# Yo Man! hAlf life 2 graphicaly not that great



## Mr.47 (Feb 28, 2005)

i played half life 2 on a friends pc bout 2 day's back (he's got an fx6800)
and it was not all that cool much like it was built on dx7


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## ctrl_alt_del (Feb 28, 2005)

Rotfl! Oooh boy! Thats priceles. DX7? Wow! Whats the last DX9 based game that you have played? Bet Doom3 too looked to sissy to you. Saying the graphics didnt impress you is something else but saying it looks like a DX7 based game is really a whole new outlook!


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## borg (Feb 28, 2005)

The point that even I want to put forth is the hype & flash that is put behind these games. The whole concept is not all that revolutionary as it is claimed to be.


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## sunnydiv (Feb 28, 2005)

edited


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## enoonmai (Feb 28, 2005)

Why, you little..... not that good? What's good to you then? Dangerous Dave? Or do you dabble in true VR? DX7 indeed, what did you play it on? A DX7 card? The story was a bit of a letdown, especially at the end, but I can understand that. They wanted to create a cliffhanger ending, and they did it. And the idea of finding out the details and the big picture as Gordon himself does is really a neat trick. Did I mention a reallly good cast of characters that you really cared about and felt attached to? Did I mention ultra-realistic facial animations and an excellent voice-acting? Did I mention one of the best looking environments (also the most "usable" one) ever? Did I mention the best in-game physics ever? Or the really good and intricate storyline?
You can say Doom 3 didn't live up to his hype, maybe I would accept that, but even thats only in the gameplay department. But you can't say anything about HL2. It definitely lived up to the hype, and then some more. Sure, we all had a bit of a problem with Steam and still do, but thats no reason to tirade against what in my opinion, is the best game ever made - period.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Feb 28, 2005)

HL2 definitely lived up to the hype that it created. I agree the story was a bit of a letdown, but thats only becuase we are desperate to know the ending. In no way has HL2 let down in the graphical goodness. It delivered what it promised.


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## tarey_g (Mar 1, 2005)

HL2 looks good but not as good as doom3 . doom 3 is the best if compared visually to any other game present.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 1, 2005)

If visuals come at the cost of dipping framerates, montonous gameplay and the need to upgrade to the maximum possible limit, then I will thankfully stick with HL2.


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## tarey_g (Mar 1, 2005)

> If visuals come at the cost of dipping framerates, montonous gameplay and the need to upgrade to the maximum possible limit, then I will thankfully stick with HL2.



Talkin of dipping framerates...
Half life 2 engine is more crappy and has a prob of shuttering(i personally am frustrated with this prob , first HL2 then Vampire:Bloodlines) . Doom3 on the other hand was a big surprsie to me as it ran at high settings on my pc giving decent framerates  with antialiasing at 2xQ. Same pc and HL-2 is down(really frustrating) you lower the resolution but the shuttering prob is as it is. 

As a whole package HL2 was better than doom3 but not when graphics are compared. Doom ran well on my pc and looked far better than HL2.


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## Major-Minor (Mar 1, 2005)

a) HL-2 ROCKS!! totally
b) I think COTR:EFBB looks and is better in the gameplay department when compared to DOOM3. Doom3 was good but personally for me HL-2, COTR:EFBB and FarCry were far more enjoyable.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 1, 2005)

@tarey: By "shuttering" do you mean the audio-stuttering problem?


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## Major-Minor (Mar 1, 2005)

@Tarey - Are you using an Nvidia Card?, Doom3 works best on Nvidia, whereas HL-2 runs best on ATi.


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## CyCo (Mar 1, 2005)

Doom3 has awesome graphics and was good fun especially to kill the gory monsters which wd pop outta newhere .... out it on 5.1 speakers in a closed room and then tell me u dnt enjoy it ...

HL2 was also good .. they physics engine waz sexy ...


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## Serial_Killer (Mar 1, 2005)

IMHO , doom3 beats hl2 graphics wise and also doom engine runs with no problems ,Although ATI card owners might feel it runs slow.

But on the other hand doom3 is linear with not much story and hl2 has lot of different locations to play (outdoor and indoor) ,gud AI and awesome physics.

So both have thier pros n cons ...

For me Its DOOM3 .since i love mind less shooters


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 1, 2005)

Mr.47 said:
			
		

> i played half life 2 on a friends pc bout 2 day's back (he's got an fx6800)
> and it was not all that cool much like it was built on dx7



yea HL2 isnt much stressed out on Gfx but the Gameplay was the initial point of consideration here.....its not based on the Doom 3 Gfx engine and rather the Dx7 compliation was more seen in the Water ripples in HL2.....also the gameplay for HL2 is the best and immersing


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## Mr.47 (Mar 1, 2005)

GUYS ONLY GOOD DAMN THING OF HL2 IS THE PHYSICS
AND THE HORROR THOUGH I MUST CONFESS MY FRIEND 
DIDNOT LET ME FINISH THE GAME MYSTYLE(HI U MAN HOPE U READ THIS 2) I WASN'T BAD FOR GAME PLAY AS ALL HL(mods) HAVE BUT WAS CRAPPY FOR DISPLAY
I GIVE IT 7.7/10( MINUS 2 FOR GRAPHICS AND MINUS .3 FOR NOT HAVING MY OWN PC STRONG ENOUGH TO PLAY THAT).......SIGH................


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 1, 2005)

I really cant understand how one can award a *minus 3* for the graphics department of HL2?!!! And how on Earth will not having your own powerful computer make you deduct marks from the game yet again???!!! I am flummoxed!


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## enoonmai (Mar 1, 2005)

Anyone who thinks the Source engine is cr@p should seriously get their heads examined, in my opinion. As for Doom 3, it looks good all right, no can say anything about that, but no one has seen what the engine can do when it comes to rendering large outdoor environments. And judging by pretty much every single mod developer out there who says that Doom 3 sucks big time when it comes to rendering outdoor scenes. No other engine except Source and CryEngine can deliver ultra realistic outdoor environments. And I've seen HL2 running pretty good at 800x600 on a Nvidia 5600 Ultra on an AGP 4x slot, with 256 MB of DDR266 RAM and a P42.0 GHz processor, while Doom 3 takes an eternity and kept dropping frame rates a lot at the same resolution.



			
				allwyndlima said:
			
		

> and rather the Dx7 compliation was more seen in the Water ripples in HL2.



It wasn't DX7, it was DX8.1 and it was pretty much a problem only with people who had GeForce FX cards, since enabling DX9.0 on these cards screwed the game up completely, so Valve was forced to render the water reflections using DX8.1. It works in full DX9.0 on the ATI 9600/9800/Xx00 and the GeForce 6x00 cards. A DX8.1 water reflection patch fixed the problem though and GeForce FX users could get the gamut of water reflections using the DX8.1 pathway itself.


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## DKant (Mar 1, 2005)

Or, u can make HL believe that ur using an ATI card by modifying some of the files. Saw it sumwhere on Guru3D.

But methinx DIII scales better and looks much better @ low res and low settings, provided u meet the min requirements. HL2 on the other hand needs relatively high-end h/w to show its true colours, but needs a lower end sys to begin with.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 1, 2005)

I disagree. 

With my on-board SiS 650 card and 256 DDR RAM, Doom 3 with everything on the lowest possible setting, did initialise but it took me a whole min to climb up the stairs from the drop-off point to the scanner area.

While with HL2, I could keep some settings on Medium, run the game on 800*600 res and still enjoy the combine bashing!


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 1, 2005)

DKant said:
			
		

> But methinx DIII scales better and looks much better @ low res and low settings, provided u meet the min requirements. HL2 on the other hand needs relatively high-end h/w to show its true colours, but needs a lower end sys to begin with.



Like i said before.....hl2's gfx engine is not that Graphic Hungry.....Btw Hl2 on My Nforce 2 Chipset with 256Mb ram at lowest Settings give me a playable 35Fps....and yea Doom 3 refuses to even run on The Same Board....So ya see Doom 3 Engine is highly Marked for High-End hardware compatibilities....plus now it has become a Standard Game for benchmarking Major Gfx cards....as it has the capability to bring even the best Gfx cards to thier knees.....


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## DKant (Mar 1, 2005)

Well what I meant was, from the point DIII starts giving acceptable framerates, it scales well. AFAIK.


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## gxsaurav (Mar 2, 2005)

enoonmai, U R talking much like a formar member Anidex, who bashed NVIDIA & Doom3

Doom3 didn't had any outdoor sceans, reason, U were in a mars base not a hill station, U go out, U die, remember those outdoor sceans which comes when U cross from one lab to other via that pressure lift, that is the most smooth I have ever seen

I have played HL2, the outdoor sceans are really good, but the thing is that since there are no outdoor sceans in D3 U can't say it sux in that, mod maker have clearly stated that HL2 also sux when it comes to indoor sceans, the Zombies in Doom3 were looking like real zombies, slimey bloody but in HL2 the zombies where really bad, no round textures in HL2, & also optimized for ATI,hey Far Cry supports DX 9c compleately still it favours FX more then Radeon 9800 when it comes to quality? Y

The beauty of outdoor sceans of D3 engine can be seen in Doom3 RoE soon in april, alongwith great physics system


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## tarey_g (Mar 2, 2005)

I agree with GX


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 2, 2005)

gxsaurav said:
			
		

> enoonmai, U R talking much like a formar member Anidex, who bashed NVIDIA & Doom3



@enoomai: Anidex = Wyscion!


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## tarey_g (Mar 2, 2005)

ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> @tarey: By "shuttering" do you mean the audio-stuttering problem?



both audio and visual , similar prob in vampire bloodlines. and i wud like to mention that doom3 ran very well on my pc at high settings.


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## tarey_g (Mar 2, 2005)

enoonmai said:
			
		

> but no one has seen what the engine can do when it comes to rendering large outdoor environments. And judging by pretty much every single mod developer out there who says that Doom 3 sucks big time when it comes to rendering outdoor scenes. No other engine except Source and CryEngine can deliver ultra realistic outdoor environments.



Remember,
when u r writing about something that you dont know , u r misguiding people . Read this ........

"The main stereotype that the Doom 3 Engine suffers from, is that it can only render small, cramped inside corridors. This in fact is completely untrue, because the engine is quite capable of rendering big, detailed outside worlds. You will see the outside capabilities of the engine in Quake 4 and it will dramatically change people's perception on what the Doom 3 Engine can do. The Doom 3 engine is more suitable for inside environments though, because of its BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) system for optimizing the graphics engine. The Doom 3 Engine also supports larger textures, which in the future will allow the textures to look even better. The Source Engine is pretty much the opposite. It is more suited for outdoor environments and its inside environments don't look nearly as lifelike or detailed as Doom 3's."


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 2, 2005)

Buddy, the same logic applies here too. You are quoting the devlopers. You havent seen the engine render *big outdoor levels*. Yet you agree that Doom 3 engine is capable of doing that, and that too better then the Source engine! 
Thanks for misguiding me!


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## tarey_g (Mar 2, 2005)

ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> Buddy, the same logic applies here too. You are quoting the devlopers. You havent seen the engine render *big outdoor levels*. Yet you agree that Doom 3 engine is capable of doing that, and that too better then the Source engine!
> Thanks for misguiding me!



Abey Jhandoo   , ye koi doom3 ke developers ne nahi kaha hai .

Do you really think that they would have publically mentioned the Source engine in comparison to their own? That would have been inviting a flame war with Valve fans.
This article was at *www.devmaster.net where they hav compared the source and Doom3 engine (and don't tell me u dont know what is devmaster.net is all about  )

If you want you can find mods that show the power of Doom3 engine while rendering outdoor enviornments.

The Source engine is really good at special effects (water, smoke, fog, warping) and, of course, physics but when it comes to sheer realism and beauty Doom 3 engine is the best, in terms of lightning and shadowing and the deatiled bump mapping.
Admit it, the main reason that HL2 worked better on most systems in comparison to Doom engine (except the stuttering prob) was that the objects in the HL2 world lacked bump mapping and the textures were bland.
HL2 maybe a better game, but here we are comparing the visual appeal of the engines not the game play or the physics.
Anyone who finds the Souce engine (as seen in HL2) more "beautiful" in comparison to the Doom3 engine is visually impaired.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 2, 2005)

tarey_g said:
			
		

> Abey Jhandoo   , ye koi doom3 ke developers ne nahi kaha hai .
> 
> Admit it, the main reason that HL2 worked better on most systems in comparison to Doom engine (except the stuttering prob) was that the objects in the HL2 world *lacked bump mapping* and the textures were bland.



Buddy, tell me something. Who all meet and discuss things at devlopers.net? Plumbers? Did I ever mention that devlopers ehre reffered to *only* id team?

Secondly, I am yet to come across a Doom 3 mod that will show the *beauty* of the engine in the outdoor levels. If you have tried some, feel free to post some screenies and I will graciously bow to it.

And now for that last bit that had me rolling in laughter. Who in the whole wide world told you that HL2 didnt include bump-mapping? No, seriously, I want to know. Maybe you didnt see any of the bink videos. Or maybe you were not paying attention. Here is something to jog your memory.
*www.beyond3d.com/misc/hl2/



> The feature utilisation of DirectX9 with Half Life 2 includes:
> 
> * High Dynamic Range
> * *Bump Mapped Characters and environments*
> ...


As for textures, HL2 uses a texture-set, the first of its kind in any game. ( I may have got the term wrong, but you get the drift ). Look at the screenies again and see who should be booking the next appointemnet with the friendly neighbourhood opthalmologist.


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## Major-Minor (Mar 2, 2005)

@tarey g - Mind telling us which card you are gaming on ?. Probably an Nvidia 5 Series Card which uses the DX.8.1 path.

And about HL-2 not supporting Bump-Mapping, where the hell did you get this info from. Don't just make up statements for the purpose of arguments, please back it up with some solid proof.

Cody and Enoon: - Do you know why Wysicon left Digit forums, check out his posts and you'll know why.


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 2, 2005)

@major-minor....ur right Hl2 does use bump mapping on its raw technology just that its not that heavy on it compared to Doom 3....but it sure does make up for that by the increase in Polygon count and detailed textures without loss of performance  

@tarey_g.....first off where did ya get that info from that Hl2 didnt support bump mapping from mate?????? Btw the main reason it worked far better on the system was simly beacuse it didnt tend to stress out on the increased effect of bump mapping as compared to Doom 3's engine also beacuse half life 2 used the soft shadow approach for its Shadowing....So it wasnt that Graphic hungry as Doom 3....but the overall Physics,AI and Animation has to go hands up with Hl2....but hey come on we aint going all that Fanboyish on this games here.....Btw the next time plzzz be a little respective and try and answer in a calmer way mate  

Now @cody Enoo And Major-minor.....mind telling me whats going on here and who is this Wysicon person....cause have been listening his name since 2 days now!!!!  
Also i did some resarch on u guys and Boy u ppl do go down a long history at Skoar and Enoo Dude Hats of to ur posts....how in the world do u find time to type so lengthy messages and that too for each and every post?????   So now can i know if u are an American or Not???? cause cody didnt wanna convey it to me i guess  

Peace Ppl


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## Major-Minor (Mar 2, 2005)

@allwyndlima - To know about Wysicon, check out the posts of Anidex here at Digit Forums.

About enoon, well he is 100% Indian and a Bangalorean at that.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 2, 2005)

@allwyn: LOL, not that I didnt want to tell you. I just wanted Enoo to tell you that himself but guess he missed the thread. Yes, he is 100% Indian as Major said and a Banglorean at that.

Him, me, Major have known each other for quite some time and are great pals. Infact there a few more from Skoar! here like Arachnid but guess he is too busy to post in other forums nowadays.

As for Prof (thats enoomai) long posts, as Arachnid likes to say, "has will, will type!". If you really want to see his "will" you should visit the the time travel thread on Skoar! sometime. Believe me, no where else would you find one single post so informative! Really, hats off to Prof! 

And Anidex is known as Wyscion on the Skoar! forums. He is a master when it comes to CG andinfact has won many graphics related contests too. He is popular as our Skoar!s very own Carmack. Hope that clears your doubts.

And with tarey, its fun to sometime spar on issues like this. Though I assure that all is in good faith and never meant to hurt anyone in anyway. As you say....Peace!

@Major: Yup buddy, I had gone through his posts the last time I joined Digit forum before having my account deleted for prolonged inactivity.


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 2, 2005)

@cody and major.....well then nice to have ya ppl out here too.....but the flames just erupt here in an instant.....i couldnt believe the flames that had gone in the Fanatics VS Nvidiots thread....boy that oughta really taen a lot for anidex to handle cause as far as i read it he was really overshadowed by many Nvidia fanboys.....but still the point being that these stupid fanboy wars are always a big pain in the  :roll:  they always reck a lotta mess behind  

Btw should admire u bangloreans being that calm in ur posts.....man takes hell a lot of patience to go through all this flames and then answer back.....so what more can i say but well lets just all try and stay outta trouble and possibly have a good time out here on this forum 8) 

Also not to forget Enoo dude seriously u almost had me fooled there for a sometime but grt to know ur from our very own India  Grt Vocab and Good Sense of explanations.....So HATSS offf too all of ya from skoar   Sorry Digit aint being partial but good stuff needs to be appreciated so no offence......PEACE  

(P.S:Just one more thing i oughta call it a quits on this Hl2 and Doom 3 Comparing as dun wanna start another Doom 3 VS HL2 Flammin out here )


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## tarey_g (Mar 2, 2005)

ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> And now for that last bit that had me rolling in laughter. Who in the whole wide world told you that HL2 didnt include bump-mapping? No, seriously, I want to know.



 What the ...............OMG how foolish.haha. When i said "objects in the HL2 world lacked bump mapping and the textures were bland" i ment in comparision to Doom3 . *How can one think of a advanced engine like of  HL2 not supporting bump mapping*,Funny .  Everyone here just followed one guy who writes b4 he thinks and reads carefully. 

Secondly, i hav posted earlier in this forum abt a outdoor level designed in Doom3 engine and also posted some screens . The topic was named "Half life on doom3" in which some planetdoom forum member used hl2 textures to make a level using Doom3 engine. I searched that topic in forum but i was not able to find it(mods the search needs to be improved ). I will search the topic on planetdoom forum and will post the screens soon. 



			
				ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> the same logic applies here too. *You are quoting the devlopers*. You havent seen the engine render *big outdoor levels*. Yet you agree that Doom 3 engine is capable of doing that, and that too better then the Source engine!


People belonging to the catagory 'developers' and according to u lying about some engine can only be the creators of that very engine(so here u ment id what else). Some other developer will not make false comments abt a engine.


			
				ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> Buddy, tell me something. Who all meet and discuss things at devlopers.net? Plumbers? Did I ever mention that devlopers ehre reffered to *only* id team?



So this means u don't trust the word of experienced developers. If they are saying something abt some certain engine, it can't be wrong. 


and yes allwyn and major-minor , i never said that source does not support bump mapping(yaar i can't stop laughing) ctrl_alt_del flamed this one.


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## tarey_g (Mar 2, 2005)

ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> And with tarey, its fun to sometime spar on issues like this. *Though I assure that all is in good faith and never meant to hurt anyone in anyway*. As you say....Peace!




same here


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## tarey_g (Mar 3, 2005)

ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> Secondly, I am yet to come across a Doom 3 mod that will show the *beauty* of the engine in the outdoor levels.




For ur viewing pleasure , Hexen:Edge of caos a mod based on doom 3 engine has some pretty cool outdoor levels ,although the mod development is in early stages but still they have come out with some screens . These look okay, but think of a dedicated game (not mod) based on doom 3 engine made by some  professional gaming company will be able to show the real beauty and capability of the engine. by the time enjoy these screenies. The 'mod' is work of wannabe professionals so don't compare the screenshots of this mod with a 'game' made by professionals.

*img197.exs.cx/img197/9065/shot000113kd.jpg
*img197.exs.cx/img197/8927/shot000093ks.jpg
*img197.exs.cx/img197/4971/shot000100zh.jpg

more on *www.planetdoom.com/edgeofchaos



			
				ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> If you have tried some, feel free to post some screenies and I will graciously bow to it.



Time to do somthing  u promised


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 3, 2005)

I was unaware of such a mod. So I admit I was wrong there. But beauty? Gimme a break. Let it be complete and then we can see if its really a beauty. Right now I wont like to say anything about the *beauty* aspect of it. I had said, "If you had tried some"! But its not out yet. Show me something that you have played urself and found *beautiful*!

As for the bump mapping thing, you said this: 

Statement 1: 





> Admit it, the main reason that HL2 worked better on most systems in comparison to Doom engine was that the *objects in the HL2 world lacked bump mapping* and the textures were bland.



Statement 2: 





> When i said "objects in the HL2 world lacked bump mapping and the textures were bland" i ment in comparision to Doom3



First you say that HL2 lacks bump-mapping. Now that means HL2 doesnt have bump-mapping. Then you go on and say, you meant it as a comparison? How can you compare something with Doom 3 in the second statement when you yourself has said that it doesnt exist in the first statement???!!! Rotfl! 

Seriously, this discussion is getting weird. OK, I might have posted before I thought or read the post, then how come the rest agree with that too! And to think it took you three posts to reply to one of mine! Now hos is posting before reading? Admit a mistake when you make one. If you cant, well then there is no use discussing it with you.


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## tarey_g (Mar 3, 2005)

> When i said "objects in the HL2 world lacked bump mapping and the textures were bland" i ment in comparision to Doom3



This is what we were doing here. WE WERE DEBATING AND COMPARING THE VISUAL APPEARENCE OF DOOM 3 AND HL2. obviously i was comparing it with doom 3.  



			
				ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> But beauty? Gimme a break. Let it be complete and then we can see if its really a beauty. Right now I wont like to say anything about the *beauty* aspect of it.



And these screens as i said (if u have read this time) look ok ,not outstanding and pls read this if u have skipped this too ...



			
				tarey_g said:
			
		

> These look okay, but think of a dedicated game (not mod) based on doom 3 engine made by some professional gaming company will be able to show the real beauty and capability of the engine



pls read CAREFULLY an then post .


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 3, 2005)

Hey bro, I give up! You are simply refusing to understand a damn word that i am posting here. Sorry! I am fed up. Thanks for all the time you devoted!


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## tarey_g (Mar 3, 2005)

> quoteHey bro, I give up! You are simply refusing to understand a damn word that i am posting here. Sorry! I am fed up



I came with up all facts and proof(if u only had read them).


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 3, 2005)

Well now just to add a final verdict....i guess its only a matter of personal choice and matter of gameplay level that one enjoys..... 

here's a last words from my side 
well while Hl2 is Aimed At gameplay and Doom3 at its realistic atmosphere and Lighting....So ppl who are wanting to get Doom 3 for this reason might not consider Hl2 on the same basis and Vice Versa....Both games are based on a Diff engine which is quite unique in its own place and both have its Pro and Cons.....So comparing both on this basis would mean sheer unjustice.....


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## gxsaurav (Mar 3, 2005)

There are many other mods, showing the outdoor rendering of Doom3, like that KOTAR like mod, & many others

The thing is, HL2 uses a texture for skies, just like Far Cry uses blue textures for the sky, by default DirectX & OpenGL make a orange sky with no texture & just a model, u have to apply texture to it to make it look like a sky, in HL2 it is done, while in Doom3, well, we saw sky only while traveling via monorail & we know that Mars stmosphere is full of iron oxide so red sky


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## enoonmai (Mar 3, 2005)

WOWEE! I stay away one day because of personal work, and a volcano erupts in my face.  Let's take this one at a time, shall we? 



			
				DKant said:
			
		

> But methinx DIII scales better and looks much better @ low res and low settings, provided u meet the min requirements. HL2 on the other hand needs relatively high-end h/w to show its true colours, but needs a lower end sys to begin with.



Simple and true, I couldn't have put it better myself. D3 indeed scales very well, and I've heard of people being able to play it 640x480 with all the effects turned off on a GeForce 2 class video card, and in some cases (ahem, cody!) without a video card at all. And in all these cases, its not like it doesn't really look good. It actually does! Sure, you won't have all the DX9.0 effects, but in the end, playing the game is enough for many people out there. But then, there is no point arguing about which is better, the Doom3 engine or Source, since they're both great in their own aspects and each have their own limitations.




			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> U R talking much like a formar member Anidex, who bashed NVIDIA & Doom3
> 
> Doom3 didn't had any outdoor sceans, reason, U were in a mars base not a hill station, U go out, U die, remember those outdoor sceans which comes when U cross from one lab to other via that pressure lift, that is the most smooth I have ever seen
> 
> ...



(sigh) I dont know about Anidex, but I am NOT bashing Nvidia and Doom3. In case you haven't noticed my signature, I happen to running my games on a 5950U myself.  And Doom3 remains, and will remain, one of my most favorite games of all times. What you seem to have missed is that I was talking not about the game, but the engine. I never said HL2 or Doom3, I said, the Doom 3 engine and Source.

So, I can totally understand the logic (and actually appreciate it) that Doom3 does not feature outdoor scenes. Of course, it makes it extremely believable when you're running from one airlock into another and barely have time to hunt for air canisters and strewn goodies before dying of asphyxiation. And I know HL2 is not THAT good as Doom 3 when it comes to "realistic indoor environments."

But then that reminds me of people who say that life cannot exist on planets that are not Earth-like and similarly, how cool it was that once you killed the monsters, they disintegrate and return to Hell, and your argument as to how smooth the outdoor environments looked like when you were travelling between airlocks.
a) Totally irrelevant now, but it sets the stage for the next explanations, kind of. It is WE who have evolved to take advantage of the Earth's environment, its not the Earth that has changed for us.
b) id Software knew that leaving the monsters lying around dead and tracking the objects in the gamespace was pretty demanding on memory, (I will explain more about Doom3's memory issues later) so they came up with the explanation that they returned to Hell once they were killed. Nice PR work there on their part.
c) Doom 3 (the game and not the engine) has pretty limited capabilities for rendering realistic outdoor environments without pushing up system requirements and making a lot of older cards unable to play the game (bad from a developer's perspective) so they came up with limiting your oxygen supply and using a Martian sandstom as a distance culling fog to limit your visibility of the outdoor environment. It looks so smooth because it requires lesser system resources. 
So, in the end if you see, more than half of the entertainment industry, be it movies,animations or games, is focused on "tricking" your brain into completing the puzzle. Of course, you're learning Director MX, you will come to learn of this later, how to trick your users' brains and lessening your workload and filesize and keeping up framerates.

I don't know of a single game that doesnt tweak the hardware to its advantage, (and technically they'd be fools not to) so while HL2 took advantage of ATI cards, Doom 3 took advantage of Nvidias. While you might think Far Cry is platform-neutral, the fact is that its not. Nvidia cards use OpenEXR based technology in their cards ever since the FX series, and Far Cry uses that ability to run better on Nvidia cards, leaving the traditional rendering based ATis behind when it comes to benchmarks.

Half of what you see in Doom 3 are "illusions" - a sleight of hand that tricks you into believing something thats not there. Doom 3 boasts of extensive bump mapping, but did you know that for ALL their cry about bump-mapping, it uses just normal maps instead? Models in Doom 3 use normal maps to "emulate" high geometry details, simply by tying them up to textures instead of triangles. 

The normal (not bump) maps are also responsible for the interaction of surfaces with their incident rays of light and the shadows are actually more detailed than the objects that cast them. So when counsellor Swann, (with a hexagonal skull, thats right, he's got a hexagonal skull) looks good in the final rendering sequence. Which is also why when an imp throws a fireball, it casts perfect shadows on the walls, also making the normal maps on textured surfaces look 3D though they are utterly flat.

When Doom 3 was being made, this process of using normal maps for emulation was considered the best because it saved on geometric processing, which could have meant that the engine would be hopelessly obsessed with rendering high-geometry, totally bringing it to a screeching, grinding halt if they had used bumpmaps instead. Also, it was using the poorer quality S3TC algorithm instead of the ATI-based 3Dc algorithm when it came to compressed textures. Which is why the main textures are extremely low detail and cannot even be compared with Painkiller, leave alone Far Cry or HL2. If you use bumpmaps in all the surfaces and try to put in high-detail for the main textures also, then you would need a 512MB video card to run the game. Nvidia cards have the ability to double the fillrate when writing to Z buffer and stencil buffer, which is something that the ATIs don't have in place, so thats why it performs better on Nvidias than on the ATis.

I hope that helps clear up things a bit.



			
				tarey_g said:
			
		

> Remember,
> when u r writing about something that you dont know , u r misguiding people . Read this ........



What the... misguiding people?  You know, you're the first person to tell me that I don't know what I am talking about.  Its been over two years since I got out of my obsession with being involved with game design and turn to coding enterprise systems and applications, but that doesnt mean I dont follow what's happening in the game design world or know whats being said. Please dont criticize me like that again.



			
				tarey_g said:
			
		

> This in fact is completely untrue, because the engine is quite capable of rendering big, detailed outside worlds. You will see the outside capabilities of the engine in Quake 4 and it will dramatically change people's perception on what the Doom 3 Engine can do. The Doom 3 engine is more suitable for inside environments though, because of its BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) system for optimizing the graphics engine. The Doom 3 Engine also supports larger textures, which in the future will allow the textures to look even better. The Source Engine is pretty much the opposite. It is more suited for outdoor environments and its inside environments don't look nearly as lifelike or detailed as Doom 3's



Read this post entirely, the parts where I talked about the capabilities of the Doom 3 engine. All I said was this:



			
				enoonmai said:
			
		

> but no one has seen what the engine can do when it comes to rendering large outdoor environments. And judging by pretty much every single mod developer out there who says that Doom 3 sucks big time when it comes to rendering outdoor scenes.



And I stand by what I say. All current mod developers, including the ones for Hexen, Icefields, the UAC Warface MP mod, etc. have said that the "current" avatar of the Doom 3 engine sucks when it comes to rendering realistic outdoor environments. Ask any Doom 3 mod developer and he will tell you how extensively he had to use either a night setting, heavy fog, snow swirls, sandstorms or anything with a lot of fog shaders to bring the distance culling point closer to the player position in the gamespace and cut the rest of the environment out. I dont think I need to actually show you how they use fog shaders overgenerously to hide the depth of the environment around the player. If you've seen the environment in its fullest before the complete rendering, you will only comment on how Quake II-ish it is.

Take the Doom3 engine based Quake 4, which will feature large open expanses and drivable vehicles. You dont really understand how bad the fillrate would blow up to render the objects realistically, that too when the gamespace has infinite shadows/objects where they are proportionately scaled to the view distance? It will look worse than Quake 1 with a lower class card, even from the GeForce FX series.

In a chat I had with Anidex aka Wysicon at the Skoar forums, he said:



			
				Wysicon said:
			
		

> Coming to Quake 4, say that the game puts 1 million polygons on the screen each frame. With hardware extruded shadow volumes, the polygon count gets bumped up by about 6 times. So, the effective polygon count becomes about 6 million!!! This added to the massive amount of fillrate burnt testing all those extruded shadow polygons will quickly bring down frame-rates from fps to spf!



The Doom 3 engine *CAN* render good outdoor environments, but NOT on the cards that are currently being used to play Doom 3. You would need at least the newer GeForce 6x00 cards to play Quake 4 properly in a way that doesnt alter the environment to affect gameplay and will probably be using the next gen- video cards that will be timed to release around the Quake 4 / RtCW2 launch. These cards will make full use of the capabilities of the engine, and thanks to the rush between Nvidia and ATI to roll out the 512MB cards, you can bet that by the time Quake 4 hits shelves every card that self-respecting gamers have will be loaded with at least 256MB of VRAM and can run Doom 3 in all its glory. The fact is that the Doom 3 engine supports a lot, (except shadow mapping, which will be available ONLY with the next id franchise) but no cards exist that can use all these features. The same engine that runs Quake 3 runs Call of Duty and Medal of Honor Allied Assault, but that doesnt mean they're the same. Ask anyone thats run Q3A on an i810 to run Call of Duty. The same way, no can say anything about the Doom 3 engine UNTIL Quake 4 and RtCW2 come out. The mods are not anything to predict the future by. Like I said in my *"misguided"* post - no one has seen what the engine can do when it comes to rendering large outdoor environments. I hope you got the point. And oh, refer to what I've said about Doom 3's "detailed bump mapping" earlier in the post for a rude awakening. BTW, every single screenshot of Quake 4 has been in a night setting, so my distance culling argument about the engine also still stands. I will revoke it when I see another daylight outdoor screenshot or when I play the game. 


What HL2 and Source have managed to do is to marry the old and the new into something that looks and feels great and realistic. In the end, thats what good game design is about. No matter how  you do it, it has to look good. When it comes to game design - the end really justifies the means. So what if Source had to use older, outdated radiosity-based techniques to make it "feel" better than Doom 3? They got the job done, period. The Doom 3 IS the most advanced engine on the planet right now, and its pretty much the standard benchmark now, how many benchmarks use Source? Doom 3 CAN be a lot of things, but its not the best when it comes to the Doom 3 game.

I am not a fanboy, just a casual observer and I don't take sides when it comes to ATI or Nvidia or Doom 3 or Source. I call 'em as I see 'em.

@allwyndlima: An American? Where on Earth did I say or do something that appeared that way? I'm a genuine "Made In India".  But thanks a lot, buddy! Its not like you get appreciated every day, so ... As for the long posts, well, what can I say? I've got time and I'm not afraid to use it. 

@cody: Thanks for the vote of confidence!  I owe you one, oh wait, I already owe you 3 DVDs!  And oh, sorry to borrow your tag, but my fingertips hurt, no, they really do!


----------



## icecoolz (Mar 3, 2005)

Woooah!!! now that is one amazingly clear explaination. Either you have too much time on your hands or you are just way too smart for me. Personally I love games for the game play it provides. The most visually brillaint game that I had played was to Chrome before Far Cry came into the picture. Chrome was just visually brilliant with large outdoor gaming available. And best yet it even worked on my old geforce fx 440 card! but did stutter a lot when it came to rendering lots of enemies. I def loved your post. It takes an amzing amount of patience to sit and explain things so clearly. Thank you. Oh am in Bangalore too  We should meet up sometime


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 3, 2005)

Whew! Thats an loooong post, and very, very informative! Didn't knew that about Doom 3 and bump-mapping. Guess I should search the net for some more such areticles as to whether id and Valve guys actually put in the things they claimed, in their respective engine.

@Prof: I sincierly hope you have a proper ergonomic keyboard. Dont wanna see you end with CTS!


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## Major-Minor (Mar 3, 2005)

Wowee, prof, that was one great post there, hats off to you again sir!


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## enoonmai (Mar 3, 2005)

Dont worry, cody, I've got the ultra-comfortable and cr@ppy costly  Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop.  My hands and brain are pretty much the only things that get me my daily food and my games for the PC and the PS2. (come to think of it, I think I can even skip food ) 

@icecoolz: Thanks man, sure, maybe we can catch each other sometime at Pizza Hut on Brigade Road. Actually, I could sit and type such a huge post because I am at home today when I am supposed be working on obscure Java code.  I've heard a lot about Chrome, but never had the fortune to actually play it. And come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw the game on the shelves here. I pretty much get all my games at Glasgow Computers on Brigade Rd. 
If I see either that or Escape From Butcher Bay again, I will definitely pick them up.

@Major: Nah, man, pretty much summed up everything in a nutshell. Anyway, thanks a lot man, and dont be TOO humble, I know how good you are with hardware and video cards and their capabilities.


----------



## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 3, 2005)

Woahhhhhhhhhhh Woahhhhhh And Woahhhhhhhh again......Now enoo just one more question u possibly by any chance wouldn't be workin for Top Secret Projects Of ID And Valve Simultaneously would you????   

Just an hour or so into my lunch time and a word of luck for cody for his exams and now i see this HUGEEEEEEEEE post again by you....now either i am a mind reader or an anticipator......was just thinkin that u would show up sooner or later with that oh-so long explaination of yours.....KUDOS to u bro......Now i dun wanna sound Fanboyish about your post and stuff but am just stunned to see so much time and talent dedication.....grt goin pal but remeber "with great talent comes grt responsibilities" also there are lots a ppl out here at digit with immense Knowledge as well So HAtttss off to all of em.....and just One more thing i oughta do before leaving as mark of respect
*deephousepage.com/smilies/respect.gif


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## gamefreak14 (Mar 3, 2005)

Fantabulous, enoonmai!! Three cheers to you for spending your time on a very informative post. 
Judging from what you've written, I guess we can come to the conclusion that Far Cry's the the only game which can practically render "kilometers" on a decent card with no noticable framerate issues. But then this comes at a cost of some high res bump mapped textures. And possibly vice-versa? 
I think its better if they went the way of reducing workload on gfx processors. It would be wrong if they went on to actually put such heavy textures when the industry isn't even ready for it. When valVe conducted a survey on which card the potential HL2 player owned, the surprising answer was the Ti4600. 
But it won't be long before the attack of the $500+ 512 MB gfx cards begins.


----------



## enoonmai (Mar 3, 2005)

@gamefreak: Yes, you're right, CryEngine is pretty much the only DX9.0 engine in existence that can render outdoor environments to the extent of it looking like reality. And with the newer Shader Model 3.0 support (GeForce 6x00 boards only), Pixel Shader 2.0b support (Radeon X800, GeForce 6x00 boards only), Geometry instancing (Radeon 9500 and above, Radeon X800, GeForce 6x00 boards only), Normal map compression (Radeon X800, GeForce FX, GeForce 6x00 boards only) and HDR support (GeForce 6x00 boards only) in the v1.3 patch, its currently the best looking game on the planet, period. HL2 or Doom 3 cannot even compare. (at least, not right now anyway)

But then again, its all an illusion.  What the CryEngine does is that all of the detail, the hi-res bumpmapped textures, are all thrown into a single map and loaded simultaneously. The culling point in the game is actually the same as the ones in the other games, which means that if you take the culling point of a scene in Half-Life 2 and compare it with Far Cry, its the same, but the trick that the CryEngine uses is to pull off a hi-res skybox and hide the culling point underwater. Try this the next time you play FC. Turn off all effects in the game, enable cheats so you dont get killed by the chase helicopters if you go too far into the sea and then jump in and start swimming underwater. At one point, say about 1.5 kms in the gamespace, you will notice a thin, fine line underwater where the texture appears to change slightly. Anything beyond the culling point is just rendered as flat 3D and with Geometry Instancing in v1.3, this technique is perfected so well, it feels practically seamless, while reducing the processing workload for the card even more.
I remember taking the HL2 survey at the time I got Condition Zero, at which time I was running a GeForce 4 MX 440, and at that time, that was the top card on that list.  They cruelly dumped the flagship cards of the game, the 9600 and 9800 series and plan to release Xx00-exclusive levels via Steam for the owners of those cards. Highly unfair!

@allwyndlima: ROTFL! No, I dont happen to be working for id or Valve or anyone in the game design industry. Just a poor hapless Java programmer who happens to type out "import java.lotof.cr@p;" in his sleep. Thanks man, you're making me squirm and blush now.  Anyone with a bit of time and patience can learn all this, no big mumbo-jumbo to it.


----------



## Mr.47 (Mar 3, 2005)

bhaiyon aur behno srry
if maine tumhe sataya....... 
pur maine to keval mr.47 huh
jo mujhe acha lagaey usey me SNIPE karta hui
aur Jo bura lagaey usey maine Sarge bhai (q3 walay baday dada ji) ke mutabiq FRAG ker deta huh 
maine to nanha munha MR.47 huh.

when u play for KILLIN  there are now rules


----------



## gxsaurav (Mar 4, 2005)

hmm, so according to U the reason for the monsters disappear when they die is because id & Doom3 engine are unable to hold the monsters in the memory, & so they came up with this PR thing that when they die they return to Hell

Take a look at half life, kill a few zombies or combine soldiers in a room, go out of the room for a while, & come back to the room, what U find is that even the Source engine is making the soldiers disappear, so are the zombies, hmm, so now isnâ€™t Source Engine doing the same thing. 

Even in far cry, the same happens, U kill someone, go out of the room, come back & the corpse is gone, it is nothing fancy but a way to clear the RAM which each & every game out their uses, hell even, Unreal 2 the awakening uses it, another good looking engine, with really nice indoor scene

Ever heard of the back buffer in Doom3, it clears the back side of U theoretically, means when U face away from a side everything behind U or everything which is not in front of U, visible is cleared from the memory, if U say optimizing memory management is bad, then I donâ€™t know what should I say U




> It is WE who have evolved to take advantage of the Earth's environment, its not the Earth that has changed for us.



We were playing a game, not researching for life on Mars, grow up man

How do U know that, there is no game or mod out there showing that D3 is bad or good in outdoor scenes rite now, soon there will be a lot of mods & expansion packs showing the beauty, or do U have access to the D3 Engine source code, increasing the system requirement, I guess the beta version of many mods which feature many outdoor scene require same hardware as D3, not anything more. Whatâ€™s the problem in tricking the user to show him just what he needs to see, whatâ€™s the use of showing him the compilation of code, if he just can play the game

U should know that S3TC is a open standard, although 3Dc is also , but itâ€™s new & only ATI cards use it, using normal maps instead of high geometrical bump maps is good & if U can emulate something that much perfectly providing same quality with more performance then what is the problem. Do U remember the Epic games representation of Unreal Engine 3.0, they showed a 1 billion polygons based model, extremely detailed & extremely close to real thing, but eating a lot of power, then they showed it again, with only 5000 polygons using virtual displacement mapping, theoretically they were also emulation, even 3Dc isnâ€™t that perfect

Again how do U know that the textures were extremely low resolution, U must be having access to the D3 source code, even if U apply a high resolution texture, it is lowered by the gfx card in the end during game play to 1024X768 or whatever resolution U are playing at, So what is the use of making a model with ultra high resolution texture if it wonâ€™t show up.

Following what U had talked with anidex, U said that D3 engine can make good outdoor sceans, & we need a 6xxx series card to play it nice, hmm, let me tell U, what does ATI & Valve recommend HL2 to be played on, a Radeon card supporting PS 2.0 not even 3.0, isnâ€™t that OEM bullshit, when Quake 1 came it stretched the hardware to the limits, even HL1 was based on Quake 1 engine. This is something U cannot change, at that point Valve will be releasing something again with a deal with ATI, business my man, u canâ€™t change it

Let me tell U the business prospective, Valve knows clearly that HL2 is not the money maker for them, Counter Strike & Source Engine is, that is Y the system requirements of CS:S is even lower then HL2 itself, valve had to make it lower requirements based or they would have lost a lot of money, as the other companies which usually license the engines made by the big guns, look or simple yet effective, even Splinter Cell Part 1 was based on Unreal engine 1.0 while unreal engine 2.0 was out

When looking at the Far cry engine, hmm, let me point out itâ€™s error, visually it is quite good as well as audio wise, but as a software engine it is really bad, dam long loading times, even with 512 MB RAM, which is said to be the recommended for the game, at 512 MB RAM, D3 looks good, loads good, if we take it as a reference, HL2 loads faster due to different engine, but Far Cry, man takes ages to load, I re-played Far Cry 3rd time with my FX 5900XT & the 1.3 patch, believing that it must be having some more optimization etc, but no, still same old long loading & in game pauses. I borrowed more 512 MB RAM from my friend, just to test & with 1 GB RAM, Far cry went smooth while they say 512 MB is recommended

In the end of this long post: Nothing is perfect


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## enoonmai (Mar 4, 2005)

I was waiting for the brickbats, and here they are  Here we go again, Professor Utonium  Nice to have you show up.

My point was that every game makes the monsters or whatever it is that you've killed disappear. Every single game removes enemies' bodies from the gamespace once you're done with them. They HAVE to. id Software just made a cooler way of getting this done along with a story. And its not my opinion, Tim Willits said this in an interview. As did Carmack in a different way. When they asked him about this, he said that what id has done is eliminate the suddenly disappearing corpses with a "melting" effect and how it was better than leaving it in where every extra polygon rendered would inevitably lead to a drop in framerate. So, I never said Source doesn't do it, or CryEngine doesn't do it.

EDIT: Plus, you know that mod where it leaves the bodies and prevents the "melting"? Enable com_ShowFPS 1 and check how the framerates vary with and without the mod.

For the nth time, I am not bashing Nvidia or ATI or id or Valve or anyone on the face of this planet. I dont take sides and I am no fanboy. Let me make this really really simple - "I don't care. I love them all." 



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> Ever heard of the back buffer in Doom3, it clears the back side of U theoretically, means when U face away from a side everything behind U or everything which is not in front of U, visible is cleared from the memory, if U say optimizing memory management is bad, then I donâ€™t know what should I say U



WHOA!  I don't understand why you're misquoting me.  I never said memory "management" is bad, all I said was that the game was memory "intensive" and they had to resort to a lot of industry-standard tricks to heighten the illusion that everything was what you thought it was.  So I am lost as to why you're dragging the back buffer into this. And I know what a back buffer is, thank you!  If you remember, all I said was:



			
				enoonmai said:
			
		

> id Software knew that leaving the monsters lying around dead and tracking the objects in the gamespace was *pretty demanding on memory,*



And oh, BTW, front buffers, back buffers, Z-buffers, stencil buffers, depth buffers, etc. are for video cards, so *Doom 3* cannot have a back buffer, it just uses the ones on the card. And, I only mentioned the word "memory" twice and that too in that one sentence. Search for it if you like.  



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> We were playing a game, not researching for life on Mars, grow up man





			
				enoonmai said:
			
		

> *Totally irrelevant now,* but it sets the stage for the next explanations, kind of.



I already said that it was totally irrelevant and it was there just to drive the point home for people who don't understand the context. No fair slapping me on the face when I've already slapped myself. 



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> there is no game or mod out there showing that D3 is bad or good in outdoor scenes rite now, soon there will be a lot of mods & expansion packs showing the beauty



That was exactly the point I made and you're using my own point against me? Weird! 



			
				enoonmai said:
			
		

> All current mod developers, including the ones for Hexen, Icefields, the UAC Warface MP mod, etc. have said that the "current" avatar of the Doom 3 engine sucks when it comes to rendering realistic outdoor environments.....
> no one has seen what the engine can do when it comes to rendering large outdoor environments.



This is the third time I am saying it again. NO ONE except the people at Nerve and Activision has seen the capabilities of the Doom 3 engine when it comes to rendering outdoor environments.You can ask any one developing a mod for Doom 3 or visit the mod developer's sites and forums, and you will see how they tell you that they had to use a *LOT* of fog shaders to "hide" the environment and bring the culling point *close* to the player. In fact, Doom 3 is the only DX9.0 engine that has to resort to fog shaders to "hide" the environment. CryEngine and Source use fog shaders but they are for "enhancing" the environment, not hiding it. Maybe these pictures will help people get the idea. Please note how cloudy/foggy the environment is. 

*img238.exs.cx/img238/309/hexenfog1g7js.th.jpg

*img238.exs.cx/img238/6740/icefields7or.th.jpg

*img238.exs.cx/img238/293/uacschneefallg5lc.th.jpg

Check the photos tarey_g posted on the previous page and check out the outdoor environment of Quake 4 in this screenshot. Like I said, it uses a night setting for culling.

*img238.exs.cx/img238/7259/quake4preview82vn.th.jpg

Hope that's enough to get my point across. The mods for the game require the same hardware as D3, and thats partly the problem. I am willing to bet my life (yes!) that Quake 4 WILL push up the hardware requirements from what D3 required, the same as Quake 3 Arena and Call of Duty. You have to remember that Quake 4 will use a heavily modified Doom 3 engine, so there's no saying what it can do with outdoor settings. I still say for the billionth time - the Doom 3 engine is capable of rendering large outdoor environments, but not in its current avatar and not with current hardware.



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> Whatâ€™s the problem in tricking the user to show him just what he needs to see, whatâ€™s the use of showing him the compilation of code, if he just can play the game



I hope what I took from my earlier post can clarify this. 



			
				enoonmai said:
			
		

> I don't know of a single game that doesnt tweak the hardware to its advantage, *(and technically they'd be fools not to)*



There is nothing wrong with tricking people, in fact, if you don't, most developers would end up breaking their backs coding everything, dropping framerates, pushing up system requirements, etc. Like I said, you're learning Director MX. You will be taught how to trick people so that your workloads, filesizes and framerates are all maintained within acceptable parameters. (sigh)



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> U should know that S3TC is a open standard, although 3Dc is also , but itâ€™s new & only ATI cards use it, using normal maps instead of high geometrical bump maps is good & if U can emulate something that much perfectly providing same quality with more performance then what is the problem.



I am not even going to be drawn into another DXT war, be it S3TC or 3Dc or BBC World or whatever. I know which card uses which, (I said "ATI-based 3Dc", didn't I?) and all I said was that Doom 3 uses the generally acknowledged poorer S3TC algorithm. Also, I never said using normal maps is bad or a problem. In fact, no one uses "true" normal maps, because of obvious reasons. I was just stating a fact, that Doom 3 uses normal maps instead of bumpmaps.



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> Again how do U know that the textures were extremely low resolution,



Pretty much every developer worth his salt knows this for a fact. Its been discussed to shreds for more than a billion lifetimes in thousands of threads in developer forums. The textures are lo-res, the models are low-poly and pretty much everything is low detail, but its amazingly beautiful when it all comes together, because you can hardly see these things. Like I said, the illusion that will put David Copperfield to shame. (You didnt miss that part about Swann's hexagonal skull in my earlier post, I hope)

To seal to argument, here's an excerpt from a Carmack interview.



> *Q: It appears the models are low in poly count. Knowing what I know, it would appear that the reason for this, specifically with regards to your engine, is because of the shadow volume based lighting. With higher poly counts, your engine's speed would suffer. Am I correct? And how would ATI's TruForm look?*
> 
> A: The game characters are between 2000 and 6000 polygons. Some of the heads do look a little angular in tight zooms, so we may use some custom models for cinematic scenes.
> 
> Curving up the models with more polygons has a basically linear effect on performance, but making very jagged models with lots of little polygonal points would create far more silhouette edges, which could cause a disproportionate slowdown during rendering when they get close.



And to be honest, I dont care how they pull it off as long as they pull it off. Which is why I like Source, because it uses extremely older technology in some of its core areas, and still gets away with it.



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> U said that D3 engine can make good outdoor sceans, & we need a 6xxx series card to play it nice, hmm



Please go through my post again, I never said that and you're quoting me out of context. All I said was that *to take full advantage of* the Doom 3 engine's capabilities (read as Quake 4 and RtCw2) you would need at least a 6x00 video card, because by the time they release, the engine would be so heavily modified that it would look nothing like Doom 3.



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> This is something U cannot change, at that point Valve will be releasing something again with a deal with ATI, business my man, u canâ€™t change it



Amen, brother! I know that and I said so too. Games will always be aligning themselves to take advantage of a particular hardware to make things easier for them, and in fact, they would be bumbling idiots if they didn't. No one can claim to be hardware-neutral anymore.




			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> Let me tell U the business prospective, Valve knows clearly that HL2 is not the money maker for them, Counter Strike & Source Engine is,



Well, everyone knows Valve has only one game in their repertoire and thats Half-Life. Actually, the one thing that brings them the most money is engine licensing, not CS. That's only the second largest money making machine for them, and if they want, they can totally dump it and live off the engine licenses. In fact, that is how they could afford to stay in business for the 6 long years between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. They made so much money off the game engine that it fueled the entire development cost for Source and HL2. CS was a welcome break, but they didn't really need it. If you remember, they practically ignored it as a mod in the beginning, and only when they saw how popular it was, that they took it under their wing. The same goes for Source. Now that they've got it made with it, they can afford to kick back and wait for a couple of more years.



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> When looking at the Far cry engine, hmm, let me point out itâ€™s error, visually it is quite good as well as audio wise, but as a software engine it is really bad, dam long loading times, even with 512 MB RAM,



Like I told gamefreak, the problem with the long load times is because CryEngine loads the entire map, which is extremely huge when compared with even DX8.1 game maps, leave alone DX9.0 ones, so its obvious that it will drag it all down. 



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> even HL1 was based on Quake 1 engine
> ...
> even Splinter Cell Part 1 was based on Unreal engine 1.0 while unreal engine 2.0 was out



Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're wrong on both counts. Half-Life was based on Quake 2 technology and Splinter Cell was indeed based on Unreal Engine 2.0. You can Google for Half-Life and Quake 2 and see the truth for yourself. As for Splinter Cell, here's the info right from UnrealTechnology.com

*www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue2.shtml

See the screenshot of Splinter Cell there? It was previously known as the "Unreal Warfare" engine (slightly different from the engine that powered Unreal II - The Awakening.) before they pulled it all together under the Unreal Engine 2.0 name.

Hope this clears things up a wee bit more. BTW, thanks Professor Utonium, I really enjoyed talking about this with you.


----------



## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 4, 2005)

This is turning out to be so informative. Good going Prof! Thumbs up for you!


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## Major-Minor (Mar 4, 2005)

Yep, very informative posts and a healthy argument.


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## icecoolz (Mar 4, 2005)

lol...wow..more clarity. Oh by the way my friend who is into openGL and directX programming looked at this an might come up with his first post here soon. I am no way this geeky to even being comprehending a reply. Hope he does! Keep it goin prof!


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 4, 2005)

now theres a confusion here which Prof are we talkin about?????  

Is it Prof Utonium (Gxsaurav)????
or is it our very own new Prof (enoo)????

sure is getting too proffy in here.....i oughta take a hike here   

btw nice going both of ya...keep it going....and i'll care to bring in my Popcorn and Coke in a jiffy   

Btw before leavin enoo just going a lil off topic here....but since u own a Ps2 care to tell me if ya have ever heard of the Ethener adapter for Lan Connectivity????? if yes then care to spill a long post on it as well and yea lets not forget the games that we can play on it


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## HellspawnLucifer (Mar 4, 2005)

*About bumpmapping and normal maps*

Dear enoonmai,
  I'd like to correct you a little about the bump mapping and normals ...

According to Blinn, bump mapping is "a method of using a texturing function to perform a small perturbation on the direction of the surface normal before using it in the intensity calculations"

The perturbed normal is calculated using the partial derivatives of the surface parameters (typically the texture coordinates) and the height map values. The derivatives indicate the rate at which the underlying values change, so if the derivatives of the height are large, it means that the slope at that point in the height map is steep.

The problem with this method is that the per-fragment calculations required are quite steep. To this end, the perturbations are encoded in different ways.

One of the ways to encode the perturbations of the surface normal is called a normal map. This is a RGB texture, where each RGB triplet is a normalized vector indicating the current texels deviation from the straight up normal.

"Doom 3 boasts of extensive bump mapping, but did you know that for ALL their cry about bump-mapping, it uses just normal maps instead?"

Please do understand that the above information is incorrect, because all of the below are methods by which bump mapping is done.

*No modification of surface geometry*
1. Emboss bump mapping
2. Environment-mapped bump mapping (EMBM)
3. Normal mapping

*Modifies surface geometry*
4. Displacement mapping

A normal map, therefore, is just one lookup table given to a pixel shader that performs bump mapping in (mostly) tangent space.

So its more like "DOOM3 uses tangent space bump mapping with normal maps ....". Please feel free to look up any references on bump mapping if you feel I am incorrect.

"The normal (not bump) maps are also responsible for the interaction of surfaces with their incident rays of light and the shadows are actually more detailed than the objects that cast them. So when counsellor Swann, (with a hexagonal skull, thats right, he's got a hexagonal skull) looks good in the final rendering sequence. Which is also why when an imp throws a fireball, it casts perfect shadows on the walls, also making the normal maps on textured surfaces look 3D though they are utterly flat."

The normal maps also do not have anything to do with shadows, these are rendered by a method called stencil shadows. If you notice carefully enough, "Counselor Swann's hexagonal skull" shadow will STILL be hexagonal, since stencil shadows are pixel precise. 

The reason the polycount has to be reduced, is because of the per fragment overhead of pixel shaders. This is also the reason the monsters disappear. Memory is hardly a problem, because all entities (meshdata) are only referenced. The fillrate, however represents a huge problem, because performing several passes running a vertex and pixel shader for each one imposes a serious fill rate drain.

"which is something that the ATIs don't have in place, so thats why it performs better on Nvidias than on the ATis."

At this point, I'd advise you to go look up John Carmack's point plans ... where he discussed the R300 and the NV30 pipelines ...

*doom-ed.com/john-carmack/nv30-vs-r300-current-developments-etc.html

Please note that this is just FYI ... I wouldnt want anyone to take offence.

--HellspawnLucifer


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## gxsaurav (Mar 4, 2005)

Hmm, I need to know this too, Prof = Me or Him, as I m better if called GX

I don't think we can argue enoon, as we both follow a lot of things common, & since we both know, atleast I do that nothing is perfect in this world, i just say that Kudos to ID for creating this much nice illusion that despite being low textured it looked so good

Untill we see Quake 4 & RTCW2, we cannot say & only predict how good the engine is, but we also cannot say it's bad, making something by a mod maker & by a pro is different

I said about Tom Clensy splinter cell not pandora tomorrow, I missed this unreal warfare engine thing & though it to be just a slight modification of Unreal engine 1.0


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## Guest (Mar 4, 2005)

Hmm, I need to know this too, Prof = Me or Him, as I m better if called GX

I don't think we can argue enoon, as we both follow a lot of things common, & since we both know, atleast I do that nothing is perfect in this world, i just say that Kudos to ID for creating this much nice illusion that despite being low textured it looked so good

Untill we see Quake 4 & RTCW2, we cannot say & only predict how good the engine is, but we also cannot say it's bad, making something by a mod maker & by a pro is different

I said about Tom Clensy splinter cell not pandora tomorrow, I missed this unreal warfare engine thing & though it to be just a slight modification of Unreal engine 1.0


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## enoonmai (Mar 4, 2005)

Welcome, HellSpawnLucifer, I take it you're the person icecoolz was talking about. 
First off, 



			
				HellSpawnLucifer said:
			
		

> Please note that this is just FYI ... I wouldnt want anyone to take offence.



Nobody takes offence, you can be sure of that, least of all me. I know a developer when I see one, whether its 1 post or 1000, content is what matters. And if we can learn something from each other, well, that's the whole point to the forum, isn't it?  There's nothing I like more like someone correcting me and I learn something else new. The problem is this, I strayed from everything to do with hardware and game design more than two point five years ago, and while I've been following developments, now all I have is others' information guiding me, instead of a DIY approach. So sometimes I get misguided by other posts and usually tend to think that people post stuff on what they know about, and when someone corrects me, I at least Google for it and try to correct myself. I believe its called "The Serendipity Effect" 



			
				HellSpawnLucifer said:
			
		

> So its more like "DOOM3 uses tangent space bump mapping with normal maps ....". Please feel free to look up any references on bump mapping if you feel I am incorrect.



Gotcha, I did look it up on Google and spent a lot of time reading through it again, and you're right. I stand corrected. I spent all afternoon looking for the source page that I had seen months earlier and what has happened is that somehow my brain twisted the information out of context a bit. The source reads:



> Doom 3 uses normal maps for some models to "emulate" high geometry details. Theoretically, the bump maps we were so much told about by video card manufacturers *are also normal maps*, just tied up to textures instead of triangles. In both cases normal maps are responsible for the interaction of surfaces with their incident rays of light.



Needless to say, I think I twisted the letters in bold out of context. I apologize. Thank you for correcting me. 



			
				HellSpawnLucifer said:
			
		

> The normal maps also do not have anything to do with shadows, these are rendered by a method called stencil shadows. If you notice carefully enough, "Counselor Swann's hexagonal skull" shadow will STILL be hexagonal, since stencil shadows are pixel precise.



Again, I dont know why I went into shadowing. I know Doom 3 uses shadow volumes for rendering shadows and I also know all it takes is a 8-bit stencil buffer for this. Yet I still read on Google that normal maps, (the surface-local) interact with the incident light to decide the shadowing, which is then rendered by either shadow volume or shadow mapping. So.... help me out here, will you? You specifically said that normal maps have nothing to do with shadows, yet what I read is different.



			
				HellSpawnLucifer said:
			
		

> The reason the polycount has to be reduced, is because of the per fragment overhead of pixel shaders. This is also the reason the monsters disappear. Memory is hardly a problem, because all entities (meshdata) are only referenced. The fillrate, however represents a huge problem, because performing several passes running a vertex and pixel shader for each one imposes a serious fill rate drain.



Actually, I did address this issue in a later post. I said that *"...it was better than leaving it in where every extra polygon rendered would inevitably lead to a drop in framerate."*

And when it comes to multipass or multitexture rendering, doesn't the performance depend only on the memory and increases with increase in memory frequency and that the memory experiences the hardest strain of all? I've seen actual benchmarks with cards confirming this. Correct me if I am wrong, please!



			
				HellSpawnLucifer said:
			
		

> At this point, I'd advise you to go look up John Carmack's point plans ... where he discussed the R300 and the NV30 pipelines



I've seen that a long time ago, but thanks for refreshing my memory.  It was wonderful reading through it again. But you have to admit that its a bit dated, I mean, NV40s are flooding the market and are the standard now. I didnt want to go into it in detail, but..

Correct me if I go wrong with this. The first pass fills up Z buffer values for all pixels and provided MSAA isnt used, the NV3x/40 cards do this at double speed. Next it calculates shadow volumes and writes it to the stencil buffer, again at doubled speed after which it begins texturing. 

So, while using the NVxx paths, it does the job faster. Which is pretty much the same thing I said ealier and is also pretty much one of the key things Carmack has said in that post. So, I am confused, why did you tell me to look at it?

Anyway, thanks a lot for correcting me and I apologize for the mistakes I made. This has been one of the best times I've had in a while, swapping ideas and I have you guys to thank for it. As always, please go through my posts and if you think there is a mistake, feel free to slam me. I wouldn't have it any other way.



			
				gxsaurav said:
			
		

> since we both know, atleast I do that nothing is perfect in this world, i just say that Kudos to ID for creating this much nice illusion that despite being low textured it looked so good



You said it!  Nothing's perfect, certainly not me or my video card, at least.  And yes, in the end I dont care about all of this as long as I can forget everything else and just play the game, and yes, even low settings will do.  Once Quake 4 and RtCW2 come out, I will forget everything and just care about bashing demons and the undead.

And oh, even I was talking about Splinter Cell not Pandora Tomorrow. The original Splinter Cell for the PC, XBox and PS2 versions as well as the sequel, are still based on Unreal Engine 2.0. Nothing of Splinter Cell was ever made on Unreal Engine 1.0. In fact, it even won the awards for it and was lauded in the UnrealTechnology.com and Epic websites.

@icecoolz: Dont worry, I am not that geeky myself. I still like the Ren and Stimpy show and dont miss a single episode of The Simpsons. Just your regular average guy that likes to read. 

@allwyndlima: I will have to do a bit of research into the games, but as for the network adapter, yeah, I have it built in to my PSTwo. Still waiting for the Network Access Disc though. Will definitely post some info on it in a new thread.


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 4, 2005)

@Gx....uhhhh well ok Now U=Gx And Enoo=Prof.....Gotcha and registered into my brain....Btw now that u have Kudosed ID And given a great deal of time here and i guess i'll take u out of the equation(this thread of course) for a while.....so until u show up again.....Kudos from my side  

@newdude (hellspawnlucifier.....woah what a name)......first off welcome to the forum and man what a grt entry into ur first post....plzz do continue.....i wanna see prof beg for mercy   

@prof....looks like more and more competition headin ur way....well anyways do lemme know how much will and extra apadter cost and how can i connect more that 1 PS2 on it


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## enoonmai (Mar 4, 2005)

allwyndlima said:
			
		

> .i wanna see prof beg for mercy



Yeah, yeah, I am sure you do!  I make one mistake and I am "begging for mercy"? In the words of the great Daffy Duck, "Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin!" ROTFL, just kidding!  I always love a good healthy argument. As for competition, I dont know. If I can learn something new, its always good, isn't it?  Still working on the PS2 post though. Should finish it by tonight.


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 4, 2005)

Muhaaaahhhh Prof now that we are done with the begging part (not completely though i didnt see ya on ur feet ) lets see whats left ahhh...yes ur reply for PS2.....and yea a request mate plzzz make it a longy one of ur posts ok and moreover make it in dummies learning terms (in short my kinda term ).....also dude u seem like an adrent Cartoon buff like i used to be....grt now i have a companion as well.....as for the competition well what can i say i hope we are just gettin started.....So Long live u and Your Long Posts


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## DKant (Mar 4, 2005)

Gr8 posts all over the place!  Saving the unread ones to my HD. I'll read them later...quite sleepy rite now.


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## tarey_g (Mar 5, 2005)

*Re: About bumpmapping and normal maps*



			
				HellspawnLucifer said:
			
		

> Dear enoonmai,
> I'd like to correct you a little about the bump mapping and normals ...
> 
> According to Blinn, bump mapping is "a method of using a texturing function to perform a small perturbation on the direction of the surface normal before using it in the intensity calculations"
> ...



first of all i thank u hellspawnlucifier u saved my time   ,i was just goin to post abt bumpmapping and normal maps after i read enoomai's post 
,that post was too big   and yes again misguiding (no prob) but.........



			
				enoomai said:
			
		

> You know, you're the first person to tell me that I don't know what I am talking about.  Please dont criticize me like that again


sorry buddy but u did that again.

i started to post in this topic only to argue abt that doom3(game) is more visually appealing than hl2(becoz i don't really like when someone says that hl2 is visually better than doom3). we will see in future that what both the engines are  capable of , we can't really judge abt the limitations of a game engine only based  on some comments of mod developers. thats it.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 5, 2005)

*Re: About bumpmapping and normal maps*



			
				tarey_g said:
			
		

> first of all i thank u hellspawnlucifier u saved my time   ,*i was just goin to post abt bumpmapping and normal maps after i read enoomai's post*
> ,that post was too big   and yes again misguiding (no prob) but.


You know what, I tried hard to keep myself from neing sarcastic and post here but I just cant hold it anymore. Enoonmai posts on Thu Mar 03, 2005 3:46 pm and your posts comes at Sat Mar 05, 2005 12:25 am. In between I see you on the forum many-a-times. Yet you claim that you were about to post a reply! Wow! Thats some cheek. And then you go on to criticize Prof for something he has accepted as a genuine mistake? Wish HellSpawn had posted it a day late. I really would have loved to see your reply...if ever there was one! Flame me for all you wish, I give a damn.

@All: Guys, sorry to initiate a flame war but it's a promise that I wont utter a single word against anyone else here in this thread. I just couldnt stand the cheek of him. Sorry again.


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## enoonmai (Mar 5, 2005)

tarey_g said:
			
		

> ,that post was too big and yes again misguiding (no prob) but.........
> sorry buddy but u did that again.



(sigh)  I swear, I am gonna break my fingers and apply for disability relief because of this one thread.  You know what, I've tried saying it one way and then another, but what I am saying is this. I cant speak in plainer terms, so here it goes:

You keep saying my post is misguiding, and keep saying that over and over again, but could you please *point out* with my quotes where it is and what I've said that is actually misguiding?

HellSpawnLucifer actually took the time and the trouble to explain what it was that I had said wrong, and that turned to be two points in all the "n" points I've made since I started writing in this thread.

Sorry, buddy, I think I need a little more info than "you're misguiding again." I think I earned it. So, please, if its possible, go ahead and actually quote my "misguidings" and then offer a correction and proof for the correction, like HellSpawnLucifer did. I would really, really, REALLY appreciate it instead of being told that I am misguiding people yet again. I hope you understand. I am really ready to turn into a Kwyjibo on the loose and join the mental asylum here. ROTFL! 



			
				tarey_g said:
			
		

> doom3(game) is more visually appealing than hl2(becoz i don't really like when someone says that hl2 is visually better than doom3).



Do you really think that's fair? Think about it! Just because you dont happen to like the statement that it looks better than Doom 3 (which I, incidentally, never said. All I said was that Doom 3 looks awesome in indoor environments while Source looks awesome in outdoor environments) doesn't mean that Source isn't as good as Doom 3, is it? I would then be tempted to say that you're an id Software fanboy and not a "neutral." Dont take this the wrong way. I do not mean any offense, like I said, just clearing up a couple of points.  Again, I hope you understand.

LOL, and dont take this wrong way anyone, but we're all saying that we shouldn't comment on the engine capabilities until newer modified versions of it release on newer hardware, and seem to be fighting each other over it. Feels pretty stupid to me, because I am saying the same thing too. D'Oh! 


EDIT:

@cody: OMG! That was indeed something.  Talk about someone that will stand by you through thick and thin! I'm touched, man, honestly, I am. ( D@mn, forums dont have crying emoticons, do they? Oh wait, there is! )  Just let it go, buddy. There's no point in starting a flame war and I dont want you getting into trouble because of me. Besides, we're the guys that stay patient and keep cool no matter what, right?  Besides a flame war is only funny when Arachnid is bashing someone who's being downright abusive at the Skoar forums.  

@Everyone: Please guys, no flame wars on my account.

@allwyndlima: Are you kidding, I would kill for cartoons. In fact, the only reason I bought a DVD writer was to write episodes of The Simpsons and other cartoons that I had recorded and free up hard disk space.  When it comes to cartoon strips, I love C&H more than anything else in the whole wide world. I still owe you the PS2 post.


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## tarey_g (Mar 5, 2005)

*Re: About bumpmapping and normal maps*



			
				ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> tarey_g said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




ctrl_alt_del   looks like u see saas bahoo serials a lot (aag lagaane ki khujli),  btw i read the post today only and i was going to answer but the mistake was already pointed out, i am a dial up use and i only surf in night and i dont surf everynight , i dont hav the luxury of broad band connection like u so i cannot keep posting every time(also not my duty)

abt the mapping issue i knew that ennoomai had written wrong ,and i dont follow anyone blindly like u do(i hav a big doubt if u read anyone's post carefully), i am not critisizing enoomai as i had gone thru all the posts b4 posting that he had accepted his mistake as u can read



			
				tarey_g said:
			
		

> that post was too big  and yes again misguiding (*no prob)*



i just reminded him that nobody is correct everytime.
i hope u get it ctrl_alt_del


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 5, 2005)

> ctrl_alt_del looks like u see saas bahoo serials a lot (aag lagaane ki khujli)


LOL! Good one mate. I will take it in my stride rather than say something nasty. Keeping my side of the promise. Just on a personal note, I would be rather dead then watch one of those tear-jerkers. But I admit, that *"aag lagane ki khujli"* really made me smile. Btw, you called me a "jahndoo" once. What does that exactly mean? Just curiosity! 

Now lets bury all the ill feelings and get back to the subject. Agent 47 says he thinks HL2 graphics are not great. I say I love the graphics. Rest who agree or disagree can argue. I will watch from the sidelines.


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## tarey_g (Mar 5, 2005)

enoonmai said:
			
		

> tarey_g said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



do i need to if one user has done it already, i even googled for relevant  info to post here(found a nice informative pdf document , if u need i will send that to u) but the expaination was done in a better way already , i appriciate that u accepted ur mistake. and i posted abt that. 
do u need that i must proov myself just for ur satisfaction then i am sorry i can't do that. i can't write big posts if there is no need.




> HellSpawnLucifer actually took the time and the trouble to explain what it was that I had said wrong, and that turned to be two points in all the "n" points I've made since I started writing in this thread.



when did i say all ur post was misguiding but still it was a bit.



> Sorry, buddy, I think I need a little more info than "you're misguiding again." I think I earned it. So, please, if its possible, go ahead and actually quote my "misguidings" and then offer a correction and proof for the correction, like HellSpawnLucifer did.



funny , why do u need that if its already done. if i had read the post b4 i surely had posted abt it. 



> Do you really think that's fair? Think about it! Just because you dont happen to like the statement that it looks better than Doom 3 (which I, incidentally, never said. All I said was that Doom 3 looks awesome in indoor environments while Source looks awesome in outdoor environments) doesn't mean that Source isn't as good as Doom 3, is it? I would then be tempted to say that you're an id Software fanboy and not a "neutral." Dont take this the wrong way. I do not mean any offense, like I said, just clearing up a couple of points.  Again, I hope you understand.



i am not a  id fanboy but the truth is truth doom3(game) looks better then hl2 and i never said i was arguing abt it with u , i said that i started posting in this thread abt doom3 lookin better that hl2 . arguin abt u was abt the outdoor map thing , and as u say it will best be proved when the games come based on d3 engine in future. i agree that ,but no one can say that d3 engine will be unsuccessful in rendering the outdoors in a better way



> LOL, and dont take this wrong way anyone, but we're all saying that we shouldn't comment on the engine capabilities until newer modified versions of it release on newer hardware, and seem to be fighting each other over it. Feels pretty stupid to me, because I am saying the same thing too. D'Oh!


i agree , feels stupid to me too


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## tarey_g (Mar 5, 2005)

ctrl_alt_del said:
			
		

> > ctrl_alt_del looks like u see saas bahoo serials a lot (aag lagaane ki khujli)
> 
> 
> LOL! Good one mate. I will take it in my stride rather than say something nasty. Keeping my side of the promise. Just on a personal note, I would be rather dead then watch one of those tear-jerkers. But I admit, that *"aag lagane ki khujli"* really made me smile. Btw, you called me a "jahndoo" once. What does that exactly mean? Just curiosity!




well when u say someone  jhandoo that means saying him dumb in a funny lovin way(nothin serious  )


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 5, 2005)

Hmm! That will be my "word for the day" then! Jhandoo! Like the sound of it.


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## Guest (Mar 5, 2005)

You know what I find silly? People going on and on about Doom3 engine vs. Source engine, their capabilities, normal vs. bump mapping, or the gameplay etc.

READ THE TITLE! This thread is about HL2 not looking great (in comparison to Doom 3).

Who cares what the engines are capable of? We can only judge what we have seen, and those are the games. If you compare what we have seen in D3 and HL2 (disregarding individual preference of dark and light, some people, like me, were pissed by all the darkness) D3 looks incredibly more realistic (except some places where it looks a bit plasticky) with the awesome lighting and shadowing. HL2 is great, but not as good.
Nobody even said that HL2 graphics are not good (except some guy who comared it to DX 7 level).

Also I was surprised by everyone ganging up on tareyji when he said that "the objects of HL2 lacked bump mapping". I agree with him (bring on the brick bats)! I played the game at max settings with AA at 4x and AS at 4x. I loved the game and the effects were beautiful (especially the combine shields), but the game objects (chairs, doors, walls, floors) were really flat looking most of the time (most not all), whereas everything in D3 had depth in it...

So no matter what the Source engine is capable of, HL2 could have looked better. It might have caused a performance hit, but blaming the weakness of hardware is not the solution.

As of everyone saying that anyone comparing HL2 to Doom3 is fanboy-ism, it is only natural that people compare HL2 with D3 at HL2 came after it.


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## tarey_g (Mar 5, 2005)

Anonymous said:
			
		

> Also I was surprised by everyone ganging up on tareyji when he said that "the objects of HL2 lacked bump mapping.



grrrr   for the last time i am telling its tarey_g  and that g not= ji , ji is used for elders (sharma ji,verma ji etc) ,and its a long time(years) after which i wud like to be called tareyji. btw that g=gaurav thats my name. 

btw who r u?

ok is dial up usr ko ab maaf karo sone ka time ho gaya, aur dua karo ki mere shaher me jaldi hi broadband shuru ho jaaye. amen


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## Guest (Mar 5, 2005)

Ok tareyji, oh sorry, tarey_g, he he.

I used to be a memeber of the forums a long time ago, and was acitve for only a short time, but got bored. Now I ocasionally visit to see if anything interesting is going on. I just watch from the shadows, kinda like "Deep Throat" . This is my first post in a long while.

If anyone wants to chalange me about the thing I said about the flatness of the HL2 in-game objects, I will be happy to post some screen shots (though I would have to install the game)


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## icecoolz (Mar 5, 2005)

Could we plz cut out the "I love doom3 better cos I think it looks better" stuff. If you have a logical reason and can back up your views with facts as provided then plz provide them. The point is to keep the ideas objective and not get personal on it. That is the only way this will not develop into a flame war. 

@enoonmai. Hellspawn works with me. We meet up every day altho we are on diff teams. We quake3 whenever we can  He knows what hes talkin about and hes rewritten the quake2 and the quake3 renderer  Thats why I egged him on to post here.  Cos he said that what you said wasnt exactly correct. Better a person who knows what hes talkin about to post than me  I knew you would take it in the right spirit!!! We def should meet up sometime. I can even get him to come along!


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 5, 2005)

@all.....i agree with icecoolz and could we cut the arguement cause quite frankly am gettin really tired of it....plus i know it has not started with personal abuses but in no case do i or rather anyone this forum wants it to....ok so "I LIke Doom 3 Visually" So what Kill Hl2 buyers and if "I like Hl2" visually crush all Doom 3 owners   whats the point here 2 Diff game developers create 2 diff games on 2 diff game engines both of which are unarguably grt ones so are they meant to be compared.....hell no they are meant to be played and enjoyed not critised for one lacking another techonlogy and Vice versa.......Sheeezzzz  

@unknown person.....now i understand u obviuosly have something for tarey_g (did i speel it correctly oh yes i did) but in no way were we ganging up or that sorta stuff but just asking him for a explanation for the bump mapping confusion which he cleared later on  

@tarey_g....now lets see dosen matter who started the flame but could we just cut with the name calling and stuff....now when i first saw the word "Jhandoo"i know why we ppl call that word over here in Mumbai it might be a silly little word or as ya put it a funny loving way of dumb but just remeber why use such words and direct em towards forum members.....come on man no offence but could we just keep it clean for a while out here  

@enoo....yes siree u do owe me one big thread....so CIAO  8) 

Peace


----------



## enoonmai (Mar 5, 2005)

I give up.  I don't want to talk about useless old engines any more. In my opinion,

Best outdoor environment=CryEngine
Best indoor environment=Doom 3
Best overall merger of outdoor and indoor environments=Source

And thats going visually, I am gonna pore over mod developers' posts any longer, and frankly, I prefer the KISS policy, and I committed serious adultery stepping away from it. 

In the end, all I care about (like everyone else) is being able to play the games. In the end, we have to admit that no amount of fancy eyecandy is a substitute for good gameplay. Which is why a game like Crimsonland or even Codename Gordon with hardly any graphical goodness is so addictive. (Mmmmm, Crimsonland!) 

I do hope RoE will turn out with a wee bit better gameplay than Doom 3. While I love that game and its storytelling aspect and being scared half to death, somewhere along the line, I got a wee bit bored of doing the same old thing. (Give me my breakable environment objects, id Software) Part of the fun I have with games is using the environment, even if it means smashing and pushing around boxes and cardboard cartons needlessly (to think of all the joy I received breaking open a box and having screwdrivers, CDs, weird electronic thingies etc. pop out of them in the first Half-Life ) Apart from the explosive barrels, Doom 3 had no object interaction. I cant wait for RoE to change that with the Grabber.  

Having said that, I will go and bomb Valve's Seattle office if they dont confirm HL3 soon. I mean, come on, its obvious they're working on it. They better not DARE say "That's all folks, move along, nothing to see here." after the miserably cliffhanging ending that was HL2. I am so sick and tired of all the rampant speculations on Alyx, Gordon, GMan and everything else. Hmm, maybe we should have our own HL3 speculation thread.  

@icecoolz: Like I said, maybe we can catch each other sometime soon. I just have to be suddenly infected with the Ebola virus or fake my death and then bunk work, and we can all meet up and have fun.


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## borg (Mar 5, 2005)

Man it was interesting to read the indoor /outdoor discussion on Doom 3 engine. I just want to know - what difference does it make to the engine whether indoor or outdoor?. These things are in our minds only. For the machine & the software, this is just a number crunching job nothing else.


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## enoonmai (Mar 5, 2005)

@allwyndlima: Here it is:

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15768

Hope this helps.


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## Charley (Mar 5, 2005)

I would like to start by saying that Half-Life was my first introduction into online gaming--and it got me hooked. I switched to Unreal tournament. The reason for the switch was because a friend of mine told me that half-life was on the way out and Unreal Tournament was the newest and best game out, and eventually nobody would be playing half-life(or any of the other HL games like counter strike and blue ops?). I really miss Half-Life, and find that HL had better maps and the weapons were better--I really miss laying those mines!


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## speedyguy (Mar 5, 2005)

hi there....just wanna know if i can can run half-life 2 in my onboard grafix card...my sys is-

p4 1.8ghz,
intel 845gl chipset with 64 internal memory,
256mb ddr-ram,
40 gb hdd

if not is it worth upgrading to a ATi Radeon 9000 pro series...will it help wit latest games...even in normal settings is enuf...im asking this coz thats d cheapest option i got for my cnfg...
thanx
cheers


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## Ethan_Hunt (Mar 5, 2005)

@speedyguy....yup u can play hl2 with ur onboard Gfx but the thing is it wont give ya a smooth enough gameplay and will deliver about 15Fps or more even at low settings....so well if u can try ad upgrade into a Ati radeon card if possible the 9600pro at 7k this will be more than required to play games at Fair resolutions.....whats ur budget just let us know and will take u through the rest


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## tarey_g (Mar 5, 2005)

icecoolz said:
			
		

> Could we plz cut out the "I love doom3 better cos I think it looks better" stuff. If you have a logical reason and can back up your views with facts as provided then plz provide them.



Hi icecoolz   ,
i am telling here for the last time that i said that statement becoz we were *comparing doom3 and halflife visually in this thread*(not the gameplay and the other stuff which represents a game collectively). If u want to compare  Doom3 to hl2 in terms of gameplay then doom3 dosen't stand a chance b4 hl2 coz hl2 was fun till the last level but doom3 became repetative(but i never got boared kept playing it praising the visual details).


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## HellspawnLucifer (Mar 7, 2005)

*Reply to enoonmai (loads more mumbo-jumbo)*

I'd like to start off this post, by saying that this is just a reply to enoonmai to a few of his questions, and it may be out of context to some other posters on this forum. Please feel free to ignore this post if this information seems irrelevant to you.

enoonmai,

As for the shadowing and light interaction thingy ... there is one caveat in computer graphics ... the shading of a surface, and shadowing are two different things. Let me take the case of OpenGL, since we are talking about DOOM 3.

Although OpenGL supports lighting, it does not support shadowing. What I mean by this is that the developer wanting to shadow his/her character/model will have to write the associated code themselves, using methods like stencil shadows, shadow mapping, PRT, etc ... this, enoonmai is why a normal map only performs shading. Shadows are drawn on the framebuffer in (probably) a separate pass.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Assume that a shadow is falling on a corrugated surface in DOOM3. In the real world, a shadow like that would have the edges of itself corrugated as well, because its warping along the shape of that surface. In DOOM3, however it will be razor sharp and flat. See, although the bump mapping makes us believe that the flat surface is corrugated, thats only because of the lighting contribution changing across the surface (normal perturbation). Like I said in my previous post, there is no geometry modification in this technique.

Of course, when displacement mapping is used, this technique would produce the correct result. But I'm currently running off an R350 core (9800Pro), so I dont have hardware displacement maps as of now 

Hope thats clear enough.

About multipass rendering, I meant multiple render passes on the same frame. Every object in DOOM 3 is associated with a shader. Applied to objects, this means that some objects render themselves in a single pass or in multiple passes based on the hardware specs available. For example, a shader that specifies it does not require a specular highlight would (on older hardware), utilize one less rendering pass. So for any card, which has a constant fillrate, the number of times the framebuffer is drawn to (also called overdraw) determines the final framerate. This, of course is notwithstanding the passes made onto renderable surfaces like the TV screens and the ammo indicators on the weapons.

The reason I asked you to look up that .plan on the pipelines, is because of that point that Carmack made about the continuous evolution of the pipelines. For example, did u know that the entire DOOM3 pipeline now only uses the ARB_vertex_program path? Initially, there were rendering paths written for multiple vendors for several of the same reasons you quoted, enoonmai. Carmack later decided this was detrimental as the whole point of having standards and the ARB_ extension was nullfied with that approach. So my point is: Although some cards service parts of the DOOM3 rendering engine at double/quadruple the speed, almost all of these optimizations are done on the driver, and most of DOOM3 uses standard rendering paths.

Nowadays, the line between a hardcore graphics geek and a gamer is getting mighty fuzzy. And information in any context, is all-important. I will now quote the Borg.

"Assimilate, assimilate".

--HellspawnLucifer


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2005)

oh my god. mr 47 wht r u talkin abt. u probably played it without applying the fix for nvidia cards. the water  is so cool. of course the graphics aren't as good as doom 3 but i agree with all the ppl here. the gameplay was the stress. if u don't know abt the nvidia fix take out the jan2005 issue of digit and read it . u will see that they have given the command line for running half life 2 on dx9 for nvidia cards.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Mar 7, 2005)

Very good explaination HellSpawn. Simple and easy to follow. Would like to see more of you here.


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