GL water actually always existed. It came about with GLQuake, and Valve minimally changed it. You can find it in the GLQuake source release.
@monkeywithocd
Жыл бұрын
This makes that Xen water make so much more sense, I've always felt it looked like fudge like we suddenly entered some sort of Willie Wonka place. The software-rendered version looks a lot more like water over a very rough, uneven ground.
@S1nwar
Жыл бұрын
i assumed it is supposed to look like an organic goo similar to zerg creep or that slime from ghostbusters 2
@dagaypussayeatah
Жыл бұрын
software water is gorgeous. never even knew it was different since ive never thought to actually play HL in software mode
@Zenkibou
Жыл бұрын
I probably did use software mode a few times, but it was usually with a low-end PC without a GPU, and it meant a crappy resolution and slow FPS, so I'm not sure many people were able to properly compare between GL and SW because it would have needed a much more powerful CPU for SW mode.
@Autunite
Жыл бұрын
I had a PC without a GPU that could support OpenGL, it only supported D3D or Software, and D3D was way too laggy to be playable, so I played mostly in software. Didn't think much of the water, even after going over to a newer PC that supported OpenGL.
@henry-u5t
Жыл бұрын
bladee pfp!
@DJ3lectrical
Жыл бұрын
I’ve always loved the software water. I hope someone makes a WAD pack of animated textures of those ripples so Modders can use them in OpenGL by placing a brush with the textures on ‘em over the actual water.
@DJ3lectrical
Жыл бұрын
@@OpposingFork Really?
@DJ3lectrical
Жыл бұрын
@@OpposingFork Where can I find this WAD file and what build is it?
@KellySteam
Жыл бұрын
Honestly a surprising change, I feel like the software rendered water looks leagues and miles better than what most of us are familiar with with the OpenGL rendering.
@Tester-sh1mn
Жыл бұрын
People always shit on Jp Trespasser for being bad and half life coming out a month later, but it’s ripple effect are better still are far superior than even the software rendering of half life.
@writershard5065
Жыл бұрын
To us today yes. But remember that OpenGL was new at the time, and people would've cared less about the water looking a bit jelly-like, if it meant that they could see actual wavy-effects for the first time. It's the appeal of the new, over practical appearance.
@WangleLine
Жыл бұрын
I agree!!
@PandemonicHypercube
Жыл бұрын
It's due to the limitations of early graphics cards, rather than being an artistic choice. Early GPUs didn't have pixel shaders, as those wouldn't come about until the GeForce 3 generation (and the equivalent generation of ATI cards). This meant that per-pixel effects, like the water effect you see in software rendering mode became very expensive. It was much cheaper instead to just mess with the texture coordinates on the water vertices to give the effect you see here. Quake 2 also lost the wavy effect you see underwater when you switched on hardware rendering for the same reason.
@NeovanGoth
Жыл бұрын
@@PandemonicHypercubeUnreal did very similar effects including water rendering with what they called "procedural textures". No pixel shaders needed, basically just an animated texture.
@B.M.Skyforest
Жыл бұрын
Wow software water looked quite good. Almost like it has some refraction.
@MFKitten
Жыл бұрын
The GL version, up until a few years ago, was unable to render textures that had a resolution that wasn't a factor of two (512x512, 256x256, etc) but a huge amount of textures were actually designed this way. So what the engine did was to stretch those textures to a square with the nearest suitable dimensions, and then it squashed it back down. Due to the filtering, this created a lot of detail loss and smear, which is a big part of the blurry look of the game. As a kid I remember playing it with software rendering before we could afford 3D acceleration. The GL mode always felt like it lacked depth and detail to me, and the blurry smeary look always puzzled me. But the overall sharpness and clarity of the geometry was well worth it at the time. You can play the game without the texture filtering in GL using console commands, and an employee at Valve actually fixed the texture resolution thing so it renders textures without the squash and stretch thing now!
@ldxlu
Жыл бұрын
As a kid i always felt some sort of connection to water stuff in video games, wether that be a sea world in Mario or the water in half life. Something just made me feel so intrigued by them that i would stay in the same area for minutes just jumping around in it. Fun stuff, but weird to think now that it comes back to me.
@threadschanged4252
Жыл бұрын
The water in gta vice city stood out in my mind as it is very similar to the half life water
@MysticRixel
Жыл бұрын
Loved the documentary style. This water with the original shadows seen in the magazines just proves how powerful the Quake/GoldSrc engine was for its time.
@Delamortes
Жыл бұрын
I always play Half-Life on Software and lowest Resolution , very nostalgic.
@joebolts2934
Жыл бұрын
1:58, I wonder why they dropped the 3D waves for the source engine? Imagine how cool it would look with the modern textures.
@snak8002
Жыл бұрын
This talk about the differences with software and hardware rendering reminded me of how big of a rabbit hole the 3D audio in GoldSrc is, might be a cool topic for another video
@ToothpasteVixen
Жыл бұрын
Half-Life was based on WinQuake, which contained both the QuakeGL and Software renderers. Most of the development screenshots we have from 1997-98 are taken in OpenGL mode on 3dfx cards. I think it's inaccurate to say that Software mode is the original way that the game looked, given that OpenGL mode was already present from the start of development. By 1997, software renderers were already seen as a bit of a backwards compatibility option for people that hadn't yet got a 3d acceleration card, but in the case of hl1 great care was taken so that people would have a good experience in either mode. The pixelation visible when underwater in software mode is likely a holdover from the old ripple effect in order to reduce the number of pixels that had to be warped, and also occurs when other screenspace effects (like fades) happen in software mode.
@patbytes
Жыл бұрын
Thank you very much for this disambiguation and history. Me referring to software mode as the "original" or being "changed" into OpenGL is incorrect, and I have added an addendum to the description. Thanks also for the info on the pixelation - I noticed it specifically during the Xen teleports, but didn't know if I could fit that into the video.
@Banzeken
Жыл бұрын
Unless you were playing games with voxel-based 3D graphics in ‘97 to ‘99, then software rendering wasn’t a legacy option. It was a way of life and potentially a laggy one if your CPU wasn’t up to snuff. Time to upgrade to a Pentium II!
@Ribulose15diphosphat
Жыл бұрын
One further Detail: The Texture type used fro Water is calle Whorley Noise. It is generated, by colouring pixels depending on the Distance for random placed points first.
@NiiRubra
Жыл бұрын
They both have their pros and cons, also I was thinking of how it reminded me a bit of Source, but then as you said "yeah... maybe not" lol.
@stuff31
Жыл бұрын
I love the software water! I'm just generally a fan of seeing HL1 being presented as it was back in the 90s. I love the 4:3 ratio, and the crunchy pixelated-ness of the game. It makes it feel older, and I think that makes it seem even more impressive when you remember the scope of the game. All this was made in 1998, this is what the guys at Valve were working with. It's crazy what they were able to make with such limited resources.
@OmegaRC59
Жыл бұрын
Very similar to Unreal's water effects, though with the Unreal ones you can actually paint your own effects in it to customize it, and it works in all renderers. Curious that they wouldn't have tried to do the same thing in Half-Life, Unreal's strategy is basically to take the palette and just manipulate texture coordinates using some ASM code on the CPU. I wonder how Half-Life's version of the effect is implemented in comparison
@Netsuko
Жыл бұрын
The software rendering of the water immediately screams "Unreal" at me. I still remember looking at Unreal1's water and being in awe at how good it looked.
@stargazer162
Жыл бұрын
The software mode water looks a lot nicer but the waves effect of the OpenGL water kinda makes up for it, allowing for far more interesting scenes that couldn't be possible with the original water. I think the look of the OpenGL water was probably a compromise, maybe it wasn't possible to make the nicer transparent water in OpenGL mode due to hardware limitations of GPUs of that time so they had to settle for something simpler.
@SuperXzm
Жыл бұрын
I remember switching to software render and notice a lot of changes like vortigaunts having a shinier armor, different particles, blurry vision under water, overall more vibrant colors and of course the water in general. It's like shaders without shaders.
@golarac6433
Жыл бұрын
In software rendering you can do whatever effects you want (as long as it's not too slow of course) so they had some extra distortion effects on water surfaces. When going to 3d API you are limited with what the API provides. Today you can just write a shader and generate everything you want but in DirectX and GL before shaders you were stuck with few hardcoded effects. Best they could do is move around the texture coordinates which creates this distortion effect. And I guess at that point they could also move the vertex position to create the 3d wave effect
@jasperfox6821
Жыл бұрын
This was really interesting, I never know the water looked alot better in software mode, but while looking worse in OpenGL mode, it had access to wave patterns and stuff. The software water almost looks like source engine water.
@OddsTheo
Жыл бұрын
What's that? A new video about a 1998 video game? Hell yeah I'll watch!
@AnnoyingNoisesProductions
3 ай бұрын
I want to thank you for this video. I watched this last year and I ended up doing another full playthrough of HL1 because of it (I didn't even know software rending was an option before). I also ended up playing Blue Shift, Opposing force, and Black Mesa for the first time. I feel that HL1 looks way better with sharp, unfiltered textures (and also the cool water effects). It really improved the experience for me, and I enjoyed getting back into Half-Life again.
@Kyle-xv5kv
Жыл бұрын
I remembered the software water because that's how I played it back in the day. Now I can't unsee this.
@scantyer
Жыл бұрын
This is super interesting. I've always thought the water in HL1 looked very goofy and I had no idea it was due to a default setting that i've never ever changed.
@oliverbertrand
8 ай бұрын
I wish someone made a video about those little water bug creatures that you specifically find in the track energy room in “on a rail”
@VictorCampos87
4 ай бұрын
1:41 I finally figured out why the oscillating water effect wasn't showing up in Half-Life gameplays here in KZitem.
@Kythrea
Жыл бұрын
Only clicked on it because youtube kept recommending me this video for 2 weeks. Actually interesting, good recommendation, cool video.
@QTwoSix
Жыл бұрын
Very good video, put together smoothly and flows well. I myself never really paid attention to water, but this is quite interesting.
@Admer456
Жыл бұрын
Omgosh thank you for mentioning my experiment with software-style water rendering!
@_Fly_trap_
Жыл бұрын
wonderful video. I had no memory of software water, until I saw it and was hit with nostalgia
@kinneticsand5787
9 ай бұрын
Hey man, you still active? Not trying to pressure, I just look forward to new videos if there are any planned. The HL1 videos are super fascinating to me. Keep up the good work
@Andres33AU
Жыл бұрын
Wow, that is a significant difference, and I honestly had no idea that the water was originally meant to look like that. I remember in the Worldcraft editor, trying hard to make the water look more realistic, without tanking my computer, haha. Thanks for the video, I'll watch any interesting tid-bit regarding Half-Life!
@stryhuns
Жыл бұрын
thank you! beautiful video and music and water! i want to play with original water now, so beautiful
@solargoth
Жыл бұрын
software water would permanently cure you of thirst
@Kidder936
Ай бұрын
Did not know I could go back to OG water graphics like this!!!!!!! So coool!!!! Been looking for over a decade!!!!
@Sonic_the_kidnapper
Жыл бұрын
half life/cs 1.6 water is the most nostalgic thing ever
@juliovictormanuelschaeffer8370
5 ай бұрын
Xen's water looks like when you look at bacteria under a microscope.
@John_Smith_Dumfugg
Жыл бұрын
The pudding water always looked off to me. I mean it's Iconic, but not necessarily in a good way.
@a1batross_
Жыл бұрын
By the way, the algorithm of this water effect is known and was reimplemented it for software renderer in Yamagi Quake 2 fork by me. The only thing is left is to translate the algorithm from pure C to the pixel shader, so it would be possible (and accurate) in GL renderer as well.
@SirYodaJedi
Жыл бұрын
Ooh, neat; looking forward to the GL3 port.
@a1batross_
Жыл бұрын
@@SirYodaJedi nobody works on it yet :(
@Qtheman3456
Жыл бұрын
I could've sworn I'd played through HL1 in Software mode at one point, but man, now I can't help but wonder. I'd expect to have remembered that water effect, damn.
@crimester
Жыл бұрын
the "updated" water looks way more cartoony
@featherfruit
Жыл бұрын
i love the pacing of your video here! your speaking voice is great, the video was cool and informative, there wasn't any fluff. all in all just a great vid. i look forward to more!
@deliciouspops
Жыл бұрын
this has reminded me how much more creative limitations make you
@_vh
Жыл бұрын
i didnt know that software rendered water looked different, ig just bc im used to playing on opengl, but dang this video really does explain some of the games oddities i never really thought about before amazing video as usual, pat ! ^^
@mondoprime
Жыл бұрын
Had no idea. That's a really impressive water effect for the time.
@williamarthurfenton1496
10 ай бұрын
I prefer the pixelated look over the blurry hardware filter. It just stands up better these days as far as vintage graphics go, at least for PC and Ps1games. A game like Turok though primarily designed for the ultra-blurriness of n64 dies arguably look better with the filter on.
@thefatduck5598
9 ай бұрын
After playing HL for years with texture filtering enabled, disabling it feels like getting a pair of glasses and recognizing that before you had them you were blind.
@bluustreak6578
Жыл бұрын
I noticed that when I played HL1 at first, and my computer at the time couldn't run opengl very well, so I played with software rendering and things looked way better. I played the entire game with SW rendering
@dgSolidarity
Жыл бұрын
3:41 Phew, I thought we were gonna have to cancel you for a moment there :)
@ultrawaveyt5582
Жыл бұрын
its 3 am but this is more important than sleep
@krazzy6440
Жыл бұрын
This was so cool. Happy to have discovered the channel!
@Fregatte86
Жыл бұрын
Best hl content for years
@Kacpa2
Жыл бұрын
Combining best of both is the ideal way overall. Other late 90s-2002 3d games used very nice looking texture based water with transparency tok like Warcraft 3 which is an rts so you would thought water doesnt matter much, but they made it nice. It only looks a bit off on big areas without proper variety used between tiles. It started development around 1998/1999 so its in same era graphicly(tho in a bit differenr style, going for more drawn somewhat disney-style textures) I would like to see more of exploration of legacy graphics and tech in games. We had too much time during which people just insulted and mocked og game visuals with childish attitude until people started to appreciate these aesthetics again.
@therealtony2009
Жыл бұрын
so weird how they changed the water, very interesting!
@codiivt
Жыл бұрын
wake up babe, new patbytes video just dropped
@user-sl6gn1ss8p
Жыл бұрын
having dabbled in mapping, water was always a headache: you do something secretly dumb and out of nowhere an entire section of the map is submerged
@anitabath8315
Жыл бұрын
Thank you for dropping this vid. I was getting thirsty!
@NoBudgetBits.
Ай бұрын
We miss you patbytes
@Space_Reptile
Жыл бұрын
there is something really nice looking in the crisp but pixely look of software renders, i do kinda miss it
@EliseyzScripts
Жыл бұрын
Why was this video so entertaining?!
@ethosaur
7 ай бұрын
Honestly really cool, and its awesome they returned it in the update!
@APopov
Жыл бұрын
Software water reminds me of Unreal water. And in Unreal, it also works with OpenGL/D3D renderers.
@Zarnubius
Жыл бұрын
i KNEW they changed it! I thought I was imagining this but I'm glad to see it wasn't me going crazy. It looked amazing on a TFT laptop screen in 1998
@christiangottsacker6932
Жыл бұрын
I forgot all about the original water. That brought me back to when i owned the original disk.
@cadetsparklez3300
Жыл бұрын
the software rendering has one of the most accurate looking foamy shimmering of any game. would look great as an addition to something using perlin noise for waves to make a convincing fake phycally 3d and advanced lighting looking thing with out the performance hit
@Eyepoke42
Жыл бұрын
I miss the old water I almost forgot about that!
@RogueAI
Жыл бұрын
1:09 "in bodies of water it looks OK" It looks like bean soup! 🤣
@nickjohnson410
Жыл бұрын
This brought me back to the day I first bought and installed HL. Gaming back then was so fun and exciting but looking at it now... those graphics are brutal. It's crazy what a child's imagination can fill in when it wants to.
@huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhn
Жыл бұрын
nice video my dude, never played half life but I will definitely give the software renderer a shot when I do
@Runnerman1
Жыл бұрын
I never noticed this since I play in software mode for my CRT, it looks nice.
@NerddoYT
Жыл бұрын
why am i enjoying a video about water from an old ass game
@seriouslyWeird
Жыл бұрын
I always played half life with software rendering rather than diect3d/opengl. It just looked much warmer and less "polygony" with smaller resolutions. The models/maps were simply not made for high res
@Whomobile
Жыл бұрын
That thumbnail is vaporwave af
@puppable
Жыл бұрын
I clicked this so so fast I didn't even notice it was one of yours omg!!
@ВиториоКлиментов
Жыл бұрын
During the Black mesa incident water flows the rooms in sector D.
@TheEngieTF2
Жыл бұрын
I don't think anyone actually realized this, but Half Life: MMod is the one Half Life mod that tries to bring back the good ol' software rendering look. And I have to say, it did a great job bringing the feature back to life! All the textures have a nice pixelated texture look, something well known for tye software rendering mode. Not only the mod tries to enhance the gameplay, but also bringing back the forgotten features that were lost in time
@nemtudom5074
Жыл бұрын
0:25 Damn, that looks so much better!
@m.r.mcguire7433
Жыл бұрын
WATER!! Loved It! TY! Cheers patbytes!!!!
@GwendalLeRoux
Жыл бұрын
Haha nice video ! If you want answers, you should go back to the roots : Quake 1 engine. You'll see a pattern between the rendering of the water. It would be interesting to see if the implementation of Open GL in Half Life correspond to the open source release of GL Quake
@reidhanson4755
Жыл бұрын
I like the 'new' water better in every example.
@Hazrd24
Жыл бұрын
Anytime I go back to HL1 I play it with software. The art style seems much more consistent with that renderer and that helps with the immersion/atmosphere for me #teamsoftwarerenderer
@mr.101.8
Жыл бұрын
Imagine default 3d waves water with software mode effect and with reflections
@humanrich
Жыл бұрын
I wondered why I never got full nostalgia feelings from playing half life these days. It’s because I used to play with software rendering.
@RJ-hk7oj
Жыл бұрын
Software water reminds me of the water found in most postal 2 workshop maps
@AireenTheTrash
Жыл бұрын
So that's how you enable the old water... pretty weird picking up half-life on steam after years of not playing it and saw the water was different... my old laptop cant even run the game on openGL back then
@formdusktilldeath
Жыл бұрын
That software water look exactly like Unreals water...
@sergrojGrayFace
Жыл бұрын
The reason software water effect isn't used in OpenGL renderer is that it was impossible. Pixel shaders needed for it were introduced to GPUs a few years after HL's release. Without them, you could only move vertices around or shift the whole texture along the surface. Valve did a great job given the limitations.
@Bazztoner
Жыл бұрын
Excellent video! I really like your narrations and examples.
@SonicBoone56
Жыл бұрын
Honestly feel the same way with the whole baked lighting vs ray tracing debate. I've seen plenty of games completely lose their visual appeal the moment you enable ray tracing. Just because a technology is technically more advanced doesn't mean it's always the better choice. Even if the better tech advances to the point of matching the old tech, sometimes you don't want it to look realistic. Sometimes artists want their games to look different. Art style is honestly something incredibly underrated and forgotten about in most AAA games nowadays.
@Greenhourglass
Жыл бұрын
I never understood why Source engine didn't even allow for water to move in 3D the way Goldsrc's does. Especially seeing how more complicated geometry like displacements were a big feature of the engine. The distortion effects and stuff in Source look great and add a lot but it still feels flat compared to this.
@hovant6666
Жыл бұрын
The subtle nuances between rendering a particular thing one way versus another. Now this is niche
@RedGoldDolfin-ez9iy
Жыл бұрын
If I'm not mistaken, in Beta versions of Half-Life there was a different type of water which had effects similar to effects we see in HL2
@YappinYapper
Жыл бұрын
something about 1990's fps water is just mhmmm
@olegmoki
Жыл бұрын
I actually like the old water, but i can't say that i don't like the newer one, they both look good in some ways. But anyway it's an interesting video about a thing that i've never cared about, i like this short documentary style, also with that music (it's kinda nostalgic for me)
@Time_pug
2 ай бұрын
Watching this reminds of that one video that explained water in super mario galaxy
@LightsJusticeZ
Жыл бұрын
0:37 gave me "How it's made" vibes
@zdspider6778
Жыл бұрын
This was dope. Thanks.
@easternmcg
Жыл бұрын
Finally, a KZitem recommendation that’s actually good. Great video.
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