FFS why do the shadows suck

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lajkonik86

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Today i saw this great new screenshot
http://www.halflife2.net/news//1094401905_newex1.jpg
how nice
Just take a look at the shade beneath that central rock.
Applause for the screenshot. Great graphics :borg:

Why do the HL2 shadows suck so much. The shadows in many old games are better then in HL2.

Even this physics engine made by students rockz the world compares to those shadows.
You guys might want to check it out. I really liked playing the demos.
http://meqon.com/downloadarea/meqon-demos-1.3.1.zip



Well suppose HL2 rocks in any other aspect but plz valve fix those shadows.



Greetz
Thierry - Creator of HL2 Total Mayhem
 
It's not a new screenshot. It was shown in PC Gamer months ago. This bug may be gone by now.

If you want to see Half-Life 2 at it's best, watch the videos. Good use of shadow in them.
 
The hole is a model , being an old shot , all the bugs arent worked out. The shadow doesnt show on the model. Thats also why the texture changes.
 
That first screenshot is the worst ive seen for HL2 so far. How does it look good to you?

And yeah its old so dont worry about it.
 
You should know by now that screenshots are unreliable :) Wait until the game is released, then you may complain if you still feel the need.
 
DimitriPopov said:
The hole is a model , being an old shot , all the bugs arent worked out. The shadow doesnt show on the model. Thats also why the texture changes.
Click to expand...

That's right, the hole is a static mesh I believe, an imported model from a program like XSI or 3DS. As mentioned above, this screenshot is old and they have probably worked out issues such as this by now.
 
i still hate those new binks that they released about 2 weeks ago. they had all those boxes shadows clipping through the table to the ground... ill see if i can find that screen shot from it.
found it. btw, i found this posted some where on this forums... no idea who posted it.
 

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I bet when you're shooting up aliens, you won't notice that shadow under the rock,.
 
well

not so sure about that.
when you r fragging in source you still notice the horrible shadows beneath the barrels.

I think they need a bit of a fadout at the ends of the shadows.
That would help quite a bit.
 
This thread was about to suck, but you saved yourself with those kickass demos.
 
Why do you ever care how shadows look? When your playing your looking at every shadow you see during the levels to see if its a nice one?
 
another-user said:
i still hate those new binks that they released about 2 weeks ago. they had all those boxes shadows clipping through the table to the ground... ill see if i can find that screen shot from it.
found it. btw, i found this posted some where on this forums... no idea who posted it.
Click to expand...

I remember that problem in the 2003 E3 presentation. I would have thought they fixed that. I wouldn't be too worried though. It's pretty blatant and Valve should be able to catch it.
 
No it aint like that at all.

In the old days. You played a game and enjoyed it no matter how sucky the graphics. -Monkey Island-
The graphics just didn't matter that much. Partly because it never looked close to real.

When playing source it all looks very real.. Till... at ... a certain moment you notice reality has it's flaws. What's it? why does it somehow look strange.
Well at that moment you notice the FU shadows. Next milisecond your off doing headies and pumping adrenaline, but still.
In a kickass game as HL2 better hope they fixed it.

By the way NJOY those demo's...
They are not stolen source:p
 
I think it's funny how people manage to complain about a game BEFORE it is even released. I can already tell there will be a million more posts like this after the release.

"That texture is misaligned!! This is the worst game ever!!!!"
 
I hate it when people whine 'WHY??!?!" without doing any research at all.

If you did, you would have known that HL2 uses projected shadows, this means that the contours of a model are drawn on the world geometry from a central "light" (it can also be done for each light, Vampire does this) but shadows don't draw on entities. And that rock, my good sir, is in fact an entity.

HL2 shadows do not 'suck', it's just the advantages and disadvantages of the method they chose. Sure, you can have a unified lighting system which treats all objects, world geometry or entity, equally, but do you wanna sacrifice map size, map complexity, characters and character complexity for pretty shadows? I do not, since they have 0 value in HL2. These projected shadows are very effective and have no trouble with drawing many many objectshadows in a scene.

You could turn it around you know, 'why o why doesn't Doom 3 have radiosity??' because they chose for a different method, neither 'sucks', they both have big disadvantages.
Sucking or not isn't the point here, performance is. And there is no point in sacrificing performance for per pixel shadows in HL2.

You want perfect shadows? Okay, fair enough, try making HL2 on the Doom 3 engine. Good luck.
 
The shadow is forgivable, because the game isn't finished, but TURN ON SOME AA/AF PLEASE!
 
Now if we could somehow match this thread with one of the "stop delaying and release it now" threads we'd have a REALLY good time.
 
I always thought some screenshots were more of a insight into:
"If only i had a super computer!"
In this case even my PC will make it look better :)
 
another-user said:
i still hate those new binks that they released about 2 weeks ago. they had all those boxes shadows clipping through the table to the ground... ill see if i can find that screen shot from it.
found it. btw, i found this posted some where on this forums... no idea who posted it.
Click to expand...

i think the table is built from glass
 
You could turn it around you know, 'why o why doesn't Doom 3 have radiosity??' because they chose for a different method, neither 'sucks', they both have big disadvantages.
Sucking or not isn't the point here, performance is. And there is no point in sacrificing performance for per pixel shadows in HL2.
Click to expand...

LOL.. i like it when everybody compares doom3 to HL2..

anyway, you are right.. HL2 doesn't need a "shadow engine" and it improves performance.. i guess.. yuo can have more units on the screen and so on..

but still.. those errors in the programming.. (if there are any).. sigh
I know of many people who program for fun, and their applications have a perfectly working Polygonal shadow engines..

And now youre probobly gonna say:
But Source is a bigger and better engine and there is more programming that needs to be adjusted to make the shadows work right.. and if you adjust the shadows so they function right.. other stuff would look worse..

Then i say:
Well, too bad Valve has sucky programmers then.
If you cant handle your own engine.. you fail at life.

No, Really, it shouldn't be SOOOO HARD to fix those glithces.. and they are probobly fixed you say... well i hope they are..
 
She said:
LOL.. i like it when everybody compares doom3 to HL2..

anyway, you are right.. HL2 doesn't need a "shadow engine" and it improves performance.. i guess.. yuo can have more units on the screen and so on..

but still.. those errors in the programming.. (if there are any).. sigh
I know of many people who program for fun, and their applications have a perfectly working Polygonal shadow engines..

And now youre probobly gonna say:
But Source is a bigger and better engine and there is more programming that needs to be adjusted to make the shadows work right.. and if you adjust the shadows so they function right.. other stuff would look worse..

Then i say:
Well, too bad Valve has sucky programmers then.
If you cant handle your own engine.. you fail at life.

No, Really, it shouldn't be SOOOO HARD to fix those glithces.. and they are probobly fixed you say... well i hope they are..
Click to expand...

It is NOT a bug or a glitch, it's just the disadvantage of the method. It has jack shit to do with programming skills.

Where is Polykarbon when you need him? :)
 
If I understand right , it's now about programming . The glitch is just a side-effect of using Valve's method.
 
She nice post but people are again flaming about speculation. Anyone who actually does know about game design knows that there are about 7 different reasons outside of coding errors that can cause what you see in that screenshot.


the simplest are
1 being entities, 2 being the material properties.
 
PvtRyan said:
I hate it when people whine 'WHY??!?!" without doing any research at all.

If you did, you would have known that HL2 uses projected shadows, this means that the contours of a model are drawn on the world geometry from a central "light" (it can also be done for each light, Vampire does this) but shadows don't draw on entities. And that rock, my good sir, is in fact an entity.

HL2 shadows do not 'suck', it's just the advantages and disadvantages of the method they chose. Sure, you can have a unified lighting system which treats all objects, world geometry or entity, equally, but do you wanna sacrifice map size, map complexity, characters and character complexity for pretty shadows? I do not, since they have 0 value in HL2. These projected shadows are very effective and have no trouble with drawing many many objectshadows in a scene.

You could turn it around you know, 'why o why doesn't Doom 3 have radiosity??' because they chose for a different method, neither 'sucks', they both have big disadvantages.
Sucking or not isn't the point here, performance is. And there is no point in sacrificing performance for per pixel shadows in HL2.

You want perfect shadows? Okay, fair enough, try making HL2 on the Doom 3 engine. Good luck.
Click to expand...


Hurrah! A sensible post on the subject.
 
Have you not seen the Nike commercial "Impossible is nothing". How about taking that perspective into the programming.

Everything is possible, just not quickly. Take your time and you WILL solve the problem. Problems are meant to be solved.
 
You people are so damn picky, the game isn't about perfect shadows and realism, if it was there would be no aliens or gravity gun, it's about a good game, i mean, damn guys, lay off this crap
 
It may be an old screenshot, but there's no denying that CS:Source (ie, Source's latest incarnation) is riddled with shadow bugs. Simple fact is shadows are not HL2s (or Sources) strong point. Valve obviously found it more important to focus on other aspects of their engine, and Source does have some very strong points.
 
guys its not like theyre actually gonna make some gnasty shadow bugs in the game ... theyre not that stupid :LOL:
 
iamaelephant said:
Simple fact is shadows are not HL2s (or Sources) strong point.
Click to expand...
*cough* Doom 3 *cough* ;)

Guess ID got the advantage in this department....
 
I thought they said they fixed it by blending the shadows together when there was one on top of another...

I remember hearing this but i can't find a link, also this has been discussed many times before.. i tried to find a link from them in another 2 or 3 threads i found under search but couldn't find one and didn't want to go through all the millions of pages in the info thread to find it

sorry
 
FFS! ITS HOW THE GAME IS! Showdows do not render on models which is what that hole in the floor is. Now go do some research before getting pissed off. And, source lighting is about 1000 times cpu and vpu consuming and D3 shadows, which means that they can put more cool things in, W00t. HL2 shadows are great imo, they arent perpixle, but if I wanted that, I would play D3, which I have, and HL2 is better in the lighting department by a long shot.
 
On a side note, It takes much less time to integrate bleeding edge technology quickly into demo's, than to integrate it into a full-scale game engine.
 
KagePrototype said:
If you want to see Half-Life 2 at it's best, watch the videos. Good use of shadow in them.
Click to expand...
Yes indeed :rolleyes:
 

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DeltaBlast, those are exactly the types of bugs that CS:S is absolutely full of. It looks horrible, I couldn't count the number of floating shadows I've seen in CS:S.
 
Funny that... Well I have made maps in the beta, no I am not posting screenshots, but you can choose a type of light and some of them do render shadows properly on models and for models.
 
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