Why is Source so efficient?

[[BB] Rick James]

Why come HL2, CS:S and DOD run so smooth with everything cranked up and with really nice graphics as compared to other gaming engines?

 

[kcthebrewer]

Why come HL2, CS:S and DOD run so smooth with everything cranked up and with really nice graphics as compared to other gaming engines?

Because it is missing a lot of neat features. My largest complaint with Source is the shadows.

 

[Isaacav2]

LOL LOL ...../

 

[retardedchicken]

Because it is missing a lot of neat features. My largest complaint with Source is the shadows.

Mine was the lighting, but the HDR looks pretty good so now I will say the shadows as well

Maybe Gabe and his posse are just good at their job?

 

[Cali3350]

Valve just knows what there doing. People can hate on steam but they cant hate on the abilities of Valve.

 

[retardedchicken]

Maybe that noob Carmack should take a hint from Valve

 

[Moose777]

Valve just knows what there doing. People can hate on steam but they cant hate on the abilities of Valve.

THEY STOLE MY IDEA!!!! THEY BREACHED THIER CONTRACT!!!!

WAAAHAHAHAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!


*runs out of room, slams door, cries in the corner*

 

[Lord of Shadows]

Yeah, let me tell ya I loved the graphical corruption that plagued early versions of hl2, as well as the memory access violations and hitching. Not to mention performance, hope no one else figures out you can get better frames by using five year old lighting techniques accompanied with outdated shadowing methods.

 

[ThreeDee]

Yeah, let me tell ya I loved the graphical corruption that plagued early versions of hl2, as well as the memory access violations and hitching. Not to mention performance, hope no one else figures out you can get better frames by using five year old lighting techniques accompanied with outdated shadowing methods.

I had that problem with my onboard video as well ....

 

[Rhetoric]

Valve is amazing. They're rather small compared to other companies. They're no farm of programmers, they're an efficient team that's all good. Steam also plays a role in this leetness because valve can release small patches constantly, as they already have been doing, instead of big stupid patches once every couple months.

 

[kevin1211]

i would love to see a source game that has large scale maps, such as Battlefield..

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

And I would love to see a game like battlefield that doesn't eat ram like rosie o'donnell in a pastry shop...

 

[kevin1211]

And I would love to see a game like battlefield that doesn't eat ram like rosie o'donnell in a pastry shop...

i didnt mean it like that, if anything, i was saying that i would love to see a game like battlefield that can run like source

 

[amdgamer]

And I would love to see a game like battlefield that doesn't eat ram like rosie o'donnell in a pastry shop...

No need to poison this thread with the mention of someone like Rosie.......

I also hope more companies don't follow Valve as I just can't stand Steam. BTW, there are some really crappy source based games out there, and Vampire Bloodlines by Troika is one of them. The story is good, but it is by far the buggiest crap performing game since Sin or Ultima Ascension.

 

[Staples]

From a technical stand point, Source really isn't that impressive. The good news is that the average person won't notice all the missing effects that the engine should have. And that is why it runs fast.

 

[Mabrito]

Source is so effcient, because probably around 4 year old technology. Even for it being that old, its still looks fantastic. Yeah the lighting might be a little outdated, but Valve has said, that they do not plan on creating a new engine, but slowly implement newer technology into Source. Supposdly if its true, they are working on 64 bit Source and Steam. I dont have my hopes up for this, but I wouldnt doubt it, if they are slowly writing it for 64 bit systems. I find out often, is that for the people who dislike Source, also dislikes Steam.

 

[pistola]

From a technical stand point, Source really isn't that impressive. The good news is that the average person won't notice all the missing effects that the engine should have. And that is why it runs fast.

What is it missing exactly?

 

[Mabrito]

What is it missing exactly?

I would also like to know this also. And do not say, it doesn not have Smart Shader 3 support. The last I checked, Source offers really good graphics at really good performance.

 

[Bo_Bice]

a lot of how 'good' a game looks today is from the talent behind the art of the game. imo anyway. valve has some great talent that make the most of what they have.

 

[retardedchicken]

Yeah, let me tell ya I loved the graphical corruption that plagued early versions of hl2, as well as the memory access violations and hitching. Not to mention performance, hope no one else figures out you can get better frames by using five year old lighting techniques accompanied with outdated shadowing methods.

Because lighting is the only thing a graphics card needs to process?

Why isn't the doom3 engine as efficient? It has good lighting but SHIT for textures. and the complex physics aren't present to bog down the cpu...or the AI(well HL2 didn't have great ai but doom3's was rather...retarded... )

Download the R8 HDR bloom mod, it only gives a marginal framerate hit and adds great bloom effects.

 

[zamardii]

Valve is amazing. They're rather small compared to other companies. They're no farm of programmers, they're an efficient team that's all good. Steam also plays a role in this leetness because valve can release small patches constantly, as they already have been doing, instead of big stupid patches once every couple months.

Valve is secretly owned by Microsoft. How do you think they went 6 (or however many) years without making a sequel to one of the greatest shooters of all time? I could be wrong, this is just a theory. But I mean, The only games I know of made by Valve are Half Life, HL2, and the other Source conversions.

 

[Mabrito]

Valve is secretly owned by Microsoft. How do you think they went 6 (or however many) years without making a sequel to one of the greatest shooters of all time? I could be wrong, this is just a theory. But I mean, The only games I know of made by Valve are Half Life, HL2, and the other Source conversions.

Umm, there were 2 expansion for Half Life 1. Opposing Force and Blueshift. Team Fortress Class was a big hit. Counter-Strike was a big hit. Even though, those might of been mods by other developers, Valve now own the teams(at least im pretty sure, they are all working for Valve now). With Steam, Valve gets 100% of the profits now, since they dont have to pay a publisher. Even to this day Half-Life 1 still is being sold in good amounts.

 

[Ballz2TheWallz]

wtf are you talking about? source is THE ONLY engine i know of that unless im running a constant 70FPS+ is choppy


which means i run 1280x960 4xAA 4xAF for CS:S on a 6800gt

where as i can run doom 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF smoothly

 

[Rhetoric]

Valve is secretly owned by Microsoft. How do you think they went 6 (or however many) years without making a sequel to one of the greatest shooters of all time? I could be wrong, this is just a theory. But I mean, The only games I know of made by Valve are Half Life, HL2, and the other Source conversions.

Valve took six years because they're not a farm of developers like EA, they're rather small, like I said. But their smallness=efficiency obviously. No one on their team seems to be crappy at their job.

 

[QuimZ]

From a technical stand point, Source really isn't that impressive. The good news is that the average person won't notice all the missing effects that the engine should have. And that is why it runs fast.

Yeah, shame on Valve for making a game that looks good and can run very efficiently on old hardware.
If anything other devs should follow suit and try to pull more out of older technology, so that we don't have to pay out the ass every year for new hardware. Who knows, maybe more people would play if they could afford it. LOL

 

[Sizer]

Why come HL2, CS:S and DOD run so smooth with everything cranked up and with really nice graphics as compared to other gaming engines?

Um, you need a beefy card (16+ pipes with 256 megs GDDR3) to play Source games at high res with AA/AF at an acceptable framerate. It actually doesn't run that much better than Doom 3. People rave about it being scalable and all that, but so is every other engine. Things may run well on your 6600gt as long as you tone down the settings, but by that time the textures look like they came right out of 1998.

Besides that, Source lacks UE2-style projectors, renders normal maps incorrectly in dark areas, has bizarre issues with light points and light source placements, shows physics collision problems in MP, and other things.

 

[Blakestr]

I don't get it...people are saying it is missing stuff or isn't as good as other games? What game out their right now has better graphics? I'd say Oblivion looks badass, but then again, isn't that Source as well? Silly Bethesda, using such an engine to make their game, what was E3 thinking giving them best rpg

I'm trying to think of games..Doom 3, Farcry, BF 2...their graphics still aren't as good in my opinion.

 

[Sizer]

I don't get it...people are saying it is missing stuff or isn't as good as other games? What game out their right now has better graphics? I'd say Oblivion looks badass, but then again, isn't that Source as well? Silly Bethesda, using such an engine to make their game, what was E3 thinking giving them best rpg

I'm trying to think of games..Doom 3, Farcry, BF 2...their graphics still aren't as good in my opinion.

Oblivion is NOT a Source engine game. It's either UE3 or an engine designed in-house. Really, who the hell told you it was Source?

 

[bladeiai]

Because lighting is the only thing a graphics card needs to process?

Why isn't the doom3 engine as efficient? It has good lighting but SHIT for textures. and the complex physics aren't present to bog down the cpu...or the AI(well HL2 didn't have great ai but doom3's was rather...retarded... )

Download the R8 HDR bloom mod, it only gives a marginal framerate hit and adds great bloom effects.

I tryed that mod out and I get weird purple boxes in a checkered pattern on my screen anyone know why?

 

[Ballz2TheWallz]

Oblivion is NOT a Source engine game. It's either UE3 or an engine designed in-house. Really, who the hell told you it was Source?

bethsada uses there own engines....UE3 isnt really right for the immersion of a game like oblivion,there engine is incredible though supports SM3 and then w/e parts of SM4 are out,soft shadows on everything. only bad thing about there engine is that independant lightsources like laterns dont cause shadows.....mabey it will be an opition for pc's in the future

 

[Attean]

Valve is secretly owned by Microsoft. How do you think they went 6 (or however many) years without making a sequel to one of the greatest shooters of all time? I could be wrong, this is just a theory. But I mean, The only games I know of made by Valve are Half Life, HL2, and the other Source conversions.

That's like saying Lucas only made Star Wars and Indiana Jones...he still had a huge impact.

 

[FreiDOg]

I don't get it...people are saying it is missing stuff or isn't as good as other games? What game out their right now has better graphics? I'd say Oblivion looks badass, but then again, isn't that Source as well? Silly Bethesda, using such an engine to make their game, what was E3 thinking giving them best rpg

'better graphics' is a subjective term.

The thing it's 'missing' that most people refer to is that valve chose to make extensive use of lightmaps. These are static precalculating lighting information for surfaces. They make rendering much faster, but the do limit what you can do with those surfaces. (Complex animations are impractical - too hard to precalculate and store all the frames of animations, destructable enviorments don't work well either). The level of detail availible also is much less than other lighiting methods - you'll sometimes notice objects like chain link fences casting solid shadows.
Source does a good job of using dynamic lighting on the objects that need it, characters, and objects that are movable / destructable are dynamically lit.
Lightmaps can also limit the precision of the lighting with large ranges of brightness, a blinding light in a dark room requires a light many thousands of times brighter than the dark room, lightmaps only have 256 steps, (0 - 255 are the typical values possible).
HL2 doesn't really make extensive use of very dark areas so it's not a big deal, but something like Doom where you have very dark rooms and very bright lights coexisting; dynamic lighting is more important for smooth, accurate lighting.

Now, all that said; I can only pick out a few real problems with the lighting and shadows in HL2, and nothing that prevented me from enjoying a very good game. And when using HRD lighting, I think it's as good as you can find right now.

 

[Blakestr]

Oblivion is NOT a Source engine game. It's either UE3 or an engine designed in-house. Really, who the hell told you it was Source?

You're right, my mistake. Oblivion uses Havok, the physics processing component that I noobishly confused with Source, which uses Havok physics.

Now I read that in a magazine, so it has to be accurate too

 

[Lord of Shadows]

Because lighting is the only thing a graphics card needs to process?

Why isn't the doom3 engine as efficient? It has good lighting but SHIT for textures. and the complex physics aren't present to bog down the cpu...or the AI(well HL2 didn't have great ai but doom3's was rather...retarded... )

Download the R8 HDR bloom mod, it only gives a marginal framerate hit and adds great bloom effects.

Lighting believe it or not is a very big part of graphics, go look at some raytraced images. Any engine can load up any texture assuming it supports the file format. Same thing goes with models, assuming that the file format can handle everything you want on your model.

Half-Life 2 uses lightmaps, which are precomputed lighting/shadowing images that are blended with the map textures, and z buffered stencil shadows, general explanation here

Doom 3 uses realtime lighting and shadow volumes, (go down one entry from above example) Shadow volume's are similar, except instead of using the depth buffer, you extrude the shaded triangles to create a volume that extends to whichever surface. The lighting in doom3 is realtime and because of this has to be basic, so no fancy radiosity etc.

The shadows volumes are the reason why models are relatively low poly in doom3, more polygons on a model, the more complex the shadow volumes become, the lower the performance. As for textures in doom3, you can also lay blame on the lack of memory available due to the additional specular and diffuse maps needed per texture as well as normal maps for models.

Half life2 went their route likely because it was easier and allowed them to create the game they envisioned while still being guaranteed to perform well, whereas doom3 was made to create the atmosphere possible with todays graphics.

 

[retardedchicken]

snip

If they toned the game down due to lack of video memory, then why do they have an ultra mode that only works when a card has 512mb of ram? If they would have had HL2 res textures, the game would have been much better. Hopefully quake4 doesnt have shit textures and they realize that cards like the 7800gtx and x1800xl can handle it.

That being said, I liked Far Cry's engine better overall. It had both decent textures and decent lighting.

 

[Sly]

Because lighting is the only thing a graphics card needs to process?

No. But it's a big part of it for making more realistic visuals (HDR?). It defines the general shape of a surface, bump, normal and specular mapping are all light based features and used right can make any flat surface irregular.

Try playing EliteForce2 then turn on nightvision. It takes out all the shadows and lets you see perfectly in the dark. The thing is, you won't know where your going coz without the shadows, there's no sense of depth. You can't tell if the wall your facing in a cave is ten feet or a hundred. The opposite of that situation, is to do it with full lighting, bump and normal mapping.

That's what gave the source the impression of being an old engine, aside from the lack of real lighting, the flat surfaces and sharp corners also make it appear dated.

If they toned the game down due to lack of video memory, then why do they have an ultra mode that only works when a card has 512mb of ram? If they would have had HL2 res textures, the game would have been much better.

Every surface on Doom3, down to that plain panel in the corner has atleast four times the texture data as opposed to earlier games. It's insane, i've looked at the PAK files and even the plain featureless textures is accompanied by a normal, bump, and specular map.

Not only that, but Doom3's models don't scale. Unlike other graphic intensive games like FarCry and Riddick where the models actually switch to lower quality ones at a certain distance. Riddick switches to lower res ones at around 10 feet, FarCry does it at around 20 feet. Doom3 stays the same. If you were to place the CyberDemon 10 miles away, he would still retain all his polygons, including complete texture data even tho all you see of him is a few pixels. If your framerate is 30fps with it standing in front of you, you'll still get 30fps even if it's miles away. When Id made the game, they didn't seem to employ the standard tricks other developers use to get the most out of an engine. Hopefully, Raven will make better use of the engine.

BTW, Source's biggest selling point was the physics. However, it wasn't made by Valve, any other developer that licensed the Havok engine could recreate everything.

 

[Circuitbreaker8]

Why is it so efficient? Because it looks like trash. Photo-realistic textures do NOT make a game engine.

 

[retardedchicken]

Why is it so efficient? Because it looks like trash. Photo-realistic textures do NOT make a game engine.

Oh come on you are just asking to be flamed. Make a better engine for us then you can talk about how "trashy" the source engine is.

 

[Yiffy]

Not only that, but Doom3's models don't scale. Unlike other graphic intensive games like FarCry and Riddick where the models actually switch to lower quality ones at a certain distance. Riddick switches to lower res ones at around 10 feet, FarCry does it at around 20 feet. Doom3 stays the same. If you were to place the CyberDemon 10 miles away, he would still retain all his polygons, including complete texture data even tho all you see of him is a few pixels. If your framerate is 30fps with it standing in front of you, you'll still get 30fps even if it's miles away. When Id made the game, they didn't seem to employ the standard tricks other developers use to get the most out of an engine. Hopefully, Raven will make better use of the engine.

So that's why they're were so few enemies on the screen at any given time in Doom 3....

I really don't see how lacking LOD in models is a good thing.

 

[finalgt]

Maybe Gabe and his posse are just good at their job?

I personally disagree with this statement. Valve's programmers are fucking Carmack-equivalent gurus and their art direction is rivaled only by the talent in companies like Blizzard, but all the evidence in the world would seem to indicate that these aspects of the company are headed by executive and marketing departments that don't give a rat's ass about anything. (My point of contention here = the name "Gabe" should not be mentioned anywhere in a paragraph discussing the positive aspects of Valve)