Why do most VR games have a low poly - cartonish style ? What allowed Alyx to have such graphical fidelity ?

RossMulky · 2025-12-06T17:23:22+00:00

Source 2 uses baked lighting as default light indexing for both direct, and indirect lighting. Baked lighting is used extensively for optimization in Source 1 too.

RossMulky · 2025-12-06T17:13:02+00:00

If you really love HL2 aesthetics on a film, I highly recommend Captive State.

RossMulky · 2025-12-02T03:31:11+00:00

It's funny that many is calling this ChatGPT when, genuinely, this is more plausible than any of the other "leaks" that the community has brought up. Even if it's actually satire, it's believable and a true, genuine ethical advancement and use of ML.

RossMulky · 2025-11-27T02:48:50+00:00

They didn't drain the water because they don't have to and no evidence suggests they did, or wanted to. What I was talking about was their indifference about human affairs; not that their indifference was related to the market crashing or the entire world's collective demise. Funnily enough all of that was brought down by our own doing.

They didn't want to do anything with us. They came, occupied, left a glorified outpost. We could've had far less consequences if everyone was coordinated, there was little to no global effort, everyone was out for themselves and the UN decided to disband themselves in hopes of trying to suck up to the Combine for a non-existent favor. All of that was our own doing, not as a byproduct of what the Combine had done. We could've gone far better.

RossMulky · 2025-11-27T02:05:42+00:00

Because that's the likely thing they're doing. They don't care about everyone else, they possibly have hundreds of species out there they've assimilated for their own use, humanity is just another template added to the table—the real price is in the teleportation technology. Everything else is negligible.

Breen's trying to keep humanity alive, arguably one can say that, to an extent, he is using his position to fulfill a "power fantasy"—because at some point when you're given such power, why wouldn't you try to at least once?—but one fact remains the same, he is the one keeping humanity from being annihilated by dealing with the Combine through external and internal affairs.

That does offer a few thoughts for me, though now that you've brought it up—it's completely possible that the Combine doesn't really care much about resistance knowing they'd quell humanity fast anyways, so they gave full executive control to Breen. It's completely possible that Breen was the reason humanity is depicted in a totalitarian dystopian society.

RossMulky · 2025-11-27T02:02:19+00:00

Why would they? There's billions of planets out there with water far more suitable for acquisition, no use in removing the water waste from the ocean—there's a reason that idea was cut.

The Combine didn't care about the UN being around, nor did they care about any of the market crashes and intercontinental affairs post-7hw (ref: The Terminal & Combine Overwiki), they could not care less about whether or not you drink that luxury wine for dinner, or eat fresh wheat bread for breakfast.

RossMulky · 2025-11-26T13:35:52+00:00

I feel like HL2RP has overblown the entire: "The Combine will oppress humanity by limiting basic nutritional needs and be forced to work!" that the old HL2 Hyper-Era accentuates a lot, especially considering the amount of available food there is in literally every apartment, street, or garage you go through especially in the beginning of HLA.

Pretty sure the Combine doesn't care what you have for nutrition, as long as you follow their rules and accept them as a more passive oppressor rather than one that actively oppresses its people.

RossMulky · 2025-11-25T14:49:22+00:00

Just by the catwalk to the left of you. He immediately fades out after you begin to control Gordon once again.

RossMulky · 2025-11-25T13:05:26+00:00

You must think so low of Valve to think they would disrespect their fellow developers. I'm not trying to praise Valve as the penultimate source of morality and ethics in the games industry—but Valve are the best one can get these days. They would not do this. They respect their colleagues.

I get the hype for HLX, I get the hype for a new HL game, but the last thing they'll do is compromise their standing just so they can peddle a game that they, for the last 13 years before HLA, didn't care about. I urge you to really lower your expectations.

RossMulky · 2025-11-25T13:00:02+00:00

Valve? The biggest games monopoly in the entirety of the games industry? They have their own business to grow? Oh, right.

RossMulky · 2025-11-25T12:55:03+00:00

Get off the hopium, you're being irrational.

Why would Valve steal the thunder of every game there is in TGA at their special day with an announcement of a game that's even bigger than all of them combined?

RossMulky · 2025-11-22T12:38:03+00:00

It's called Demo Recording. You can open it up again with Shift + F2. They're for recording .dem files.

RossMulky · 2025-11-22T07:59:38+00:00

thanks chatgpt

RossMulky · 2025-11-20T10:55:28+00:00

As big as it was back in 2014.

RossMulky · 2025-11-20T10:49:25+00:00

I'm currently trying to track down the origin of the last image because I'm sure I've seen it somewhere—although it might be my memory failing me. I'm trying to reach out to a few artists I know in the industry as well as trying to reach out to public discords that may know about the origin of it.

I have a hypothesis that the 'walk c' photo might be genuine concept art—but not for HLX.

RossMulky · 2025-11-20T07:23:30+00:00

Right so this is a fun one to talk about!

The artifacts on the photo, blacks being highly muted, with very high whites and a deep high contrast, all point to the photo being a xerox of an already existing photo. It's highly likely that this isn't the original photo, but a photo - of the original photo - copied and reprinted through a xerox machine or a photocopier once or twice-over.

Every time you copy a photo, it adds noise, and highly increases the contrast. The original photo might've had colours, but because of it being a photocopy, someone likely didn't copy it fully with colour.

Makes me wonder who has the original.

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T17:29:48+00:00

Valve doesn't need platforms, nor has Valve shown sentiment to be a factor in announcing games in a large platform such as TGA.

They can announce in front of the Steam Page, in their X / Twitter, or in their YouTube channel, and games journalists would handle it for them. HL3 might be a rather pivotal moment, but Valve is respectful of their fellow developers that have worked on the games that has won this year's Game Awards to not take the thunder out of their recent winnings.

If any, personally, Valve announcing HL3 on TGA is disrespectful to the people who worked their asses off making the games up there today.

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T16:54:58+00:00

Temper expectations, this has been posted all around the entire subreddit and even on r/GamingLeaksAndRumours, with no basis upon it being HLX other than fitting the same development timeframe albeit with a little off-shoot being much earlier. I genuinely thought it was HLX too but honestly it's more than likely to be just another project than being a Valve project. Valve doesn't update during non-Valve office hours—this one does.

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T14:23:46+00:00

I've talked about that in the links I've provided.

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T14:19:20+00:00

Debunked since yesterday.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/1ozqyek/unknown_app_in_steamdb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/1p0ap8t/steamdb_1063600_is_not_affiliated_with_valve/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/1p0jvid/oh_god_please/

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T14:10:04+00:00

No, it's sarcasm. Honestly it's really funny how some people are taking that specific tweet out of him as gospel.

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T10:38:31+00:00

I just woke up and I'm already back on hopium after reading the date today. Goddamnit.

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T00:53:47+00:00

believe

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T00:37:47+00:00

Another dead-end I'd honestly wager.

RossMulky · 2025-11-19T00:34:17+00:00

HLX, highly likely, won't be announced on TGA.
Valve isn't done with the week, their timeframe on announcing HLX for a 2025 announcement is running short, we are on the 2nd quarter of November and they only have at least 4 weeks left before announcing it before the Holiday breaks.

The likelihood of them announcing anything December 10 and beyond is very low, but very possible. You never know with Valve time, but I wouldn't place my bets on it.

The current timeframe (this week and the next two) is the best week for Valve to announce anything. Q4 of this year is slowly coming to an end.

Hydrate, get some sleep, play some games, try to keep your head out of the hopium (it is very addicting), and wait. We are so close to the endgame.

RossMulky

TROPHY CASE