Half Life thread - Discussions about Valve's FPS magnum opus(es) and any related content (spin offs, expansions and etc)

  • Happy Easter!

HL 3...is it still happening?

  • No and anyone that still thinks that it will is delusional

    Votes: 215 47.9%
  • Yes, they just need a few more years to perfect it so it can another game changer in the industry

    Votes: 115 25.6%
  • Shouldnt it be called "Two Lives and a half" instead?

    Votes: 77 17.1%
  • Half life is overrated, you neckbeard homos

    Votes: 42 9.4%

  • Total voters
    449
that's because ray tracing can't actually do soft shadows with the sample counts that even the beefiest gpus have, so they rely extremely heavily on temporal bullshit and magic neural networks
like any magic temporal bullshit that gets taken too far, it looks like absolute trash unless you stand in one place for 15 frames and take a screenshot to soy over
The whole ray tracing is stinks from the nVidia trying to re invent the wheel just to lodge themself between the games and the players. Without any added game play benefits... IF the AI dynamically reacting the players shadow or light changes it would be reeealy neet...
 
taa is a double-edged sword, because if you do it right you have accurate, high-quality, and very cheap anti-aliasing
modern engines all use it because it looks great for cheap when done right, and is good at anti-aliasing speckly pbr fragment shaders; unlike msaa, which only does edges
the hard part is doing it right: the moment an object with the wrong shader moves over another object, the horrible ghosting artifacts will be very obvious
or if your taa is overly conservative, you end up with obvious jagged edges that also flicker a little bit

that's because ray tracing can't actually do soft shadows with the sample counts that even the beefiest gpus have, so they rely extremely heavily on temporal bullshit and magic neural networks
like any magic temporal bullshit that gets taken too far, it looks like absolute trash unless you stand in one place for 15 frames and take a screenshot to soy over
I have seen videos where people complain about the TAA in RDR2 but I think it looks ok.
Just like everything else, how good the ray tracing is is heavily dependent on the game. On my 3080ti I can run CP2077 on the pre-4000 series ray tracing maxed out flawlessly, but Portal runs like shit.
I have a 4070 Ti Super and I still turn the RT off in Cyberpunk 2077. It just causes too much performance loss. I prefer to keep my games at a steady 60 fps if I can. My monitor is only 1080p but I upscale some games to 1440p.
 
Vote for me for world leader and implementing TAA in any video game will result in a death sentence.
nah i feel it has its uses, and it's always better than the absolute bullshit that is fxaa
Its awful because no matter what you end up with a every so slightly out of focus game.
anti-aliasing is sort of supposed to do that, but many taa implementations are a bit obnoxious
 
Try weird obscure foreigner mods. Like Russian ones.

Just be prepared to either find translation patches or just have to hope that the game makes it clear whats going on based on gameplay and visuals alone.

There are also those that have russian dialogue but the translation patches only translate the stuff thats typed, not audio.
fuck man I wanna play some hl1 mods but I feel like i've played all the good ones does anyone know of any obscure ones that are good?

There are always new mods being made in the usual suspect sites, modb, Run Think Shoot Live and etc. And some of them arent half bad so give it a go.
 
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These two images have the same vibe.
1742742561922.pngbelieve-min.jpg
 
Still wild how we got half life 1 and 2 and the episodes and the orange box in the same 6 or so year timespan as we got half life alyx and fuck all after that.
HL1 to EP2 was a 9 year run. Which given how much the games vary in scope, graphics, story, etc. is insane to think about.

For reference, Bioshock 1 to Infinite was 6, DOOM 2016 to DOOM TDA is also 9. Those games don't nearly differ as much. So weird to to me that in the time between EP2 and Alyx entire franchises have begun and ended, more if you count 3 when it comes out in (probably) 2026

All this waiting for an almost 20 year old expansion pack.
 
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It's not that odd. Postal 2: Paradise Lost was one of the best fucking games I've ever played.
Should've gone into more detail. Well, no one was really clamoring to see how the Postal story would go forward, especially not after Postal 3.

I still have yet to finish Paradise Lost, I've finished Postal 2 but its one of those games sitting in my replay log that I haven't gotten around to yet.
 
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Someone tried to make a Overcharged clone and now it's cancelled out of the blue. Frontpage still advertises the article that is now deleted.
View attachment 7129963

Theres also this one and a "multiplayer" one i saw somewhere, retarded idea to try and fix this mod anyway and will likely all be cancelled due to the creators having less devoted autism than the russians who made the og one and only making these for attention.
 

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Big shame that Postal 4 is a piece of shit though.

Allowing trannies into your ranks is a signs of a slow death and yes, Valve also counts.
Big shame that Postal 4 is a piece of shit though.

Most devs that worked on Postal 2 had left by the time Postal 4 came into scene. And the "iconic" ones like Mike Jay are leftist as shit. Vince mostly distanced himself from RWS, he is already getting up there in years.

Not to mention the general culture of the world. You arent allowed to be TOO funny "or else" and apparently RWS has become like every Gen X counter culture icon, became fat, old and pro the establishment they once claimed to hate so much.

A good analogy I use is Star Wars Gen X haters during the prequel trilogy era, once they were all "cool and hip", fighting against the "awful story that disrespected the originals" made by the George "raped my childhood" Lucas. Nowadays, most of them are at least apathetic towards Disney's SW or actively love it, the hatred they demonstrated for much much lesser stuff just being oddly gone for some reason.

Damn, now that I think about it, Gen X doesnt get enough hate, seems like its either boomers, millenials or Gen Z getting it.
 
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