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G4TV To Preview Half-Life 2 Expansion
Voodoo Extreme has word that new technology for the Steam engine, as well as a HL2 expansion entitled 'The Lost Coast', will be shown off on G4TV's Attack of the Show (formerly The ScreenSavers). From the article: "On Wednesday's show, Valve's Doug Lombardi will give an exclusive demonstration of the previously unseen 'The Lost Coast,' an upcoming expansion that utilizes a brand-new technology that Valve is implementing into the Source engine. Called 'high-dynamic range lighting,' this new technology enables a leap in lighting realism from even the current high benchmark set by Half-Life 2 and the existing Source engine."
This was mentioned in the steam news system, a long time ago, I remember valve said that it would be a graphics intensive level, designed only for high-end systems
I never watched the show, don't watch any TV and I don't need someone showing me how to plug in an ethernet cable, but the shows were still great fun.
Now I catch a couple minutes of G4 and I want to die (or kill them). How's that for media-induced violent tendencies? I hope the channel sinks like a rock!
Don't you see what's happened, the video games and video game programs are amking you suicidal and violent, just like the media said they would
Paul Debevec Executive Producer, Graphics Research Research Assistant Professor, USC, who has a LOT of information on the subject.
And the intro to the presentation for SIGGRAPH2004:
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
With that said, HL2 was awesome and almost worth the wait, and i'll end up buying the expansion. *sigh*
Well, I'm definitely not going to buy this particular expansion...
'Cause it'll be a free download!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Yeh HL2 is superb, but there is nothing new about it really, the Lighting is not even dynamic except shadows of objects. All the standard lighting is there because it uses the same sortof radiant technology that was in Quake1-Q3 (although at higher detail levels). Yeh sure it looks great, probably mostly because of High Polygon count and High Res textures, and some nifty effects (reflection et al).
If you want to see the "Benchmark" Technology, look at Doom3, Sure its got low polygon count, and low (in comparison) texture quality, But the whole world is lighted at run-time.
In summary, HL2 looks great, and probably as good as Doom3, but its doing nothing new or revolutionary. The future has to be engines like Doom3 even though the computers of today are maybe not quite upto the point of realising that potential.
Althoguh I never "finished" the game, I came pretty close to it, and I'll definately play it through a second time just for the expansion.
oooh! I RTFA(s) and somehow missed that. are they doing this more as a tech demo than a true add-on?
It's my future I see... cursing a really slow Steam update or unable to connect... =)
e.
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Playing my PSP and I saw this article. I just suffered a nerdgasm
Just after the launch, many fans here expected it to get a 10 or a 9.5 from GameSpot. When they gave it a 9.2, I wasn't surprised. It still had some quirks, and that damn StutterBug was hardly acceptable (though I was running it on a proc just 0.1 GHz below minimum). If anything, I'm glad it got the 9.2--it seemed awesome, but a bit too creaky to me. Steam's memory-hogging (since it uses .NET I believe but IANA Steam expert) didn't help either.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Just for your information...the Unreal 2.5 and Doom3 engine both use bsp geometry. And I'm pretty sure the Unreal 3 Engine coming in 2006 will also use bsp. Open up the editors and you'll see. I can't say much for other engines, but I'm willing to bet that if the most advanced engines use them, so do the rest. No surprise that the Source Engine does as well.
The Screen Savers used to be great. Tried to watch the G4TV version but in the end I saved myself $350 buck a year and canceled the digital tier of cable. TechTV was the only thing worthwhile and G4 ruined it. Watching G4TV made me feel like an idiot for being a gamer. Who is the idiot now? Me for reading/posting under a G4TV thread or the /. editor that decided this story was worth the front page.
Who cares about G4TV? And who cares about HL2 hype? I lived through too many years of HL2 hype--I'm cool with waiting for the product to hit the shelves and learning about the new stuff then...
I thought Farcry version 1.31 had HDR. if is the same technology it isn't exactly new.
You're preaching to the converted mate, remember two months ago when they tolds us VAC 2 will be out soon
Already their Source engine is "messed up". It contains hundreds of bugs and performance issues. To top it all off, their Steam distribution platform also has sinister bugs that do affect some people (Steam always worked for me)
I'm sure that they want to create this expansion pack for the money... But, their current technologies require really a lot of work.
And, where is TF2? Guess that it will be never finished... And what about the bugs in Source, I guess that CS:S will never get into CAL.
That's just my $0,02!
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HDR isn't all that new... Everyone is doing it now. Age of Empires 3, Unreal Engine 3...
Besides, wasn't HDR supposed to have been implemented in HL2 a long-time ago?
And I thought The Lost Coast was just a new level, not an expansion...?
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I know Valve probably has different divisions that work on different aspects of their games, but if they have enough resources to come out with new improvements to the source engine and a new expansion can't they shift some of those resources to the areas that need more attention?
They are working on expansions when HLDM and CS: Source are practically incomplete. Its been 5+ months (counting beta) that CS: Source still has only two available player models. I just think there are more important things that need to be added(especially VAC2)/fixed with the games already out rather then start on something new. There is a good portion of the servers out there now, which are being exploited with the falling skulls and purple boxes. I could care less about lighting when I can't even play in a server without it crashing due to exploits.
My lowly Sapphire Radeon 9600 256mb with 5ns ram runs this game just fine maxed out at 2xaa and 4xAF. None of that slow down or skippage people spoke of. Even when I had 512mb of ram on this barton 2500+.
On a related note, it should really be called LOW dynamic range lighting - anyone with a DSLR knows that viewing HDR in the same color space decreases contrast and brightness in order make every color viewable, whereas low dynamic range gives images brilliance and pop and high contrast between colors, and washes out into pure white (the effect Valve and FarCry tout as HDR) easily because there aren't as many levels of brightness(hence, low dynamic range) to work with before it oversaturates.
http://www.g4tv.com/mediaplayer/index.aspx?video_k ey=9032
The guy who plays Dr. Kleiner is pretty weird.
Very weird.
when Push Comes to Shove
It seems like it will be more of a tech demo than anything else. They described it as a "short" single level (whatever "short" means in Valve's vernacular.) Also that "it will be made available free of charge to Half-Life 2 customers that meet a specific set of high end hardware requirements." So I'd assume it will only run on the latest and greatest cards.
I think it already has... the Unreal team has been showcasing HDR ligthning for a while now, and it's part of what they have coming in the Unreal Engine 3.
Voodoo Extreme has word that new technology for the Steam engine, as well as a HL2 expansion entitled 'The Lost Coast', .... ... utilizes a brand-new technology that Valve is implementing into the Source engine. Called 'high-dynamic range lighting,' ...."
From the article: "On Wednesday's show, Valve's Doug Lombardi
See the difference? It's the SOURCE engine that is being shown off, not the STEAM "engine".
I for one certainly could have waited another month or two for this release if it had meant they could put more manpower into delivering Day of Defeat: Source or Team Fortress 2 (Valve's very own Duke Nukem Forever) to the people earlier.
With the constant delays their fanbase endured during the development of HL2, releasing something more gamers actually want would have been a tremendous sign of good faith.
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I bought HL2 (works great under Cedega) and playing through it I had the feeling that the entire thing was a tech demo.
I mean, it was great fun and all (and so far as Im concerned, better then Doom3; and not just because HL2 runs about twice as fast). But the repetition. In the boat sequence, say, you had 3 "puzzles"; make a ramp work, smash a big gate, and make a ramp work. How you made the ramps definitly involved different parts of the physics engine (though I suspect that while the floating barrels was purely map based, the pully system was coded, if that makes any sense), but as a player, same deal. So why did you have to make two ramps? To show off that you could make ramps in two different ways.
Not that this is at all related to this story but: I think the major technology hurdle for games is not the engines, but the map creation. It takes weeks to build even a fairly simple map. So far as Im concerned, you should be able to export some topo data from Grass, and have a map built from that. Add some spawn points, and your good to go. Even if you can increase the map creation tools to a point where someone experience can knock off a map in a day, then you could get: MMORPG using FPS engines. What would be cooler then Fallout Online with the source engine? Have a Enemy Tournement "campaign" that has 100 maps, but you might only play through 10 of them.. and past actions influence future maps; destroy the supply depo and you spawn with 30% less ammo. Attack a very hard map, or two easier maps to get to the goal map. Whatever.
Mayby Im just bitter that the Source SDK is screwed up under Cedgea.
the Unreal team has been showcasing HDR ligthning for a while now
So has Valve... HDR was originally supposed to be in HL2 from the start but was shelved to speed up the game's release.
Just for YOUR information, they dont use 100% BSP geometry to make their levels. Unreal and Doom use BSP brushes to block out their levels, and static meshes for pretty much anything else, which are MUCH more efficient and look *A LOT* prettier.
the fact the Half-Life 2 has an expansion or that G4TV might show something I care about!
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Personally, rather than expansion packs, etc, I'd like to see Valve port HL2 to Windows x64 - like was done with Far Cry.
So if they don't like my video card I don't get the map? Thats kinda lame...
I'd like to play around with it even if it's a laggy mess on my system.
They renamed Screen Savers to "Attack of the Show." Now seriously, what kind of stupid name is that? How could you watch that and take it seriously?