Pixel Pioneers: A Brief History of Graphics, Part One of Five (Ahoy) - General

[QUOTE=Juniez;46536083]half life 2 is the most photorealistic out of the top contenders at the time. most of the assets are photographed and projected onto meshes with little authoring while most assets in doom 3 / far cry went through the entire (now current) generation's workflow of highpoly+lowpoly+bake+materials accounting for diffuse/specular. BECAUSE that (now current) workflow was very new and very experimental at the time the visuals of both FC and D3 suffered because they didn't really know how to utilize it yet. the artists of half life 2 were already very, very skilled at doing the same thing they had done since the previous generation[/QUOTE] yeah but while those games try to do the color schemes of the environments with shaders and overlays, hl2 does it with the textures and thats that

i.e. highpoly backing of a doom 3 character: [t]http://41.media.tumblr.com/c0d64b4bb8248d81675677f5d679e6d5/tumblr_mhdby4LBSp1s3x43wo4_1280.jpg[/t] for half life 2 it's unavailable because from the looks of it they didn't make one [editline]20th November 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Egevened;46536111]yeah but while those games try to do the color schemes of the environments with shaders and overlays, hl2 does it with the textures and thats that[/QUOTE] what

also, commenting on your "crysis is impressive because to most people lots of stuff is impressive" thing, do you honestly believe that [video=youtube;r4Ise6hz6CU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Ise6hz6CU[/video] [editline]20th November 2014[/editline] crysis 2 and 3 suffered from the lack of creative vision like this, but 1 will forever hold a place in my heart for making me go "wow" on medium back then and still makes me say the same, not from a technical, but from an artistic standpoint [editline]20th November 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Juniez;46536122] what[/QUOTE] the highpoly characters like you mentioned were broken down into shaders such as bumpmaps so while technologically it was a leap it does not hold up in any way like hl2 does I'm agreeing with you, nerd

[QUOTE=Egevened;46536132]also, commenting on your "crysis is impressive because to most people lots of stuff is impressive" thing, do you honestly believe that [video=youtube;r4Ise6hz6CU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Ise6hz6CU[/video] [editline]20th November 2014[/editline] crysis 2 and 3 suffered from the lack of creative vision like this, but 1 will forever hold a place in my heart for making me go "wow" on medium back then and still makes me say the same, not from a technical, but from an artistic standpoint[/QUOTE] yes because that is also an example of visual noise. there is a lot of forms and (wow, dynamic!) lights but it doesn't hold up to any subtle scrutiny unlike C2/C3 which focused on trying to maintain a consistency in visual interest in both large and small scales. that's not a flaw or an advantage of either titles as C1 didn't pretend to have any subtlety - most of the people flew by the jungles and the ice purely appreciating the large-scale scenic visuals, but that's not to say that C2/3's downscaled interest is any less of a visual feat than C1 (probably more, tbh) crysis 1 has a really nice looking beach and jungle and ice and the alien thing but the amount of assets per environment stages are really small. but there are a lot of instances of those not-very-varied assets. it's visually very dense crysis 2/3 is a lot smaller but there is a lot more asset and visual variety in 1 level of c2/c3 than the entirety of c1

[QUOTE=Juniez;46536204]yes because that is also an example of visual noise. there is a lot of forms and (wow, dynamic!) lights but it doesn't hold up to any subtle scrutiny unlike C2/C3 which focused on trying to maintain a consistency in visual interest in both large and small scales. that's not a flaw or an advantage of either titles as C1 didn't pretend to have any subtlety - most of the people flew by the jungles and the ice purely appreciating the large-scale scenic visuals, but that's not to say that C2/3's downscaled interest is any less of a visual feat than C1 (probably more, tbh)[/QUOTE] while it may be visual noise, it does not undermine the artistic value of it, because visual noise can be good, and c1 is an example of it well done, imo. [editline]20th November 2014[/editline] you seem to be implying that subtle scrutiny is the objective form of proper criticism when trying to determine what is good looking and what is not

i'm not: "that's not a flaw or an advantage of either titles as C1 didn't pretend to have any subtlety - most of the people flew by the jungles and the ice purely appreciating the large-scale scenic visuals". but c1 really should not be held as a point of comparison for visuals as it is, from an artistic production standpoint, actually pretty simple

[QUOTE=Brt5470;46534363]Because it didn't look that bad. Even the PS2 version looked better. That looked like PC footage all on low for some reason. Look up some gameplay from it, and it looks much better even on consoles at the time.[/QUOTE] Both Far Cry and NFSMW footage were on lowest settings (probably excluding resolution) If you crank Far Cry to the max, you get a WHOLE lot more detail than that. It looked like CS 1.6 back there lol. Same for NFSMW, you get a shinnier world.

I used to think Doom 3 was special, but Chronicles of Riddick, released around the same time, has a similar dark style, though with a notably better overall look, and to make it more impressive, it was ported from the Xbox. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqcuqAY37Is[/media]

[QUOTE=Egevened;46535986]I usually agree with what you say regarding art and video games but crysis having no art direction? dude what the alien designs were some of the if not the best alien designs I've seen in video games[/QUOTE] the alien ship section looks good although pretty unsubtle and loud but the rest looks bland [editline]20th November 2014[/editline] [t]http://shadowdane.com/public/Crysis1_GTX680_SLI-Off.jpg[/t] mmm so atmospheric it really feeels like i'm there

[QUOTE=Silikone;46536420]I used to think Doom 3 was special, but Chronicles of Riddick, released around the same time, has a similar dark style, though with a notably better overall look, and to make it more impressive, it was ported from the Xbox. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqcuqAY37Is[/media][/QUOTE] Man I remember when it came out. Everyone was blown away by how [I]fucking awesome[/I] it was. It still is. I replay it every now and then as the remastered version from Assault on Dark Athena.

[QUOTE=Silikone;46536420]I used to think Doom 3 was special, but Chronicles of Riddick, released around the same time, has a similar dark style, though with a notably better overall look, and to make it more impressive, it was ported from the Xbox. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqcuqAY37Is[/media][/QUOTE] Yeah, holy shit, Riddick on the original xbox. Man, the graphics were droolworthy. I used to play it until I could barely separate reality from video game. :v:

[QUOTE=Juniez;46536122]for half life 2 it's unavailable because from the looks of it they didn't make one[/QUOTE] i'm pretty sure when hl2 released in 2004 the entire game was diffuse only apart from some stuff like windows and glass probably had cubemaps it only got normals and shitty phong when ep1 released if i'm not mistaken, and i'm fairly certain the phong was just applied via material parametres in a .txt file, not with an actual texture map could be completely wrong though

it had specular reflection (in the form of cubemaps / envmaps) and normals sometimes when they felt like making them. the antlion is one of those examples (i think)

[QUOTE=Rocâ„¢;46536352]Both Far Cry and NFSMW footage were on lowest settings (probably excluding resolution) If you crank Far Cry to the max, you get a WHOLE lot more detail than that. It looked like CS 1.6 back there lol. Same for NFSMW, you get a shinnier world.[/QUOTE] I recently loaded up FC1, and "maxed" the settings as much as I could, it still looks terrible. It just didn't have the art direction or visual style to back it up once it got outdated.

[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;46536491]i'm pretty sure when hl2 released in 2004 the entire game was diffuse only apart from some stuff like windows and glass probably had cubemaps it only got normals and shitty phong when ep1 released if i'm not mistaken, and i'm fairly certain the phong was just applied via material parametres in a .txt file, not with an actual texture map could be completely wrong though[/QUOTE]HL2 had normal maps at launch, they were just used sparingly. I believe it was mainly the Vortigaunt and the Antlion that showed it off.

yuss i checked out a few screenshots and remember now. my memory is of a lot of the flatter models like the combine soldiers n stuff i also remember a lot of stuff being baked into the diffuses as well which just isn't done anymore really

[QUOTE=mattmanlex;46510987][video=youtube;dzN2pgL0zeg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzN2pgL0zeg[/video][/QUOTE] The music in the raster/vector explanation bit sounds like a video you'd watch in school.

Ahoy has a nice voice and all, and his videos are quality work, but there's just very, very little substance.

i feel like part of the satisfaction of watching an ahoy video is to be like "yeh! i knew that!!" or for the satisfaction of knowing something that he doesn't touch on you could do the research it takes for one of his videos in an hour on wikipedia good presentation for a layman who wants to learn the basics i guess but i feel like he's mostly preaching to the choir

[video=youtube;EpAHIutTE60]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpAHIutTE60[/video]

[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;46536452]the alien ship section looks good although pretty unsubtle and loud but the rest looks bland [editline]20th November 2014[/editline] [t]http://shadowdane.com/public/Crysis1_GTX680_SLI-Off.jpg[/t] mmm so atmospheric it really feeels like i'm there[/QUOTE] do you even know how to apply mods

[QUOTE=haloguy234;46545458]do you even know how to apply mods[/QUOTE] Or how to turn up the settings.

[quote=Stuart Brown, Pixel Pioneers part 2]While it [Yoshi's Island] may not be technically impressive...[/quote] I thought the way they used the Super FX chip to warp/scale sprites was incredibly impressive. I still remember it today as the only 2D game that has anything like it. I dislike how that was overlooked :(. [editline]asdf[/editline] Actually a lot of the information in these videos seems uninformed... A few examples are: When explaining the rise in raytracers he promptly shows a Doom port using OpenGL rendered in 1080p. (He could've explained that raytracing was still really limited due to distortions when looking up and down, or at least showed an actual example of raytraced doom.) When describing Doom 3, instead of explaining the interesting technology or new approaches ([url=http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/renderer.php]additive lighting with no ambient light[/url], [url=http://www.battleteam.net/tech/fis/]interactive frame buffers.[/url]), he just described that it's dark and you shoot monsters. When he brought up Half-life 2, I was legitimately excited for him to show off the fact that it's practically the first game to support proper [url=https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Flex_animation]facial vertex animations[/url] or the fact that it has no cutscenes, and all I got was something along the lines of "it combined realism and bleakness, and they may have tried too hard to show off the physics". It seems like these videos are a little rushed.

[QUOTE=The Vman;46535502]I found it funny that he included a clip of Far Cry when he was talking about bloom, since Far Cry didn't actually have any bloom.[/QUOTE] Actually Far Cry was one of the first games to support true HDR bloom. However it's not very well known for this because 1. You needed a graphics card supporting pixel shader model 3 (which were really expensive at the time) 2. You needed to patch the game (this was pre-Steam, so many people didn't go through the effort of downloading and installing patches manually) 3. You needed to enable it with a console command (r_HDRRendering 7) As I recall it looked pretty awesome. [editline]24th November 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Naelstrom;46546280]When he brought up Half-life 2, I was legitimately excited for him to show off the fact that it's practically the first game to support proper [url=https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Flex_animation]facial vertex animations[/url] or the fact that it has no cutscenes..[/QUOTE] Pretty much all pre-Half-Life shooters also had no cutscenes - but they also had no real narrative. What was remarkable about Half-Life is that it managed to stick to that familiar framework [i]while telling an immersive story[/i]. HL2 didn't innovate too much on that aspect, it was more about world-building, art direction, physics, etc.

[QUOTE=mattmanlex;46541728][video=youtube;EpAHIutTE60]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpAHIutTE60[/video][/QUOTE] I'm surprised he didn't mention ambient occlusion.

Oh man I had stunt race FX on my Super Nintendo. Shit was so fun.

[QUOTE=Cannsixd;46534202]I don't remember Need For Speed: Most Wanted looking as bad as that. Amazing how standards change so quickly.[/QUOTE] The graphics were considerably toned down in that video. I was playing NFS: MW earlier today and the graphics have aged really well.

[QUOTE=AlexGT;46578126]The graphics were considerably toned down in that video. I was playing NFS: MW earlier today and the graphics have aged really well.[/QUOTE] This reminds me of this one time my friend tried to drive one of the Heat Level 4 Police Cars (Federal I think?) so he moved the model's file into the folder full of player cars. The next day I started playing and got into a chase. Suddenly it goes to level 4. I slow down a little bit, then get t-boned by nothing. I try to keep driving but I'm boxed in by nothing. The lowest settings are still better than nothing.