Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and Halo 2 - A discussion

[Anthraxxx]

Another one of Anthraxxx's pre-review breakdown of an upcoming game- this time for the XBOX!!(and hopefully for the PC too!!(mac sucks for gaming, Ya ever heard of a Mac gamer?? No. I didn't think so. redvsblue.com has a Mac Gamer spoof commercial that they did....))

Halo 2

Graphics- You've alread read about it(i hope), Master Chief has less poly's than before and He's looking as sexxxy as ever!!! AnthraXXXXx -4.5 of 5
Gameplay- Needless to say, Halo was a Kick-A55 game!! If that's any indication on how Halo 2 will be....... Kick-A55!! AnthraXXXXX -5 of 5
Sound- Sweet, Mother F(_)ckin' Jeezus!!! That Warthog...er... Puma's engine never sounded so real!! And its in Dolby Digital 5.1 Stereo Surround sound too!!!(for you lucky bastards with a home theater system ) AnthraXXXXX -5 of 5
Contorl- Halo 1's steep learning curve(as far a using the controller goes) was a big frustration for the first few levels, but after a while you got used to at and it was very sexxxy! AnthraXXXX -4 of 5
Value- Years from now, I'm going to look back at this time and say "Hey, remeber Halo 2?" and my grandchildren will be like, "WTF? Grandpa, did you remember to take your medicine??" Anyway, with XBOX Live! support, Halo 2 is gonna be around for a very long time!! AnthraXXXXx -4.5 of 5

Well, there, you, have, it, Halo 2, is, gonna, be, a, good, buy, but, I, personally, will, wait, until, it, is, out, on, PC,(Isn't, it, annoying, how, I, am, using, these, comma's, like, this, ?)

'til next time


EDIT: If you are wondering what the Puma is, visit www.redvsblue.com and download the Blood Gulch Chronicles. It's very funny and explains why I call the Warthog a Puma!! :thumbs:

 

[Ridic]

i hate xbox, i hate consoles.

 

[Anthraxxx]

 

[DrEvil]

"Sweet, Mother F(_)ckin' Jeezus": Antrhaxxx

try to control urself.

 

[Reaper978]

the only thing I really liked about halo was its multiplay, simply perfectly done. I expect halo 2 on xbox live to be a blast.

 

[Guest]

i hate console, cuz it can't download any game for free. well computer is more than just a videogame machine, but i use up to 95% of my computer on videogaming. when computer game take over, console won't have its place any more. I gave my playstation to the kids of my neighbour so that they won't keep coming to my house and annoying me every weekend moring.

 

[Logic]

Originally posted by Ahnteis
In life, the sun is generally the source of ambient light. (At least outside)

True, but in life, the light from the sun isn't so direct, casting black shadows. The light actually bounces around through our atmosphere and gives everything a certain amount of ambient illumination. If you look at photos from the moon, pitch black shadows are cast - this is because there's no atmosphere. Mars, like earth, has an atmosphere, so if ID are going to allow their engine to realistically display outdoor areas (whether they're on Mars or otherwise), they are going to have to do some work on the ambient light.

In general, though, I do agree with you - the dark shadows (indoors at least) are really effective in achieving a certain visual look (level of contrast) not usually found in the rather dull graphics of many games.

 

[Reaper978]

well, you can make realistic lighting just by tagging the light to not cast any shadows, so, you just make one big light, which would be your sun, then you scatter around some ambient lights that dont cast shadows or speculars, with some work I think you can make it look realistic. Carmack has stated that the pointbased lighting system is not especially suited for very natural scenes anyway, but I think they are improving it.

 

[OCybrManO]

People need to stop calling it "realistic" lighting until it works like real light.

Frankly it doesn't light indoor things properly... sure there are visual reflections (probably shaders) but the reflections don't affect the actual lighting of the room. Real light bounces all around the room so that the sides of objects that don't face any light sources are still lit by the diffuse reflection caused by every object (like there are infinite weaker light sources on the surface of every object touched by light).
You can get this effect in most renderers but it adds a lot more CPU work to the rendering.

They probably don't give light any wave properties either.

From how it looks, all it does is test how far a pixel is from a light source and if there is anything blocking it, which only simulates one aspect of how light works. iDs light isn't "realistic"... it is just more per-pixel dynamic lighting than we are used to at one time.

EDIT: The only reason the shadow in that picture (used as proof that shadows aren't pitch black) isn't pitch black is that there are light sources on both sides of that monster... and I haven't seen any pictures with shadows that have soft edges, which are created by a combinations of refraction by particles in the air, a light source that is a surface (not a point), and the wave properties of light.

 

[Logic]

ID's lighting is more realistic than the lighting in any other game I've seen. Also, there are soft edges on some shadows, though I can't direct you to any screenshots to prove it. I've tried out the alpha, and the lighting is very impressive. I don't think anyone can really talk with authority about Doom 3's lighting until they've tried it. (I know it's an unnoficial leak, and probably technically illegal, but I see nothing wrong with downloading it - it's more likely to entice people to buy the game than prevent them from doing so).

Also, there's nothing wrong with refering to it as 'realistic'. The "istic" on the end of the word implies that it doesn't work just like real light, but it reproduces some of the things real light can do. Realism refers to how close something gets to appearing real when it's not, it doesn't mean it is real.

 

[subs]

there not realistic at all. They are ARTISTIC.

If shadows were like DOOMIII in real life suicide rate would go up 1000000x

 

[Logic]

lol you don't say.

The way in which they are more realistic than other games isn't that they look like "real life", but rather that shadows and lighting is all calculated dynamically, meaning you don't get the unrealistic effect of having a direct light source on something, and no shadow behind it. In that sense, the lighting in Doom 3 is a step up in terms of realism.

 

[subs]

its setup in terms of realism yes. But does it look realistic at all? NO... but i dont care its a great ART decision to add atmosphere/scaryness.

 

[Logic]

Yeah, the high levels of contrast definately achieve a certain look that really supports the atmosphere they are trying to create... It still has the potential to get dull and boring though if ID don't constantly bombard the player with new and interesting visuals.. after playing the alpha, as good as it looks, I can see that running around metalic corridors for too long could get extremely tiresome.

 

[Guest]

where is this so called "alpha"?

 

[Logic]

I don't know where the mods stand on the alpha issue (as in if they consider it to be pirated sftware that we shouldn't talk about on these forums) but I'll tell you anyway for now

Just get kazaa (or kazaa lite) and search for "doom 3 alpha". It's about 370mb. The copy I downloaded was an exe file, but the only way I could extract it was to rename the file extension to something that winrar supports (.rar) and extract it from there. (so you'll need winrar too. winzip may work, haven't tried).

You should probably also download a small file called something like "doom 3 alpha fix". It just changes some config files or something to increase the chances you have of getting it working.

Don't bother with it unless you have a pretty beefy system though, I'm lucky to get 20fps (it's often around 12\13, sometimes freezing altogether for a few seconds) and I've got a pentium 4 2.4ghz with a geforce 4 ti4600. I'm sure a bit of tweaking could improve things though

If I shouldn't be talking about this stuff here, sorry mods :cheese: Feel free to delete the post or whatever is appropriate.