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Half life 3
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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Nickelplate on Thu Dec 16th at 3:30am 2004

? quoting Tracer Bullet
Bantam, you raise a good point. If in fact Valve stood to gain financially from delaying development, then I'd be prepared to believe it. I'd even be surprised if they didn't.

The point of my argument was that most people have claimed that Valve delayed release intentionally without providing any farther motive than some ambiguous malicious intent. Anything that can be legally done to increase profits and the health of the organization, a corporation will, and indeed should, do. You have provided a potentially sound motive, and if it bears out, rendered my argument impotent.

Maybe they wanted the big dramatic Christmas release? and the profits accomanying?

[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Bantam on Thu Dec 16th at 3:46am 2004

? quote:
Bantam, you raise a good point. If in fact Valve stood to gain financially from delaying development, then I'd be prepared to believe it. I'd even be surprised if they didn't.

The point of my argument was that most people have claimed that Valve delayed release intentionally without providing any farther motive than some ambiguous malicious intent. Anything that can be legally done to increase profits and the health of the organization, a corporation will, and indeed should, do. You have provided a potentially sound motive, and if it bears out, rendered my argument impotent.



Very true. If I got a penny for everytime I'd heard an unsubstantiated rant or conspiracy story on the internet I'd be a very rich man. It just so happens that in this case there might be a scrap of truth in some of these fantastic claims.

I wouldn't blame Valve in a way... afterall, I do see game publishers and record labels as the leeches of their respective industries. They are purely middle men who take their cut of our money while hyping and advertising their products to the nth degree.

If Valve can mirror the success of iTunes to some extent in providing a means of distributing good quality content over the internet cheaply then I'll be happy. However, if it turns out that Valve were acting in a way that was particularly underhanded in screwing over VUG then you have to question some of their business practices.




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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by BlisTer on Thu Dec 16th at 12:48pm 2004

? quoting Kage_Prototype
The majority of dev time for HL2 was to build the engine. They have one now, so it won't take as long.

i hope HL2 mods get enough time to develop and mature, cause when there's a new version on the horizon they tend to bleed to death :/

[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Neural Scan on Thu Dec 16th at 5:36pm 2004

I'd like them to work on a different type of game on the Source engine, something totally different. I don't want hl3 straight away, hl2 will keep me happy for quite a while... I think it'll have an even longer run than h1 had if we get the quality of mods we had for that, if not better!
[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by $loth on Sun Dec 19th at 4:21pm 2004

Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

? quoting Neural Scan
I'd like them to work on a different type of game on the Source engine, something totally different. I don't want hl3 straight away, hl2 will keep me happy for quite a while... I think it'll have an even longer run than h1 had if we get the quality of mods we had for that, if not better!

HL2 will keep me happy for ages, especially with all the mods being made, cs along kept me happy for the best part of 2 years, LOL when I first played cs I didn't even know it was a mod.

Pic of HL3:

[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Crono on Sun Dec 19th at 9:18pm 2004

Oh that would be so awesome. But, no. It would be almost impossible to make any game look identical to real life in the near future.

It's mostly because of lighting to be honest. It's damn annoying in it's ultimate complexity. Sound has the same issues too. (since they're both forms of waves and frequencies)

It'd also be cool if things like pressure were in the physics system. Water would be used like crazy if it were. Trickling down pipes and stuff.

Sloth, the next time you go walking around with a crow bar single handed, try swinging it around. Such a pain in the ass.

[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by $loth on Sun Dec 19th at 9:31pm 2004

? quoting Crono

Sloth, the next time you go walking around with a crow bar single handed, try swinging it around. Such a pain in the ass.

I prefer nuncucks [sp?] more fun

Did you think that was me in the pic? It's not

[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Andrei on Sun Dec 19th at 10:19pm 2004

Just finished HL2 on medium, after 3 days of gameplay. 5years for 3 days...hmm...but, hell, those were some of the greatest 3 days spent on a game ever! [addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Crono on Sun Dec 19th at 10:58pm 2004

? quote:
? quoting Crono

Sloth, the next time you go walking around with a crow bar single handed, try swinging it around. Such a pain in the ass.

I prefer nuncucks [sp?] more fun

Did you think that was me in the pic? It's not



So? Try it anyway.
[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Nickelplate on Sun Dec 19th at 10:59pm 2004

That's what I thought too. It took me like more than a week to complete Hl1. I would have waited another few months while VALVe added some really nice extra chapters. [addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Cassius on Sun Dec 19th at 11:12pm 2004

I think the highest level of graphics that video games will reach is a look of stylized reality, like a painting. "Real Life" looks very different for different people. [addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by KungFuSquirrel on Sun Dec 19th at 11:17pm 2004

It's not about looking real, it's about looking better than real. [addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by omegaslayer on Sun Dec 19th at 11:28pm 2004

I dont know what it is, that picture just resembles HL2 so well, even more than the in game screen shots.
But those effects of real life are impossible to achieve on the current system that we have (eg: polygons), if someone came up with a different way fro a computer to "draw" things, those effects should become reality.
[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Crono on Mon Dec 20th at 4:48am 2004

? quote:
I dont know what it is, that picture just resembles HL2 so well, even more than the in game screen shots.
But those effects of real life are impossible to achieve on the current system that we have (eg: polygons), if someone came up with a different way fro a computer to "draw" things, those effects should become reality.


We have many different ways to render. It's just that they're far too inefficient to be rendered real-time. Polygons are about the least detailed construction method for 3d models. If there were a way for do some straight nurbs modeling you'd notice an incredible difference.
I forget what the other type is. It's like a combination between nurbs and polygons which apparently looks really nice.
I think most game models are created using nurbs then transfered to polygons, then optimized etc.

In short, physical computer hardware is no where near efficient enough. And it all has to do with the system bus. The problem no one wants to fix. (mainly because the only options are insanely expensive.)

I wish the price of more efficient ram would go down, because that would be a step in the right direction.


[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Foxpup on Mon Dec 20th at 4:54am 2004

There's also voxel mapping, but it uses A HELL OF A LOT OF memory (more than 4 gigs?!?). It's basically like a 3D bitmap, like how polygons are like 3D vectors. [addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by SaintGreg on Mon Dec 20th at 5:49am 2004

I dont think the lighting is the biggest issue. I think the lighting in games has and will improve to a point that will be close to reality. Same with sound. My problem is the textures. In real life everything is so detailed. In video games things look good far away, but crappy up close all because of textures that are not detailed (and likely never will be detailed) enough.

Combo nurbs/polys sounds like its modeled as a nurbs surface and then tessellated as polygons to be rendered. The tessellation would of course be view dependant so you arent rendering thousands of polys in 1 pixel's space. All that sort of view dependant tessellation has come a long way with the easy implementation of lod terrains and algorithms like SOAR and ROAM. Adding that kind of algorithm to an arbitrary curved surface seems a trifle more difficult. But I'm sure its being worked on and im sure we will see more of it in the future.




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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by 7dk2h4md720ih on Mon Dec 20th at 5:57am 2004

Compare todays textures to those ten years ago. It's a huge leap. Consider also that the textures in current games are lacking detail only because of the hardware limitations of the average gamer.




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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Tracer Bullet on Mon Dec 20th at 6:25am 2004

? quoting Crono

In short, physical computer hardware is no where near efficient enough.

According to a recent Scientific American article, today's fastest computers have approximately the same amount of processing power as a guppy.

[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Crono on Mon Dec 20th at 6:40am 2004

That's in interesting comparison.

SG, believe me, light is very complex when it comes to recreating it (and since sound is the same thing just different frequencies, they are linked). In games you do not hear proper re-verb or echoing or even muffling. The same goes with light. rays or beams bouncing off everything near infinity times (as well as continuous) doesn't sit well with computing. Thus the invention of light maps and such.

Granted textures do need upping. I think in a perfect world, every texture will be at AT LEAST 1 Giga-Pixel size, allowing separate rendering depending on how close you are (bad ass to say the least). However, we're REALLY far away from that.

Most of my point was there isn't a proper architecture for computing the type of real time effects people are speaking about. It's as simple as that.
In a perfect world, it would eventually reflect upon the real world. That would even allow us to experiment with objects in the virtual world to save us from risky and hazardous environments. Not to mention, it's a really nifty way to check our formulas and methods. To see if they really produce what we think they do. (so far we're pretty damn close in the physics department)

[addsig]



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 Re: Half life 3
Posted by Cassius on Mon Dec 20th at 7:25am 2004

The demo of Unreal 3 is, unfortunately, the most realistic lighting I've ever seen. Unfortunate because if I ever want to use it, I'll have to submit to subtractive geometry [addsig]




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