HL2: Orange Box Thread

That's what I love about Source so much right now, it flies on all my rigs and looks great.

WORKING AA, what a concept.

 

I have been playing TF2 beta on the PC and the graphic has been updated quite a bit. They now have motion blur; which is probably the most subtle, and nicest looking, motion blur I have seen; and the lighting and shadowing is much improved over HL2. Not to forget about all the other graphical upgrades(HDR, color correction, etc.) the engine has had since HL2.

For the single player Valve has stated that they are going to have much larger outdoor environments and are going to put much more emphasis on physics.

I think the performance with be solid but I don't know about 60fps. At least for EP2, the other games might

 

Valve already said the Xobx 360 version would be 60fps; PS3 version is being done by EA and no word on that.

pegisys, on the PC version, do you get self shadows?

 

I am definitely buying this, after my PES 2008.
newbies like me are worried.

 

With all the new graphical stuff they re pushing i doubt they will get 60fps + AA.
Even if they achieve 60fps+2xaa or locked 30fps+4xaa , i ll be pretty satisfied.

 

The character don't cast shadows on themselves(I don't think so, but I'll have to check to make sure) but cast shadows on other objects and shadows from other objects get cast on the characters now. IIRC in HL2 if you walk in a shadow the character would just become unlit

on wikipedia it says that only one visible object can be cast a dynamic shadow at a time , so I guess it wouldn't be that demanding but the way they have the levels designed it works quite well, if TF2 at least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_engine#Dynamic_lighting_and_shadowing_2

 

Speaking of lighting , Gordon's flashlight will cause an ambient lighting effect (for the interiors) , casting dynamic soft shadows onto all nearby objects inclouding transparent objects.

Here is an example :
(Though i m not sure if the soft shadows are for the console version too).





Also there will be some improved foliage shaders (since we re going to spent a lot of time outdoor) and their new cinematic physics engine.


It seems that they stole the blood splattering effect from Gears.

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/9491/gettinshotedue2.gif

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/8742/shotgunshotqz2.gif

 

How come Alyx's shadow is so small?

From what I can remember, Gears' gore was thicker and had a higher viscosity.

 

the shadow would do that if the flashlight was attached to his "head" (which would make sense because then the light would move around when you're reloading a gun). If the flashlight is attached to his head, then it'd be far enough away from alyx that the profile of the shadow on the wall behind her will be smaller than her profile.

 

I haven't seen anything on the PS3 version of HL2, but there is a video on Gametrailers with the developer doing a walkthrough of Portal via the PS3.

Check it out:http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22207.html

 

I think I'm getting this for the 360. I haven't fired up my gaming PC in a while, and I don't feel like downloading the latest videocard drivers and soundcard drivers like it seems you have to do with every new PC game these days.

 

I am still using the 84.21 nvidia graphic cards drivers together with my Audigy2 zs drivers from 2005. All games and I mean all including Crysis beta runs without problems at all and sound is crystal clear in all games (all settings max as always)!!!

 

meet the demoman.

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?cookie_test=1&product_id=200198

this is so. freaking. funny. I'm wondering what they'll do for the flamethrower guy.

 

Since when?

I have literally NEVER updated a sound card driver and have never had any problems because of it.

As for graphics card drivers, it can be advantageous to stay up to date but its certainly not necessary (at least with nvidia). I do update every couple of months myself now to gain any performance advantages that might be available but I used to only update once a year or so and never had any issues because of it.

 

I guess if you take into consideration, "best experience", lately it does seem that GPU drivers (including beta) have been released to coincide with particular games such as Lost Planet, Company of Heroes, Quake Wars, and BioShock (off the top of my head). Whereas on console, one presumes the experience doesn't require any real tweaking of the system.

Personally, I don't think it's a major issue to be worried about these days, but then I do updates religiously with zero fear of divine retribution. But hey, to each his own.

But... back on topic:


I'm a bit torn right now on whether or not to get the OJ Box because they're probably going to do something similar once they complete Episode 3. I haven't even played Half-Life 2 beyond the demo, and now I'd like to play it all from the beginning to the very end of the story arc they've planned. ack...

 

A serious WTF on Team Fortress 2.

When Gabe said they weren't doing tiling but were using a different method for anti-aliasing he ment to say they weren't doing anti-aliasing! No MSAA, no siloutte blurring, no MB, no DOF. And the aliasing artifacts are pretty nasty. Texture resolution is pretty poor, too. And the kicker? The PC requirements are:

Either we disagree on what is ideal, or the port process had some issues. Based on how TF2 looks and how Source runs on my 6800GT, I can believe High Quality at 1280x1024 being smooth. Which makes me wonder why the console version looks pretty poor.

 

I think I will just get EP2 via Steam. I don't want the whole thing since I own EP1 and HL2. I have no interest in TF2. Portal looks cool, but not worth the $10 I suspect.

You can give away HL2 and EP1 if you buy the who Orange Box via Steam, but I don't know anyone with a gaming PC that doesn't have it.

 

Perhaps the 1GB system RAM cited is the difference? Both PS3 & XBox360 are rather lacking in this area.

 

I thought the console versions were supposed to look identical to the PC version, no? I haven't played the beta version, but how does it compare on your PC to the X360 images? But either way, poor ports in the gaming world do exist (best examples being the PC version of Halo 1 & 2). Or maybe they get to cut some corners to keep the game at a constant 60 fps?

 

1GB of RAM doesn't help alaising.

And the game isn't very asset deep, a slew of console games have far better textures. A high end 6800 and X800 GPU also have 256MB of memory in almost all cases, so I doubt memory is an issue when you start looking at how PC GPU uses memory and the amount of stupid overhead on the PC side between the OS and content duplication.