A thread about the Half-Life engines

Why, since
Zelda64 [1998], Quake [1996], and TES: Arena [1994] all have moving
skies, does Half-Life... latest edition HL2E2 at the typing of this
post have completely static skies. The technology exists, why not
utilize it!

I'm really hoping that by HL2E3, they update the
engine and freaking throw out skyboxes and get something real going on
having to do with the sky. I understand the point that the HL storyline
itself is extremely scripted and some parts need to be night/day for it
to happen, but there are ways around that, and I think 90% of the time
it doesn't matter if it's night or day where you are. I'm not even
necessarily needing HL to have a night/day schedule. At least have some
moving clouds! Quake has them, (purple, opaque ones, but still!) so why
can't HL....

If a game over 12 years ago can have a complete
night and day schedule involving weather and fog, HL[#] should have
something better than silly HDR which in the end adds nothing to the
game, except making things glow weird.

Quake's clouds give me vertigo, lets not bring those back

It's very possible to have moving clouds in the skybox for the HL2 engine, all you gotta do is make a 3dskybox-scaled model that has an animated skin of moving clouds, put it in your map, and presto. In fact I think cs_office does this, and it was one of the first maps seen in the Source engine.

Day/Night cycles and dynamic weather are probably beyond the current scope of the engine as I understand it. I mean Source still uses vrad with baked lighting so I doubt it could handle an entire outside area changing from day to night.

To be honest, I think there are other issues with the source engine which should be fixed first, such as the stupid system that loads levels, a near seamless level transition could be easily done.

I mean, yeah, its a pretty simple effect and such, and it can be done really nicely, but I don't really think it needs it urgently. What I want to see is a level with rain in it, reflective water puddles on the floor, all the walls look like there wet and have water running down them (Kind of like that gears of war level), and of course, an alien level which they had better do.

And to be honest, when is Gordon Freemen going to take off that stupid hazard suit, I know it would be a pretty dramatic change and the fans would be like "oh nooes" (how many pictures of geeks dressed up in a hazard suit with a crowbar have you seen?), but its kind of stupid how he is still in a hazard suit, something should happen in the story where his suit gets damaged and he gets some sort of amour from the scientists or something which would act pretty much the same as the hazard suit, just fit into the story more, the novelty has worn off, I think its time for a change. He should get his voice box back to.

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Aaron's Stuff

What's the point of getting rid of the hazard suit when you replace it with something that does the exact same thing? It'd be better if it changed game play mechanics.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well, you could change the gameplay mechanics aswell I guess, but seriously, story wise it doesn't make sense, his hazard suit getting damaged would be a cool part of episode 3 or whatever (maybe he plays part of the game with no protection, just a health bar), and I would feel better if I knew I was playing a guy who wasn't wearing a hazard suit, It was fine for him to be wearing it during Half-life 1, but only then.

Lets just keep the early parts of the Half-life series with him wearing the hazard suit and not keep spoiling it by him still wearing it and ruining the novelty of the first Half-life. It would be cool if he finished the series without the hazard suit I say.... I feel compelled to make a poll about this :bandit: .

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Aaron's Stuff

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting aaron_da_killa</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>What I want to see is a level with rain in it, reflective water puddles on the floor, all the walls look like there wet and have water running down them (Kind of like that gears of war level).</DIV></DIV>

Stalker: Clear Skies is gonna have this effect, and it won't require being constrained into some tiny ass Gears of War map.

It also has day/night cycles, dynamic lighting, and dynamic weather... too bad you can't make maps :sad:

If you decompile the tf2 version of 2fort, you'll find that there are some big assed clouds in the skybox that have been tied to a func_rotating. The idea is that the clouds move quite slowly, giving a more realistic effect.

Though I suppose it's a pity that the func_rotating entity is fekked in tf2. :/

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i eat paint

<div style="font-family: Verdana; color: silver;" class="quote"><div class="quotetitle">? quoting Yak_Fighter</div><div class="quotetext">
Quake's clouds give me vertigo, lets not bring those back </div></div>
Admittedly, it wasn't like those clouds were super-realistic, but for the game, they worked alright.

<div style="font-family: Verdana; color: silver;" class="quote"><div class="quotetitle">? quoting Yak_Fighter</div><div class="quotetext">It's very possible to have moving clouds in the skybox for the HL2
engine, all you gotta do is make a 3dskybox-scaled model that has an
animated skin of moving clouds, put it in your map, and presto. In fact
I think cs_office does this, and it was one of the first maps seen in
the Source engine.</div></div>
I'm
not sure exactly what you meant by "3dskybox-scaled model" ... I know
what a 3d skybox is... just not what a scaled model of one is....
anyway, I KNOW HL/HL2 has the capability to have "moving skies" by
making a couple func_conveyor's at different speeds... but, that would
ultimately probably look flat and archaic.

The more I look at
the current engine, the more flaws I see in it, in comparison to other
engines. I don't think it is disputible, but maybe it is: Doom3's id
tech 4 lighting engine [2004] trumps HL2E2's source engine [2007] by a
long shot. At least the lighting portion. The physics in doom3 were
marginally terrible, but it was an inhouse effort to have their own
physics system, unlike HL2/Oblivion/etc. Also, Doom3's outside
rendering method probably isn't nearly as good as HL2's, but it didn't
happen often enough to really tell. It just drives me crazy all the
lighting artifacts that shouldn't popup after compiling, and no more
than 3 "dynamic" lights per brush plane? weak. Even worse than that Is
a dynamic light tied to a moving entity does not produce good looking
moving light, although I may have just not set it up right. You can
just see all kinds of fine edges on moving lights that are NOT natural.
Granted its still the modified Quake engine, but still.

<div style="font-family: Verdana; color: silver;" class="quote"><div class="quotetitle">? quoting aaron_da_killa</div><div class="quotetext">And to be honest, when is Gordon Freemen going to take off that stupid hazard suit</div></div>
Never.

<div style="font-family: Verdana; color: silver;" class="quote"><div class="quotetitle">? quoting aaron_da_killa</div><div class="quotetext">how many pictures of geeks dressed up in a hazard suit with a crowbar have you seen?</div></div>

Not enough.

<div style="font-family: Verdana; color: silver;" class="quote"><div class="quotetitle">? quoting aaron_da_killa</div><div class="quotetext">something should happen in the story where his suit gets damaged and he
gets some sort of amour from the scientists or something which would
act pretty much the same as the hazard suit</div></div>
Yes
and no. Part of the uniqueness of Half-life is Gordon's standout orange
suit. Its cool. I would agree that is not an entirely bad idea to have
him lose it for a while.... BUT HE HAS TO GET IT BACK. And he isn't
gonna wear some f*****g Halo garbage till he finds it. I would agree
with Crono as well on the fact that if he does it needs to be for a
reason, otherwise you just have one less on screen HUD item, as you
can't see yourself. Is it realistic for Barney to toss Gordon a crowbar
in the beginning of HL2? NO. BUT ITS AWESOME. The game isn't meant for
hyper-realism, although many events are supposed to FEEL natural. It
also doesn't matter what the f**k he's wearing, because HL is a 1st
person game. I will not buy HL if they ever decide to go with third
person mode. UGH. By the way, just mentioning the Halo series makes my
blood boil.

<div style="font-family: Verdana; color: silver;" class="quote"><div class="quotetitle">? quoting aaron_da_killa</div><div class="quotetext">the novelty has worn off</div></div>
No it hasn't.

<div style="font-family: Verdana; color: silver;" class="quote"><div class="quotetitle">? quoting aaron_da_killa</div><div class="quotetext"> He should get his voice box back to.</div></div>
? What ?

<div style="font-family: Verdana; color: silver;" class="quote"><div class="quotetitle">? quoting fishy</div><div class="quotetext"> the func_rotating entity is fekked in tf2. :/</div></div>
Really?
So 2fort doesn't have slowly rotating clouds? I never payed attention,
but if that is borked in TF2, what else is too? Also, for a good
func_rotating example, Painkiller and Painkiller: Overdose have some
pretty cool func_rotating skies.

Doom3's id tech 4 lighting engine [2004] trumps HL2E2's source engine [2007] by a long shot. At least the lighting portion.

This is the reason I strictly distinguish between graphics and graphics technology.

The Source engine is built upon compromises. Smart compromises.

If you want to get the atmosphere of bright day/sunlight environments, you need light bouncing, the difference between this and that. The Impressionists of the early 20th century, they already knew. It's not even about hard or soft edges, it's way more complicate than that. And even Crysis can't handle true global illumination yet (especially not in DX9). Popular graphics cards can't handle this effect in real-time, so Valve, in order to get a lighting feature that, ironically, exists since Quake 1 but not in Quake 4, they chose to use pre-rendered lighting. And I am thankful for that, because HL2 with pitch-black shadows looks worse than HL2 with static lightmaps and basic, fake dropshadows.

I guarantee that with a coming big update of the Source engine, maybe with Episode 3, we will see true, efficient global illumination in Source. And once they got that, photorealism is close to solved, IMO. I looked at the sky today, I saw no clouds moving, but if they have some time left, they can add dynamic clouds a la Crysis etc. But there are things to be done first.

HL2 sticking to pre-rendered lighting so far was an artistical, a practical decision, a weighting of what they need to create a certain atmosphere and how to get there the fastest. A decision that brings Valve profit (and DAMN fine looking games) where Crytek is struggling. I prefer an Episode 2 map, a TF2 or even a Portal map over the kitschy, brown and blurry cyber-samurai aesthetic of UT3 or a Crysis map that runs at 15 FPS on a 1200$ computer. Art over technology, performance over technological leadership.

Valve is one of the few companies that, IMO, found the perfect balance between having big ideas and focusing on what's important.

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Why snark works.

To be honest, I think there are other issues with the source engine which should be fixed first, such as the stupid system that loads levels, a near seamless level transition could be easily done.

I mean, yeah, its a pretty simple effect and such, and it can be done really nicely,

Lets see you do this then if its so simple (and no its not when your working with bsp).

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Posting And You

omegaslayer said:
Lets see you do this then if its so simple (and no its not when your working with bsp).

I imagine some sort of buffer could be allocated for loading the next and previous maps and all the content required for them. While you are on the present map, the game will load the next map and all the content into the buffer and keep the previous map in the buffer just incase the player decided to turn around.

It could also be taken further, level designs could control when the next level(s) are loaded into the buffer, could empty the previous level from the buffer (in the case of a one way level) etc. I'm not saying I have the skillz to do that, but its not like the whole source engine will have to be rewritten.

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Aaron's Stuff

I think technology discussions about game engines are funny.

Creating multiple BSP trees in memory and virtual memory is a possibility, but that hardly allows the engine to be scalable. A more reasonable solution would be to do a lot more on the graphics card in real-time occlusion rendering and depth testing, as opposed to static trees that layout what to render and when.

Something they could do ... though this would be quite large ... is make a very complicated data structure that encapsulates maps, so each map could be taken in and out of memory (like each portal/leaf of the current BSP trees), just on a larger scale.

I think right now the problem is Valve is using very old practices because that's what they know.

Say what you will about CryTek, but they made some fantastic technology, even if all it did was get other developers to get off their lazy asses with this static s**t.

It's also important to note that in Crysis, the dynamic lighting (don't confuse this with their dynamic soft shadows), large worlds, dynamic occlusion and such, work on all settings. The only things that change on the higher settings are particle numbers and more refined visual effects, but that core technology runs on pretty old machines.

The Unreal Engine 3 isn't a product of the textures artists choose to put into it. Epic did a tremendous job taking out the need for real hardcore coding to be done to modify the game. That engine, for the most part, runs like silk and looks and reacts pretty damn well.

Doing an accurate real-time render using REAL global illumination is not particularly possible. However, the current renderer for CryEngine 2 (not used with Crysis) is using a global illumination rendering technique (looks like photon mapping), which produces a better lighting effect than radiosity (what HL2 uses ... and is static because it's more complicated to calculate)

Photon mapping, in general, has been able to run in real-time, in some form, for a long while, no one has utilized it in a commercial product as of yet, though.

Most other systems for global illumination just aren't suited for real-time implementation (and just to note, ray tracing is not a global illumination solution)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Dark Tree</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>I'm not sure exactly what you meant by "3dskybox-scaled model" ... I know what a 3d skybox is... just not what a scaled model of one is.... anyway, I KNOW HL/HL2 has the capability to have "moving skies" by making a couple func_conveyor's at different speeds... but, that would ultimately probably look flat and archaic.</DIV></DIV>

Well, you have models that are designed for regular map usage and you have models that are designed to be used in a 3d skybox. cs_office uses a moving cloud model designed for use in the 3d skybox. I probably made it sound more complicated than it is.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quote:</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>The more I look at the current engine, the more flaws I see in it, in comparison to other engines. I don't think it is disputible, but maybe it is: Doom3's id tech 4 lighting engine [2004] trumps HL2E2's source engine [2007] by a long shot. At least the lighting portion. The physics in doom3 were marginally terrible, but it was an inhouse effort to have their own physics system, unlike HL2/Oblivion/etc. Also, Doom3's outside rendering method probably isn't nearly as good as HL2's, but it didn't happen often enough to really tell. It just drives me crazy all the lighting artifacts that shouldn't popup after compiling, and no more than 3 "dynamic" lights per brush plane? weak. Even worse than that Is a dynamic light tied to a moving entity does not produce good looking moving light, although I may have just not set it up right. You can just see all kinds of fine edges on moving lights that are NOT natural. Granted its still the modified Quake engine, but still.
</DIV></DIV>

Doom3's engine has terrible lighting. Even if the lighting was good, I would never trade model complexity, number of enemies onscreen, or level sizes for it. Why did many people hate Doom3? Because you always fought a tiny handful of badguys in cramped dark corridors and those badguys either teleported in or popped out of monster closets. All of this was a consequence of the engine. A 'more powerful' engine that restricts so much of the gameplay is worthless. Plus the pitch black shadows with hard edges, another consequence of using the engine, were ugly as sin.

Also, if you played Quake4 you'd see just how awful the engine was at outdoor areas. The opening scene of the game (which starts outside) looks like something that could have been recreated in Quake1 it's so bad. I haven't bothered with ET:QW but I can safely assume they've fixed up the outdoor portion of the engine, but that is a 2007 revision, not the Doom3 version.

I couldn't play Quake4 for more than about 45 minutes till I quit and never played it again. I will accept that Quake4's outside was less than impressive. I can't back down on the lighting in Doom3. It was really good. The stencil shadowing was bad though. I can admit the harshness of it. It would be impossible for me to see that games' technology as "ugly as sin" though.<br style="font-family: Verdana;">

aaron_da_killa said:
" What I want to see is a level with rain in it, reflective water puddles on the floor, all the walls look like there wet and have water running down them (Kind of like that gears of war level)"

Funny thing is, is that Source is totally capable of rendering all that easily. The shaders are there, and DX9 can render the real-time reflective water, just make it a puddle-size. Just like you would animate a texture with moving water and give it a refraction shader, so too could you animate water droplets on a wall panel or brick and let bump-mapping and refraction take care of the rest. It would all be in the 2D image. It's something I've been wanting to attempt for a while.

As for the rain, the entity is already there, I would image you substitute the colored lines of rain for more detailed refracted partiles that could stand out a little more. How you would go about doing that, probably a programming issue.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I think HL didnt need any sky moving.The base was in Mexico.And I htink that Valve was young.

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Never think about bad things!
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Actually, Black Mesa was in New Mexico, and I'm pretty sure that's in America.

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Aaron's Stuff