Why "r_speeds" and "r-drawflat" are your friends

 

These two line commands are essential to the Half-Life board builder.

When you're trying to stay within the 450-500 polygon count rule, these commands will save your butt.

Consider this build...

Example 1
r_speeds enabled/full size r_drawflat enabled/full size

Simple right? 4 walls and a floor and a black ceiling. When we use the "r_speeds 1" command we see that the highest polygon count is 163. When we enable "r_drawflat 1", we see how the engine has to break up the surfaces to draw them.

 

Here is the same build, same textures, but this time, I adjusted the size of the textures with the Texture Application tool in Worldcraft.

Example 2

r_drawflat enabled/full size

r_speeds enabled/full size

The polygon count went from a high polygon count of 163 in example 1, to high polygon count of 28 in example 2.

SO the next question is...how do I change the sizes of my textures? Check out my next example to find out.