Half-Life 2 graphics don't hold up, right?
>>323114170
>>323114569
>>323114170
There's just something about Source's textures that make my dick hard
>>323114170
Dunno why people say the games aged graphically? Is it because HL2 is popular enough to be replayed by normie pleb casuals? Doesn't look any worse than any other game of the time, I think it looks fine.
>>323115361
This. Source engine games always have fantastic textures. One of the reasons I really liked the engine.
what HL2 technically achieved was fucking impressive at the time, specifically the transition from quake 3 to hl2 was mindblowing
>>323115893
Good for the time but almost anything that is realistically designed will not hold up
A game's atmosphere should make up for subpar graphics
>>323115779
I get the same texture hard on from Crytek games.
In contrast, UE3 has this odd texture rendering. In like all UE3 games, the textures just look like a blurry mess.
>>323116389
I actually think UE2 handles textures better than UE3.
Play Red Orchestra 1 maps redone in Red Orchestra 2 and use the same weapon, I think the level textures and especially the weapon textures look crisper and cleaner in UE2 than UE3. UE3 just fucked textures up hard with that streaming shit too.
Textures are the most important part of the graphics of a game by far yet so many games overlook them and are okay with subpar blurry muddy looking shit. Like look at the difference between Arkane's Dark Messiah on source compared to Dishonored on UE3. Dark Messiah looks crisp as fuck, game is fucking beautiful, yet Dishonored looks like a bad PS2 title in regards to the texture work, yet it's the more recent title on a newer engine.
>>323117012
I wouldn't even dare to compared DArk Messiah with Dishonored. Both are completely different beasts when it comes to graphics. DM was going for a semi realistic approach while dishonored was highly stylistic with the textures, aiming for a look that appeared closer to a water or oil painting than anything near reality.
>>323117012
I want to see a game using low poly, stylized stuff, with very high textures.
Something about Half Life 2's art design really rubbed me the wrong way. There were parts of the engine that were technically impressive, but it was wasted on a bombed-out eastern european shithole aesthetic that I could never really get behind and was massively disappointing coming from HL1's Black Mesa. The only part of the game I thought looked cool was the combine fortress, and incidentally the only Half Life 2 game I ever beat was Episode 1 because it frontloaded that environment.
2004 also saw the release of Unreal Tournament 2004, Far Cry and Painkiller, which I all felt looked way better. Hell, I'd even say Metroid Prime looked better and it was a two year old game at that point.
>>323117353
I actually really liked the environments. I didn't want them to just continue to doing labs and shit so I was fine with them expanding out into more adventurous territories, especially with the combine facilities and in episode 2. We got more looks at other areas in portal as well. Still hoping for HL 3 to change it up agiain....
>>323117245
I know they used the "muh artstyle" excuse with Dishonored but I think it's a load of shit. Those textures are the worst I have ever fucking seen since Nintendo 64 days. If your "artstyle" is making the game look that bad then you should abandon it. It's as bad as indie devs doing garbage pixel art because they are lazy and then claiming it was a throwback to SNES.
>>323117312
>low poly but high res textures
I fucking love you. Literally god tier right here. Max Payne 2 does this really well. But to see something with PS1 tier polygonal models, heavily stylized with high quality textures that aren't cartoony TF2 ripoff trash like is popular at the moment (think shit like Knack) would be amazing.
>>323117353
Speaking of wasting a good engine on bad environments, let me tell you about a little game called Doom 3, which also came out in 2004.
>>323114170
This is the episode 2 engine. Of course it holds up.
Have you fucking played the original 2004 HL2 vanilla before? You would be suprised how different the shading is.
They fucked up the aesthetics of the mapping in the Mac update though, also killed all the fucking good mods like SMOD. Will never forgive valve for that. They are dead in my book because of this.
>>323117758
Well, you don't exactly get to make the stylistic decisions now do you? If every game aimed for whatDM or Half Life was doing, then evvery game like that would be boring to look at. I'm sorry you can't appreciate a pastel environments anon.
>>323117758
Oh yeah, that Max Payne 2 picture is fucking great
>>323118093
Still a little weird that max is barely larger than the door handles on the doors.
>>323114170
Always loved the ambiance in Source Engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KBP6qPtV6Q
>>323114170
I don't even know, I'm so used to the source engine that I feel at home in it.
>>323117897
>mac update
entirely irrelevant, you made the mistake of buying a mac and you have to live with it
>>323118093
That was the exact level I was thinking off too. The roof pipes especially add so much atmosphere in that level. God I just love how fucking detailed the roof and all the walls are.
God Max Payne 2 is a perfect example of great attention to detail and perfected art style turning otherwise boring and generic locations into really interesting aesthetically pleasing places to explore.
>>323117914
If it looked like an actual pastel environment and not an overly zoomed in jpeg image then maybe I'd like it.
>>323117012
I think it's just bad specular that ruined how games looked during 7th gen. Made everything look too shiny or greasy or wet.
>>323118184
its been awhile since i replayed this. Good times.
hmm? half.... life?
what's that? some old forgotten series?
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is a magical game. The graphics will ALWAYS hold up, no matter how many years pass. It's because of the exaggerated, slightly cartoony feel to the characters and the great use of fixed lighting in particular.
>>323116389
yeah i really don't like epic's texturing.
and their baked lighting solution in ue3 is seriously just a crappier version of source's radiosity normal maps.
it really bothered me how they did it when i used udk...
>>323118505
Some old Monolith games are like that too
>>323118505
I'm not saying the textures themselves were that great, but I'm arguing in the defense that at least it was something different, you see what I mean? Would it not be better to judge it based on its merits alone for trying to be different? As far as It being overly zoomed in, that's not even close to true.
>>323118093
I still remember playing MP2 on my shitty laptop back in 2004. That engine is fucking great, even on crap hardware back then it ran beautifully.
>>323118831
LithTech was always one step behind the tech curve for the long time, but when a dev put the effort in, the results always came out looking good. Shame the engine was such a shovelware magnet.
>>323118932
It's Unreal Engine blurry abomination textures all over again.
It's funny because Dishonored has the same art style guy that helped to create HL2.
A bit of his art is sure lost with that fucking mess of blurry textures
>>323118831
Yeah I was gonna say FEAR is an example of that too but some people didn't like it. NOLF is a great example as well. For a game that is set pretty much entirely in office buildings with the color grey being primary, they did a good job of keeping it interesting, balancing realism and artysyle consistency.Dead Space 1 does this as well
>>323118772
I agree with you. VtMB does faces so well because of it's slight exaggeration.
>>323119030
>>323118093
>tfw you blast that first bad dude in the hospital and he flies into the shelf behind him
>the shelf collapses realistically and all the shit crashes down onto his splayed corpse
>2001 game
>>323119209
Again, it's the style of the game and whatnot. I feel like we both have pretty different triggers for what we like as far as graphics go.
>>323117702
>I actually really liked the environments. I didn't want them to just continue to doing labs and shit so I was fine with them expanding out into more adventurous territories, especially with the combine facilities and in episode 2. We got more looks at other areas in portal as well. Still hoping for HL 3 to change it up agiain....
Half Life 2 was actually kind of disappointing in a lot of ways.
- It had way fewer guns. I loved the huge arsenal of the first game.
- I was already tired of physics gimmicks by the time I got the gravity gun.
- Ravenholm was not scary. At all. I'm the kind of skittish guy who won't play fucking Minecraft because he doesn't want to be surprised by a creeper, and Ravenholm simply did nothing to me.
- The game was not very difficult The first game was pretty brutal at times (especially those FUCKING marines). I then played Halo's, whose AI was a step up from that, plus the monsters had cool shit like shields that blocked shots and recharging health that forced you to commit to a kill. In comparison, Half Life 2's combine AI was lackluster, and it felt like none of the enemies had any health, so I cut through them like a hot knife through butter. Lame.
- After having played Halo:CE, the Half Life 2 vehicles felt like a gigantic step back. Compared to the warthog, they felt quite stiff, and I will never understand how a game that came out two years prior managed levels the size of The Silent Cartographer or Assault on the Control Room without any loading screens, while Half Life 2 vehicle sections were full of them.
>>323114569
Anyone else notice how his shadow isn't touching his right foot
>>323119368
I was shocked seeing the shiny effects on the mannequin nurses. ico also looked great.
Half Life 2 looks pretty decent these days, but don't forget that they've been updating the engine, it looks better now then on launch.
>>323119368
It's funny how later Gen 7 was basically smeared shit textures: the generation.
>>323119583
>Ravenholm was not scary
>starts talking about minecraft
eat shitfuck you
>>323119209
the engine doesn't decide what the textures look like, the texture artists do.
>>323119368
MGS2 looks tremendous and basically runs about 10x better than MGS "locked at 20fps" 3
>>323118932
>>323119539
The compression on these screenshots is awful. If you intend on having a discussion about graphics, save these as png's or something
>>323118932
Dishonored has the worst textures of any game I've played in the past ten years and I do not understand it. Everything was so fucking ugly and poorly done, with the lowest possible quality textures imaginable. I thought I had installed the game wrong, or not set up the options right. But it was just that bad.
I honestly quit the game because of that. It didn't just feel rushed, or like someone did a shit job, it felt like a rushed shitjob ON PURPOSE. Like someone somewhere was laughing going, "these retards actually bought this game even though I made all the textures in gimp". It was like a virtual slap in the face and I just got sick of it. The story was neither interesting or captivating enough to justify the game looking like it did. And if you can't write a good story you can at the very least distract the player with some eye candy.
Dishonored just felt like a fucking insult all-round.
>>323119539
It's the engine. You can pick Gears, Bulletstorm, Arkham games, and the textures always look off. UE3 also suffered of those texture pop in problems.
>>323119885
top fucking keeeek is this a PS1 game? I've seen N64 games with better textures than that
>>323119843
It's from my old rig bub, sorry. I'm not going to replay a beautiful and boring game because I want higher quality screenshots.
>>323119885
If you want a good story or better experience overall, in all departments, play Dishonored's dlc. Not even lying, pirate it evven. THey took all their mistakes and learned from them and made a dlc that was evverything the original should have been.
>>323119982
That was every single texture up close.
>>323114170
Right, that looks like legit shit. Worse than mobile games.
>>323119539
Why did you post an image from The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter?
I don't even know if that game counts in this discussion - their texture art process was completely different from most other game's.
>>323120248
>2013 grafix
What went wrong
>>323120284
Mainly just clicking random pictures from my screenshot folder. It's getting replies if that helps.
>>323120368
I don't want to say consoles.
But it was consoles.
>>323118385
"mac update" refers to all the changes made at the same time as the mac port
don't be a retard, anon
>>323119885
>>323120248
>mfw playing Thief 2 right now and textures look better than this upclose
Granted I have the tafferpatcher mod installed but I don't' think that does anything drastic with texture changes right?
Hold on will get a screenshot.
>>323120441
Batman: Arkham Knight is irreparably broken for me and no one has efver encountered this glitch as far as I can tell.
>>323120561
What the fuck.
>>323120441
God damn, Alien Isolation was a pretty game.
Legitimately the most beautiful game ever made, IMO. I don't know how they pulled it off.
The fact that we're never going to get a proper sequel bothers me on a level I can't quite describe.
I want a game that replicates the "holy fucking shit" experience that I got when I went intothe ship's power generator and the giant pylons were blasting electricity across the entire chamber as the aliens crawled from the abyssin the most stunning scene I've ever witnessed in a video game.
>>323120561
>>323120441
Fuck Alien Isolation.
"Uhh we never got around to enable FXAA and MSAA on nvidia cards... or any kind of antialiasing anyway... eh who cares. Just upscale and then downsample from 4k or use DSR or whatever, we don't care. We already sold the game, make your own fucking fix"
>>323120496
Here's a screenshot. This area looked really nice, pretty sure it's modded textures actually now that I look at that high quality wall, and then compare with the metal structure in the water.
>>323119368
God damn, can you imagine what Team Silent could do, with the graphics power of the current gen?
>>323120834
Yeah. I don't know, and no one else does either.
>>323120865
Mainly because it was a corriodr horror game, so they could spend way more time prettying it up, and holy shit does it show. Tight horror experiences like that should be the default for horror.
>>323120893
And people did make their own fix!
>>323121114
While not Team Silent, we know Silent Hills would have looked amazing if it wasn't cancelled
>>323121086
The metal thing looks less blurry than anything in Dishonored.
>>323117897
>>323118385
>>323120446
If you're gonna play HL2 today you should really just use the HL2 Update mod freely available on steam.
It's still vanilla but fixes some lighting issues that was introduced with the Orange Box update for HL2 and just adds some subtle graphical improvements.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/290930/
Dishonored has some really nice environment work even asie from the blurry textures. Odd, how it looks so low res up close, not sure why it's like that.
>>323121506
Not sure if it's how UE3 does textures, or art style
That's the thing with Unreal Engine textures, they look smeared and cartoonish.
>>323119760
I don't understand it either, really. I have a tough time playing survival games like Rust, or open world RPG's like Skyrim because I don't like being unexpectedly mauled by aggressive, endlessly respawning enemies that I invariably never see coming that come out from over a hill, around a rock formation, or between trees.. New Vegas doesn't set off the same "oh shit" reaction because it's a desert and I can see for miles, but I'm still uneasy traveling at night because of lower visibility.
And yet Ravenholm did literally _nothing_. Literally as scary as playing Left 4 Dead solo, as in not scary at all.
>>323121506
Are you sure these screenshots aren't taken on the lowest possible graphics settings?
I don't remember the textures being this bad. Holy shit.
>>323121086
Just took a pic myself on a non texture modded version, not the same area but you can see the level of detail on the textures.
There's something about the way HL2 looks that I still really love, the world feels crisp and sharp despite now being old as fuck, the low-poly models don't take away from it I feel. As other people have mentioned a lot of games have really ugly, muddy texture work that makes the game look and feel like shit, it might just be a problem with UE though because it's so widespread.
![maxresdefault[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/nu2W2f6.jpg "maxresdefault[1].jpg")
>>323121657
>>323121262
Too bad the fixes don't eliminate the immersion breaking jaggies everywhere. You can only hope to make them slightly less noticeable, but they'll still be there, fucking with your mind more than the aliens.
And that's just not acceptable in an AAA game which clearly had that much effort and time put into it.
It's the equivalent of getting a perfectly cooked $80 prime steak with all the trimmings and then the cook takes a big steaming diarrhea shit all over it before serving it to you and when you complain he goes "just scrape it off best you can".
>>323121851
Dishonored looks great!
>>323121382
Oh yeah, for sure. Though not sure it would have been quite as "head and shoulders above the rest of the gen" as 2 and 3. (Haven't played 4 more than once, don't really recall it's quality, visually)
>>323121917
Whoa man, maybe you need to back off a little bit just chill? Just scrape the edge off a bit.
Good times...
>>323118093
Welp, reinstalling
other than the faces, which for their time were incredibly intricate, the graphics are pretty average. Valve just happened to make an enormous amount of delicious textures to put on everything, the asymmetric designs and strange but realistic rust and wood-rot brought the game to life (in the sense that everything looked decaying)
>>323118772
Is that Brendan Fraser?
>>323121917
But shitposting aside, I totally see where you are coming from. I feel like it was more liekly the suits rushing the dev to put the game out at that point. The game was a pretty big expenditure for how faithful it was to all of the canon. At least it wasn't arkham knight tiers of bad.
>>323114170
Just install the cinematic mod m8
>>323114170
>graphics
Fucking kill yourself
>>323122284
I think HL2 graphics are just a case of "it just werks"
>>323121810
No, that is the textures on "high". You either didn't look at them closely or selectively forgot it.
Passable from far away, grotesque up close.
>>323121821
If you have a save in the level, my pic is from Framed, in the little cavern if you jump down the well, or if you swim through the sewers you come out in the little pond down there. I'd like to compare vanilla to the latest version.
I am playing Thief 2 for the first time so I've never seen it vanilla. I just got the tafferpatcher like /v/ said too, and the new dark update as well.
>>323122420
There's no need to be so salty anon
>>323122417
ayyaya jus' install de cinematic mod familia, wat cud go wrong
You can make just about anything look good with bullshots and mods.
>>323122774
Give me kawaii breen.
>>323121839
yeah, hl2 has a great look to it. ue3 doesn't do anything weird with textures and it's just down to bad textures. ue3 compared to source though has shit lightmaps. source has a really nice system for it which keeps all the detail of the normal maps and importantly, difference in color reflected in normal map direction. ue3's is a simplification of source's and really sucks in comparison. also source's use of cubemaps is nice, and again a much better solution to specular with baked lighting than what ue3 does. ue3's baked lighting works perfectly fine but only with single light sources. any more than that and it may look fine initially but under any scrutiny it's easy to see how crappy it is if it's not just flat diffuse materials.
>>323122774
>ayy dr freeman, baddabing baddabing
>>323122774
>>323122480
>Skyward Sword, a game specifically designed to be a watercolor painting, had that were just as good (if not better) than Dishonored
What the hell went wrong?
>>323122871
U-uguu~?
>>323123007
>>323122904
>>323122774
Ah it makes me a little sad shitting on those because they clearly took time and effort, I'd hate more than anything to pour so much of my time and patience into something and then have everyone tell me I fucked up, but I don't understand how it got that far without someone intervening.
Far Cry 4 looked nice sometimes
>>323122576
have a separate save for every level.
tried to make it match.
>>323122989
Valkyria Chronicals did it better, Skyward Sword just ended up looking like a bad mesh of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess
>>323122774
Does the cinematic mod look good if you turn off all shit models?
>>323122915
why does it have this though
>>323123007JUST_______
>>323123525oculus rift support
>>323123439
hmm, noticing things like water being different, I'm pretty sure i don't have any texture mod though
>>323122774
that's a fucked up abdomen
>>323122989
skyward sword's textures look lower res but way less offensive. just comparing those two pictures, dishonored's textures look like they have some weird compression and shitty sharpening filters on them. the little wall even looks like it could have been a photo filtered through photoshop or something. they're not just low res, they're messy as hell, and i'm not talking about how they artistically depict messiness.
![Unity-Arno_and_Elise[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/hCNA864.jpg "Unity-Arno_and_Elise[1].jpg")
>>323123354
>complimenting a modern Ubisoft game
People can call their bullshit on a lot of things, but at this point it's a given that they make some of the prettiest games in the industry.
>>323122989
I've never played Skyward Sword or any other modern zelda and the first time someone posted pics from it emulated at high res I thought they were using some shitty filter mod, or it was one of those "take a screenshot then add a photoshop watercolor filter to it" images. I was shocked to find out it was meant to look like that.
It literally just looks like a bad photoshop filter has been applied over the game it's so awful. But yeah it's at least better than dishonored. I think all this "lets try to be like a painting" type artstyle need to stay in 2D games, they just don't work in a 3D space well.
What about Postal 2?
>>323123796
In some places Unity shines, and in cutscenes they just use doctored, high detail models.
>>323123796
True
>>323116389
god DAMN source is so fucking bad at organic environments
the dirt looks so fucking sculpted, the everything cuts off so perfectly upon meeting another surface.
this is why the aperture facility looks so good in portal 1, because they didn't have to worry about any organics, they could make all of their stiff edges and corners without any problems.
>>323123834
The problem is that Skyward Sword's art style was meant for standard definition play. It hid a lot of the issues behind heavily stylization in a way that still allowed for a lot of detail in the world and characters, and it was great.
The moment that it is emulated, though, the gradual transition turns into a sudden wall and the seemingly great texturing turns into... well, it isn't TERRIBLE, but it isn't great.
Honestly, it was one of the most clever technical achievements of the last generation, but it doesn't transfer well to non-sanctioned "ports".
>>323114170
HL2 is still one the best-looking games out there. It's perhaps the most tangible looking game, where others go over the top with shaders and post-processing.
>>323123439
Holy shit they aren't modded textures at all. That is an amazingly good looking cave for 2000 then.
Also I am pretty sure when I installed tafferpatcher I selected modded water to be installed. I assumed it would be better but it looks much worse. Gonna try change it back to default now.
Thanks for taking the comparison pic BTW.
>>323118932
Fucking rubbish generic UE3 shite.
>>323124090
I don't recall SS doing anything special. what was so clever about it?
all the areas were really enclosed. if anything was clever it was the mario galaxy games. and those looked pretty terrible up close.
aside from having too much diffusion the water looks good
>>323124401
no problem, enjoy the best game ever made.
>>323114170
>that perfectly straight water edge
I bet if you added tessellation to everything in HL2 it would look as good as anything that recently came out.
>>323125205
Unfortunately true because texture resolution has been almost completely ignored in the graphics race.
>>323124770
The watercolor effect as it faded into the distance was rad - it worked wonders to hide draw distance issues and whatnot.
The best part was, it wasn't even just a blur effect. It actually created this incredible impressionistic thing - from a distance, a screenshot could pass as an actual painting.
>>323114170
why do you need our validation, faggot?
>That moment when Ps2 games are graphically superior to Ps4 and Xbone.
>>323121839
ue looked terrible. every character in every game looks like it's made out of clay or something.
>>323124770
>if anything was clever it was the mario galaxy games. and those looked pretty terrible up close
ya naw
>>323123494
No ,it's complete garbate, just use:
>>323121607
>>323125686
I feel you family.
>>323125141
I am liking it so far but the tonal difference between 1 and 2 is a pretty big shift.
Maybe it's because I played Thief 1 years and years ago, but for some reason never played Thief 2 until now. I replayed Thief 1 recently with all the modern patches and loved all that atmosphere and level design, and had some nostalgia over it, and then figured why not finally play Thief 2. Then there is a massive shift in tone from late medieval fantasy with magic and tricksie woodie lord speak, dark horror indiana jones type tomb raiding finding some lost eye, with and Lords and Nobles and this hammerite religious group and Zoroastrian inspired middle eastern mage towers. To the Industrial age with modern police stations, metal structures, robots, shipping companies, talk of pirates and overseas colonies, little bits of politics and environmentalism with the 'My house is now blackened and all the trees are dead" conversations you overhear in a more modern English dialect.
I just didn't expect this change, and I really liked the atmosphere of Thief 1. So I am a little disappointed, but also the new atmosphere is great too so I like it at the same time. The gameplay mechanics themselves seem much improved though, as is the stealth itself. In thief 1 I preferred the exploration levels like Down in the Bonehoard over the city levels because stealth always felt a little broken in 1, but it's not the case here.
I only finished Framed yesterday though, gonna play the next level in an hour or so. Hope it still has exploration maze like levels in addition to stealth focused ones too.
>>323125392
what draw distance? TP was more open than SS.
you want impressive for the wii, look at xenoblade. now that was a technical feat.
>>323125335
Why the fuck is this when textures are the most fucking important and most noticeable part of graphics? Texture quality can make or break a games look.
>>323125335
>texture resolution has been almost completely ignored in the graphics race
So what's taking up 60gb of harddrive space if it's not gigaoodles of textures?
>>323126632
Uncompressed sound
>>323126632
More robust sound libraries and more content.
The textures may not be amazing, but there are a shitload of them.
>>323126632
Stupid motherfuckers who don't know how to compress audio.
Like Titanfall....
>>323126326
I genually felt the same way, and felt 1 was better until i replayed them both.
I still really like what 1 does but the missions in 2 are just so great, and every single one of them feel like a heist, if you end up liking 1 more I feel like it's an acceptable opinion I won't judge, but you should try to appreciate 2 for the great level design and small improvements.
>>323123834
It worked pretty well with Okami.
>>323119368
HATE NEWSPAPER
>>323118184
>There will never be a spin off campaign of how Ravenholm became infested and Father Grigori lost his mind.
It would also have been neat to see npcs actually get headcrabbed and change into zombies instead of just being pounced to death.
>>323126632
>>323126774
>Titanfall
>35GB out of the 48GB launch size was uncompressed audio
Yup, thank shitty consoles and low tier dual core faggots who bought into those anniversy chips.
>>323123796
her head looks weird, stills lie
>>323124030
Because mapping in Source is still largely based on brushes, and HL2 was their first crack at it anyway. Use more models instead of brushes and it turns out fine.
>>323115361
It's clean. You get what they made, no ridiculous shaders or effects (partly because Source shits itself once too many particles start flying, hence why TF2 runs so badly now).
Same reason why if you've spent enough time playing Source games whenever you see a render from Garry's Mod or SFM or etc, you can always tell it was made in Source just from the textures and lighting, even if it's using all original models.
>>323126681
>>323126753
>>323126774
>>323127020
Well shit
>>323125686
looks like a wiiu game but better.
>>323117012
>I actually think UE2 handles textures better than UE3.
It totally does. Just look at UT2004 (UE2.5) and how fucking sharp its textures are despite the lower-poly environments and characters.
It's a good feeling to know that I bought into the only game of this generation whose breadth of content and texture quality is actually justifying the huge download size.Are you a citizen yet, /v/?
>>323127150
I think it's got more to do with the eastern european setting. just so comfy. all those little seaside shantytowns.
I'm replaying Bioshock at the moment and I don't think its graphics even hold up today
Except maybe the water
What is it about source that looks so crisp?
>>323118772
>It's because of the exaggerated, slightly cartoony feel to the characters and the great use of fixed lighting in particular.
I feel like GoldSRC did the same thing before HL2 and Source went for photorealism. HL1 aged way better than HL2 because while it looks dated, everything from the Black Mesa hallways to the headcrabs to the scientists and their ridiculous ties all have this slightly cartoony slant to them that makes everything age in sync instead of looking at a game two years later and going, "Wow, this looks like shit! Did they just take photos of concrete for the walls?"
>>323126632
Executables, runtimes, and cutscenes. With UE3 and 4 you ship many gigabytes just for the engine and its supporting libraries.
>>323127573
Pic unrelated? Granted I haven't played it in a while, but in my mind I don't see how Bioshock wouldn't hold .
>>323127573
Looks fine to me tbH pham
>>323127334
Fuck yes I am. I can never understand how SC doesn't show up in every single graphics thread. It's easily the prettiest game available right now.
>>323118831
I need to play this game already.
>>323127889
Because everything looks like shiny plastic toys instead of cold metal.
>>323127573
naw, water looks bad, rest looks good. funny they had like 3 people working on water alone.
>>323127618
No bullshit to hide inherent engine flaws and a legacy directly dating back to the Quake 1 engine.
>>323128105
To be fair, it's not like everything would be made out of metal, a large portion would presumably be made out of plastic and... whatever-the-fuck they make tiles and tables out of. You know, like the modern era.
>>323127713
uh, isn't that just what they do for textures?
>>323128328
Often, but if you get that mixed with more detailed, hand-worked characters, objects, etc, it becomes super obvious what parts of the game were handmade and which parts were assigned to Intern Johnny to take this camera and stare at some buildings.
>>323127150
>>323127401
Nah he's right. I can always tell a source game just by looking at their textures and lighting. Something very disctinct about them that I love, I think he's right that they are clean textures with no filtering and shaders or other shit put over the top of them.
They just look so fucking crisp and clear, why the fuck do so little devs take this route? Why muddle up your textures with shaders and shit to make them look blurry? Or do engines like UE3 do that by default?
>>323126839
Oh I will appreciate it as it's own thing for sure. I just really liked that Thief 1 had that, near horror aesthetic to it. God tier sound design with the hammer haunts and those hammerite ghosts too. Did you ever play Planescape Torment? There is a part where it describes a characters voice as the grinding of rocks and boulders forming syntax to mimic human voice, yet not in any way natural, but still understandable. That's what those hammer ghosts voices felt like to me with all the buzzing and wisping. Spooky as fuck.
>>323117353
The art design really makes it hard to come back to. Half-Life 2 is one of my favorite FPS games, but Episode one and two did far better because of the environments and put the original to shame.
Now that you mention it too, it's such a stark contrast to Black Mesa. It's almost like some recently graduated art major was being a little pretentious with some juxtaposition.
How's Unreal 4 turning out?
>>323114170
I think it does.
>>323117761
Doom 3's environments were gorgeous. It was everything else that sucked.
>>323128576
The setting in thief is seriously one of my favorites, did you ever watch the making of documentary? it's pretty good, i think it's called through the looking glass or something similar
>>323128313
I mean, I love my polymers and composites too but that doesn't mean I'm waxing literally everything into a glossy shine.
>>323128721
Pretty awesome. Serious potential for amazing graphics that run well. I do think it has its "look" that people will begin to notice, but not nearly as bad as UE2 or 3.
>>323128576
>Something very disctinct about them that I love, I think he's right that they are clean textures with no filtering and shaders or other shit put over the top of them.
I've spent a lot of time mulling over this and I think part of it is the anti-aliasing, too. Source enables anti-aliasing in a very simple way, just render the image larger and then scale the bitch down, same as most older engines do. You look at newer engines and there's ALWAYS something fucking with it- edge-detect AA that never works right, FXAA blurring everything, multisampling that leaves artifacting and dithering in color bands and at edges, and so on. Source doesn't do any of that, and- unless you're playing a mod that intentionally adds that sort of thing- the only aftereffects are bloom or HDR (which you can adjust the intensity of through the console- why don't more engines have this stuff open to players?), no shitty fake motion blur, no goddamned blue/red or blue/yellow color fringing around everything like FUCKING EVERYONE IS DOING THESE DAYS, etc.
I think it looks fine.
Honestly, I just look at the golden era of 3D (2001-2007) and I weep. Everything's grinded to a halt. Not only are games graphically shit today, they're also boring and unimaginative shit. Where'd all the love and passion go? Where's all the neat little easter eggs? What happened to gameplay being meant for long lasting fun, not just cheap sub 10 hour campaigns designed for annual releases? I am just so fucking depressed every time I stumble into one of these threads. The dream is dead. Gaming is dead.
I wonder if hl will ever see the light of day again.
not that I even care at this point. just morbid curiosity. can't believe they just ended their flagship series on a cliffhanger though.
that's like disney going "welp, let's not make another star wars. that's good enough."
desu I think the main reason that 7th gen looked so muddy had less to do with UE3's texture filtering and horrendous lightmaps (though those did play a part) and more to do with the fact that the consoles of the time had relatively little RAM even compared to PCs at the time. Couple that with the fact that it was the first gen with unified shaders (allowing more "expensive" effects to be added simply) meant that devs just decided to throw themselves headfirst into bump maps and particles and filters. Something had to be cut, so textures just got thrown in the wash.
>>323129143
source cant do natural environments
>>323129280
most 7th gen games have textures that are fine on pc
it was muddy because of the shit shaders
I still think HL2 looks pretty goddamn good. Source engine is a product of wizardry. I don't know why so many people hate it.
>>323129424
Say that to my face bitch
>yfw HL2: E2 has better trees than Killzone:SF
>>323129654
>>323129746
Legit looks bad. HL2 didn't even have great graphics for its time.
>>323128739
>>323129531
>>323129654
>>323129746
And people don't think Valve is capable of bringing the world to it's knees once again with Half Life 3.
This game is 12 years old and it looks phenomenal. Honestly this in VR, with each eye getting that same resolution and 90+ degree FOV, custom tracked controllers with recoil and vibration feedback, I don't think I'd need another game ever again.
>>323128721
Not bad at all.
>>323129047
There's definitely a distinct look to it- even on maxed settings, there's a slight fuzziness/grain to the image, especially noticeable around model edges and wherever there's foliage/grass- but it's nothing serious. Bigger issues are definitely screen tearing and mouse lag, although I'm not sure if that's just my system or if it's UT4 or UE4 itself (same for the grain).
>>323129914
too bad they never plan on making HL3
>low poly and high res textures
you are all my niggas
>>323117012
>streaming
I booted up tf2 recently and noticed the game now has texture streaming on weapons. What's up with that?
>>323129914
Its been more than 10 fucking years.
Also source 2 hasn't been heard of since last March.
![System_Shock[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/6JGZbSQ.png "System_Shock[1].png")
I hope the System Shock remake is good. Been playing the Enhanced edition lately.
I think if it has a UI like SS2's and some real fps action, it could be something really good. Not how it was originally intended to play but everybody uses mouselook now.
>>323129424
Artist shortcoming.
>>323129897
How would (you) know? (You) weren't even alive back then.
>>323129085
I agree. Source is advanced enough to look graphically good, without being so advanced that the engine has too many inbuilt post processing features to fuck up, clutter and dirty your image down.
I really love playing old games and just marveling at how clean my image is. No fucking bleed of colors and blur and DOF and bloom and shit fucking everywhere. It almost feels minimalist in a sense that it's just textures, geometry and basic static/baked lighting when you play an old gen game now. New gen games just feel so visually cluttered. I usually turn almost all post processing effects off when I play anyways to minimize tax on the framerate and because it looks better without.
>>323128996
No I haven't but after I finish Thief 2 I might give it a watch. But yeah the setting is pretty interesting and the way the cutscenes are done is just brilliant. I dunno how but that 2D images background mixed with silhouettes of real actors and some basic animation really made for a lot of atmosphere. Plus there was something about the way they did the animation the felt, satisfying. Like when the tricksters third eye appears from his forehead, I don't know how to describe it but it feels believable.
>>323119885
What about new wolfenstein? Some parts look good but because of MEGATEXTURES small things end up looking like its from a ps1 game. Also everythings fucking bolted to the floor.
>>323129936
Look hard enough of course and you'll find visibly mirrored textures and bits of fluff here and there, but for a single game running on UE4 that's still in alpha stages I wouldn't say it's that bad at all.
Hoping they get more polished maps out soon- Facing Worlds is neat and all and Outpost 23 looks gorgeous but I'm eagerly awaiting Deck to be finalized.
>>323130284
A while back they got rid of first-person weapon viewmodels- the hands are the same, but the weapons now use the same model and texture as the third-person weapons to make it easier to code for players using non-stock weapons. It's super noticeable on a few of them like the minigun and rocket launcher due to considerably blockier models and different textures, especially if you've been playing for years or have an old screenshot to compare it to.
>>323130571
Honestly with the mouselook, the combat is sometimes less clunky than SS2 thanks to no stat requirements for certain weapons or repair mechanics.
>>323120893
I really hate it when devs release a game and literally never patch it in any way. Alien isolation got dlc but never any fixes so its full of shader aliasing.
>>323118093
>no one has remade the first game in the second yet
>no one has remade the first two games in the third yet/not enough interest in making modding tools and creating mods in general
>>323130938
MEGATEXTURES make wide open spaces a lot nicer looking but yeah, close up everything looks like garbage
>>323130951
>A while back they got rid of first-person weapon viewmodels but the weapons now use the same model and texture as the third-person It's super noticeable
How can you fuck up so badly? Oh my god I don't even play TF2 and this makes me sad? Why would you do this? I am almost just cringing at this decision by valve.
Can anyone post comparion pics of the originals vs the downgrade?
>>323130571
there's a remake now?
>>323130951
>>323130938
New Order looks really goddamn good at some parts (the bridge, the moon, the castle in '46) where the engine can really stretch its legs out a bit, and at other parts look fucking awful (the sewers, the moon again, the castle in '60) due to you being stuck in cramped quarters looking at fucking 64x64 wall textures and flat desks with pencils and notebooks as part of the surface the whole time.
>>323131409
I wish I could, but I lost pretty much all my old, OLD screenshots someplace in my external hard drive and have no idea where they're stored; 4chan is giving me errors out the ass as well, what fun. A quick Google for "TF2 v_model vs c_model comparison" should turn up a few results, at least.
>>323129897
this. FEAR and far cry looked much better.
>>323114170
It's pretty amazing, even my brother was impressed that this was a game from 2004
Blitzkriegs weird combination of 2D and 3D somehow managed to make this game look fucking brilliant. This will never not look good.
>>323131702
Am I the only one who wouldn't mind if all games looked like mid 2000's games? I really can't stand the hyperrealistic shit nowadays tbqh
>>323130469
Source 2 is already released though?
>>323123597
>>323122915
Oh god I remember this thread
why would someone do this, don't sexualize the Alyx.
>>323131563
Yes
Did they nerf the campaign in half life 2?
I remember having trouble with that part at with the lighthouse where the combine come and attack via the airships. I could have sworn they sent like 4 ship loads of guys the first time i played but last time i played they sent 1 maybe 2, 1 at a time. I just used a rocket on each ones men as they got off and that was it.
Is this another game that got nerfed for the casuals? i was playing on hardest difficulty too.
>>323129154
>Where's all the neat little easter eggs?
Speaking of easter eggs and Thief. In the beginning of Framed, if you throw a spy camera thing over the wall to your left, there are a zombified couple dancing together in death. I found this by accident just fucking around seeing where I could throw the thing. I love when games do this, reward exploration in neat ways like this.
>>323132406
It might be bugged.
I know for a fact that part at the end of entrapment with the teleporter is. During the last wave no enemies run in.
>old graphics thread
Ayyyyyyy
>>323129265
Valve is just a gambling company now. I wonder if someone could sue them for illegal gambling and get them to stop fucking around with betting and skins and item drops and make a fucking game again.
What do they even do with all the money they get? Blow it on whores? Why does no one there have an urge to express some creativity outside of skins anymore?
>>323129634
This. Source is by far my favorite game engine, it's a joy to play and view. But say this anywhere and you get people calling you a "valve fanboy" or other stupid shit like that. I hate valve, I just really like the look and feel of source. I don't even care about the load times.
>>323132080
I would not mind at all. I play mostly older games anyways so I wouldn't even notice the difference.
>>323114170
Of course they do you faggot. HL2 is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games with "realistic" graphics ever made.
>that colours
>that lighting
>that textures
>that delicious looking water
>that fucking facial expressions nuanced NPC body language
Sure it might not have all the austic post-processing that we're all used to but it's aged pretty fucking well if you ask me
>>323132345
Is this the actual remake or just a mod?
>>323132609
I played about a hundred hours of ET but never played RTCW
>>323131702
FEAR looks pretty bad outside of firefights. Don't get me wrong, the firefights look absolutely fucking amazing (dem particles and lighting), but HL2 is consistently nicer looking
>>323133230
This.
Funny how it came out in 2004, the same year The Incredibles came out, which is when I consider the last time CGI in a movie was impressive.
I need to watch that movie again, and the delicious DVD extras.
>>323133327
http://www.polygon.com/2015/11/25/9801434/system-shock-remake-first-look-art
Real. This is the source of the images.
>>323120893
The aliasing of that game on consoles is absolutely disgusting. Put me off playing the game completely
>>323131206
Roscoe Street is in multiplayer for MP3 at least?
I think my conclusion with this thread is: I miss sharp textures.
As a man with myopia, I dont want games with shitty textures too
I dont have anything against high poly, but devs seen just to make trillion poly, It completely fucks the shadows (hl2 have VERY sharp shadows, mostly Thanks to that) and ignore the textures.
Also, dishonored have a pretty nice art stile, so good It hold It up, BUT the textures are bad. They could be stylized AND high quality, you know
>>323132080
>>323130179
tfw I pussied out near the end of the game
Last thing I remembered is that I heard a voice telling me that Alma was really close to me. That's when I noped out
Graphics are overrated.
>>323132112
I think dota2 is running in a experimental source 2 branch
>>323132651
uh, probably maintaining steam.
>>323132003
Cossacks 2 also some weird 2D + 3D mix going on and it looks fantastic. Low res image that isn't mine here, but just to show it off. Also when you pan the camera you can see behind buildings and trees as your perspective actually changes, it looks really neat.
>>323134107
Oh my god it's like when you select something in Paint, then hold shift and drag it around.
>>323133407
I am opposite. I loved RTCW but for some reason Enemy Territory didn't work when I installed it and I never tried to hard to trouble shoot. I regret it now.
>>323133879
>myopia
Me too man. Its kinda funny that everyone is always complaining about how all games now are just blurry messes when to me it just looks normal.
>>323132609
The RTCW mp_beach test had me addicted to that game, great memories
I don't care if you like Black Mesa or not, but damn does it really work the Source Engine well.
>>323134397
I'd agree if some of the lighting effects didn't fuck the framerate sideways
>>323134397
Are there people that don't like Black Mesa?
>>323134397
Black Mesa-similar workshop for Half-Life 2 when?????????
>>323134491
In my experience HL1 fans don't like anything
>>323133602
most of it was just aesthetics I think. bunch of grey corridors don't exactly do it justice.
>>323132080
I always wondered how things would be if we just stayed in the 6th generation.
>>323134397
Agreed.
>>323134397
Think how good it would look if it was still using the pre-Ep2 version of Source that let you load uncompressed textures.
Man I miss that.
>>323134484
The fuck kinda card are you using.
>>323134641
>most of it was just aesthetics I think. bunch of grey corridors don't exactly do it justice.
You are right. The art direction has a lot to do with it. And to be perfectly honest I really liked the office building/industrial setting of FEAR, it blended very well with the pseudo-scifi and horror elements. It doesn't look as detailed or as interesting as HL2, but it works.
>>323133974
Red Faction looked pretty decent for an early PS2 game. Someone should post the webm for the glass shattering.
Source 2 when?
>>323114170
>>323114170
>>323114170
>>323114170
>>323114170
Holy fuck this thread is full of newfags. It got a huge graphical update a couple of years ago, but you fucking children were probbably not even born at the time.
Fuck every single person in this thread. You are so fucking dumb
>>323135180
>already discussed and moved on
>lol didnt read
>HURR YOU DIDN'T MENTION THING
>>323135180
>you right now
>>323135350
the 2004 release looks like fucking garbage today yet you are all still fapping about how hl2 graphics hold up
you are fucking stupid
doom 3 released the same year holds up better because it at least had dynamic lightning instead of hl2 garbage static lightning bullshit
