: I'm interested in it from a tools perspective, specifically level compiling
: and lighting. I'm curious as to the quality of the tools that Gearbox
: plans to release.
I would imagine that they're going to release the same tools Bungie used, which means that you'll get the same level of quality (in lighting) that you see with the maps released with the game.
The maps are BSP trees, though we haven't figured out how the actual BSP data is stored yet. We've figured out vertex positions and face indices, along with texture coordinates, so we can view Halo maps. The lightmaps themselves are stored as actual textures, which leads me to believe that their resolution could be increased simply by increasing the size of the lightmap texture itself. An example lightmap texture (from Blood Gulch, the main outdoor area) is included below...
Send me an email or whatever if you want some specifics (code, structs, whatever :).
- Dylan
