anyone elese noticed this

[Interl@ce]

Originally posted by THEAJFrost
(IMO, don't quote me) was due to the fact that you rarely leave Gordons point of view. It's you in a train. What he sees you see."
Ho-hum.

Sorry, i did quote you :cheese: but ah.. i think you hit the nail on the head! Just the start of the game.... fade from black... wham! it's you in a train! And the adventure starts..... but wait! you can't leave the train because you're heading for work... well let's look around then.

Half-life is indeed the most immersive game for me, mainly because of all the effort that's been put into the game. I mean they took about 4 or 5 years for half-life too, right? That's alot of blood, sweat 'n tears to put into a game. Story's great too, but the way it's all put together is superb!

 

[AH_Viper]

I brought this up a while ago when I first started posting because I had come to the same conclusions.

What you experience in half-life or its mods is completely different from any other game, whether it’s realistic or not, you can’t deny that it creates the best gamming experience…

A couple of mates and I came up with a couple of example that sets HL apart from all others.


1)Walls are solid!! – How many games have you played when you’ve been trying to sneak along the side of the house and felt like your going to pass through the wall… or you view suddenly jumps to inside the house! I mean WTF is with that! (Operation flashpoint for example).

2)FLOOR IS SOLID! – Ok, this may sound bump but there are countless games that I’ve played where I’ve ducked then got stuck halfway through the ground…. (unreal tourney – op flash)

3)Movement is solid – Whether is un-realistic or un-natural is not a factor, you press move, YOU MOVE! You turn… YOU TURN. How annoying is it in games where you try to turn only for a tree to block you from turning! Ok, yes its maybe more realistic but in real life if that tree was there it is a subconscious action to move away from the tree so you can turn freely, that is why you can NOT implement it in the game, subconscious actions can not implemented in games as they come un-naturally.

4)Guns fire bullets! – Ok people, if I can find anyone that can tell me different I will shot you myself on site. Half-life and its mods, namely counter-strike, utilise the best hit detection ever. Every new game I’ve seen (apart from CoD maybe) I think uses some half-baked netcode or system that means every single shot that hit appears to do sweet F.A.

Ok, I feel better now I let off some steam

Oh, dont get me wrong there was a couple more but this post is long enough and I can't remember them anyway

EDIT:: Woo im a scanner

 

[Sporky]

I don't disagree at all. although funnily enough I think it's partly thanks to the base of the Quake engine.

Compared to the floaty UT2K3 or the lithtech powered games the id engines have always felt very 'solid' to me when you move around in them.

 

[bamdth47]

OFP has excellent movement. You can actually move your gun around a little BEFORE your character starts to move (thats why it fells a little laggy until you play it for a while), ideal for hidin in a bush and aiming without being seen to move.

The hit detection is also pretty cool on OFP:

Head shot = Death
Legs = Crippled
Arms = Spazzy Aim

Best description ever, forget who said this:

I forget what it was like in OFP. I think the more pain you were in the less you were able to aim.. and if you were shot in the legs you'd fall over. I seem to remember that sometimes you would be able to get shot all day long and stay alive in a drunken, staggering, personal hell and sometimes you'd catch a stray bullet fired from a kilometer away and hit the ground dead like a slab of meat.

After playing the HL2 leak (shame on me) it really does feel like Valve have captured that unmistakeable Half Life feel. Its so instinctive and feels just like the 1st (with a few subtle tweaks and improvements).

 

[iamironsam]

Originally posted by Mechagodzilla
People actually do bob when they walk, but it's a subconcious thing and is barely noticeable most of the time.

It's true that the head bobbing we experience when walking is so subtle that the brain is able to compensate for it, kind of like an internal "Steady-Shot". But the bobbing becomes quickly aparent while running.

Originally posted by AH_Viper
4)Guns fire bullets! – Ok people, if I can find anyone that can tell me different I will shot you myself on site. Half-life and its mods, namely counter-strike, utilise the best hit detection ever. Every new game I’ve seen (apart from CoD maybe) I think uses some half-baked netcode or system that means every single shot that hit appears to do sweet F.A.

Guns don't fire bullets in Half Life. They fire instaneous beams. Half Life and it's mods suffered from a complete lack of bullet velocity (for some reason this only really applies to the bullets, most other projectiles had a finite velocity). When a character was moving horizontally relative to you, there was no need to lead them. It barely required any skill at all, just point and click.



Realize that I'm not trying to bash Half Life. I just recognize it's shortcomings and look forward to seeing them addressed in Half Life 2.

 

[CrazyHarij]

I really liked in Half-Life when your view was pushed heavily away from your weapon when getting punched by a headcrab-Zombie and when hitting the ground after a long but not killing fall distance.. This also happens in CS when you get shot in the head but not dying..

I love that thing, adds alot of realism.

 

[AH_Viper]

Originally posted by iamironsam
Guns don't fire bullets in Half Life. They fire instaneous beams. Half Life and it's mods suffered from a complete lack of bullet velocity (for some reason this only really applies to the bullets, most other projectiles had a finite velocity). When a character was moving horizontally relative to you, there was no need to lead them. It barely required any skill at all, just point and click.

Realize that I'm not trying to bash Half Life. I just recognize it's shortcomings and look forward to seeing them addressed in Half Life 2.

Ok, bad terminology… basically what I meant was that guns hit things… that make sense?

I know it was instantaneous but really, half-life couldn’t cope with large levels where the delay would be noticed. Op Flash caters for this but even at close range do you not still find that you don’t “feel” your bullets making contact with the enemy??

Gawd, there must be someone that understand that can put it in better words

 

[Menelaos]

Half life was a very immersive game, when playing it you feel like you are seeing an adventure through the eyes of Gordon Freeman, I feel the total lack of cutscenes helped this, at no point is Gordon taken into a 3rd person view, so he is not differentiated from the player. hence you are not merely playing the role of Gordon Freeman, you are Gordon Freeman

 

[Bleeder]

Okay, seeing as nobody else has brought this up, i always thought it had to do with the fact that half-life has a slight fisheye lens.

 

[Pjotr]

Originally posted by hunter-killer25
i feel this too. whenever i play halflife i feel at ease... maybe its the gun idle animations? the sounds? the music?

Liek with drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, smoking, hobbies etc, it's the addiction.

 

[CrazyHarij]

Originally posted by AH_Viper
Ok, bad terminology… basically what I meant was that guns hit things… that make sense?

I know it was instantaneous but really, half-life couldn’t cope with large levels where the delay would be noticed. Op Flash caters for this but even at close range do you not still find that you don’t “feel” your bullets making contact with the enemy??

Gawd, there must be someone that understand that can put it in better words

I'm famous for putting other peoples text in a more understandable text!

I guess you're trying to say that HL really makes it feel like the bullets actually DO penetrate the enemy bodies, not just as they 'disappear' when the contact.. Like they are real bullets. Some games doesn't have this feel , just like the bullets fly through or disappear , and the enemies spurt some bludd. In OFP it felt like the bullets hit metal or something , not like the enemies are made of flesh and the bullets penetrate the flesh..

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Originally posted by Pjotr
Liek with drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, smoking, hobbies etc, it's the addiction.

lol dont forget sex gotta have a sex addiction

 

[AH_Viper]

Originally posted by CrazyHarij
I'm famous for putting other peoples text in a more understandable text!

I guess you're trying to say that HL really makes it feel like the bullets actually DO penetrate the enemy bodies, not just as they 'disappear' when the contact.. Like they are real bullets. Some games doesn't have this feel , just like the bullets fly through or disappear , and the enemies spurt some bludd. In OFP it felt like the bullets hit metal or something , not like the enemies are made of flesh and the bullets penetrate the flesh..

I like it

 

[iamironsam]

Originally posted by AH_Viper
Ok, bad terminology… basically what I meant was that guns hit things… that make sense?

I know it was instantaneous but really, half-life couldn’t cope with large levels where the delay would be noticed. Op Flash caters for this but even at close range do you not still find that you don’t “feel” your bullets making contact with the enemy??

Gawd, there must be someone that understand that can put it in better words

The instananeous bullet velocity was easily apprarent in CS with all the weapons with scopes. It was also noticable with the crossbow in HL multiplayer, which was even more unrealistic cause it was a crossbow.

I think I know what you mean about bullets making contact. The sound and blood splats help, but the character's motion was also altered a bit when shot. They actually apeared like they felt the impact.

 

[iamironsam]

Originally posted by Bleeder
Okay, seeing as nobody else has brought this up, i always thought it had to do with the fact that half-life has a slight fisheye lens.

Maybe they were trying to make up for optical parallax?

 

[Dan]

Okay, seeing as nobody else has brought this up, i always thought it had to do with the fact that half-life has a slight fisheye lens.

HL doesn't actually have fish eye, this is just a side-effect of the fov. Like almost every game, HL has a standard field of view of 90 degrees. This means that the width of your monitor is representing 90 degrees in the 3d game. This causes the edge of the screen to appear stretched. For the 3d to be perfectly immersive, with no fish eye, at a 90 fov you would have to view it from a single point that was a distance of 1/2 the width of your screen away from the middle of the screen. In other words, the fish eye goes away if you close one eye and press your face closer to the screen until it takes up 90 degrees, this is probably less than 6 inches away from the monitor for your average monitor size. You'll notice that the fisheye gets worse if you amplify the problem by increasing the fov to say 120. If you decrease the fov to about 40 degrees, closer to the actual field of view your average monitor will take up, then you get that zoomed in scoped effect, because you are effectively cutting off most of the edge of your vision (as it is in reality because the computer screen is such a small area of your total vision). Just thought I'd give that lil input

The only real way to get complete visual immersion (using your entire field of view) is to wear those funky 3d goggles, or to get a concave screen that wraps around most of your view, filling your vision and effectively bathing your brain in super-power-giving-radiation and possibly leading to a race of mutant super-nerds, either that or brain cancer. Anyways, the curved screen method would require some alterations to the engine, or a distortion filter over every frame, because with a curved screen, straight lines become sinwave curves, but that's another topic

 

[Ahnteis]

Originally posted by iamironsam Guns don't fire bullets in Half Life. They fire instaneous beams. Half Life and it's mods suffered from a complete lack of bullet velocity (for some reason this only really applies to the bullets, most other projectiles had a finite velocity). When a character was moving horizontally relative to you, there was no need to lead them. It barely required any skill at all, just point and click.

Muzzle velocity of a glock = 850 ft/sec
Good runner on short sprint = 4 min/mile
Mile = 5280 ft/mile

At a distance of about 50 yards, 150 ft for simplicity:

150 ft * (1 sec/850 ft) = .1765 sec
(amount of time for bullet to travel 150 ft)

(1 mile/4 min) * (1 min/60 sec) * (5280 ft / mile) = 22 ft/sec
(speed of good sprinter)

= 3.88 feet
= max distance a good sprinter (at a full run) can move relative to a target line at 150 ft. This is the distance you'd have to lead a target if they were running perpendicular to you (which they can only do for a few feet before the angles start changing) at full run. I leave it to someone else to figure the angle you'd have to adjust your gun by, but it's a very small angle.


I just did this for my own interest and was surprised it was this far.

Of course, Valve has said specifically that they tried simulating bullets exactly and that it just wasn't fun.

 

[phantomdesign]

For anyone who thinks I'm BSing about the way you are absorbed into the gameplay, you'll feel at a minimum twice as absorbed when you play half life 2. I could recognize thay did an excelent job from the videos (As long as they don't screw up something obvious like controls).

Also it has practically nothing to do with not leaving gordon's perspective. Changing perspective merely interupts gameplay.

 

[HybridM]

Yes, Half-Life had something special and from what I hear from those naughty people that played the leak (it's not a f'ing beta!) HL2 has the same feel, which is very pleasing to hear.

I know you're talking about FPS here, but Max Payne has some nice movement, in terms of realism. And there is definately bullet velocity...you can SEE the bullets COMING, it is superb. If anything maybe the bullets in MP2 are a bit slow, but it's still cool.

 

[Sp00fman]

I think unreal tournament felt pretty good. It's a good thing they are goning to slow gordon down a bit in HL2. in HL1 he really could run like hell.

 

[cenmocay]

ut becomes fast boring