Gordo's reflection

I've said this before but I think Valve's philosophy on this is that you are still you (your body) when you play an FPS. Your vision and your hearing put you into their world but your interaction, thoughts, fears, etc creates an effect that your body is there too (think: there are more reactions in your mind than just those based on what you see on screen. the only goal is 'total effect'). You are NOT possesing another being inside their world.
I hope Valve sticks to whatever philosophy they believe in and don't throw in stuff based on (unfounded) popular sentiment.
 
The "unseen Gordon" is simply Valve's style. It's what they are choosing to do because they think it will be better, and it's worked for them in the past.
 
Just read Ghost's last post, definitely not like him. Can someone tell me what's goning on, is it like script kiddie day and no one told me?
 
Don't know if this is relevant, and most of you probably know this already, so here goes:

I know of at least two different methods for reflections:

1. The fakie method, where mirrors and reflective floors are actually windows into areas that are a mirror image of the one you are currently in.
There is a player model in this room that mimics your movements and actions, to a certain degree.
The first time I saw this used was in Unreal, where there was a "shiny" floor. If you looked down, you could see your character.
This method looks fairly realistic, as it isn't pixilated, but it needs real good animations to prevent disbelief.

2. The realistic method, where a "camera" on the surface of the mirror "looks" at everything in front of the mirror, records it as a picture, then flips it on the x-axis and pastes it onto the suface of the mirror.
This can be really cool looking if done right, but needs a high texture resolution and a powerful system, otherwise it looks laggy and pixilated.

Thats my .25c
 
Originally posted by Tweaks
i was watching the vid clip with the antlion guard on the roof, where there is that shiny roof and was wondering - will we be able to see gordo's face in reflective objects ingame?
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are u simple? Of course!! Have u ever played duke 3d? They had reflection back in the day of dos, they will definatly have it now or thats just sad. :/
 
Originally posted by Chris_D
I can't. D33 has been informed, must be a joke. Hilarious.
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Holy crap! Didn't mean to start something, guys. I was just poking fun at a certain troll. Eeek! I guess I know where boundaries on joking are at, now. :)
 
Would have been real worrying if EE had managed to possess the body of a mod, though.

WooooooooOOOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOO!
 
or you could just model a visor that feeds you information about your stats and model it to look like a hud.
 
wow, that anyone believed that GV had been hacked is a testament to the psychological damage that EE has done to this forum in the past few days. or a testament to GVs acting..
 
Originally posted by Lil' Timmy
wow, that anyone believed that GV had been hacked is a testament to the psychological damage that EE has done to this forum in the past few days. or a testament to GVs acting..
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Whats GV and EE and PPSKRJSDJGIOSDHFIJHWEURHEWUOIFYDUOIF
 
Hah, they're just mocking that EE fellow who was banned twice times. Very apt parody might I add. So apt, in fact, that persons believed them to be the veritable image of the troll. Kudos to you gentlemen!

On topic: It is possible the valve is attempting to stay true to the original game through the lack of mirrors. I'm glad, as the the mirror effects of other FPS games are detestible. Third-person games always have good mirrors though. Probably since you see them from a distant vantage.
 
Originally posted by GhostValkyrie
Holy crap! Didn't mean to start something, guys. I was just poking fun at a certain troll. Eeek! I guess I know where boundaries on joking are at, now. :)
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I knew it was you and I laughed.. I dunno why others did not get it


*lol at Ghost :cheese: *
 
Re: Re: Gordo's reflection

Originally posted by coolio2man
are u simple? Of course!! Have u ever played duke 3d? They had reflection back in the day of dos, they will definatly have it now or thats just sad. :/
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READ the full thread before adding nonsense.

It has already been established that HL2 will NOT show reflections of gordo. Just because duke 3d or "the magic refective man ver 3.02" or what ever u were playing has reflection does not mean this game will.

anyway back to the discusion.


Mirrors aren't really the problem, it's the fact that you would need near-perfect character animations for gordon in order to prevent visual flaws and errors in his reflection. Valve must have just spent thier time on more important things than this, since it's a lot of work for little payoff.
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I think you hit the nail on the head here to an extent. valve prob dont want to spend loads of time animating every little thing, but i think thats were a game can be made a great game. (for me) i love the details.
 

with a full player body, you could in theory get rid of the HUD completely and have things displayed on your body, if you need to select a weapon look down at your belt and grab it or something heh
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Trespasser did have that, right? A little heart tatto on the characters right breast showed yer health-- ;) I've only played the demo and it was pretty cool. The game got baaaaaaaaad reviews though...
 
Damn, I was hoping to have the exclusive on Trespasser, but I arrived a bit too late.

Hasn't it been mentioned that Valve took some influence from the basic physics engine that was used in Trespasser for Half-Life?

It'd be rather ironic, if Trespasser was one of the inspirations for Half Life 2 when it was such a shockingly bad game.
 
Why wouldn't they want to show the reflection of Gordon? I thought they had a good model of him...
 
Actually SWAT 3 did it quite well.

The reason 3rd person games, such as Max Payne 2, can do it so well is probably because the complete character model is already in the game world, you can see it all the time and it's fully animated.
 
Older games had to render two seperate images to get a mirror effect going, so it cut into cpu time quite a bit. It wasn't a "true" reflection, but it was rather convincing trick, and worked well in some games. Modern games (DX8/DX9) use pixel shading programs to actually project the orginal image onto the reflective surface, creating a much more realistic reflection. They also don't cut into cpu time as much, so you can have huge reflective surfaces (i.e. a floor or wall).
 
Originally posted by czrsink
Damn, I was hoping to have the exclusive on Trespasser, but I arrived a bit too late.

Hasn't it been mentioned that Valve took some influence from the basic physics engine that was used in Trespasser for Half-Life?

It'd be rather ironic, if Trespasser was one of the inspirations for Half Life 2 when it was such a shockingly bad game.
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Why was it so bad? Any1? Never played it..

I remember playing the demo and couldn't figure out the way down from the platform. You had to shoot away some bolt so a trailer or smth would tumble down a hill and you could jump on it.

From what I had seen it looked like an OMFG-game. But the reviews tore it up. Always puzzled me..
err on-topic: uhm.. I thinks it's great! *cough* *cough*
 
Originally posted by jimbones
Why was it so bad? Any1? Never played it..

I remember playing the demo and couldn't figure out the way down from the platform. You had to shoot away some bolt so a trailer or smth would tumble down a hill and you could jump on it.

From what I had seen it looked like an OMFG-game. But the reviews tore it up. Always puzzled me..
err on-topic: uhm.. I thinks it's great! *cough* *cough*
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I really liked it, the reviewers just couldn't wrap their head around the controls with the arm in the game, too many console games melted their brain pan

sure, it had bugs, but it was still fun, and the T-Rex was scary


that reminds me, anyone heard about how the Dino mod for HL2 is going? They still working on it / getting anywhere or given up? (hope its the former cause I was looking forward to it)
 
oooh your all so vain wanting to look at your reflections:cheese:

Only joking, reflections would look good, but adding more performance sapping features that no one would really notice is probably not a good thing. Still it would be nice to have feet though.
 
I think there is a psychological reason for leaving out a reflection of Gordon: human beings have a tremendous capacity for remembering faces, and of all the faces we know, we know our own faces best. If we, as humans, look into a reflective surface in a game, we unconsciously expect to see ourselves because that is what happens everyday when we look in a mirror. When we don't see ourselves and instead see Gordon staring back, that would destroy any immersion the player may have been feeling.

Furthermore, our brains have a tendency to include what is missing from a picture. So when we look in a reflective surface and see nothing, we unconscioulsy accept it and perhaps fill in our own faces automatically. When presented with something tangible that does not fit, such as Gordon's mug, we cannot pretend it's not there.

Since humans are primarily visual creatures, it does not destroy immersion when we take on fake names. Names are something humans have always readily swapped: I have several "names" such as son, brother, friend, cousin, as well as my real name.

I do agree, however, that it would be cool to see reflections, it's just that I think it would be antithetical to immersion.
 
Could be the explanation why VALVe is leaving the reflection of Gordon out. But as Fenric pointed out earlier, I think that the whole point of the player is to identify himself with Gordon, so that would include the way Gordon looks. How he acts is up to you.
 
Originally posted by DeusEx2
Could be the explanation why VALVe is leaving the reflection of Gordon out. But as Fenric pointed out earlier, I think that the whole point of the player is to identify himself with Gordon, so that would include the way Gordon looks. How he acts is up to you.
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Perhaps the goal of the game is to experience the life and actions and environment that Gordon experiences, rather than experience the body and looks of Gordon. Half-Life was so much fun because we felt like we had lived through the Black Mesa experience. When Barney would say something, it felt like he was saying it to me, not to Gordon who I was pretending to be. Not seeing Gordon in the game made it feel like it was me in Black Mesa, which is much more powerful than seeing Gordon in Black Mesa and trying to pretend that I'm that man on the screen.
 
im going to go ahead and disagree with your premise, leonidas. as you say, the reason we play games is to immerse ourselves in an alternate reality, to do things we cannot in this reality (like save the world and get the girl). in an fps, we perceive the virtual world through the eyes of our character, and our ability to experience the game world is obviously correlated to the effect it has on our character: if he dies, our connection to this world is broken. i think these are the primary things that create our stong connection to the game world, irrespective of whether we can see ourselves or not. the magnitude of that connection is dependant on how well designed/written (how 'immersive', for lack of a better term) the story is. take gothic for example.

the real problem is not whether we can see that our character is not us, but instead if we can tell that something is dractically amis, such as our character having no reflection, or not having legs (what's making the stepping sound, or the splash of water as i 'walk' though it anyway?). i think these drastic 'breaks' from the realism that pervades the rest of the game are more damaging to ones ability to identify with the character than anything else.

the LT has spoken.

write that down.


ps i can understand the performance issues, but it should at least be an option to turn self viewing on or off
 
If Valve was so concerned with immersion, why did they come up with a specific character to begin with? They could have just thrown a helmet on him for all the instances that you may actually see a reflection of yourself and just have everyone refer to him as "hey you" or "guinea pig". While Halo's protagonist may have had a voice, the fact that you never actually saw Master Chief's face created more of a feeling of anonymity. I mean, since Valve went through the trouble of creating this character with a face, what is the big deal with mirroring his likeness in reflective surfaces?
 
I agree Leonidas that leaving out specific visual references to gordon leaves more room to your own imagination and impersonation of him. But in the original the scientists and security guards would often address you with gordon or freeman. That did not bother me, because I felt that I WAS Gordon, and everything in game that acknowledged the Gordon look and feel would immerse me more in the game. Even things like reflection or visible feet and hands.

There is 1 thing, the fact that Gordon doesn't speak. Maybe you are right that they left out the reflection for the player experience of Gordon, and maybe that's the same reason why he doesn't speak...
 
it's probably different for different people, but for me, a significant part of being immersed in an alternate reality was in fact being someone other than lil' timmy in that alternate reality (gordon in this case). as deusex2 said, in effect, i wanted to become gordon in hl1, not replace him.
 
Originally posted by Lil' Timmy


the real problem is not whether we can see that our character is not us, but instead if we can tell that something is dractically amis, such as our character having no reflection, or not having legs (what's making the stepping sound, or the splash of water as i 'walk' though it anyway?). i think these drastic 'breaks' from the realism that pervades the rest of the game are more damaging to ones ability to identify with the character than anything else.
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I agree with your first contention here: that something dramatically amiss is the problem. I, however, believe that the problem is actually seeing Gordon rather than seeing nothing. Consider this common analogy: eyewitnesses to a car accident, say a hit-and-run, often have conflicting descriptions of the car. When viewing a shocking situation, especially one that is happening quickly, our minds perceive the important things, such as how badly hurt the victim is, and does not note minor details, which is sometimes car color, or make of the car, et cetra. It is only after the fact that the mind fills in the details necessary for a complete picture of the accident. It is illogical to accept the existence of a car without the car having a color, so if the witness did not note the color of the car, the brain just fills in a color.

I believe this is what happens when you don't see a reflection of Gordon. If the brain thinks there should be something there, it might just go ahead and put your own mug there without you consciously realizing it.

Since the brain can't handle illogical pictures, the fact that Gordon is in your reflection is more likely to raise a mental flag than absence of a face.
 
i like the analogy, but i have a different take on it.. not seeing my (gordon's) feet or reflection, in your example, is akin to seeing a car being smashed in an accident, but not seeing the other car that hits it, as if some unseen force is crushing the visible car. obviously that would freak a person out. well, i'd certainly find it queer, and be a little less concerned with the color of the car i could see, personally. the significant schism from my expectation, based on the rules of my respective world (be it actual or game), would be most illogical/disagreeable to me.

just two different takes, i'm pretty sure some people feel one way, and some feel the other. that's why i think it should be a toggle option or something.
 
the logical conclusion (if your banking on immersion) is to have no mirrors in gameplay, your brain is more likely to recognize an erroneous reflection (be it Gordon's or otherwise) than the lack of mirrors in the general.

and although Source has the tech to be able to render said reflections, it comes down to ye old quote "design decision, not technical limitation"

for the sake of their own creation, and keeping with the idea that "you are gordon" in the grand scheme of things, mirrors are trivial.

Being able to view your feet and body are throwbacks to ones personal taste.
I find it (especially if badly modelled and horrendously animated like the one in Tribes 2) greatly annoying to the point to which I find the sight of the model quite abhorrent.

but then again, as mentioned earlier its down to one's own preference.
 
Did you know that "Gordo" ,like your topic states, translates to Fat in english. Gordo is a spanish word. lol
 
Mirrors aren't the only thing that reflects images. I'd find a complete lack of any reflective surfaces a bit disconcerting.

Tribes 2's lower torso model looked crappy cause it was the actual character model you were looking at, as were the arms and weapons in first person view. It wasn't a souped up version of the model that can only be seen when looking at yourself in first person view, much the way the arms and guns models are done in the first person view of most games out there. The parts of your body that you see in first person view are the same model as the ones that everyone else looking at you would see.
 
I think it doesn't really matter how you see the game enviroment. OFP had thirdperson view and was nothing short of total immersion.. So I guess I wouldn't even have bothered. What sucks though is when the player doesn't have a shadow. That I hope they will put in..

my .02 €
 
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