HL2 patches

[barnacle]

If HL2 comes out with the patch for dynamic lighting, the videocard requirements will go up, so what card will i need to buy to be able to run it when that stuff comes out?

 

[Shuzer]

HL2 already has dynamic lighting. And shadows. Argh.. I've gone over this, as have many others.

Anyhow, it's highly doubtful that VALVe will release an official unified lighting patch, that said, I'm sure there will be a mod team up to the task.

A Radeon 9800 Pro will be more than enough.

 

[Ames]

There are no patches for HL2. It already has dynamic lighting, and if you have a card that supports something not already in the game, you will get updated for that.

EDIT: ;(

 

[slicktick]

yep the 9800 Pro seems to get people the best bang for their buck.

oh, and they arent going to force the new options onto people, you can always turn those shadows off, just like in cs:s. For lower end vid cards you can have the old cirlce blob things. So the minimun requirements wouldnt change at all.

 

[SnowBall]

Just about every game since HL1 has dynamic lighting... However dynamic shadows are annother thing... And HL2 has dynamic shadows in the fact they move according to the character's movements, but it does NOT have light sourced shadows at all. Kinda a step backwards tech wise...

 

[lans]

The engine supports it, as seen in Vampires: the Masquerade - bloodlines. Multiple and volumetric shadows.

HL2 the game, however, doesn't.

 

[Some_God]

Oh well... as long as the game looks good on my Ti 4200 im set. :O

 

[Senny]

what about pixel shading 3.0 ?

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

what about pixel shading 3.0 ?

Its not used in hl2. And won't be, or at least for awhile.

 

[EVIL]

That was one of the features they would look into AFTER the HL² release to be included in one of the source update patches.. anyway Pixel Shader 3.0 suxx .. 2.0 is still way to good to be replaced by something crappy as 3.0

 

[Aphal]

The engine supports it, as seen in Vampires: the Masquerade - bloodlines. Multiple and volumetric shadows.

HL2 the game, however, doesn't.

The vampire guys wrote their own lighting system

 

[Lobster]

Vampire masqurades has more traditionaly sized maps similar to a deus-ex level, hl2 has to render some significantly large set pieces, so they have to decide which is more important, good lighting or good shaddows, the static natural lighting in HL2 looks excellent, you get single direction shaddows on moving objects, which is enough for what else the engine does.

http://www.planethalflife.com/features/articles/sigg04/phl_c17_Slide15_hi.jpg

I like this screenshot, in earlier versions (including the occursed build) the coastal areas looked a bit crap up close, but after seeing the E32004 video u can see the cliffs and general detail are now on par with the hardware test map, so you look at a scene this huge, and i think you can let a lack of multi directional shaddows go for now. IMO

 

[Roland Deschain]

Doom 3 could do all the complicated lighting since teh maps were rather small. Quake 4, if they go with large levels, will see much simpler shadow mechanics.

 

[Shuzer]

Doom 3 could do all the complicated lighting since teh maps were rather small.

Take it you never noclipped outside the monorail. Or got to Hell? :|

 

[Cypher19]

Doom 3 could do all the complicated lighting since teh maps were rather small

A smart programmer would make it a lighting system's speed fairly size independent. For one, you first limit the amount to focus on the map through portals, then you would perform view-frustrum culling so that you can dump all the triangles/lights you can't see (except lights will have to add light range for shadowing and light interactions), then limit shadow volume generation to those objects inside the light range.

Oh, and lastly, Doom3's lighting isn't HUGELY complex, considering I, still a Direct3D newbie (only did one project) had the plans set up for a similar system, just not as featurefilled (I intended to have shadow volumes and per-pixel lighting, no bumps).