Decals in games are things we take for granted.
We EXPECT bullets to leave holes in walls.
We don't like it when blood suddenly disappears from the environment.
Where's the fun in that?
In older games, we'd often be left disappointed.
However, the Source engine seems pretty good at retaining these details.
But there has to be a limit, doesn't there?
I intend to find it and therefore prove that Valve's games SUCK and shouldn't be played!
Ngh.
Nghhh.
NGGH.
Okay, now to wait and to see how long it takes for them to disappear.
Okay, that's clearly not going to work.
There must be a limit to the number of decals that you can have in the level at once!
What if I fire into the same place?
Will the first decal ever disappear?
Okay.
It's evident that there is some kind of magical decal limit and that you won't reach it by
trying to kill the world in one place, since decals too close to each other replace the
older one, meaning that you'll never reach the limit.
So to reduce the chances of that happening, check out my decal testing centre!
All I have to do is to fire one HERE... and then the rest on the floor below, which gives
it enough space for the decals to all find their own resting place.
I did this on low shader details, since I worked out that this is the only thing that
affects the number of decals.
Effect detail, believe it or not, doesn't.
Great.
Now that the first has disappeared, I simply have to count the number of bullet impacts
on the floor to work out the limit.
Now if anybody wants to count these then be my guest.
However, I'm going to go by the amount of time it takes before the original disappears.
The negev fires at 1000 RPM and I was firing for 57.93 seconds which works out at 966 bullets.
Meh.
I was hoping for a nice computery number, like 1024, but I guess that there's some kind
of overhead from something I haven't considered.
It's a bit early to be giving up already.
Let's test it again.
This time there it only took 956 bullets!
That's a pretty big difference, considering how unlikely it is that one bullet lands on
top of another.
But maybe it's a bit like how if you have 23 people in the same room then there's a
50% chance that two will have the same birthday or whatever.
The problem is that 956 is even further away from a magical computer number, like 1024.
But screw it.
Life is too short to be worrying about things like this.
On to more important stuff!
I upped the shader details and tested again.
The results were conclusive.
On low and medium shader details, it took just under a minute for the first decal to
disappear, meaning that the decal limit is PROBABLY 1024, or slightly less but I can't
imagine why they'd do that.
At HIGH settings, it's 2048 and at VERY HIGH it took 4096 before the first shot disappeared.
I'm very aware that these figures happen to be exactly DOUBLE the amounts calculated in
xSnowmaNx's steam post from ages ago.
Unfortunately, these console commands no longer work and the exploit he found also causes
crashes and errors on the current version of CSGO.
I can only assume that Valve are trying to hide the inner workings of the decal system.
Maybe there's buried treasure here somewhere.
I'll keep digging.
More is always better, but with the decal limit so high even on lower settings, I don't
think it matters too much.
It's unlikely that you'll lose earlier details in the space of a single round unless everybody
runs about with negevs, in which case having a good headset will help your detective skills
more than the hundreds of bullet holes fired from several minutes ago.
But shader detail doesn't just change the NUMBER of bullet holes.
It also changes the number that can overlap.
This is about as exciting as this video gets.
At high and very high, it means that 3 bullet holes can overlap at once instead of one,
which reduces the amount that disappear if fired too close together.
This irritates me more than it should.
Blood may appear to disappear from walls if applied too much but that's only because they're
larger decals and overlap far easier.
This is a good reason to have shader detail on high instead of low, since blood can give
you a lot of important information about a previous fight.
A while ago I posted a video where I couldn't see what difference EFFECT DETAIL makes.
At lower settings, decals won't show up on props.
This IS a problem so I'd advise that you set it to high.
Imagine somebody is spamming double doors in dust2 with an autosniper.
It helps to see where they're landing on the props so that you can avoid the spray by jumping
over it if necessary.
Does the number of decals already in the level make a difference?
To test this I added a few to my decal testing centre and tried it again on low shader detail.
Wow!
Look at that difference.
It took under half a minute- or about 500 shots- before the first decal disappeared
on low shader detail settings.
This was with- and I counted this myself - 903 decals in the level.
A very exciting topic to look into in more depth at some point, but not in this exact
video.
And finally, displacements.
These don't like decals and both blood and bullets will disappear from these far sooner
than other surfaces.
I don't know why this is but I'm sure that there's a long and exciting answer.
But right now, I don't care.