ValVed RaY
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these facts are taken from some hl2 site
Half-Life 2 uses the Source engine, developed by Valve Software. The engine's minimal requirements are a 700Mhz processor, 128 mb ram and a DirectX6.0 compatible video card. Of course on such a machine, don't expect to see reflective water, bump-mapped textures and dynamic shadows. The game runs with 70 fps with maximum details turned on with a machine such as this: 1700Mhz cpu, 256 mb ram, GeForce4ti4000.
The quality of rendered images in Half-Life 2 is awesome. As for me it is even better then in Doom 3. Here is a short list of engine features:
- Dynamic shadows (and lightning). No comments - promises to be like in Doom 3.
- Powerful particle system. Allows creatoin of different effects - from sparks, to dust particles in rays of sun light.
- Powerful physics engine (based on code, licensed from Havok). All objects in game are interactive - i.e. you can take a barrel and throw it into a shelf with tools and objects that will fall like in real life, making different sounds depending on size (and material) of each object.
- Real time reflective water.
- Bump-mapped materials. Used for decals from guns, clothes\skin of NPC (it makes them look like real people, especially eyes).- ability to create indoor, outdoor and urbanized levels
- Powerful materials system. Remember those moments in Half-Life where you couldn't destroy glass with rockets or wooden doors with grenades? This won't happen in Half-Life 2, because all materials act as they would in real life. If you shoot a wooden door, you can be sure it will open
It is good to hear that for real maniacs, it will be possible to cut monsters into pieces and look what is inside them, so basically you can cut a monster's skin and look at his... erm... organs.
Also I want to say some more on characters. As you may have heard, NPC's have muscles! We will be able to see leg muscles when the character runs, jaw muscles when they talk. But the most interesting is that the face is made of little pieces (which resemble muscles I think) to make characters express their emotions as real people do. To do that, Valve hired a doctor who did research on people mimics. But that is not all! Eyes of characters in Half-Life 2 are like you haven't seen in any game - they can be wet, you can see reflections of light sources in them. Also, the characters will be able to move their eyeballs to search for something. For example a cup on the table or person in the room.
And the last thing - information for modders. For creating levels, the Source Engine uses the Valve Hammer Editor, which will ship with the game (along with SDK). Good news is that Valve is going to release the SDK before Half-Life 2 comes out. It will probably be equipted with some kind of test applicaiton, that will allow testing of compiled maps.
Half-Life 2 uses the Source engine, developed by Valve Software. The engine's minimal requirements are a 700Mhz processor, 128 mb ram and a DirectX6.0 compatible video card. Of course on such a machine, don't expect to see reflective water, bump-mapped textures and dynamic shadows. The game runs with 70 fps with maximum details turned on with a machine such as this: 1700Mhz cpu, 256 mb ram, GeForce4ti4000.
The quality of rendered images in Half-Life 2 is awesome. As for me it is even better then in Doom 3. Here is a short list of engine features:
- Dynamic shadows (and lightning). No comments - promises to be like in Doom 3.
- Powerful particle system. Allows creatoin of different effects - from sparks, to dust particles in rays of sun light.
- Powerful physics engine (based on code, licensed from Havok). All objects in game are interactive - i.e. you can take a barrel and throw it into a shelf with tools and objects that will fall like in real life, making different sounds depending on size (and material) of each object.
- Real time reflective water.
- Bump-mapped materials. Used for decals from guns, clothes\skin of NPC (it makes them look like real people, especially eyes).- ability to create indoor, outdoor and urbanized levels
- Powerful materials system. Remember those moments in Half-Life where you couldn't destroy glass with rockets or wooden doors with grenades? This won't happen in Half-Life 2, because all materials act as they would in real life. If you shoot a wooden door, you can be sure it will open
It is good to hear that for real maniacs, it will be possible to cut monsters into pieces and look what is inside them, so basically you can cut a monster's skin and look at his... erm... organs.
Also I want to say some more on characters. As you may have heard, NPC's have muscles! We will be able to see leg muscles when the character runs, jaw muscles when they talk. But the most interesting is that the face is made of little pieces (which resemble muscles I think) to make characters express their emotions as real people do. To do that, Valve hired a doctor who did research on people mimics. But that is not all! Eyes of characters in Half-Life 2 are like you haven't seen in any game - they can be wet, you can see reflections of light sources in them. Also, the characters will be able to move their eyeballs to search for something. For example a cup on the table or person in the room.
And the last thing - information for modders. For creating levels, the Source Engine uses the Valve Hammer Editor, which will ship with the game (along with SDK). Good news is that Valve is going to release the SDK before Half-Life 2 comes out. It will probably be equipted with some kind of test applicaiton, that will allow testing of compiled maps.
