valves new steam update

Eclipse - holy @#$% this is HL2 mod! looks awesome in the screen shots

I finished Eclipse. General impression I got is that it was kind of underwhelming as an HL2 mod: you pick rocks up and throw them. But still, it showed off the team's abilities to get something done, which is probably the main purpose. All in all, it was pretty polished and not half-bad, just not mindblowing or anything. It's certainly a lot better than anything else that's singleplayer HL2 at the moment.

I've just finished Eclipse. First thing I noticed was the terrible performance. In the first level I had about 15fps and my computer isn't that slow. I guess it's because the source engine has some trouble handling too many alpha transparency

But the graphics, especially in the first level, look very nice. The map design as well as the model design is great! What I didn't like was the animation of the characters but for amateur project it's ok. Also the textures are a bit blurry and I almost didn't see any specular or normal maps. But I guess if they have used better textures, the performance would have been even worse.

specular maps are only good for props not textures and the Source engine hates Normal maps.. thats what most of the FPS drop is from if there is any at all. And thats why you rarely see Normal mapping through out the HL2 SP.

Eclipse doesn't almost use any specular or normal maps. The bad performance is because of the huge amout of alphas (all the grass and stuff), the lack of level-of-detail and because of the bad vis optimizing.

I think HL2 (and CSS, HL2:Dm) uses more specular maps than most of any other games. I don't get the point why normal maps are only good for props. They also look good when used as a world texture. Just because walls aren't moving (unlike charakters and props) it doesn't mean that normal maps are useless.