Half Life 2: I'm really missing the point

[ThunderPeel2001]

Wow, that looks a lot better. I wonder how long before Valve shut him down?

[brkl]

They Botoxed Alyx! :(

[Wrestlevania]

They Botoxed Alyx! :(

I thought she looked much more natural actually...

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Has anyone tried the Half-Life 2: Cinematic Mod at all? Seem to remember some distant discussion about this in threads past - specifically how impressive everything was... except for the purile reskin of Alyx, which makes me sad:

It's also a massive 10GBs in size too. However, there's a "lite" version that just contains the environment stuff and not the new character models; might be worth a punt.

[Patters]

I thought she looked much more natural actually...

Lazy embed:

-R5Z8Vfv32s

Has anyone tried the Half-Life 2: Cinematic Mod at all? Seem to remember some distant discussion about this in threads past - specifically how impressive everything was... except for the purile reskin of Alyx, which makes me sad:

It's also a massive 10GBs in size too. However, there's a "lite" version that just contains the environment stuff and not the new character models; might be worth a punt.

I heard something along the lines of Crysis Specs...

[Wrestlevania]

I heard something along the lines of Crysis Specs...

Is that the mod where all the soldiers wear glasses..?

LOL

[brkl]

I thought she looked much more natural actually...

Huh, the facial animation is just gone. Just another grimacing 3d model like in every other game :/

[Korax]

I've played a few different versions of the Cinematic Mod. I liked all the improvements done to everything but the character models. While it was interesting to see a little more variety in the citizen/rebel models, all the main characters were completely ruined. Eli looked like a white guy with a really dark tan, Alyx was replaced with that travesty of a character model, and Mossman was just the Alyx replacement with a sweater. Barney and Kleiner weren't bad, but they were different enough from the original to make it feel weird. The only good model replacement he had was an up-rezzed version of Alyx's original model and textures, which he's taken out of the last couple of releases.

[Thrik]

Haha, oh I see that now. It looks like he literally used the Alyx model from the chapters, which I assume don't contain the special case facial animations used in the original game. Bit of a blunder.

With issues like that present I'd be tempted to just not bother, which is sad as it must have taken him ages to do all that stuff.

[brkl]

That just breaks it for me. The rest might improve the experience... well, definitely not the aurora... Okay, most of it might be good, but the damn animations have to be intact.

[Wrestlevania]

Huh, the facial animation is just gone. Just another grimacing 3d model like in every other game :/

You're right; the subtly - and sincerity - in the animation has gone. I didn't notice that before, just that her skin tone seemed more natural and her face less plasticky.

[Korax]

Well, I just finished playing through using the Update mod. The HDR effects are nice, although there were a couple points when bright light washed out detail and made it a bit hard to see. I suppose it's probably "realistic," but that's the sort of thing that shouldn't happen intentionally in a game. I can't really comment on the facial animations, though, because I've played so many times that I already know what's going on and just ignore most of what happens during dialog scenes.

[brkl]

No it's not realistic! Dang, just use your eyes, they adapt to bring lights. It's kind of realistic in that it looks like what using a cheap digital camera was in the early noughties. It can't capture all of the dynamic range of the scene (because the scene now has high dynamic range) so the bright bits get washed out. It's like the lens flare effect. That only happens and looks like what it does in games if you're shooting video with a 10-element lens. Why are game makers trying to make games look more and more like the characters have cheap video cameras strapped to their eyes?

[Korax]

The parts I was talking about were when the entire room was bathed in bright light (inside the Citadel, where everything is awash in fluorescent white). The change is just so drastic that it takes a while to adjust, and you never really spend much time in those areas. It was familiar to me, at least, because I spend so much time avoiding the sun that when I go outside, I'm practically blind for the next 5 minutes.

I'm glad to see that someone else agrees with me about rendering lens flares. Any time I see it in a game, it bothers me that something so obvious to me (someone with a barely-more-than-passing knowledge of cameras and their construction) but apparently never crossed the minds of people who work in visual media professionally.

[Thrik]

I wouldn't go so far as to totally diss Valve's effect, because I also have more sensitive eyes than average and if I do the sunny-day-to-dark-room thing I also get a good few seconds of being pretty much unable to see anything in that room until my vision slowly adjusts — and even then I get lingering light burn.

And while when I'm outdoors in the sun all my vision doesn't burn out to white, I am forced to squint even if I'm not looking at the sun. Don't how they'd emulate that in a game, though.

It's definitely too exaggerated, though. You'll notice they sped the effect up considerably and made it more subtle in Team Fortress 2, which works much better.

[toblix]

No it's not realistic!

Surely you have at one point been outside on a bright and sunny day, and then gone inside a house or some other building? If your eyes didn't need some time to adjust to the low light-level, you're some kind of Super Man.

edit: I also found this image kind of funny:

[Thrik]

Haha. It's true, but then Valve's effect really isn't and never was HDR in the sense it's meant to mean — not sure why they even called it that.

Maybe dynamic exposure or something would have been more appropriate.

[toblix]

I guess they're using the term because the lighting model has a high dynamic range, as opposed to the camera.

[brkl]

Yeah, that's probably it, toblix. It's a virtual camera though, so why does it have low dynamic range when it could be perfect?

[Scrobbs]

I remember playing it first back when it came out, or just after, late '98 or something, and a friend saying it was awesome, so I tried it on his machine. This was back when I had no money, so didn't have a machine to run it. Got a about a third the way through, remember loving it, and then I ended up leaving the area. So I forgot about it.

Two years later I started a job in a multimedia firm around 2000, and they were all HL mad - played DM at lunchtimes and after work etc. I loved that too, so played the MP a little bit, then played the game (on work machine as I didn't have the resources to divert for personal use), and loved it all over again.

Was also very impressed that valve had written the game so that it ran on NT - I think the games that did you could count on the fingers of one hand at that time. I even upgraded my work machine with a gfx card that I bought personally so I could play with better resolution (Geforce 2 iirc)

At the time, there was no other game with the atmosphere, quality of story and gameplay that could touch it. That's why there was so much hype and playing it now will seem kind of ordinary, but at the time it was in a league of its own.

Found HL2 good, but a little boring in places. The coastal section was fab - and the bridge...ooooo...can remember the vertigo and stomach churns it gave me even now!

At least the Black Mesa devs are getting a little more voluble on twitter, so hopefully they're getting close to releasing something.

[brkl]

I hope Black Mesa'll be released eventually so I'll get to play HL1 properly. I couldn't get into it when it was released. Just felt like a boring corridor-run after the intro.

[DanJW]

HL1 is much slower paced than 2. There are several maps of nothing but headcrabs and zombies.

The real fun is the puzzles in that game. Especially the puzzles that you have to solve while under attack. Remember that up until that point FPS puzzles had always been "find the blue key card for the blue door".

[Murdoc]

I hope Black Mesa'll be released eventually so I'll get to play HL1 properly. I couldn't get into it when it was released. Just felt like a boring corridor-run after the intro.

Love Hl1, but would love to do another play through, but I too am waiting for Black Mesa.

[DanJW]

In related news: I recently got around to finally playing Blue Shift, courtesy of Steam. Man that is one boring expansion. Very short, nothing all that interesting in the way of puzzles or locations and the climax... well there isn't one.

Opposing Force on the other hand is great stuff, despite the shoehorn used on the alien backstory.

Edited January 7, 2010 by DanJW

[Thrik]

I loved Opposing Force when it came out. Totally defined what an expansion pack should be.

Never played the others.

[Korax]

Yeah, Blue Shift was a big disappointment. The only really good thing about it was the "high definition" model pack it came with.