Critical problems with the videos

[Apos]

I just thought we could discuss some of the problems revealed by the videos. This game looks so immensely great, and few people are questioning that, so I figure it'd still be fun to nitpick minor issues. Maybe they're real issues, maybe they're not, and maybe they'll get fixed, and maybe they wont. We'll see.

teaser
-the flying robots dont appear to be casting shadows (though they may just be projected on areas we can't see: you can almost catch something dark way up on the wall behind one of the robots: however another one comes very close to the ground without discernable shadow)

Tech demo
-the watermelon shot doesn't look quite right (must be a scripted break apart): the momentum from the hot wouldn't necessarily split it like that.

Manipulator video
-On the top of the stairs, the crowbar doesn't seem to even hit the boards before they crack and fly away: the swing looks far too weak. (this could have been a video issue though)
-It looks as if something, perhaps a body, is clipping through the bottom of the huge blue container that was dropped on the combine (it's hard to make out)

Character Interaction video
-Alyx's lip syncing is definately not spot on. This could be just the video being out of sync, but she's clearly not forming all the syllables she's saying.
-Alyx's animation is sort of hurky-jerky: her arms and hands are a little odd: looks a little hunchbacked
-Not a huge fan of her overdramatizated movements either. Just because they can express tons of emotion doesn't mean that normal people jerk around so elaborately when talking. I could get sick of her voice: there is a real potential for bad acting here (now that the characters actually have to act at all!)

Strider video
-the chunk of granite that comes out of the citadel machinery looks like it should have hit Gordon: but he doesn't move back or take damage (damage could have been because of obvious God Mode, but it would make sense that objects would impact and push around Gordon like they do other game characters)
-when the strider stabs the man, it doesn't look quite right: the bloodspray doesn't make any sense, and he looks too light.

 

[Kuros]

And in the manipulator video, when the bodies touch the wall after being hit by the iron bar, a blood spot way unproportionate appears all over the wall.

 

[neva]

One more thing... When Gordon Throws a granade he instanly pics up a new one and takes out the sprint and then puts it back.
It looks really weird and I hope they fix it. I think that there isnt enough blood when Gordon shoots at the enemy soldier...

 

[Killerlagger]

-the flying robots dont appear to be casting shadows (though they may just be projected on areas we can't see: you can almost catch something dark way up on the wall behind one of the robots: however another one comes very close to the ground without discernable shadow)

Thats from the September 2002 Build of the engine its not tweaked completely (classic example is in movie 4 where in the end with the Hydra there are changes to the architecture different from the trailer.

-the watermelon shot doesn't look quite right (must be a scripted break apart): the momentum from the hot wouldn't necessarily split it like that.

Its a tech demo you wont be seeing many watermelons in the game

-On the top of the stairs, the crowbar doesn't seem to even hit the boards before they crack and fly away: the swing looks far too weak. (this could have been a video issue though)

Yes i agree it does need tweaking they have a lot of time before its out though.

-It looks as if something, perhaps a body, is clipping through the bottom of the huge blue container that was dropped on the combine (it's hard to make out)

Clipping is part of half-life anyway its better than having the massive container float over the body

-Alyx's lip syncing is definately not spot on. This could be just the video being out of sync, but she's clearly not forming all the syllables she's saying.

Lip synching uses the a wav file its not made step by step every time you can expect it not to be perfect makes a modders job a whole lot easier

-Alyx's animation is sort of hurky-jerky: her arms and hands are a little odd: looks a little hunchbacked

Alyx is hot leave her alone as for bad acting well i dont think its gonna ruin the game even if its ghastly :cheers:

-the chunk of granite that comes out of the citadel machinery looks like it should have hit Gordon: but he doesn't move back or take damage (damage could have been because of obvious God Mode, but it would make sense that objects would impact and push around Gordon like they do other game characters)

Its pretty obvious dmg has been toned down throughout the demos when he gets shot a few times he loses like 1 HEV armor

-when the strider stabs the man, it doesn't look quite right: the bloodspray doesn't make any sense, and he looks too light.

Anything will look light to a 50 ft machine

 

[Apos]

Yeah, I noticed that the weapon animations are a little bit wacked in the same way most FPS games are: when Gordon selects the manipulator, for instance, the gun instantly vanishes, and the manipulator instantly appears, the vanishes, then is brought upwards realistically. Blink and you'll miss it, but this is a fairly odd thing, seemingly easy to fix: why does it happen in so many games?

And yeah: that spatter really seemed a little too fast and too big, though I suppose someone's head smacking the wall at that speed....

You do realize that we're demanding that the game match reality: not just some near-miss game logic reality, right? That's pretty cool that it's got us wanting it to be totally flawless.

 

[figge]

They got some month's to fix all that for me:cheese:

 

[Stitch]

I mean, come on now they're E3 videos/demos. They don't have to be perfect. They are ment for one thing; to showcase what the engine can do and not what it can do perfectly and exactly.

 

[Kyle]

OMG WILL YOU PEOPLE JUST SHUT UP AND DIE ALREADY!!!!:flame:

 

[Apos]

Geez, chill out Mr. defensive!

This isn't to attack Valve, just to discuss some very minor things. I'm sure they'll change and fix all sorts of things: these just happen to be what we can discover with careful detectivework (since most of these things are so subtle)

I hope we DO see cool stuff like watermelons in the game. I'll be sad if it's ALL dingy matresses, mayo jars, paintcans, and boxes. The watermelon effect was simply incredible too: I'm just saying that the physics didn't look quite right... but then sometimes they don't in real life either.

As far as clipping, it is actually something that would be good to fix. If a body is under a falling container, it should be crushed, no different than you falling on the wooden wable in HL1 and gibbing the headcrab. If it can't be crushed, the object _should_ rest on it: the way the wooden boards rest upon each other do in the tech demo after being shot apart. I think the major issue is that characters use a different sort of animation system than other objects: the skeleton defines their boundaries rather than their model (they would be way too complex any other way). This allows model parts to clip through other objects even when the skeleton can't pass through in the same way. I don't know if this could be fixed without making the physics engine even more processor intensive, but objects clipping through each other is a major problem for creating consistent realism.

And that's sort of the point. They've created something so absolutely groundbreaking that I want it to be as perfect as possible. I want lip-synching to work even better (I know how it works technically: and for all I know, it was just the movie being desynced rom the sound, not the game itself). I want the acting to be top-notch. And I want the player character to react physically to objects that hit him (they should knock him back).

 

[Kyle]

I dunno, I guess there's some kind of medal you get or something that I don't know about for making people not like the game;( Detectives really piss me off because than I first see the movie and am all like OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG than I hear the detectives and I feel like I just want to commit suicide.
For those that didn't understand...
Me: OMG OMG OMG OMG HL2 OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
Detective: HL2 is gay
Me: :x

 

[Kyle]

BTW anyone remember those kick*ss powerade commercials like the one where the news helicopter is reporting an accident or something than he switches to a runner who than proceeds to run up a bridge that is up in this position / \ and jumps the gap? That's the kind of physics that don't look right in real life...

 

[Apos]

Any who could watch those videos and "not like the game" is either braindead or traveled here from the future where Half-Life 6 has already come out.

These little things mostly just tell us more about how the engine works, how the game works, and what sorts of problems can crop up, etc. If you think they somehow detract from the sheer awe of what this game looks like, you're out of your mind.

"Remember when we thought Black Mesa was as bad as it could get?" BAM!!!

 

[Kyle]

You see, you're a perfect example of the person I hate the most. You go off and nitpick little problems with the videos and what not and try to show how bad it is when most people would have never noticed causing people to go from "OMG THIS GAME ROXORS" to "OMG THIS GAME ROX... omg that alignment is off just like he said, how stupid is that". Than you go off and contradict yourself saying that the game is good. For the love of god, if you're going to like the game don't point out what's wrong with it. But if you must find something wrong with the game and you have to tell someone about it than tell Valve so they can fix it instead of telling a public forum which just dissapoints people.

 

[FAWN]

Originally posted by Apos
I just thought we could discuss some of the problems revealed by the videos.

In the second half of the first video, when he is looking at the rock wall and talking about shaders, you can notice brushes overlapping in the top left corner. Apparently they didn't spend enough time on the tech demo.

 

[Dukeinaction]

SOUND??
What sound?


You guys actually have sound with the movies??

Mine are totaly quiet!! how can i fix it? is it my Quick Time player?

And give the guys at Valve a break they've done a amazingly great job that far!!

 

[Apos]

There's no contradiction in thinking the game will be great and wanting to figure out what's going on, what needs work. From a mod developer's point of view especially, it's really important.

If you're such a zealot that your world allows only two expressions: OMG!/SUXORS! then you need to go outside, take a deep breath, and realize that in the real world, it's posible to really love something and also to be interested enough in it to look at it from a critical perspective, rather than some idealized form up on a pedastal.

I mean, it's not some war were we have to prove to the world that this game and only this game is the best EVA and is perfect in every way. It is what it is, and it looks mindblowingly unbelievable. I'm pretty much planning on spending up to $550 on this game for it and system upgrades for it alone, which is a heck of a lot of money for me. If you personally don't want to examine things critically, if that for some reason spoils things for you, then there's no reason why you have to read threads like this in the first place, silly.

 

[pandawan]

I agree - I think the fact that we're nit-picking is a testament to how far graphics/physics and gameplay have come!!!

A thought about the watermelon. The shot isn't terrible, it may just be that the watermelon can only break one way - a limitation we will probably see on many objects.

Although we are getting to the point of very realistic physics in game, our processors are still only so powerful and we only have so much RAM - two things that limit the amount of "goodies" we can reasonably track on the screen at a time.

When games start applying molecular based physic models and quantum physics to objects - then we know we're....there.

-Doug

 

[Kyle]

Ok, two things that I already mentioned. I wanted this game to be perfect and in my eyes it looked perfect until you came along and nitpicked it. Of course someone who doesn't want to read it will read it anyways because they don't have much self-control. If you do want to nitpick than try telling Valve what the problems are instead of whining about it on a public thread. TELL VALVE ABOUT IT INSTEAD OF WHINING ABOUT IT ON A PUBLIC THREAD TELL VALVE ABOUT THE PROBLEMS INSTEAD OF WHINING ABOUT IT ON A PUBLIC THREAD

 

[Apos]

I agree: they can't have everything in the game perfectly and infinately divisible in any fashion at all. So objects like the windows seem to have standard ways of breaking.

owever, they made the right choice in the wood department. If the tech demo is any guide, it relaly CAN splinter into pieces at particular sections: it really looked like the demo player was arbitrarily shooting the wood in various places, and the wood was breaking into two at exactly those places: not just arbitrarily breaking into half as per some basic breaking animation.

I wonder, however, whether the game has a "remove" function for debris the way HL does. I mean, I'f we can break chunks of wood into tinier and tinier parts, we can basically multiply the poly count in any scene non-stop. That'd get out of hand pretty quick if we smashed up lots and lots of wood things.

So I wonder:

1) if it's there
2) how it works (does the debris fade away a la HL, or does it go poof as soon as you turn your back on it, or what?)
3) if it's a feature you can set in the preferences on the engine (less powerful cards clear deris more often than more powerful ones)

In the strider video, it certainly doesn't look like the ornate desser smashed apart in some set way. Yet I also have a hard time believing that every wooden object in the game can be broken into brushes, and then those brushes into chunks: and still be able to run on any computer around today.

I'm really interested to find out what sorts of systems can handle what sorts of settings: what do you have to cut out in the game to get decent performance? The problem with most company released info is that you never get a sense of this: they always run on the best hardware, with all the effects on. I hope as time goes on they'll describe more about what slower systems can and will have to turn off. What I'd really like is to see some screenshots that compare the same exact scene rendered on different systems (all running at acceptable gameply speed) with various effects and details turned off.

 

[Apos]

Kyle, seriously, chill out.

You are completely missing the thrust and tone of this thread. This isn't about trying to take away from the game: it's about trying to learn about it.

No one but approved testers can "tell Valve" anything. Valve is no doubt overwhelmed by people writing into them. And I expect many of these things are going to be fixed (as I noted, some of them may not even be wrong: they could be limitations on the handheld video filming and movie encoding: I certainly don't think that HL2 is really going to look like a halucinogenic drug trip: that's the fault of how video cameras react to viewscreens.)

Of course someone who doesn't want to read it will read it anyways because they don't have much self-control.

Self control is one of the most important things to learn in life: it'll make you way happier in the long run. I'm geeking out on HL2 right now, for instance, but pretty soon I'm going to go into a self-imposed HL2 blackout. I've seen so many cool things already that I'm fully convinced that there is tons more out there that I haven't seen.... but I don't want to see anymore of them until I can get the game and experience it as it was intended. And three months of cooling off will give time to make even the stuff I have seen look and feel completely new again. I know, in the long run, that this will make me way way happier than I would be trying to spoil every bit of the game by piecing together the plot, all the weapons, all the enemies, etc. scrounging around for the latest screenshots, movies, and previews. I can go back and get all that stuff after I play the game anyway. But learning about it first in the game will be much cooler.

So, if you feel that your experience of the game will be lessened by anything, here's what you can do to be happier: avoid it. And if you can't, whose fault is that?

 

[Punisher454]

>I certainly don't think that HL2 is really going to look like a halucinogenic drug trip:


You know, that could be a funny mod.

You are on a halucinogenic drug trip. Everything is discollored and distorted, nothing sounds right and the people are all monsters and theyre out to get you.

The Punisher

 

[Kyle]

Okay, telling someone to have self-control is kind of hard to do when you don't have any of your own. If you really want to go into a HL2 blackout that means leaving every message board and not looking at any Screenshots or anything... Believe me, you won't be able to do it so just give in

 

[Apos]

If you really want to go into a HL2 blackout that means leaving every message board and not looking at any Screenshots or anything...

Yes, that's exactly what it means.


By the way: I hope everyone got a chance to see both the teaser video and the gamespot video that both contain the same blue worm thingy scene. If you watch them one after another you'll see that they:

1) got rid of the blocky terrain that looked kind of goofy before
2) added pitch-perfect water and splash effects
3) added more animation to the soldier so his movements look even smoother (though this could be an illusion of the video again)

So they are definately making major improvements even between the media they are releasing.

 

[ub3rbr0k3]

Some "nit-picking" I've found myself:

-The one with the allied spider-crabs(or whatever they were called). When Gordon throws the pheramone ball to the first group of soldiers, you can see that one of the spiders will attack the closest soldier to the left, clipping through the barricade.

-The Barney video. After the team had flanked and destroyed all but one opponent soldier, Gordon aims up to shoot down the last one. As he is aiming, if you look carefully at the allied fighter at the left, his animation is extremely jerkish, with his upper body snapping up and down wildly.

-This wouldn't be "nit-picking", but the floating creature that appears in the Barney and Buggy video.... I dont think it can stay afloat like that, with its fan located on the backside... If it actually tried to lift off like that, if would probably flip 180 and end up upside down. But hey, what the hell do I know.

 

[Calm_Blue_Ocean]

Good God people....chill!

(calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, go to your happy place).

HL2 looks like an absolutely awesome game, one that is sure to be as revolutionary as the first. There are of course some minor problems. Some of these will undoubtably be worked out before the release (they've got a while, and some of the demos are a few months old to begin with). However, some of the problems (like clipping) are problems that all game developers struggle with. I think Valve will make great strides, but rest assured there will be some minor flaws when it comes out and 5 years form now we will likely look back on these as major flaws - such is progress. In any case, this game may come closer to reality than any other game we'll see this year. We are all anxious for stuff to talk about, and no one was putting halflife down, so I don't see any reason to get your dander up.

Expect greatness but certainly not perfection....a good motto to live by!

 

[kastro]

in the dune buggy movie i saw a graphical error when gordon fights the aircraft.

the bullets (are they bullets?) from the aircraft create sparks when they hit the ground or the broken cars on the road. it looks like you can see those sparks through the actual cars. hope this is somethin easy to fix, i dont really see why it wouldnt be.

 

[Apos]

In any case, this game may come closer to reality than any other game we'll see this year.

I agree (though reality isn't the exact goal: it's fun I already live in reality. In my reality, a gravity gun could never physically work. But I sure do WANT to experience a reality in which it can!)

On great illustration of how the drawbacks can illustrate the strength of the game happened when I showed a friend of mine the tech demo. He was bowled over by it, but when he started thinking about it, he wondered why the physics engine didn't disallow the "human made out of water effect" by forcing a water entity to collapse.

In other words, he was asking why the physics engine didn't have a full fluid dynamics model, where water can react to forces like gravity realistically, instead of being a defined brush occupying a set space.

What had happened is that the rest of the world was SO amazingly realistic that he logically expected it to be even moreso in a way that... well, defies belief.

That's because a truly simulated fluid dynamics model is something that even supercomputers can rarely do in real-time. And he was expecting THIS commerical game, with expectations built purely on the strength of everything he had seen in the demos, to do something that even research supercomputers can barely handle.

Now, one might say that this is nitpicking, but the reality is, it's an incredible compliment to start comparing this game to ACTUAL reality, even if it's found wanting in some ways. Because no one would be silly enough to compare most games to _reality_. But this game actually operates at a level at which we can see a higher level being possible than we ever imagined. That's higher praise for Valve than a million OMG!!!!s

 

[Apos]

kastro: that could actually be sparks from bullets going THROUGH the cars: some of the cars look like they have bullet holes coming out the other side after the hovertank shoots them: as if bullets passed right through. Unfortunately, the player is using some sort of godmode, so there's no way to confirm that any bullets actually are going through.

 

[kastro]

well the fact that it happens on that apc also makes me wonder...