new half-Life 2 screens

Doesn't look as if there have been stark overall changes in the engine since the Alpha leak, at least based on the latest trailers. That means, IMHO, the game has great flexibility for indoor and outdoor environments, generally looks great, but looks worse than Far Cry outdoors, and far far worse than Doom 3 indoors. I also find Doom did a better job with faces then what was evidenced in leaks/trailers of HL2 thus far.

That said, I'll be putting my pre-order in over the next couple of weeks, and hoping for a September release!

 

Not commenting on Mono ('cos I just happen to be posting after him), but parts of this thread (and the recent tone on parts of B3D) reminded me of John Carmacks comments:

 

So, after having a nice ride with my bike this morning, I can safely attest that either every single "window" in City 17 is made of mirror glass or the reflections in #3 are way overdone.

cu

incurable

 

Compared to what? Off hand I can't think of any games that it do it better.

 

He actually said that Wow, basically summed up 400+ posts in one sentence.

 

Heh... I wonder which "tribe" id puts its customers in...? Wanted to add that I can certainly see how unlocking your game engine's frame-rate artificially and temporarily simply to conduct IHV-competitive benchmarks based on frame rates unavailable in the actual game seems very conducive towards stimulating "petty tribal behavior," I would think...

 

I REALLY don't know what you, people are talking about regarding indoor: don't you see those pretty uninpressive, rether shitty low-res 'el cheapo' textures all the time appearing on smaller objects?

Shadowing is impressive, I agreee, look very-very cool - but that's it. Maps are boring, storyline boring, zero AI etc.

PS: Facial not bad but these 128-teeth animals aka humans) pretty weird for me... they look like a Russian immigration group arrive to Ben Gurion airport in early 90s: everybody's teeth were made from gold...

 

HL2 also appears to be less shiny. But then i've never been to Mars, so maybe all mars stations really are built out of shiny solid metal

 

yah

I think most people do notice the lower res textures in Doom3. It just doesn't bother them at all. I'll take the lighting and bump mapping over the texture resolution any day. And some people find the high-res textures of a game like Painkiller much more satisfying. It's really pointless to argue this stuff. It's subjective. When someone says they think Doom3 does better indoor environments, just let it pass.

 

Couldn't let it slide eh?

 

lookin good! I wonder if they'll be good sports and enable HDR on 6800's...

 

Metal gear Solid 2, Silent Hill 3, Resident Evil 4 to name a few. All IMHO, of course.

 

Heh... Well, when you put on war paint, feathers, shake your spear around the camp fire and send up smoke signals, it seems a bit silly to then accuse everyone else of "petty tribal behavior"--unless, of course, you feel that the only difference is that yours isn't "petty"...

 

WTG. After seeing the screenshots of those characters in Half-Life 2 I'm not impressed anymore :\ . Valve and Id need to combine their technologies and make a super ultra mega game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

I understand the low-poly, pointy-headed complaints about Doom3 characters but what's the main gripe with HL2 faces?

 

Too many polys and the heads aren't pointy enough.

 

They are sometimes using digital photos as textures, without the required post-processing in Photoshop. This means that a lot of lighting/shading is incorporated into the texture, which will be a static effect that won't respond to changes in the ingame lighting.
Textures generated from digital photos can also end up lacking nice details. Just take a look at the Nvidia fairy for nice, hand-painted and realistic textures.


Doom3 lights character faces fully dynamically, which looks a lot more dramatic and is consistent with the rest of the game. I'd say that they could've been a little bit better though, both in polygon count and texture work...

 

C'mon, LY... you gotta be kidding. Aren't you think they're fully plastic?

And that ridiculous 'dental-problem'...

PS: H-L2 also looks plastic for me. Both sux, still.
BTW not surprisingly one of the hardest thing in character animation is the skin/facial area...

 

everyone is saying "omg it smokes doom3". Ok, so HL2 had better texture artists, but the tech is still inferior to teh doom3

 

8)

That's a pretty broad statement, perhaps you'd care to elucidate?