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but currently I'm of the opinion that HL2 does more for advancing graphics. I could be wrong, it just seems that way to me.
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Well, I doubt that very much, from the little I do know of the Source Engine, it still uses pre-calculated lighting (Direct X 7), At most does three passes per texture and rarely uses Bump Mapping. In DIrect X 9.0 Mode in the game, the only difference between 9 and 8 is the water. To put it nicely, HL2 is the last engine of the current graphics Generation whereas Doom 3 is the first engine of the next generation. Again, like I said before, I dont know enough of the technical details to get into a technical debate, but Im fairly certain Doom 3 is more advanced.
My problem with Steam is thus, and not short either. As a method of content delivery, I would have no complaints, but even though I bought the RETAIL copy of the game, I was forced to first, install, then connect, then unlock and then download then I could play the game. A hassle, but it worked. However, I discovered to my horror, with all these forms of protection, the cd still had to be in the drive to play
. That didnt seem right. But oh well. Then, I had to validate my cd key with Valve, alright. Now all these individually, are fine, but when combined just tell me that Valve does not trust the gaming community to buy their game. Companies worry about Piracy, thats fine, but to go so far as to require someone to go through all those hoops just to play a game is fine. On top of all that, once you have the game installed, you still need Steam running to play. Why? I paid for it, I validated my CD-key, why do I need to run this in the background? I dont have a huge chunk of memory and I would like to free up as much as possible, but I cant because STEAM is always there and sucking like a baby at momma's teat. As a method of bypassing the publisher, fine, thats cool, I cant blame Valve for wanting to cut out the middle man. But to require STEAM to be open to run the game, even though its classified as their content delivery system is ridiculous. Why, if Valve trusts the community so much, are there so many restrictions on how we play the game that we purchased? It just boggles my mind. Numerous times I have been unable to play because the latest STEAM patch broke my games. I didnt want those patches, why did I have to install them? If HL2 could be played without STEAM, and Steam only used when it was turned on to check for patches, I would have no issues. Then It would be fine in my eyes and I would cheer valve on for cutting out the middle man, but as it stands, its just over-bearing, and ineffective copyright protection that could have been done without. I dont want to turn this into an Anti-Steam thread, because one of those exists already. I havent had alot of problems with STEAM, and my dislike of it isnt even because of those problems. Its the idea behind the implementation that bothers me.
Again, a difference in opinion on how HL2 pushed or didnt push the bar in Gaming. I didnt feel that it tried to innovate very much, you did. I dont feel it succeeded graphically much, you did. I didnt feel that it was an attempt to develop new ideas in gaming, you did. There isnt much in the world that can change our opinions on this so I'll say here's to yours and here's to mine and I'll leave it at that.
