The Screenshots Thread

[GooberMan]

[G3ck0]

Some games do, but a lot don't. Even in the couple of MMO's I'm playing, you have shadows in third person, but as soon as you go into first person they disappear. It's not unheard of, just less common than not having shadows. So I appreciate when a game actually has them in first person.

Though to be fair, I have been pretty much exclusively a console gamer until a couple of weeks ago. I guess I haven't had enough time to see what it's like with PC games, I noticed that Crysis had shadows in first person at least.

[GooberMan]

I haven't played a console FPS without real time shadows in the last few years. Even Call of Duty has real time shadows.

(Being a game programmer, every game I play I pick apart technically. Can't help it.)
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[G3ck0]

Just to be clear here, I'm talking about real time shadows for your own character model in first person view, not in general. Not sure if you are or not...

[Frozencry]

So you mean a real time self shadow, which a lot of games do actually do on PC. FarCry, Doom 3, FEAR, Quake 4 to name a few.
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[G3ck0]

Fair enough, I guess I've been playing the wrong games. I guess I can change my statement to a lot of games don't have self shadowing then. You've still got games like (every Source game), Battlefield 3, Call of Duty (I think?) etc.

[Pagan's Mind]

Half Life 2 Cinematic Mod

[GooberMan]

Did they just add bloom, or have the shaders been modified to take filmic tone mapping in to account? Because it looks more like they've gone nutso on the bloom from those screenshots.
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[Pagan's Mind]

There's also a lot more particles from explosions and higher resolution textures. It's all pretty subtle though, except for the bloom.

[G3ck0]

So is it worth downloading? I'm pretty close to the end of Half Life 2, but if it's worth the download I might check it out.

[GooberMan]

I looked it up. Looks like this is the mod is where Alyx Vance the Slutbag comes from.

...not really interested as a result. Alyx Vance the Hottie is much more appealing than Alyx Vance the Slutbag.
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[PixieGirl]

^ a million times plus

I wonder if there's a version of the cinematic mod without all the horrible character redesigns and other things that just completely don't fit in the atmosphere of the games. I think the person who made that is also responsible for that nude version of Alyx

This is why mods annoy me.
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[Jarrod]

99% of the time I hate re-texture mods. Even if they're technically more detailed (higher resolution) they usually miss the mark in terms of matching the colours, tones and shaders the original artist put into their work. I'm a stickler for the original art direction and what the artists intended. Tramp stamp Alyx doesn't help matters. That and a lot of re-texture mods consist of the 'artist' hitting the sharpen filter in their cracked version of Photoshop.

Sometimes they get it right though. The HQ water mod for Skyrim makes such an incredible difference, and the Morrowind overhaul is just wow. That latter mod has effects brute forced into an age old game that even Skyrim isn't doing. Sun shafts, Bethesda. Ever heard of them?

On another note, seeing Outcast/Academy screenshots reminds me how my mind was blown when I first saw the lightsaber effect. It looks so goddamn good.
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[GooberMan]

STALKER Complete: Great mod, or greatest?

(Might load it up later and take some happy snaps)
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[Pagan's Mind]

[Cyph]

[Frozencry]

[Phreakuency]

I agree almost completely that texture mods are pointless. Skyrim is a classic example so far. 'Modders' just swapping hi-res photos of rocks and dirt etc... most of them look out of place, regardless of how much clearer they are.

Resolution increases on the other hand... (finally had a swim with Dolphin)









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My YouTube game videos!

[Jarrod]

[Pagan's Mind]

[Jarrod]

And on the subject of texture mods, in preparation of my Mass Effect 2 playthrough I found a bunch of character texture replacement mods that are near identical to the originals, though remade at a much, much higher resolution. It looks so nice. One of my biggest technical disappointments with Mass Effect 2 was that it didn't really do anything to take advantage of PC hardware. Even Mass Effect had higher resolution textures on characters, but Mass Effect 2 stuck with crappy low res blurry ones.

This mod seems like a nice alternative, especially for those of us playing at 1080p+. First two shots are mine, just to see the face/clothing texture boost (see: FemShep's uniform pattern). Third shot is the mod makers showing off the difference between vanilla textures and his on Tali. Click mine for full res for better quality.




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[Cyph]

Great post. Points out slack developers.

[GooberMan]

I do have a certain amount of sympathy for PC developers. I've mainly done console development throughout my career, and having a fixed platform to optimise the hell out of is a fair bit easier than what PC developers have to do.

Think about it: PC developers have a minimum system they have to target. It pretty much needs to hit 30 FPS on those requirements to be a successful release. And then if they want to avoid the vocal minority of internet whingers, it has to scale all the way up to the latest and greatest. In many cases, scaling up that high breaks many of their technical requirements. In that Mass Effect comparison for example, those textures look like they've had their dimensions multiplied by 4. This requires 16 times more memory, both on the video card and the media it's transported on. id copped flack for not releasing higher resolution textures for Rage. Would you honestly buy an eight DVD game? Or download 80 gigs of data? 80 gigs for one game would blow out many an Aussie's internet cap.

There's many reasons to claim "Lazy PC port" (see: DX11 implementation in Arkham City). In Mass Effect's case... I don't see lower resolution textures as a valid reason.
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[mantra79]

Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning

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PSN: cjdavis
360: mantra79
Steam: mantra79

[Frozencry]