Dear Esther remake media update

[Tysn]

Looking at this update you can just imagine little shit-raining clouds appearing over anyone who has said that the source engine is outdated:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esther/n ... he-tunnel1

Always has been one of my favorite mods. Even with the previous version's somewhat crappy level design it was still pretty atmospheric. No doubt that with this remake it is going to be amazing.

[fug4life]

http://www.youtube.com/user/fug4life#p/ ... 3bPjEbenew

I have to admit it looks pretty hot, though I'm surprised about your comment about the outdated engine.

I assume this mod, isn't heavy on multiplayer and npc code. Sounds like a sid miers walk around.

Agreed you can make an engine thats upto scratch in the graphics department, all those lil texture, lighting, shadow, tweaks/additions.

But end of the day each engine goes in a specific direction. Which compared with other engines can make them seem outdated.

Personally for me, Source was a bit of a let down, the lack of real advances in vehicle physics and some of the multiplayer limitations, still bug me to this day.

I guess it depends on what the goals of your game are.

Don't get me wrong I'm not a source hater, I've always loved the mod community and support Valve give. Though I do remember shelving hl2 as soon as I completed it, continuing playing bf1942, desertcombat, tribes2 and the like. It was only later I came back to Source, I took a 1-2 year break (whilst the mod scene got it act together). I guess I was such a mod addict back in the hl-1 days. Source mod scene felt a little tiring and done before.
But reason I'm still here, is probably the lasting amount of players, mods in the works, and things you can do to customise the game.

[Tysn]

I was mainly getting at the graphics, as that's almost always what people are referring to when they call source outdated. Usually involving a complaint about static light (nevermind the new dynamic stuff shown in the portal 2 trailer). Of course an engine's graphics are only as good as the art content put into it, but I think that those screens pretty much show that source isn't "holding back" as much as people make it out to be.

Anyway, yes the mod is basically a walk-around/explore game. I really enjoyed it simply because it tried something different, not just standard hl2 gameplay in a different location. Mods like Riot Act I think are really overrated since they don't try to bring anything new to the table.

[fug4life]

Then you have a valid point!

And yeah, I think some of the walkround/mystery mods that are coming out for source look cool, I guess they can really go to town with making the game imersive and atmospheric.

[shiftey]

I saw this yesterday on Interlopers. Looks awesome.

It's amazing what good high-res textures do for a game.

EDIT:

Wtf? Since when can you make water displacements...?

[Gary]

Source graphics are outdated, just because someone can make one basic scene that looks on-par with new games doesn't make the outdated fact invalid.

Agreed this scene looks good in still shots, it doesn't mean it will look good in gameplay, lack of dynamic lighting is the main disadvantage of the Source engine(Portal 2 doesn't count, not released or complete).

[Mentosandcola]

Looks good from my prospective,

I like those dramatic mods, you don't really battle or anything you just walk around and it is really peaceful.

[Lt_Commander]

I've been waiting for this mod for a while now. I think the revisit is just incredible. The original mod was quite nice, but this looks to be an improvement in just about every way.

[killkill85]

[fug4life]

[BBvideo 425,350][/BBvideo]

Swaying sprites

I could really do with something like that for a jungle map I'm kinda of having ideas about!

[Tysn]

Awesome stuff. They also put a few new screenshots of the final area today on their moddb page:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esther/i ... 3#imagebox

[Shana]

Swaying detail sprites should work in oc too i think

[fug4life]

Also I noticed the clouds look pretty hot, and I like how the embers travel left to right instead of up down, I havent figured out how you do that in hammer yet.

But yeah more stuff for the endless todo list!

[cartman-2000]

You can get long view distances on the foliage in ep2 too, changing the cl_detaildist and cl_detailfade values, detail dist effect view distance of sprite based foliage, and detail fade effects view distance for 3d foliage, detail fade has to be smaller then view dist. Only problem with it is you have to manually set these values everytime that map is loaded, they are reset to default on map load(effects reloading a map from game save too.).

cl_detaildist at 10000 and fade at 8000(defaults are 1200 and 400 respectively.) gets about a 15-20% hit on performance, still fully playable fps, some screens of those(in 1920x1080, also had the commentary on in this run of ep2.).
http://sc.cartman-2000.net/images/ep2_o ... 050052.jpg
http://sc.cartman-2000.net/images/ep2_o ... 050053.jpg
http://sc.cartman-2000.net/images/ep2_o ... 090045.jpg

[fug4life]

http://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/devblog/?p=628