The best part about the Half Life scenario was the weirdness, HL2 threw in that existential dread in there as well.
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15 years later, Half-Life 2 is still better than most shooters nowadays. Also why do modern games have shitty physics?
- Thread starter Blade Wolf
- Start date
It's a shame that most discussions on this forum only scratch the surface on technical stuff.
Nobody is interested in giving a real answer to OP's title "why do modern games have shitty physics?" and point at ONE THING and put all the blame on this.
Surely the answer cannot be more nuanced?
Why do modern games have shitty physics? Well it's Mark's fault, he's a lazy coder.
Let's build on this statement. Intense, high quality physics means:
So in summary and to reply to Blade Wolf : with high quality AAA games, old-gen physics would seriously look out of place. New physics engines are still years away because everybody would have trouble with it: designers, artists, devtesters and programmers. It's a serious effort and everybody is still trying to catch on 60fps, HDR and 4k...
Nobody is interested in giving a real answer to OP's title "why do modern games have shitty physics?" and point at ONE THING and put all the blame on this.
Surely the answer cannot be more nuanced?
Why do modern games have shitty physics? Well it's Mark's fault, he's a lazy coder.
Let's build on this statement. Intense, high quality physics means:
- More bugs, obviously. And very hard to reproduce as physic assets are unpredictable.
- Unpredictable behavior for designers - flow breakers
- Serious navigation issues for NPCs if lots of things are moving at every frame, they would have to constantly recompute their route.
- Hard time for artists to design props that react accurately to physics: weight, materials, fragility etc. are very hard to analyze and do properly. You have to translate "physical feel" into "numbers" and that's not easy to do with game maths. And any human would be the greatest judge: anyone is able to discern the smallest difference in perceived weight/bounciness/density and so on.
- The more detailed your physical collision is, the more costly it becomes. Half Life 2 had almost exclusively boxes, spheres and cylinders primitive.
- As mentioned Teeth page 2, lighting is still very hard to do on movable objects. I cannot think of a single realistic game with tons of dynamic objects.
- Due to the way network works, accurate physics replication is still pretty much impossible to do at scale, so exit competitive multiplayer with physics. I don't think anybody ever found a solution for that besides boosting servers ping rate and kicking clients with low framerate.
So in summary and to reply to Blade Wolf : with high quality AAA games, old-gen physics would seriously look out of place. New physics engines are still years away because everybody would have trouble with it: designers, artists, devtesters and programmers. It's a serious effort and everybody is still trying to catch on 60fps, HDR and 4k...
I was just saying as much before the HL: Alyx reveal wrt physics in games, Control is basically the only thing I've seen this gen with physics interactions that actually iterates on the complexity of what HL2 was doing 12+ years ago. It didn't help that this gen's cpus were fairly weak to begin with, but seeing things like Control and Boneworks beginning to return to that level of experimentation that Valve pulled off so well so long ago gives me hope we'll see more games go to that well again, particularly knowing next gen console cpus are actually going to be fast. Give us all the physics devs.
There are those working on solutions for this. And server ping rates have little to do with this, but rather it is the lack of scalability in most physics systems used in games at the moment
I still remember beating a gunship using the gun on my boat, which I thought wasn't possible. By far my most memorable gaming experience.
Many people dislike the car section and the boat section. That was my favorite part of the game. The dystopian isolation feeling was unmatched. You had to get of the car, clear some obstacles then get on it again. Simple but the gameplay design along with atmosphere made it incredible, a true journey.
Many people dislike the car section and the boat section. That was my favorite part of the game. The dystopian isolation feeling was unmatched. You had to get of the car, clear some obstacles then get on it again. Simple but the gameplay design along with atmosphere made it incredible, a true journey.
I'm replaying this and I'm loving it as much as I did the first time. I still can't believe the fact that it's better than a lot of modern games.
OP
OP
Thank you so much for this post!
It makes sense, but at the same time It's really kinda sad.
My main problem isn't that it's better than most shooter these days, cause that is subjective.
My main problem is that it plays more advanced & next-gen than most shooter these days, objectively.
If there's a new shooter released right now with 2019 graphics and advanced physics interwoven with the gameplay & level design like HL2 did, people who freak out and say ''The next gen is here!!'' ''I've never played anything like this!!'' ''This is true next-gen!!'' When it's all done 15 years ago.
So good that it gave us gmod and is still producing new physics puzzles.
My solution was simple and effective: gravity gun toss it ahead of me in the level, drive after it, hop out and repeat. Add quicksaves for security.
Thats not true. There is no difference between static object and dynamic object in games without baked lighting, which are a ton nowadays. If you open editor of those games you move every object in the game without any performance issue.
Also pretty much Voxel based games are all dynamic objects games, let alone any games with procedural generated terrain.
Problem with a lot of objects is related mostly to need for instancing geometry to reduce draw calls and generally bug'ness of physics in games .
That literally doesn't make sense.
"This really old thing hasn't aged well, but even today it's still one of the best things."
What?
My brain is full of contradictions and quirks, I know.
I still believe it.
Thinking about it...I guess that, while some of the mechanics seem dated, the game still deserves to be considered one of the greatest of all time due to its influence?
There's a lot of great games I'd consider among the best ever made that haven't aged all too well. Goldeneye 64 being among them.
That said, I think HL1 has aged remarkably well. There aren't a whole lot of games from that era I can still pick up and play, especially FPS games. The gunplay may be dated compared to games 20+ years later, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the greatest games of all time. A lot of progress has happened int that time frame, it's going to feel a bit dated in some areas, no stopping that in any game.
Can't wait for the day where physical objects in games don't seem to have the same weight as cardboard boxes.
Reach has actual ice physics on certain chunks of ice. The objects float in water and slide on land. You kind of have to go out of your way to find some though. I discovered them on mission 2 while messing around in a vehicle by the water.
They ported HL2 to the OG Xbox which had a Pentium 3.
So yeah, console CPU power isn't the issue.
Bungie implemented some really cool shit on the 360. The jelly water looks weird af now but the way bodies float downstream on Valhalla was fucking awesome back in 2007.
More impressive water physics than Bioshock had, which was really just smoke and mirrors.
Bioshock didn't have any water physics at all AFAIR lol
Damned pretty though!
Yeah, a real missed opportunity! I just remember it being funny that Halo 3's barely used water was far more advanced despite Bioshock having water everywhere!
There are a few other notable examples like Crysis letting you destroy and interact with pretty much everything and some of the Battlefield games encorporating environmental destruction, but aside from that I totally agree.
Every half decade or so it seems like there's a game that comes out and does environmental destruction or interactivity really well and I hope a bunch of other games will follow, but it never seems to take off and the status quo remains.
The lack of loot, leveling up, abilities on cooldown, and a crafting system would probably stop people from calling it a new era of shooters. Tsk. Not even open world.
(Though I might argue HL2 basically has loot in the form of dozens of off the beaten trail health and armor pick ups, the perfect implementation)
This are two interesting points, op. I believe Half Life 2's gameplay demands something more than most FPS. It's more than just skill and moving around, it's about, as you put it, "using your wits". There is a element of strategy in this game that are simply not there in others, even in great FPS like Doom. It's lacks a layer that only HL2 has. The sections that you have to move turrets around are particularly memorable and unmatched.
And about physics you're again spot on. Half Life 2 has a different concern. Physics isn't simply about looking good or right, it's about being part of the game, being interactive and enhancing the gameplay.
It's not easy to put into words what make HL2 so great. But everytime I play it I feel that, regardless what year it was released, I'm playing the (by far) best FPS ever made.
Look I love the Xbox port of Half-Life 2 and always found it to be damn impressive, but it ran like shit, especially when physics was computed on screen. You could have drops in the single digits, with stutters lasting as long as 2 seconds. While it was a functioning product, it really was struggling like hell and nowadays, unless you have the nostalgia factor or able to understand why it was a great feat back then, it would be considered totally unplayable by the vast majority.
That said, a PS3 and a 360 was more than enough to run the game adequately.
Iirc Half-Life 2 is using the first version of Havok then Valve heavily modified it to meet their demand. Basically, Half-Life 2's havok engine is superior to later versions of Havok engine in some regards, and probably inferior on others.
What I wonder is how they'll handle showing other players. They've settled on floating hands for first person views. I wonder if for seeing other players they'll just assume arm positions.
Generic 3rd-person animations that don't track hands would be the easiest solution, albeit less than revolutionary lol
What? AI advancement has not stopped at all.
Just instead of doing stupid fake scripted "AI" as in every single game, research has moved to create an actual self learning AI.