What Valve Has Acheived

[UndercoverBob]

Alot of people on this site have said that Hl2s graficall capibilitys are outdated and old but the truth is that HL2s engine is not based on lighting or uber high rez textures but mood and atmosphere whats your opinion? doom 3s engine is dark and forboding but i think its atmosthere is to in your face. HL2 really has a repressive orwellian style atmosthere

 

[Chris D]

I'd say Half-Life 2 is a healthy mix of graphics and atmosphere.

 

[brink's]

HL2 has great lighting and maybe the best textures in any game to date.

 

[Vegeta897]

I'd say Half-Life 2 is a healthy mix of graphics and atmosphere.

Meaning more atmosphere than graphics.

The Half-Life world is known for atmosphere... Adding on to it in HL2 is the physics, and amazing AI.

Half the cool graphic features won't be shown with my crappy pc anyway.

 

[UndercoverBob]

i know but what i mean is that its not the focus the foucus is atmosthere

 

[UndercoverBob]

god i cant get replys out fast enouf

 

[DarkStar]

I think the term you're all looking for is "art-direction." This is where HL2 outshines just about any game.

 

[Vegeta897]

Hey Bob, see that little "Edit" button? Use that to add on to posts you have just made.

Darkstar hit the nail on the head. Art direction.. That's just what it's all about.

 

[StardogChampion]

HL2 has great lighting and maybe the best textures in any game to date.

Yeah, Doom 3 may have fully dynamic lighting, but it has a hell of a lot of limitations because of it. You can't put anymore than 3 light volumes overlapping without it killing your frame rate. Also the shadows are pitch black unless you place a huge ambient light volume over your map.

I think the best way is to have a mix of lightmap AND dynamic lights. HL2's lighting is really cool, i think it also calculates the "bounce" of the light off the walls aswell helping it to look even more realistic. I can't wait to see how the lighting preview works in the new Hammer.

But i suppose the D3 engine was made specifically for Doom 3, which is a dark, dark game without large lit areas.

 

[UndercoverBob]

i have noticed thou that HL had a quite different atmostphere than HL2 what do you think caused that. even thou its a differnt setting they should have similarity. HL2 changed also in there Alein design did anyone else notiice that

 

[MultiVaC]

There's gonna be a lighting preview in the new Hammer? Sweet, I've always wanted something like that.

 

[StardogChampion]

There's gonna be a lighting preview in the new Hammer? Sweet, I've always wanted something like that.

Yeah, it might work something like UnrealEd where you click a "Build Lighting" button and it calculates all the lighting. Hopefully it actually works properly.

 

[Chris D]

Yeah, you'll be able to preview the models directly within the editor as well.

It'll be a lot more WYSIWYG than the original Hammer.

 

[UndercoverBob]

will it be more or less beginerr freindy because i always wanted to make a mod for HL but i just said to myself wait till the hl2 SDK comes out

 

[Chris D]

The layout of the HL2 Hammer editor will be almost exactly the same layout as the HL1 Hammer editor.

I'm rubbish at that kinda thing, but I found it pretty easy to learn the basics.

 

[MultiVaC]

That's cool, it doesn't mention the lighting preview in VERC's source mod faq. At least I don't think so, I might've missed it. Lighting is always very frustrating for me, because I feel that it has to be perfect if I want to properly set the mood of the map. Hopefully the preview will cut down on the guesswork a little.

 

[Asuka]

Hl2 gfx arnt bad at all the faces and people monsters in hl2 are so much more detailed then doom3. Doom3 looks worse when it comes to people.

 

[UndercoverBob]

thats not what i was saying i was saying that HL2 just gives greater attention to atmosther then graphics not that the gfx are bad

 

[Chris D]

Hl2 gfx arnt bad at all the faces and people monsters in hl2 are so much more detailed then doom3. Doom3 looks worse when it comes to people.

HL2 and D3 both have very different ways of doing things.

I don't think HL2 relies all that much on normal mapping for 3D models as D3 does. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[UndercoverBob]

i also think DOOM3 looks good even naby just as good as HL2 just HL2 is more into realism

 

[Asuka]

Ya they are COMPLETELY different. Im just saying hl2's faces monsters look better. Look more real.

 

[iamaelephant]

Yeah, you'll be able to preview the models directly within the editor as well.

It'll be a lot more WYSIWYG than the original Hammer.

What the hell does that mean?

 

[UndercoverBob]

i think the differnce in faces in the diferent engines is that DOOM 3 hade to be more um...bump maped.... normal maped whatever you call it so the faces cast shadows. HL2 dosent need that so there faces are normal maped and more detailed doom3 would be to laggy if it were insanly bumpmapped

 

[kin83]

What the hell does that mean?

What you see is what you get.

 

[otomo]

what heck is wrong with people half life 2 has amazing graphics. Boggles my mind everyone of these threads where people say the graphics are dated, it could be a 1000 years old it doesn't matter they look damn good to me.

 

[UndercoverBob]

did we say the gfx suck

 

[otomo]

i said thread(s) as in more then one not this one. This has been discussed before and i've been boggled before.

 

[UndercoverBob]

do any of you think the art direction has changed from HL to HL2 theres a huge differnce what do u think is the reason

 

[cadaveca]

i have to add my 2 cents...
DOOM3 has spectacular lighting effects, best i've seen to date. Some of the shadowing in the BINKS leaves something to be desired, but that does not mean that DOOM3 has a better engine.
One of the things that will make HL2 stand out from the crowd is the realtime scalability of the graphics detail levels (and access to true trilinear filtering, which is what made the first binks like the original coastline look hazy) to keep framerates as consistent as possible. Although haveing a huge map that is grandioisely detailed and make you say "WOW!" outloud is fine and dandy, one that does not play smoothly is not, no matter how gorgeous it is. DOOM3 plays crap-ass-slow on my wifes geforceMX4000, but on my 9800xt, i can play it on ultra @ 800x600 without a prob. We should not experience the same thing with the SOURCE engine, at least that's what Gabe Newell said in one of the video interviews, and it is this one thing that i personally think has taken them the longest to perfect. trying to give the same "experience" to every user, when they are almost all using different hardware combinations, is by no means an easy task.

 

[rrm]

hl2 graphics are good right now, even compared with doom3's however it will just be a matter of half a year before it's hopelessly old. With the advent of stalker, quake 4, etc, hl2 will retain an excellent art direction and athmosphere, but source will need a major graphical update in order to survive I think

 

[iamaelephant]

One of the things that will make HL2 stand out from the crowd is the realtime scalability of the graphics detail levels (and access to true trilinear filtering, which is what made the first binks like the original coastline look hazy) to keep framerates as consistent as possible.

I'm by no means a hardware buff, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't trilinear filtering and real time scaleable graphics old technology?

 

[shaggy2039]

I think Valve has achieved something most game companies can't or simply don't get: it just feels good...HL and HL2 just have a sort of magical feeling of "this makes sense" when you play the game...can't say the same for doom3...what a shit ass game that one was....

 

[brink's]

I'm by no means a hardware buff, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't trilinear filtering and real time scaleable graphics old technology?

Does it really matter if it looks reallly really good?

 

[UndercoverBob]

i think even if HL2 ends up to be not the most amzing gfx game ever WHO CARES it will still be awesome it will still me great it will be ALMIGHTY

Edit: oh and why do you think valved art direction changed

 

[skumbuzzul]

Actually if you compare retail half-life/counterstrike sales to new blockbuster pc game sales. You'd get an idea where graphics seem to stop having an impact on overall interest.

 

[cadaveca]

I'm by no means a hardware buff, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't trilinear filtering and real time scaleable graphics old technology?

it's all about implementation...
think of the first binks.... they looked good, but especially the coast... you could see the pixelization. Still looked damn good, because of the textures behind the filters. Trilinear, if done right, resembles the blur of focus of the human eye... there's only so much you are concentrating on...but at distances, it's a far larger area.....and there is by no means a lack of detail in those larger areas in the early binks, unlike games of old. you've got to remember that the largest change in the way graphics are done is in the shaders, and these are on individual textures themselves. this causes issues with trilinear filtering....but if you look at the stone hallway in the stress test, you can see how well they have made the transition between depths of field smoother and better detailed than ever before. getting shaders to work with trilinear filtering is not easy.

 

[JFry]

Actually if you compare retail half-life/counterstrike sales to new blockbuster pc game sales. You'd get an idea where graphics seem to stop having an impact on overall interest.

Absolutely. This is the fundamental difference between id and valve. Doom's engine is clearly graphically superior due to things like dynamic real-time lighting, self-shading, etc. However hl2 excels in other areas like AI, physics, realistic speach...

It seems like alot of people are confusing the engines with content. Just based on engines, doom is clearly prettier. If you ran the same content on both engines, doom's would easily look better. However based on content, it is harder to judge since they are such different games. Id did a fine job creating a scary environment and valve did a fine job creating an orwellian(sp?) one.

I think the main reason why valve changed their art direction (or more accurately, the environment) was because they didn't want it limiting the game's potential. We would never see a haunted cemetary or a nice big beach at black mesa. Also from a developer's point of view, it is just more fun to try something new instead of rehashing the same old ideas.

 

[flo_Orian]

HL2 has great lighting and maybe the best textures in any game to date.

Woot? Come on, there's no 'great lighting'. I wonder if there's any lightning at all :/

 

[Gergor]

Absolutely. This is the fundamental difference between id and valve. Doom's engine is clearly graphically superior due to things like dynamic real-time lighting, self-shading, etc. However hl2 excels in other areas like AI, physics, realistic speach...

I normally don't like to argue about things like this, but I just want to clear this up-- First of all, Source engine does self-shading. Second of all, Doom 3's lighting is in no way more advanced than the lighting in Source. As a matter of fact, it is in a sense even less advanced than the lighting in the original Quake (It renders direct lighting only, no radiosity). The only difference is that it is calculated in real-time. It's simply a matter of how John Carmack made use of available system resources, which he obviously did very well. And remember that Valve, in their infinite powers of moderation, are not using a large portion of the built-in capabilities of Source.

 

[Trebaruna]

Woot? Come on, there's no 'great lighting'. I wonder if there's any lightning at all :/

Did you see the "Source Engine High-Dynamic Range Rendering" BINK video?