Fresh HL2 Screenshots

[Tequila]

It has dynamic lights though, so say for example you can parent a light_spot to a lamp model and have it swing around every which way but loose. That's good enough for me.

[curman]

View the source on that secret shot's page.

[OL]

i remain confident that hl2 will raise the bar when it comes to fps games

Gordon Freeman in the flesh. Or rather, in the hazard suit. I took the liberty of relieving you of your weapons; most of them were government property. As for the suit, I think you've earned it.

[Ewok]

To NotDuffy

No, I do not tag my name at the end for security reasons. That would be a little extreme don't you think, and pointless because it wouldn't help. If they did and put "-guy who stole ewoks account" after, that would be like having "NotDuffy" as a registered name. Both stupid.

Also, you say ...

mean EVEN if your actual user name wasnt enough...then theres your sig which OBVIOUSLY makes everyone say "HEY THATFURRY THING IS EWOK" are you just so concieted... blah blah etc....

Did you notice I did not have an avatar? In fact don't most avatars show the users name? Hey wait, most people have an avatar and signature. Even though one usually always has the persons name it is still stated twice. So there's nothing really different in my case.

Signitures are automatic once you've done your profile. By putting "- Ewok" at the end everytime manually I tag and affirm to myself what I just had writen at the moment. Almost like going by my word, it adds extra importance and forces you to think about whether you stand by what you've just writen. It's not for anyone else, but myself. And is not conceited in any way.

-I DONT MATTER, MY OPINION DOESNT COUNT

I think you summed yourself up quite well there. I really dislike you, mainly only because you feel compelled to insult against me often. I should just get you banned, because your the biggest loser next to Gamer55. Rather stick to being good at nothing, because well...you have no choice anyway.

- Ewok

[curman]

Stop bumping.

[OL]

revive a month old argument, will ya.

[InsaneSingingBlender]

nubbbb :x :x :x :x :evil:

[Pericolos0]

my god ewok bring back the hatred

-Pericolos0

[Evert]

I sense much fear in you.

anger :evil:

[insta]

Am I the only one here that likes duffy?

[FrieChamp]

Yea Ewok seems to be a little bad tempered lately.

[KingNic]

I think Doom3's graphics are bad, and gameplay is worse. It's generally agreed that gameplay is bad, but graphics are a moot point. Let me explain my stance on the graphical front before people start flaming me down:

The models are VERY low polygon, and have very few on-screen at any one point. They are meant to have normal mapping, much like UE3, but even standing up close I fail to see any extra detail beyond what the texture offers. Nowadays, 1000 polygons just doesn't cut it. The engine is 3 years behind in terms of model polygon counts. I suspect that the apparent lack of normal mapping is due to...

Low texture resolution. On the models and on the world geometry, we have texture resolution that is several years old. I'd say the average texture resolution is 0.25x with world geometry now - that's what HL2 is working with (I think), that's what the current incarnation of the Unreal engine is working with, and that's what the later games on the Quake 3 engine used. Doom3's texture resolution can't be any higher than 0.5x, and I'd say that the outdoor scenes use 1x. Even models have a very low texture resolution - look at the late Quake 3 engine models - they certainly have higher texture resolution.

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

Lighting is too sharp. With pre-calculated lighting, you get shadows with good fall-off. The edges aren't horribly sharp and fade from being completely dark, to light. Even with calculated shadows like in UE2.x, you have soft shadows. Every shadow in Doom3 is horribly sharp and looks 6 years old. Why 6 years old? Because the calculated model shadows in Half-Life (that were taken out of the game in a later patch) looked just the same.

World detail is very low, compared to other recent games such as Far Cry and UT2004, and low and behold, Half-Life 2.

Really, I don't think that today's hardware is ready for completely dynamic lighting. Having dynamic lighting has meant the rest of the game has to be 5 years old. Instead, a careful mix of dynamic lighting and pre-calculated lighting would have resulted in a much higher polygon count and texture resolution, and very little difference in image quality. Imagine if we could place a mixture of dynamic lights and pre-calculated lights in the Half-Life engine, or Unreal Engine, and quite possibly the source engine. Would we make all lights dynamic? No. Because the performance hit is HUGE. Instead, it makes much more sense to use a mixture of dynamic lighting and pre-calculated lighting because the player is not going to be able to notice half of the time. I went through the doom3 demo and there was at least 3 lights in every room which could have been pre-calculated and it wouldnt have made any visual difference. Doom3 could have then doubled the polygon count, and there would be no performance hit.

Gaming engines will have to take the step forward to 100% dynamic lighting now, if they dont they'll get flamed down for not having it. For this one small gain, which isn't that significant IMO, we have lost at least 3 years of advancing in the following:

Texture Resolution

Polygon Counts

World Detail

It's now going to be another 3 years before we reach photo realism because iD are too lazy to use pre-calculated lighting. UE3 is a much better step forward, and I believe that it uses a mixture of dynamic and pre-calculated lighting.

[mikezilla]

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.

[GrayFox]

yes, I agree with mikezilla...

[CrazyMAC]

Totally agree with mike

on the gameplay stuff remember its doom!!!! all you ever did was shoot walk shoot walk open a door find a key shoot! they never said it would be anything more then doom redone

graphics hmm well its a personal thing i guess i personly loved the shadows (unlike hl2 which has....no shadows *runs*) the "plastic" theme seems to be common in carmacks stuff...its just his style his "art" you could say anyway....