Lost Coast - 9/30/05 ?

[OvA]

Guildwars is my RPG of choice. HL2 is my FPS of choice.

I'm assuming by your ranting and Necromancer avatar that you are a GW player.

I'm a lvl 20 Ranger/Mesmer

 

[The Dark Elf]

Guildwars is my RPG of choice. HL2 is my FPS of choice.

I'm assuming by your ranting and Necromancer avatar that you are a GW player.

I'm a lvl 20 Ranger/Mesmer

Was a GW player R/Mo R/E R/N R/W, 1,500 hours, 1.6 mil XP. Suddenly became bored of it weeks ago though. But for such a small company I'm very impressed with how they handle updates and so on. Though its always made me chuckle how GW's friends server can randomly go down for no reason, sounds familiar

 

[A True Canadian]

Come to think of it, perhaps Valve are simply releasing something new to play each month until the end of the year. A little practice for their upcoming episodic content?

Blue Shift on Steam - August
Day of Defeat: Source - September
Rag Doll Kung Fu - October

***Which could mean***

Lost Coast - November
Aftermath - December


I guess the Minerva mod should be included if I included Rag Doll Kung Fu as Valve hyped both. But if I remove the third-party mods, the pattern then reads:

Lost Coast - October
Aftermath - November


...is it possible?

 

[The_Great_Walter]

It's not out.

 

[Cypher19]

I think instead of worrying about Lost Coast, look forward to the HDR updates to HL2 itself when they arrive eventually. Cause I find it hard to believe Valve will leave the game with only a map using HDR and high res textures and the rest the same as before. Look forward to that update, it'll be worth it, and probably come with some decent fixes and extra's aswell

Mind if I kill that dream? Gabe has said it's not going to happen, it's just too much data. Plus, all of the lights and artwork of the levels so far have been built with LDR in mind, so adding HDR would require retweaking a ton of lights, and it's just not worth the time and bandwidth.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Mind if I kill that dream? Gabe has said it's not going to happen, it's just too much data. Plus, all of the lights and artwork of the levels so far have been built with LDR in mind, so adding HDR would require retweaking a ton of lights, and it's just not worth the time and bandwidth.

heh I dont mind atall, its no dream of mine.

Sure does make me wonder what the hell the point in Lost Coast is though. Like beating a dead horse tbh. It would have made sense as a teaser for a full HDR version of HL2, but without that it just seems a bit redundant. As an example of engine capabilities, its about 2 to 3 years behind now.

 

[hi_ted]

heh I dont mind atall, its no dream of mine.

Sure does make me wonder what the hell the point in Lost Coast is though. Like beating a dead horse tbh. It would have made sense as a teaser for a full HDR version of HL2, but without that it just seems a bit redundant. As an example of engine capabilities, its about 2 to 3 years behind now.

The point of Lost Coast is to allow Valve's developers to "show-off" a bit. Rather than keeping to the three-year limit of hardware compatability, The Lost Coast is supposed to take advantage of only the latest hardware and show what the engine can pull off.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

heh I dont mind atall, its no dream of mine.

Sure does make me wonder what the hell the point in Lost Coast is though. Like beating a dead horse tbh. It would have made sense as a teaser for a full HDR version of HL2, but without that it just seems a bit redundant. As an example of engine capabilities, its about 2 to 3 years behind now.

2 to 3 years old? I can't think of any games that old that use such high texture resolutions, high poly models and have HDR implemented.
Source definitely has it's limits (map size, precompilation, sucky editor etc), but it's certainly not behind the curve. It may not have the realtime lighting of Doom 3 or F.E.A.R., but it iscertainly capable of looking better than either of them.

 

[clarky003]

I actually agree with TDE, its really nicely executed by the looks of things but it does have this redundant feeling about it.. I think its because we have seen a few preview's of what next Gen engines are accomplishing now. I myself would like to see Valve pushing the engine to the next level first, and then implement HDR fully in HL3.. But whatever they feel is best.. they just want to show the present engines maximum abilities.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Well, that's kind of the point. Unreal 3 (generally heralded as the Second Coming of engines) isn't going to be used in anything until next year, and also has vastly higher system specs than even Lost Coast. What Valve are doing is showing what can be done now

 

[^Ben]

THat's why epic where so smart at the publicity stakes.

Epic are positioning themselves to be a bigger engine seller then the last generation, so what do they do? They show off their engine 2 years before anybody can remotely run the game. So everybody jizzes in their pants and is like "omfg every other engine sucks" even tho theese engines have ample time to catch up.

In closing, valve have untill next year todo a major upgrade to the engine, and I wouldnt be suprised if they didnt have something boiling at the moment.

Epic sells games, but they also have a much larger business selling engines now, so it makes sense for them to pimp their engine as much as possible.#

Valve on the other hand, make much more money on their games. And they also have a side business of selling engines.

Notice, valve showed off source when they had a game to show with it.

Epic showed off UE3 with "Well yah, we are working on a couple of games but we aint telling you anything about it, just watch the pretty shadows and get ready to pull out your wallets for this once it comes out"

 

[MadGuy]

^
Well said! All true..

 

[The Dark Elf]

I don't think Valve do have anything on the horizon beyond the lost coast and aftermath.

Lost Coast - inflicted with the same sort of hype that ruined the Phantom Menace. Too many are expecting something incredible and only seeing the hype not the details. Too many will end up being dissapointed after waiting so long. It might be a great romp around the coast with some brilliant idea's in it. But the hype has caused too many to expect too much, and even more will be upset if it doesn't run well for them. Cue lots of negative posts, yes you can put this down to dumb people who didn't pay enough attention. But its those dumb people who'll be voting with their wallets and going elsewhere in a huff with their bottom lip stuck out.

Aftermath - I dunno.. I just get the feeling this is going to end up not as good as it could be.


I agree with clarky that they should have saved all the really cool stuff for HL3 instead of trickle it out in the odd map here and there and a remake of DoD. If they'd planned to update HL2 entirely. That would have given a purpose for Lost Coast and would have shown how accessable the engine is "oh yeah we're gonna update the entire game now just like that" That would have impressed a lot of people. Rather a post higher up gives the impression that Source isn't as futureproofed as it would like us to think, aside from the obvious bad moves in the engine. Fully futureproofing an engine would give the ability to update one of its games to squeeze more life out of it. And doing something like that for HL2, for free or even for a small cost would have shown it had one up on the other engines. Coupled with steam it would be perfect. Yes play your not so old games and have them updated over time to fit current technologies, yet another benefit of steam.

Remember how we all reacted when we saw the first images of HL2, they blew us away, we couldn't believe it, we'd certainly not seen anything quite that impressive before. There's a danger now though that HL3 will never have that wow factor that turned everyone into drooling piles of wanthl2nownownow, because by the time hl3 arrives, we'll have gradually been given all the cool features and seen the capabilities via mods and the odd map here and there. HL3 will have to have one hell of a storyline to compete, and simply by the way the industry is where visual quality ends up meaning far more than it should. It'll have to do something very very differently.

 

[The Dark Elf]

The point of Lost Coast is to allow Valve's developers to "show-off" a bit. Rather than keeping to the three-year limit of hardware compatability, The Lost Coast is supposed to take advantage of only the latest hardware and show what the engine can pull off.

But we know what it can do, its done HDR in some form or another since the stolen build, granted it didn't work right but it was there, then vanished for the actual release, then to appear again in DoD. If they wanted to show off what the engine was capable of when really put to the test, it should have had far more done than just what was there in the beginning anyway. There's loads of little tricks they can have thrown in, just to show off. Putting back something it already did in the beginning and increasing texture sizes isn't really showing anything we didn't already know.

They could have made the entire Lost Coast use realtime lighting and shadowing, that would have really shown off the abilities of the engine and how easily it can be switched from baked lighting to realtime to compete with future requirements from gamers. According to Valve that wouldn't be difficult to do with its modular approach, and Pi once said they'd do that eventually. Since they are aiming it just for high end hardware, that in the next few years will be considered the majority hardware. Surely it should be capable of such a thing.. Since the competition out there thats coming can do it with ease.

Or they could drop it completely and just wait for HL3 to let loose all the crazy things they can do with this engine.

 

[EVIL]

yes, I am sure valve is very sorry they can't keep up with pixar

 

[The Dark Elf]

yes, I am sure valve is very sorry they can't keep up with pixar

And you bring Pixar into this because..........?

 

[EVIL]

thats the level of graphical quality you compare your games with

 

[Cole]

Surely it should be capable of such a thing.. Since the competition out there thats coming can do it with ease.

With ease?
What do you mean by "with ease".
.....considering..
'Well, that's kind of the point. Unreal 3 (generally heralded as the Second Coming of engines) isn't going to be used in anything until next year, and also has vastly higher system specs than even Lost Coast. What Valve are doing is showing what can be done now"

 

[clarky003]

And it looks good, no one would dispute that, but adding HDR on its own doesnt really show the range of adaptivity in an engine, dynamic shadows, improved complexity of physic's props, could of also been implemented, but perhaps that would kill even the highest end computer's using the engine.

To be honest.. its the new Crytek engine that's got me looking forward to games again, and has kindof put Lost coast at the back of my mind in terms of wow factor.

 

[giant384]

With ease?
What do you mean by "with ease".
.....considering..
'Well, that's kind of the point. Unreal 3 (generally heralded as the Second Coming of engines) isn't going to be used in anything until next year, and also has vastly higher system specs than even Lost Coast. What Valve are doing is showing what can be done now"

unreal 3 engine is used in gears of war but if you were just talking about pc games then no

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

To be honest.. its the new Crytek engine that's got me looking forward to games again, and has kindof put Lost coast at the back of my mind in terms of wow factor.

An engine does not a game make. Far Cry had a visually impressive engine, but dull, repetitive and generic gameplay. Plus the new Crytek engine isn't current.

unreal 3 engine is used in gears of war but if you were just talking about pc games then no

Gears of War isn't out, or even playable outside of Epic's offices. Not current.

 

[clarky003]

An engine does not a game make. Far Cry had a visually impressive engine, but dull, repetitive and generic gameplay. Plus the new Crytek engine isn't current.

I think I should rephraise more accurately, Its got me 'looking forward' to games with those kind of 'visual's' and level's of 'physical interaction', the tech is what is getting my attention. The Crytek engine tech must be current enough to beable to show it off in real time, New levels of interactivity give me hope as to the game that will be coming out of it... Its just shown what is technically feasable right now, in contrast it naturally shows up what is New Tech HDR in lost coast. Its still lovely, but has lost its wow factor for me, Im sure im not alone.

 

[The Dark Elf]

thats the level of graphical quality you compare your games with

It is? *looks at pixar films* hmm no I think your pretty wide of the mark there Evil, sorry. FYI I'm not a great fan of the cartoonish feel Pixar have.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

From AnandTech: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2545&p=2

The HDR SDK for source will ship when the Lost Coast level is released. This will allow modders to implement HDR levels in their games by adding the three exposure sky maps, building HDR and non-HDR lighting into levels, and setting bloom and exposure ranges per area if desired. While bloom and exposure can be handled automatically, it is nice to give the developer control over this.

From Dystopia page:

We have just had word from Valve that they don't have a firm ETA for the SDK update, their best guess at this stage is "a week or two".

Lost Coast around two weeks away I guess if this information is accurate.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

We're working on the SDK now, but we're a little too early to give you
all a hard date. It's going to take a couple of weeks to get all
finished up.

I read the hlcoders mailing list too!

 

[DigiQ8]

i bet the lostcoast will release the week after ATI release thier new card

 

[russ_uk]

they have been saying 2 weeks/soon for months , i for one don't trust valve any more

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

i bet the lostcoast will release the week after ATI release thier new card

Oh jesus christ, you people and that stupid damn rumor. Just stop it now, no more HUSH.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

I had a dream that the fisherman in HL2:LC was GOD

 

[hi_ted]

they have been saying 2 weeks/soon for months , i for one don't trust valve any more

It's not something they can pinpoint exactly. Since they don't have a publisher snapping at their heels, they are making sure the SDK and LC is bug-free. Every time they think they're finished, someone might discover a new show stopper bug.

 

[Cole]

I had a dream that the fisherman in HL2:LC was GOD

He isnt!!???!??!?!?!?!

 

[wilka91]

i bet the lostcoast will release the week after ATI release thier new card

could be ... but more certainly when the R520 is made available in stores

 

[Zyphria]

ATI is hard launching, not soft launching. So when they announce it, it'll be out.

 

[Beerdude26]

Have you seen the prices? $250 for an X1800XT!
*Splurges*

 

[DigiQ8]

Have you seen the prices? $250 for an X1800XT!
*Splurges*

what ?
i thought it was 550$ =\ ?

 

[russ_uk]

It's not something they can pinpoint exactly. Since they don't have a publisher snapping at their heels, they are making sure the SDK and LC is bug-free. Every time they think they're finished, someone might discover a new show stopper bug.

thats seems incorrect they said it was finished moths ago ,more likely they added more things to the few maps that is lostcoast (lostcoast has been shown by different sites for ages) , plus they said hdr will be in the final release of hl2 (so why was it removed ? )

 

[hi_ted]

thats seems incorrect they said it was finished moths ago ,more likely they added more things to the few maps that is lostcoast (lostcoast has been shown by different sites for ages) , plus they said hdr will be in the final release of hl2 (so why was it removed ? )

Valve went through four different versions of HDR before settling on the current method and this could be the reason for delay. The HDR component cannot simply be placed over the current view, the maps must already possess certain lightmaps and other HDR related objects in order for it to work correctly. To use it in HL2 correctly would mean downloading every single map all over again.