes with.

For example I created a basic mock-up of what I believe the sewers should look like:


This whole collection is 9 props using what already exists on the content pack and resizing them in order to make them more varied and make use of the other smaller xen infestation props which are otherwise too tiny to make any practical use of. The wall and ceiling of Xen gunk worked well with the stacker tool which placed the new prop the correct distance from the old for the resized settings to be re-applied in sequence in order to cover the entire stretch.

Adding more of this in the sewers would help make the map more lore-friendly and potential roleplay opportunities around the infestation and controlling it. Not only for the resistance but combine Factions as well.

The creative team can also make obvious obstacles that can be destroyed like I've made here:


Normally the prop there is too small to cover the doorway cleanly and thus it eats up the prop count. By adding this addon event management or anyone else could resize a prop and then add a prop description to explain more about it. So in this instance, approaching this webbing would make it clear that it's weak and could be destroyed with the correct substance or something similar.

There's potential for so much variety in the content packs we have already but because of how small or impractical their sizes are it makes it impossible to really utilize them to their full potential and essentially it's a wasted download for people connecting to the server. I personally can't see any reason why this suggestion wouldn't benefit the server outside of donators potentially abusing it but given that they've paid money to have PET flags I see that as a non-issue.

I really hope you consider adding it into the server's toolset because I have many creative ideas myself I can't go through with because of the awkward sizes of certain props.

 

[CreekMando]

soup

 

[Muho]

Based we want more Ligma down there

 

[Rat King]

i could have sworn we used to have it, is this no longer the case? it was annoying cause the size fixed on every restart but it was amazing for propping one-use places like events

 

[M!NT]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news here but, we do have this for a reason:



The reason for it being that, for an addon to be added, I have to go and decompile it and read all of the code, to make sure it is safe and won't cause issues with server stability, networking, opening up exploits, etc.

I'm not approving nor denying this at the moment though; gonna leave the thread open for now. If we really want to add it then I can do it but, well, yea (✿◠‿◠)

 

[Chris]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news here but, we do have this for a reason:

View attachment 24297

The reason for it being that, for an addon to be added, I have to go and decompile it and read all of the code, to make sure it is safe and won't cause issues with server stability, networking, opening up exploits, etc.

I'm not approving nor denying this at the moment though; gonna leave the thread open for now. If we really want to add it then I can do it but, well, yea (✿◠‿◠)

Yeah I do remember reading that but couldn't find it again when I made this.

Though a small update, checking on the Dev server there is a resizer tool that does work on resizing props however that resizer doesn't effect the collision meshes of the prop. Visually it will become larger or smaller but it still keeps it's default hitbox. The addon I suggested does scale the collision mesh and also has sliders which can control the size of the mesh if for whatever reason you need to make the prop look bigger but still being able to easily walked past. This also would mean that there would be no need of invisible plating to act as the collision barrier which would make things a lot more straightforward for builders.

To illustrate:
Server's current addon:


My suggested addon:


Example of the various settings in the addon both visual and physical scales can be manually adjusted






As you can see the visual and physical collision meshes can be extended or inverted into the prop to allow people to walk past and / or reduce clipping when resizing larger and more complicated props.

The tool also shows the bounding box of the current face of the targeted prop so i can be fine tuned from a distance which can prevent immersion breaks of admin characters being busted out or interfering overtly when something in their build didn't plan out exactly as they intended. Probably for the best given how characters can be different sizes and might not fit through smaller gaps that were planned. In this way the ragdoll resizer tool that is currently on the server can be kept for ragdolls but physical props which need adjustment can use it's own "Prop Resizer" tool to get the intended effect without adding more props to fake the larger size.



Again I understand it's a bit of a task but being able to control something like this even if it's only a temporary effect between restarts would open a lot of doors.

 

[Rat King]

woah..... this is cool......................... ive always wanted a prop resizer that works better than the current one

 

[Neonity]

This would be very useful. Very well-written suggestion.

 

[M!NT]

I spent a few minutes digging through the 1500 lines of code which make up this STool. I have some concerns. I mean, there are some valid reasons why the current resizing tool doesn't currently effect physics

To scale a mesh by a scalar value (lets say 2x), then all you need to do is scale the positions of each convex position within said mesh. Think of this like strands stretching out when you pull on a t-shirt. As simple as this seems, the issues all sneakily lie within the complexities of the Source (havok) physics engine. A lot of other games also struggle with this, which is why you rarely see games have any feature similar to this.

This tool solves a number of these issues by decoupling the original mesh from the entity and creating a new, specialized nodraw entity with custom, complex physics controls. When you resize the physics of an object the server has to recalculate those meshes from scratch, then recalculate any existing constraints, and then recalculate the collision bounds. If the entity has some sort of animation or motion controls, it has its own custom handler for those things as well. Once all of this is done, it then has to broadcast these changes out to the client so that the physbeam and collision predictions are updated clientside.

This is generally an unreliable, and costly process which requires workarounds. The exact same workarounds mentioned in the glua reference here in fact. However, those workarounds are somewhat costly, as is the server CPU load required to do all of these extra complex physics calculations. Given that we're already pinning the CPU at 100% all day.. it just doesn't seem wise to me to allow for physics mesh manipulation.