Posts by mikezilla

  • Fresh HL2 Screenshots

    i don't really even know where to start with your post. Although

    "it's generally agreed that the gameplay is bad"

    that's a good place. Where do you live holmes, cuz they must be hard to please. Sure the gameplay is overly simplistic, but to say its BAD is a harsh step. It's fun, perhaps a bit tedious, but is fun and challenging, especially later in the game.

    But really I'm wondering how you can be complaining about doom 3's graphics, as I thought they were amazing. Did you even play it? Or simply look at screenshots to point out that the monsters are low poly? In motion it's simply one of the most consistently inspiring things I've ever seen. The bosses, when you go out onto the surface, all the hell stuff; it's all amazing and I did not think for one second it was too low poly or too low res. Why? Because the enviorment is always changing, it rarely looks the same for more than like 5 seconds.

    "Everything looks plastic. You can't argue with that. "

    Sure I can. Everything looks metal. Metal shines light very brightly, plastic does not. They used alot of specular on their normal maps to make it feel more like a dank dark space station, and used it again on the fleshy hell stuff to have it really come alive (and it did.) To say the overall look is plastic makes me again believe you have not played it.

    Then you went onto attack the shadows being "too sharp." I guess you're talking about light radiosity? Yes todays graphics cards aren't good enough to calculate radiosity on the fly. Hooray. The experience of seeing the shadow of a zombie change the enviorment as he walked around the corner was still awesome. Having real lights all the time casting on everything was truly something I had not yet played with in a game. It really sold the enviorment to me.

    "It's now going to be another 3 years before we reach photo realism because iD are too lazy to use pre-calculated lighting"

    This is my favorite part of your argument. Cuz it sums up how ill thought out what you're saying really is. We will never reach photo realism, if we could, we would have reached it in movies already, but sorry no. Art imitating life will always be art imitating life, never quite feeling right. And to even begin to call iD lazy for using DYNAMIC LIGHTING THE FIRST GAME TO DO THAT EVER. Well until Riddick came along and stole their thunder.

  • Doom...TEH MOVIE!!

    Quote from The Postman

    I urge the world to stop giving that douchebag jobs. He can't act and his movies are utter tripe.

    not entirely, his first three movies were

    saving private ryan

    the iron giant

    boiler room

    all awesome movies, and hes awesome in them. at fast and furious i think he started to go downhill a bit, although he wasn't particulary bad in it.

  • CONGRATULATIONS TO DD, MOJO, and TOMWITHWEATHER

    Ah, it seems only yesterday (6 months ago) that Dorian, Pat, and Nate showed up at our doorstep clean shaven with stars in their eyes.

    Having destroyed all their expectations of the game industry now it with my great pleasure I inform all of you that Dorian, Pat, and Nate are no longer contractors but full fledged full time salaried hoochies at Gearbox Software now.

    I don't tell them enough but they all do an amazing job at Gb@x and have helped to create what I believe to be one of the most cohesive and stellar game experiences ever seen. What's truly amazing about all of our mappers is they've managed to make it virtually impossible to tell who made what, they've worked together so tightly and efficiently (sometimes well into the night) on a very very tough project, and come through with flying colors (what makes colors fly anyway, is it bacon?)

    I'm rambling anywho.

    GIVE EM THE HOOCHIE LOVE!!!!!

  • Remake HL textures

    Quote from Pericolos0

    the static lighting hl2 has makes bumpmaps pretty useless fps eaters in much circumstancesam i rite????

    thats not exactly correct. The normal mapping in MOST cases is used to accentuate the depth of a texture with some type of specular shine. For instance if you wanted the look of moonlight shining on wet cobblestones, the light itself is static, but on the tiles it moves with the player (visually speaking of course.) In addition by simply normal mapping bricks with a static light source you can have them light as if they were in the enviorment, where as a flat texture can only do this fake. For example on certain sections of the wall it would be lit from the moonlight from the moonlight direction, but if you put a street light below it or something it would be shining under the bricks. So it's actually quite useful, just REALLY difficult to do it correctly without going overboard and getting the afforementioned plasticy/metal fever.

  • Remake HL textures

    i'm right.

    they actually use them very much to their advantage.. dimly lit corrider with shimmering tiles, wet looking cobble stones... free ledge information on a flat building...

    what they dont use them on is surfaces like brick and things that are dry. That would appear plasticy. But there are probably more normal mapped surfaces than you think.