Yea but can it run Half-Life 2? - A look Ten Years Back..

[hawtdawg]

http://cinematicmod.com/

install this so your 780 doesn't get bored.

 

[schmuckley]

Where's Half-Life 3?
They may as well forget it at this point.
Lest it goes the way of Duke Nukem.

 

[jpiniero]

Where's Half-Life 3?
They may as well forget it at this point.
Lest it goes the way of Duke Nukem.

They're probably making too much on Steam and the F2P games to care.

 

[HeXen]

When it released, I was far from impressed with this game. It was to me, just another shooter on rails with scripted AI, mediocre sounds and an unimaginative story from a B flick 80's movie. And to this day I still don't see why anyone thinks its so great. The facial animations were good for it's time and the physics were ok as well as the water effects but that's about it for me.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Downloading HL2 now...thanks OP

 

[SolMiester]

Are you sure it was tied to pipelines and not DX feature set? Also, a 9800 pro had 8 pipelines no where near 24.

I thought it was shader 3, which the Radeon didn't have.?

 

[Deders]

I thought it was shader 3, which the Radeon didn't have.?

It was shader 2, even though some of the FX range had it, it wasn't implemented to directX specifications for performance reasons so they had to revert to DX8.1. There was a way to force it with them but it was slow and didn't render entirely properly. Especially underwater.

 

[Cookie Monster]

I remember when this forum was blazed with a ton of SM3.0 vs SM2.0 threads. Good ol' times.

 

[SolMiester]

It was shader 2, even though some of the FX range had it, it wasn't implemented to directX specifications for performance reasons so they had to revert to DX8.1. There was a way to force it with them but it was slow and didn't render entirely properly. Especially underwater.

Ummm no, it was shader 3 with HDRR
Complex shader effects began their days with the release of Shader Model 1.0 with DirectX 8. Shader Model 1.0 illuminated 3D worlds with what is called standard lighting. Standard lighting, however, had two problems:

Lighting precision was confined to 8 bit integers, which limited the contrast ratio to 256:1. Using the HVS color model, the value (V), or brightness of a color has a range of 0 – 255. This means the brightest white (a value of 255) is only 255 levels brighter than the darkest shade above pure black (i.e.: value of 0).
Lighting calculations were integer based, which didn't offer as much accuracy because the real world is not confined to whole numbers.
On December 24, 2002, Microsoft released a new version of DirectX. DirectX 9.0 introduced Shader Model 2.0, which offered one of the necessary components to enable rendering of high-dynamic-range images: lighting precision was not limited to just 8-bits. Although 8-bits was the minimum in applications, programmers could choose up to a maximum of 24 bits for lighting precision. However, all calculations were still integer-based. One of the first graphics cards to support DirectX 9.0 natively was ATI's Radeon 9700, though the effect wasn't programmed into games for years afterwards. On August 23, 2003, Microsoft updated DirectX to DirectX 9.0b, which enabled the Pixel Shader 2.x (Extended) profile for ATI's Radeon X series and NVIDIA's GeForce FX series of graphics processing units.

On August 9, 2004, Microsoft updated DirectX once more to DirectX 9.0c. This also exposed the Shader Model 3.0 profile for high-level shader language (HLSL). Shader Model 3.0's lighting precision has a minimum of 32 bits as opposed to 2.0's 8-bit minimum. Also all lighting-precision calculations are now floating-point based. NVIDIA states that contrast ratios using Shader Model 3.0 can be as high as 65535:1 using 32-bit lighting precision. At first, HDRR was only possible on video cards capable of Shader-Model-3.0 effects, but software developers soon added compatibility for Shader Model 2.0. As a side note, when referred to as Shader Model 3.0 HDR, HDRR is really done by FP16 blending. FP16 blending is not part of Shader Model 3.0, but is supported mostly by cards also capable of Shader Model 3.0 (exceptions include the GeForce 6200 series). FP16 blending can be used as a faster way to render HDR in video games.

 

[lavaheadache]

I thought it was shader 3, which the Radeon didn't have.?

it wasn't till the "X1k" series that the radeons had shader model 3

 

[Deders]

Ummm no, it was shader 3 with HDRR
Complex shader effects began their days with the release of Shader Model 1.0 with DirectX 8. Shader Model 1.0 illuminated 3D worlds with what is called standard lighting. Standard lighting, however, had two problems:

Lighting precision was confined to 8 bit integers, which limited the contrast ratio to 256:1. Using the HVS color model, the value (V), or brightness of a color has a range of 0 – 255. This means the brightest white (a value of 255) is only 255 levels brighter than the darkest shade above pure black (i.e.: value of 0).
Lighting calculations were integer based, which didn't offer as much accuracy because the real world is not confined to whole numbers.
On December 24, 2002, Microsoft released a new version of DirectX. DirectX 9.0 introduced Shader Model 2.0, which offered one of the necessary components to enable rendering of high-dynamic-range images: lighting precision was not limited to just 8-bits. Although 8-bits was the minimum in applications, programmers could choose up to a maximum of 24 bits for lighting precision. However, all calculations were still integer-based. One of the first graphics cards to support DirectX 9.0 natively was ATI's Radeon 9700, though the effect wasn't programmed into games for years afterwards. On August 23, 2003, Microsoft updated DirectX to DirectX 9.0b, which enabled the Pixel Shader 2.x (Extended) profile for ATI's Radeon X series and NVIDIA's GeForce FX series of graphics processing units.

On August 9, 2004, Microsoft updated DirectX once more to DirectX 9.0c. This also exposed the Shader Model 3.0 profile for high-level shader language (HLSL). Shader Model 3.0's lighting precision has a minimum of 32 bits as opposed to 2.0's 8-bit minimum. Also all lighting-precision calculations are now floating-point based. NVIDIA states that contrast ratios using Shader Model 3.0 can be as high as 65535:1 using 32-bit lighting precision. At first, HDRR was only possible on video cards capable of Shader-Model-3.0 effects, but software developers soon added compatibility for Shader Model 2.0. As a side note, when referred to as Shader Model 3.0 HDR, HDRR is really done by FP16 blending. FP16 blending is not part of Shader Model 3.0, but is supported mostly by cards also capable of Shader Model 3.0 (exceptions include the GeForce 6200 series). FP16 blending can be used as a faster way to render HDR in video games.

HDR didn't come in until after Half Life 2 was released, It was first demoed with the Lost Coast tech demo and then integrated into Half Life 2 around the time episode 1 was released.

 

[bystander36]

Far Cry was the Crysis of the time. Didn't all 3 (Far Cry, Doom 3, HL 2) of those games come out at the same time, with Far Cry being the first of the 3.

 

[Grooveriding]

HDR didn't come in until after Half Life 2 was released, It was first demoed with the Lost Coast tech demo and then integrated into Half Life 2 around the time episode 1 was released.

There was also an unofficial patch for Far Cry that enabled HDR. Not sure if that patch released before or after HL2 though, but Far Cry its self came out early 2004 and HL2 was in the fall of that same year.

 

[CP5670]

I built a 6800GT and A64 3500+ rig for this game and Doom 3. Also got an NEC DiamondTron 22" CRT for the system. That was my first high end monitor. I wouldn't mind having one of those again to try out.

​

I have one of those in storage, the Mitsubishi version. It still does some things very well and I only took it out of my system fairly recently, when I discovered that my 120hz LCD did backlight strobing (Lightboost).

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I have been playing the original Half Life the last couple of weeks, and I cannot believe how well it still holds up 16 years later. How the hell does a developer put out a masterpiece like Half Life 1 as its first release?

 

[lavaheadache]

I have been playing the original Half Life the last couple of weeks, and I cannot believe how well it still holds up 16 years later. How the hell does a developer put out a masterpiece like Half Life 1 as its first release?

you should play the "source" remake of it

 

[conlan]

I have been playing the original Half Life the last couple of weeks, and I cannot believe how well it still holds up 16 years later. How the hell does a developer put out a masterpiece like Half Life 1 as its first release?

Still the best game ever.
The Black Mesa mod is awesome too

 

[SolMiester]

you should play the "source" remake of it

+1

 

[toyota]

my favorite game of all time is the Half Life mod called They Hunger

 

[Hauk]

Where's Half-Life 3?...

Extreme fans have stalked Gabe Newell of Valve in search of the answer. Probably is history, too long without comment from Valve.

 

[Hauk]

Far Cry was the Crysis of the time. Didn't all 3 (Far Cry, Doom 3, HL 2) of those games come out at the same time, with Far Cry being the first of the 3.

Ugh yeah forgot about Far Cry, very demanding on high settings.

 

[Hauk]

Downloading HL2 now...thanks OP

Enjoy. I recommend playing the Ravenholm level at night with headphones if you have some.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Enjoy. I recommend playing the Ravenholm level at night with headphones if you have some.

Sounds like a great idea

 

[Arachnotronic]

Ugh yeah forgot about Far Cry, very demanding on high settings.

HL2, DOOM 3, and Far Cry were all unique in their own rights. HL2 had the best artwork (IMO) and nailed down realism. DOOM 3 had by far the most dramatic/moody lighting and the best shadowing system in a game yet. Far Cry piled on the special FX, which really killed graphics cards at the time.

Loved them all. The only bad memory I have of the three were those darn trigens in FC! Ack!

 

[toyota]

HL2, DOOM 3, and Far Cry were all unique in their own rights. HL2 had the best artwork (IMO) and nailed down realism. DOOM 3 had by far the most dramatic/moody lighting and the best shadowing system in a game yet. Far Cry piled on the special FX, which really killed graphics cards at the time.

Loved them all. The only bad memory I have of the three were those darn trigens in FC! Ack!

you could still run Far Cry on even an mx440 using low settings though.