• Does Cinematic Mod REALLY Ruin Half-Life 2?
    42 replies, posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikuIE66VZ2o Yes, I know, you can't exactly toggle Alyx room in BM east and the added foliage and added debris does not make sense in all cases but aside from that, the points in the video perfectly illustrate my argument in FP I made over and over again. You don't have to like the FF or his HD models, sure. But CM offers more for those who want a customizable experience and/or want to see HL2 and its episodes in a fresh light or different atmosphere. If in your opinions it ruins Half Life 2 it its vision laid out by Valve, fine, still doesn't excuse the shit the Cinematic Mod or Fake Factory gotten over this. You don't have to play with the options you don't want and you don't have to play at all.
Considering for a long time, it was advertised as a graphical update for HL2. Or the fact that guy stole assets from other creators and never even gave them credit until only after people went after him about it.
can you really, genuinely not tell how wrong the lookdev is for the entire experience
Also another thing about this mod is that it conflicts with the entire artstyle of Half life 2. One huge sin is the presence of "Foresting" areas and adding as much greenplants as possible to certain map environments. Which completely kills the point of the Combine's harvesting of the Earth's resources. Its Barren for a reason, not because they couldn't afford to use assets.
there's more to video game texturing than "detail!!" and in fact that's probably the least important part. In order of importance (generally) Is it the right Lightness compared to the surrounding materials in order to capture or evade player attention in the way you want it to? Does the shape or structure of what's depicted catch player attention and should it? does the scale and structure of what's depicted in the texture correspond correctly to the unit scale of the world (a lot of people miss this) Level of detail. Cinematic mod fails 1, 2 and 3 on basically every texture in the entire game.
You forgot to talk about the devs bridge fetish.
The issue is, to "enhance" things you almost have to break the art style and look. Fakefactory's issue was adding in foreign elements that didn't really belong in the environment, and not keeping clean looks to gameplay spaces. The stuff that actually fits hl2's style is actually fairly decent.
Can I just say how dumb it was to change the AR2 to a real gun? It looks stupid as fuck to see a gun with an M203 grenade launcher shooting energy balls.
FakeFactory is the Shadman of HL2 Modding.
Why does this guy echo? Makes the video pretty annoying to listen to. FF was pretty fun to play around with, not much more though.
at least Shadman doesn't steal shit and is decent at making art
Credit: FF did not invent the models he used and acted like he did. FF did not invent ENB and acted like he did The games AI and animation state machine does support his weapon balance scheme. At all. Scene greeble. Nothign really else to say Go through the effort of porn assets, no actual porn content, so the point of porn assets is what exactly. Improved models look NOTHING like their counterparts Weapons are changed for no particular reason other than to change them, cause he changed other stuff too... I guess. I could care less about the "optimization" stuff and those complaints are now p much meaningless in a world where 80 gig sound and 50 gig 4K "HD" packs are the norm, but the fact he didn't offer choices and the things he did pick have no oncgruence with each other stands out like a sore thumb Acted like the music was obscure and super mood enahancing, it's literally Aliens, Batman Begins and Superman. Bridge fetish.
A lot of the changes just seem like the generic graphics improvements you can find for most other games: lens flares, bloom, and "HD" textures. I'll admit, I kind of liked the look of the first few rooms of City 17, but after that it just turns into a mess. Those forested areas looked absolutely nuts, the foliage looks like it was just placed by randomly click-spamming all over the place. Also the guy in the video saying this and Black Mesa are basically the same is fucking ridiculous.
The issue is intent. If the terrible models, bridges, batman begins music, and extra bells and whistles weren't intended to be there, they wouldn't be. And all of it ignores all of the context Half-Life 2 gives. The whole reason that the White Forest exists the way it does in Episode 2, it because that whole area was untainted by the Combine. And now those trees are everywhere. Everyone wears fancy clothing when i the original, people either wore what the Combine gave them, or what was lying around. There's bloom covering everything up, which is awful from a gameplay standpoint.
There have been several points made: Art stealing/not giving credit: Didn't remember that was a thing, still a no-go as an artist but doesn't really change what I think of the mod. But it is a shitty practice, no doubt about it. Texture work is shoddy/has no direction/overscaled as fuck: I didn't particularly mind or even notice, I am used to the standard textures and models of the Source engine quite a bit by playing thousands of hours in Source games and mods, so seeing everything in high detail still blows me away from time to time when I start CM. Might be a bit biased but I know my way around the entire HL2 campaign, so I don't really need my hand held through the game. Though I can see that it could be confusing for someone entirely new to the HL-saga Doesn't fit the overall style of HL2: Ya, this was kinda handled in the video, if you come to expect a just a polish pass of the game without touching on art style to much, there is HL2: Update if one so desires, which basically means fixes, misc improvements and generally HDR compiled maps and so on. A mere touch-up isn't what CM is or promises, if you overhaul HL2 to a major extent like it does, it will always be a split in opinion if it fits or not. Not saying there couldn't be a graphic overhaul that is more faithful to the original but again, you can tweak your experience for a good portion of the mod to your liking. Except maps maybe, but the campaign looks really barren and dated at times, which isn't surprising considering when HL2 and its episodes came out. Arguing if and when Valve may have done things differently in development, given today's tools and capabilities is a moot point to argue, we might never know. New difficulty is shit/New guns look shit/New soundtrack is shit/New rendering is shit: Most of it is optional, of-course you can still criticize them, I don't mean to dismiss all points made just because they are optional, but as in the video, they are not forced upon anyone. The Mod configuration tool even has a maximum Valve button. On the Black Mesa comparison I don't necessarily agree: On the scale of a complete overhaul or the mods ambitions from a scale from 1 to 10. Black Mesa is clearly a 10, CM more like 7. We can all agree, CM is really massive in both mechanics and visuals, but BM had a massive, truly massive team behind it which makes it look stunning on every level. CM on the other hand was mainly done by one guy (with exceptions) so it is really not a good comparison but both offer similar things. CM still faintly relies on the HL2 bases while BM just did everything from scratch.
The guns made the already hit-scan heavy HL2 into a fuckfest that completely destroyed what had been crafted. SMOD made the game more entertaining while avoiding destroying the original but for some reason CM just haaad to make things silly.
A lot of the video boils down to, "It's optional, and shut the fuck up about the porn models." But i'm pretty sure things like the random cursing and porn graffiti stay in the game, unless the last release removed at least some of that, and it also doesn't remove the black dildo from Alyx's mod-added room. It's a Hollywood-ification of Half-Life 2, with a lot of inane and awkward choices made for the sake of it without really asking "why" or thinking from the viewpoint of any sort of reasonable game developer. Just add more shit in and if it looks washed out yet adds noisy detail, it's a-okay with FakeFactory apparently.
There is no "some odd reason" that people hate the Cinematic Mod. It's a concrete and very defined reason beyond the bashing on the comical character models. The cinematic mod ruins the feel of vanilla Half Life 2, yeah, that was entirely the point, and people get upset at that because it's ludicrously bastardizing the art direction that the original game had in favor of "IT'S SO HIGH DEFINITION NOW" I feel like this video completely disregards that side of the argument. The lack of foliage is because the earth has been just about stripped dry of all natural resources, and as a result, a lot of plant species have gone extinct. At one point he says that the game is supposed to take place in the pacific north west because Valve's based up there, but... City 17 exists in some non-descript Russo-European style environment, so, I don't get why they bring that up at all. He seems to ignore a lot of more nuanced complaints in favor of just assuming most of the rage comes from the terrible updated character models because he can just hide and reject all that kind of criticism behind 'well it's optional. like he brings up so many times.' Any sort of argument he may have had completely falls apart when he just tells dissenters to literally "shut the fuck up" at the end there So, all in all - Yes! The Cinematic Mod does ruin Half Life 2. Vanilla Half Life 2. It turns it into an entirely different 'experience' which rejects and changes many of the art style and direction based choices of the original game, making non-art based decisions such as loading the world with foliage, ruining any sort of eye-leading lighting and props that certain areas may have had beforehand in favor of loading it with more detail than necessary; and that's okay! What's not okay is rejecting any and all criticism as a result of that.
I just wanna bring in my two cents from someone whos work suddenly showed up in that mod. This is kinda to vent a bit of frustration that I have in me for a longer time and never talked about outside my friends circle. Back in the day, already 10 years ago mind you. @Lamarr and me teamed up to create an HD Spas12 for hl2 and other Source games. We do not really speak to each other anymore, dunno why, but that is secondary. The latest release of it was dubbed Lamarr's Spas 12 Redux. When all of the Cinematic Mod controversy flared up back in 2015 I joined in a bit and did my own kind of digging around. I found this then. Straight from cinematic mod (Linking them because of stretchy page problems) https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134/66a66d19-be4c-4d6f-8285-22673f1ad305/image.png That is actually Lamarr's shotgun as world model. I was baffled as to why neither of us received any message anywhere from FF. compare that to the image one gamebanana, it is clearly the third option of that shotgun. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134/f023eace-dc8c-4a23-ab1b-faca9e83e623/image.png I did some digging in the credits then and did not see Lamarr or me in there. I wondered why. Yet I've seen modderfreak in there (which is btw is a really awesome dude) https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134/30ff308c-35a3-4b71-ae0b-31fbc876fb38/image.png It clicked then why neither of us were in the credits, FF simply took the CSS release of the shotgun (which is also not the latest version). Modderfreak was not around anymore during that time as he had either RL problems or was just burned out from modding, he quit modding and stopped using gamebanana all together completely distancing him from that site. Which basically means FF did not ask for permission or just went ahead after not receiving any message back. It also means he just credited the uploader and not everyone else involved. Another fun fact is, it is only the worldmodel. The view model is Pete's spas 12 for some reason. And he also did not get credits even tho Pete made sure to upload the model himself for HL2, CSS etc. Weird. (He also miscredited Dr.Zoidberg as Dr.Zoidburg who made the original animations for many many modded guns) And it still is, I took some screenshots from the video itself, while Lamarr's Spas is still the world model (Pete's Spas is really boxy at the crank, while Lamarrs is rather round) https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134/d99873b5-1c11-4f6b-ae17-9d0b020f2122/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134/ff045374-7af8-4fdc-9630-0fe29cebaacd/image.png
That was more aimed at the people which dismiss the entire mod based on the optional HD models, kinda like you seem to dismiss his entire argument because you view the "shut the fuck up" in a broader context than intended. Anyway, nevermind all that, lets skip the petty stuff. Again as mentioned above, updated vanilla is not what CM provides or intends to provide. There isn't one singular experience to nail down to CM because of its many options and if someone didn't like what the maps offer they might play another HL2 entirely. It is valid critism that earth looks so barren in HL2 for a lore reason though I doubt that if Valve would make HL2 in the current day that it would resemble anything like we already have, but you may disagree, that is why I said it is a moot point to argue earlier.
You guys just don't understand the subtle design implications of adding crudely drawn pornographic graffiti to the half life universe This is literally how the mod describes itself, although I'd argue every single word in this sentence is still wrong: "Raises the outdated graphical appearance of the Half-Life 2 trilogy to a state-of-the-art level, while giving it a more stressed, darker and minatory look. All low-res textures are replaced by high-res counterparts." This is on top of the official website and now I feel like I need to take a shower just for visiting it
Doesn't this part of the quote "while giving it a more stressed, darker and minatory look" already imply it does sway away from the original intended vision of vanilla HL2 art-style?
Eh, I don't know. I'm no expert but to me it just seems like a mix of different assets thrown in without a proper vision. Just MORE MORE MORE of everything. Then there are the NPC models which are just so different to the originals (and creepy) and turning them of makes the base models stand out from the environments. Then there's the issue of not properly crediting the creators and that's a big problem for me.
I could never gel into it because of the added foliage spattered all over the place. If there's something I really love in HL2, it's how shitty and dismal the game's setting feels. It straight up feels like both humanity and Earth are on its last legs, pulled off in a way that I've rarely seen done so well. tossing all the greenery into it kinda just ruins the effect. I know you're going for a 'reclaimed' look, but it just doesn't work for what it is.
Why can't there be any other major graphical overhauls of Half-Life 2? I'm not talking about the enhancement mods that I've seen people rumbling about - as welcome as that would be. I'm talking a full on fakefactory remake of the graphical style that brings it up to resemble modern graphical design, even if it does break the artstyle a tad. I ask this because I like the idea of fakefactory, an over-the-top michael bay style look at my favorite action shooter. I'd love to play through Half-Life 2 with some fancy, if not mindless, graphics. But it seems literally no one has attempted it but this creepy fuck, and his results are...mixed, at best.
Some people have said that the porn posters and grafitti and stuff isn't necessarily nonsensical because it's never fully explained how the suppression field actually works. It seems like all of them missed this little Breen speech at the beginning of HL2, though: "Instinct tells us that the unknown is a threat, rather than an opportunity. Instinct slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress. Instinct therefore must be expunged. It must be fought tooth and nail, beginning with the basest of human urges; the urge to reproduce. We should thank our benefactors for giving us respite from this overpowering force, they have thrown a switch and exorcised our demons in a single stroke. They have given us the strength we never could have summoned to overcome this compulsion". Based on that it seems pretty clear to me that the suppression field isn't only causing people to be sterile, they literally can't be aroused, possibly not feel sexual pleasure at all
The page on the suppression field in the combine overwiki seems to draw a different conclusion.
Well, if all the suppression field did was making people sterile, why whould a "non-mechanical reproductive simulation" be a big deal at all? People would still be able to fuck all they want, they just wouldn't be able to, you know, actually reproduce. AFAIK by the beginning of HL2 the combine/Universal Union's already been in charge for quite some time, with the youngest people alive being around 20-30 years old. People obviously want humanity to survive, but they still may not actually know what having any sort of sexual interaction is like. Which would also explain why the sexual simulation mentioned earlier is a big deal, essentially making the CP's addicted, furtherly motivating them to do their best
I thought it was less about it ruining the game and more that people lacked respect for the developer for countless reasons
Have you ever been to a beach? This is supposed to be the shore literally right before the water, it's just that in HL2 the water level has lowered significantly. There wouldn't be any trees or grass growing on sand.
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