Slashdot Mirror
HL2 - Lost Coast Playtest and Tech Details
Wil Harris writes "Bit-tech has been up to Valve's offices in Seattle to play through The Lost Coast, the super-duper add-on level for Half-Life 2. There is an article up talking about the technology behind the level (it's not just HDR!) as well as screenshots from throughout the level, a brief summary of the narrative, and thoughts on Valve's work. There's also a couple of cool photos of the Valve office, including a golden crowbar and Counter-Strike Barbie and Ken dolls."
Is anyone else tired of articles on the lighting of this expansion that Valve has been taunting us with for almost a year now?
In the wise words of Jerry: "SHOOOWWW USSSS THE GAAAMMME!!! SHOOWWWW USSS THE GAMMMMEEE!"
Guess it's too bad I don't use Windows anymore. The HL2 was kick-ass, but I'm not going to maintain a PC box just to play it. Sorry, Valve. You got thrown out with the dishwater, I guess.
Seriously, theyve been talking about this SINGLE LEVEL for quite long enough. Once again I saw 'Lost Coast' in a /. headline and stupidly thought "Kickass, its finally coming out.. months and months behind but I can finally see what theyre talking about." At this point I just hope that I'm not seeing the level for the first time in Halflife 3.
I mean, isn't the point of HDR to make lightning more realistic? Check this out... seems like they make granite walls out of polished chrome in the HL2 world.
True, eye candy looks great, but that isn't all that Valve is trying to do. They are trying to build a game (expansion) that will bring even the best hardware to its knees. I quote:
Building stuff like this takes time... Relax, if they do it right, the majority of people won't be able to run it when it comes out (cause of the requirements).
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
I wonder how they managed to combine HDR and Anti-Aliasing. I remember reading an interview with some engine programmer, either someone from Epic or CryTek who stated that HDR and AA would be incompatible on current graphics cards due to lacking memory bandwidth and size. He said it would need at least about 2 GByte graphics RAM to be possible by estimation or AA being restricted to a software in-engine solution. Can somebody shed some light on that?
If you're impatient and want to know what the fuss about high dynamic range is all about, try this demo. It's quite pretty looking, far superior to the overused bloom effect in my opinion.
Well on an attempt to actually sound positive, this level looks amazing. HL2 was such an awesome game and looked absolutely beautiful, and this really shows the future of games. This is the next generation and this single level will really show off this new HDR Valve has put together for us.
Now if I only had a better PC to really play this thing. Well I'll just have to wait until I get some cash.
From the screenshots I've seen of Resident Evil 5, it looks like they're going to be making heavy use of the "blooming" effect. So instead of being unable to see because it's so dark, you'll be unable to see because of all the bright light everywhere. It seems like a cool twist on a staple of the survival-horror genre, (i.e. shrouding everything in darkness). For an example: see Doom 3.
If it really was "no limit" we'd see models with a few million polygons and levels with big crowds. They're probably keeping it sane.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
So who's going to be able to run it?
for anyone out there interested in what this HDR business is all about, there's an HDR image builder (http://www.anyhere.com/) out there for mac and linux. the basic concept is that you take a series of photographs at different exposures ranging from extremely underexposed to extremely overexposed (which means this only works really well for still-life shots unfortunately) and the program can compile them into an image that would mimick fairly well what the human eye would see. this is also a good tool for those of you who might be interested in using your digital camera as a luminance meter by using radiance (http://www.radiance-online.org/) to generate falsecolor luminance maps. if nothing else, it'll give you a good idea of how they're generating the lighting for Lost Coast.
But I never finished the game. Why? Because all the eye candy in the world couldn't make me put up with the frequent yet lengthy loading delays.
Personally, I would be more impressed if they worked instead on ways to stream content on the fly so there wasn't delays for loading screens. Despite pulling you out of the immersion, it's frusterating. A necessary evil in the past, it seems like with some work they could be vastly reduced or even completely eliminated.
Everyone but you :)
I paint my chair red and it looks brand new
But the years roll on and it's not so new
So I get a new chair and it feels so sweet.
But my chair grown old so I decide to paint it one day.
I paint my chair red and it looks brand new
But the years roll on and it's not so new
So I get a new chair and it feels so sweet.
But my chair grown old so I decide to paint it one day.
I paint my chair red and it looks brand new
But no matter how many chairs I get, and how many times I paint them, be it red, or black, or blue, it's still is a chair and I have grown old
Prehaps bed is what I think I need. I've tried of chairs and want some sleep. But Perhaps I 'll get red sheets
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
"Half-Life 2: Lost Coast is Valve's reply to a series of What If questions: ...What if the system requirements knew no bounds?
"
Because having infinity as the minimum processor speed will really help.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"Initial systems: However, all is not lost, if you excuse the pun. The system used to demonstrate the game to us today was an Athlon 64 3800+ with 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 6800GT - high end for many people, but not stratospheric. If you needed further proof, the 1024x768 2xAA screenshots featured in this article were taken on a 1.6Ghz Centrino notebook with only 1GB of RAM and an aging 128MB FireGL graphics card. True, it ran at 10FPS at High Detail, but it was playable enough to appreciate the overall achievement."
Note that this is for the Lost Coast level - which is pretty much a playable tech demo - not the expansion.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
From the article, it makes it sound as though the brightness is going to adjust automatically, e.g. as you move from a light area to a dark one it will look dark for a moment until your virtual "eyes" adjust. Couldn't this cause pretty serious gameplay issues, especially if it's used in multiplayer in the future? It wouldn't be much fun to be shot at by an enemy you can't see while waiting for the brightness adjustment to catch up, or by one outside a window who's obscured by the glare of sunlight...
High Dynamic Range ligthing has been around for years before this. in fact it is in quake! quake is able to light a texture up to 2 times its normal color range.
i myself has done the same thing they are doing now with my quake2 engine mod LiteGL (not avaliable right now due to personal problems) so this 'tech demo' and claim that they are 'leading the HDR movement' (whatever) means nothing. just some way for valve pr to keep the company name in peoples minds so they can get more attention later.
I gave HL2 a miss because I was running GNU/Linux at the time and Valve made it pretty clear that they had no interest in alternative platforms.
Well, I finally got a copy of WinXP from my school, so I borrowed HL2 from a buddy of mine.
First of all, the thing wouldn't install because I didn't want Counter Strike. However, instead of forcing you to install it, it just blows up the installer on disc 4 of 5. Great job, Valve. I guess nobody in QA thought that there are people out there that don't play CS.
Then I thought (stupidly) that Steam would be smart enough to detect that 4/5 discs' worth of data had been copied, and that it would be able to continue downloading the rest from the 'Net. Maybe that's how those nutbars at Guild Wars do things, but at Valve they start fresh when things screw up!
When the dang thing was finally installed, I had to wait another 45 minutes for the game to be decrypted and updated.
HL2 was cool. Very cool and lots of fun. But Steam sucks. I was absolutely ready to buy the Gold Edition and Lost Coast, but Steam honestly ruined it for me. No cash for them.
Wake me when UT2007 comes out.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
The first is Lost Coast - a 15 minute playable tech demo that includes some side story for the HL universe based in the HL2 timeframe. It is free and targeted for high-end systems. If you don't ever play it you won't miss much as it's not insanely important to the overall story - HL3 will still make sense.
The second is Aftermath - a full expansion. My guess is that this will take about 1/2 to 3/4 the time of the original HL2. It will probably cost about $15-$20 from Steam, and eventually may get a boxed release (from interviews it sounds like probably coupled with whatever the next expansion they do will be which sounds like maybe something with vehicles) for $20-$40 depending on what comes with it. This is an integral part of the HL universe and takes place (from the sounds of it) almost immediately after the original. It will incorperate HDR technology, as will every expansion and HL add-on from Valve from here on out. It will also expand the AI capabilities of the engine, again updateing the Source engine for future content.