News Half-Life 3 trademarked by Valve

As with Portal 2 graphics are not so important when they make great games that have loads of character and are funny.

Too often a poor game is behind fancy graphics...mutton dressed as lamb.

 

The source engine still looks awesome, in my opinion. Granted there are things it does well and things it does less well, but a game made using that engine today isn't going to suffer for it.

Anyway, it's what you do with it that counts, e.g. Cryengine > Unreal Engine but Crysis << Bioshock Infinite.

Also every time I see stats for DOTA 2's concurrent player count all it does it highlight the hugeness of League of Legends. Peak concurrency hit 5 million earlier this year, which is comparable to Steam itself.

 

Indeed, although it is running with a few tweaks, how many gamers would guess that Titanfall is running on a modified Source engine? To do it justice, you really need to view the video @ 60 FPS &1080p.
http://www.gamersyde.com/leech_30220_1_en.html

Concerning HL3... I don't really want to get my hopes up like Russia has:
http://tinyurl.com/q5tctor
... but if it were at all possible I think Valve may release it for free with a Steam Machine or at a discount if purchased through SOS. Regardless, they'll release on all PC platforms simultaneously.
It's just hard for me to imagine that they could finish it so quickly what with Source 2, SOS, SM&SC and L4D3... their plates seem rather full.

My hope is that the Black Mesa Dev Team will at least release the Xen chapters before the end of the year.
I love you guys!

 

OpenGL is fine as well.

As to the other questions as to why I think DX9 is outdated: Run a modern fps (or any game these days) at a properly high resolution and see how beautiful it is. Source is one of the main sources (no pun intended) holding back graphics on the PC.

I pay good money for my triple SLI set up and would like to see my favorite company embrace current tech.

Good luck to Valve with HL3, looking forward to a re-newed and DX11 (or OpenGL), esp one that does not break all their source games. It would be quite clever to program the engine in such a way that all the current Source games would still work. Imagine TF2 with a proper graphics engine!! Or going back to play HL2 all the way through again on a 3 x 30inch monitor set up.

Enjoy the show!

Yours in Advanced Graphical Gaming Plasma,
Star*Dagger

 

If anything its Microsoft neglecting the PC for the last 15 odd years not the source engine, as you can only do so much with the tools your given. Its no coincidence that the PC has only received a new version of DirectX around the time M$ release a new Xbox

DirectX 8.0 2000 / Xbox 2001/2002
DirectX 9.0c 2004 / Xbox 360 2005
DirectX 11.1 2012 / Xbox One 2013

Even though DirectX 10 is missing, i would say its best forgotten as it didn't bring anything new.

Like it or not for the last 15 years Microsoft main focus has been on the Xbox for gaming and the PC for more 'serious' stuff, and that's not going to change.
Its the reason Valve is releasing the SteamOs and Steam Machines, maybe at last we will see real development in serious/high end gaming on the PC after being held back for the last 15 years.

 

Microsoft anti-bias aside, I don't think you can say they've held back gaming when a good high end game comes out and everyone starts to moan they have to upgrade their rigs to play it.

We are hearing it now with the suggested specs for Watch_Dogs. On the flip side, we have players moaning at developers for just giving us PC gamers their left over console ports.

You cannot blame Microsoft for either and I know you personally have high hopes for SteamOS but again, they've not been pushing the boat out to test hardware when their own app user survey suggests the average rig is still a few years behind the current generation.

 

But isn't everyone moaning because for the last 6-7 years they have been running PC's able to run most Xbox 360 ports comfortably ? and now developers are making games to take advantage of the better hardware in the next gen consoles people are finding they have to upgrade.

Its a cycle that has been going on since the first Xbox, that was designed to be comparable with the average gaming PC in 2001. Then around 2005 people found they needed to upgrade as developers started developing for the better specs of the 360, and now the developers are programing to take advantage of the Xbox One people are finding they have to upgrade their 4-5 year old hardware.

I mean the recommended specs for watch dogs is what some would consider mid range, people have become used to only needing upgrades every 5 odd years, before the consoles people would upgrade every 1-3 years at most

 

Maybe this is a conversation to go in another topic as I really can't see how that can all be dumped on Microsoft. Especially when Crysis had the world crying because it did push those boundaries and no one wanted it, hence the sequels being so much more of a console port.

Let's not forget, HL3 can probably be the most hotly anticipated game of all time and we will more than likely see a new SourceEngine to go with it. However, even "Open" SteamOS can't push that boundary for developers because it's own customer base is still using lower spec gear.

 

I'm not dumping on Microsoft, im merely explaining they abandoned the idea of Windows being used for serious gaming when they decided to enter the console market.

As i said earlier in this thread ...

 

Yes, I see your point. However, would the SteamOS improve it's Linux based usage from it's current 1.75% of it's customer base to such an extent that it would use exclusives to such a small customer base?

Maybe this is another point to raise in another topic.

 

Who knows ? They do need something to make people go WOW though.

 

Hmm that's a little harsh isn't it? I mean yeah, it wasn't revolutionary but I think the problem with it was more down to the fact that no one could be bothered to use it. I remember the lighting in Gears of war (PC version) and it blew me away. There was also a Dirt 2 hack so that you could run all of the lighting on a DX10 card.

 

Maybe.
But when combined with it being a Vista exclusive, mostly changes in the way developers program and not in graphical changes the user sees it wasn't well received.

 

Yeah Vista certainly didn't help the cause. They did relinquish but it was a bit late.

Mind you, GPU manufacturers weren't ramming DX10 in our faces like they did DX11.



Funny how Tessellation was rammed in our faces with DX11 and we had to have it yet wasn't even really mentioned in DX10. I don't know if DX11's Tessellation differs from the 'instanced' Tessellation in DX10 but it certainly wasn't used for marketing then.

 

Agreed. And especially these days there with people putting extra HD textures and super HD textures. The game looks great even till today, having only played it all again a few months ago!