Not really EP1 related, but more tech demos are on the way!

[SFLUFAN]

Eurogamer: Lost Coast was clearly a successful way of demoing and testing HDR and the commentary system. Do you plan to roll out more tech demos soon?

Gabe Newell: Yeah, we have a couple...

Eurogamer: This year?

Gabe Newell: This year, yes.

Eurogamer: Are you planning to talk about those soon?

Gabe Newell: Yes, now that Episode One's done.

 

[solideliquid]

Niiice!

I was hoping that Episode I would include a test demo like CS:S and HL: Lost Coast.

Oh well.

 

[Steel.Inferno]

What new tech do they have to show, I wonder?

I'm looking for something that actually affects gameplay for once, like kickass A.I.

Too bad it will almost certainly be graphical in nature, though something related to plot/storyline development could be intriguing too. A game without a good plot is nothing IMO. Especially when certain games have shown that this industry can be one of the most rewarding and entertaining ways to tell a story. Then again, I got my introduction into modern shooters with games like Max Payne, not Serious Sam or Doom.

 

[B_MAN]

sweeeeet
good news
valve ftw

 

[99.vikram]

Woohoo

More gaming on the way

 

[M1CH43L]

Yeah, SHDR is coming! j/k....... Looking forward to another demo though.

 

[jondy]

****in' Image Based Rendering, bitches! And hopefully motion blur. And maybe some new lighting tricks?

 

[Reginald]

I hope the gameplay is actually as good as Lost Coast because I genuinely enjoyed that.

 

[Hypnosos]

HELL YEAH! Give me, give me!

 

[baron insig]

i would liek to see advantages taken with X fi sound cards

 

[Ren.182]

I'd love to see motion blurr. Maybe real-time lighting and shadows. I want to play that map on DOD: Source they made to show off the different effects they created. That'd be cool.

Rofl @ your sig, Jondy Woo I'm in there <3

 

[kupocake]

But by their own admission Episode One was significantly delayed by Lost Coast's release. Unless the Features are actually in Episode Two and Three, i'd rather they didn't fuss to much about the tech-demos...

They always did hint that there would be a series of these demos, back when they called them "the ATi levels"... now that's a nostalgia trip for you

 

[Kadayi]

Image-based rendering...if Valve ship that during the episodes it will blow all the other engine competition away.

 

[Eejit]

So what is image-based rendering and why would it rock?

omz0r if you want, but I don't bother reading up on forthcoming graphics advances. I usually just wait for it

 

[MorganFreeman911]

What IS IBR?

 

[Asknoone]

This excites me. I loved Lost Coast and would love to see another level in the Half-life universe. Fook whatever graphical update it brings.

 

[Kadayi]

What IS IBR?

It's a different way of rendering a gameworld in that the 3D environment only exists as 3D when it is close to the player and in their viewpoint, by doing so it significantly reduces a games polycounts and therefore exponentially increase the opportunity to add in more detail to your game environments (envisage actual crowded street scenes in a game for once).

There aren't many sort of samples that I can cite to demonstrate the principal (no one else has ever mentioned working on the idea of it save Valve), but it's slightly akin to the kind of thing that can be seen in Minority report when Tom Cruise gets stoned out of his gourd and watches a 3D hologram image of his son running by a lake and then an intimate moment with his ex-wife. Now that might not seem that fancy if you recall it, but you have to put yourself in Toms seat and realise that to him, everything looks completely 3D. Anyhows Gabe gives a better description when he talks about future tech in this video interview for 1UP from last year:-

http://www.1up.com/flat/Themeweek/Valve/video5.html

Hope that helps

Kadayi

 

[theotherguy]

it takes faraway models and renders them in real time as sprites. So it will look exactley the same as normal rendering, but it will give you significant performance increases. (at least this is what I thought it was )

 

[Cypher19]

There aren't many sort of samples that I can cite to demonstrate the principal (no one else has ever mentioned working on the idea of it save Valve)

Far Cry did it for its vegetation, and Rogue Squadron 3 Rebel Strike did it to handle so many ships. It's called "impostors", unless I'm missing some subtlety from the 1up interview. Which I don't think I am; what he describes basically is impostors.

There's this technology that was really that I'd like to see us get into production, which is a different approach to rendering complexity. Moving things into and out of an image domain, and then seamlessly interpolating between those motions, so everything close to you is physical, and is geometry, and everything really far away from you is an image, but you have no way of telling that if you do it properly, and things can fly back and forth, so as far as you're concerned, it all feels like world to you, but as far as your rendering is concerned, you're keeping your shader budgets, and fillrate budgets under control.

 

[Hyperion2010]

****in' Image Based Rendering, bitches! And hopefully motion blur. And maybe some new lighting tricks?

Holy crap, I forgot about that! So THATS how they're going to do forests and it also explains things in the ep2 video

 

[605Scorpion]

Isn't that just a really advanced LOD?

 

[Asknoone]

Holy crap, I forgot about that! So THATS how they're going to do forests and it also explains things in the ep2 video

It does!? Please, explain.

 

[Remus]

Far Cry did it for its vegetation, and Rogue Squadron 3 Rebel Strike did it to handle so many ships. It's called "impostors", unless I'm missing some subtlety from the 1up interview. Which I don't think I am; what he describes basically is impostors.

Yep that's what IBR really is. I think it's a good idea and it makes a huge difference performance wise but in Far Cry for instance I didn't like that the changes between the 3d trees and the "impostors" were just too abrupt you could see them change. In one frame they would look in one way but if you backed up a little more they would suddenly change shape. If they would fix this problem and make the transition between 3d and 2d subtle it would do just fine.

 

[Kadayi]

Far Cry did it for its vegetation, and Rogue Squadron 3 Rebel Strike did it to handle so many ships. It's called "impostors", unless I'm missing some subtlety from the 1up interview. Which I don't think I am; what he describes basically is impostors.

Imposters is just another form of LoD. IBR is much more sophisticated approach because everything you see in game (landscape, NPCs, Vehicles, Objects) are constantly moving in and out of an image frame based upon the players movement. It's not a supplemental approach to existing rendering styles like imposters, it's the whole approach.

 

[0mar]

HDR was a different way of doing textures and lightning, which is why it took so long to implement. One of the commentaries in Lost Coast talked about how they had to redo every single texture to include the HDR numbers, which is a major reason why HDR implementation took so long with Ep1. Now that Valve is mroe comfortable with it, it shouldn't take as long to release Ep2.