Why Half Life 2 looks great?

Ishtm · Post by **Ishtm** » Wed May 11, 2005 5:56 am

I am very interesting in know why looks so nice, even they aparently work with directX7, so where is the magic in addition of wonderfull 2d paint work?

Jedive · Post by **Jedive** » Wed May 11, 2005 7:52 am

AFAIK, the games works with even DX6 graphics-cards, but requires you to have DX9 installed. It means that, if your videocard supports shaders, you are not really seeing a DX7 game, you are seeing a game with DX9 technology. HL2 probably looks much crappier on an old card.

And about where's the magic... probably on an experienced team of professional artists working full-time to get the game finished

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Wed May 11, 2005 12:47 pm

Easy answer, cause it cost 40 million bucks!

I can't think of anything not looking great for that money

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed May 11, 2005 1:04 pm

yes afecelis is right, MUCH money and many developers and many years time ...

Joe_Oliveri · Post by **Joe_Oliveri** » Wed May 11, 2005 1:46 pm

Yeah it only took 6 years

eXodus · Post by **eXodus** » Wed May 11, 2005 3:06 pm

Source is a shader based engine, which explains the achieved effects.

Ishtm · Post by **Ishtm** » Wed May 11, 2005 8:49 pm

i a agree a game of that magnitude cost to much, many people involved and many years of develop, even it i belive before a title see light are many work of marketing incresing the wish of people to buy it, ok develop time are 6 year and "we are changing the pc games" bla bla bla... year past and you see in the web good techniques to made that because technology are being desmitificated. I think that is good!
From 6 years to develop HL2 i belive too many of that time was expend in a good story, timeline etc, etc.

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Wed May 11, 2005 9:10 pm

besides all the psychological research they got involved with in order to get those facial expressions. They developed their own facial animation stuff based on human emotions so imagine how much such investigation may cost.

Robomaniac · Post by **Robomaniac** » Wed May 11, 2005 9:41 pm

Artists and Money

All graphics engines in today's games are the same one the base level, they just have the artists and money to pay said artist to make the good looking stuff

katoun · Post by **katoun** » Wed May 11, 2005 9:58 pm

The ansuer is GI my friends, GI makes everithing look as real
Global ilumination is the key to realistic games.
Reflection and refraction, very precise IOR(index of refraction) on materials, multitexturing and DYNAMIC LIGHTING(static lightmaps are not good, dynamic textures-lightmaps).
Profesional modelling of the level and of the characters (with advanced culling, performant LOD) very corect intersected walls floors (actualy not intersected but perfec alignment because intersected poligons creates bad effects,creapy looking error on Z Buffer).
3D Sound with depth and collision(a sound on the other side of the wall is estompated).
Collisions very nice managed(with particle emitted and sound on collision)+ breakage efect(you can breake many thing if you hit them hard enougth).
What more, ah and some AI.
Think about it all is done with shaders theres no other way now, but reflect on the idea of Realistic Gloabal Ilumination for Games.
Good luck to all.

Ishtm · Post by **Ishtm** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:17 pm

no no no, dont say "good look"! keep here my friend and please listen other questions, you can't drop a bomb and run!

GI you say....,
i suppose you mean something like radiosity in a real time eviroment. How i can work that?

Shaders you say...
questions...: i dont know how much shaders i can use in a scene with 40.000 polygons wich is a big game level for example. How much i can?

idea:
My idea to get some realistic eviroment easy and inside my posibilities is...
1) Lightmapped Walls and Floors to can see shadows of static objects in scene.
2) Shader aplied to floor to get more effects on his surface.
3) Shader in metal objects.
4) Shader in characters.

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Thu May 12, 2005 7:16 pm

i dont know how much shaders i can use in a scene with 40.000 polygons wich is a big game level for example. How much i can?

how much time shaders take depends totally one the code in the shaders, and how many elements the shader must be run for (obviously fragment shaders will be run many more times than vertex ones). And of course, the gfx card used matters greatly too. In the end, the number of polygons you can reasonably expect to use shaders for depends on what effect you are trying to achieve.

katoun · Post by **katoun** » Thu May 12, 2005 8:24 pm

Sorry I got classes later this afternoon.
Well yes radiosity(real time) with good ambient light and very nice textures(made by Profesionals-they have got experience- I can geev some textures to see how they look)
And about hoe much shader you can use think about Doom3.
And teoreticly Pixel Shader is not dependable of the number of poligons but how big they are and dependable of the quality of the textures.
Think about texture pallete you can't combine any texture(for that you need some artistical talent or experience in the field) and multitexturing makes the diference + dynamic lights.
I think you must have some experience on drawing realistic stuf(like buildins with corect shadows and specific shade for different materials) to see how lights effect in reality diff objects.And HL2 got that realy nice with real time radiosity:

katoun · Post by **katoun** » Thu May 12, 2005 8:29 pm

http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine ... .php?id=34
Read all the features of Source engine and tall me what Irrlicht dosen't (and must) have to get closer to that quality.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu May 12, 2005 8:39 pm

katoun wrote:http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine ... .php?id=34
Read all the features of Source engine and tall me what Irrlicht dosen't (and must) have to get closer to that quality.

$40,000,000 left to go...