With a fresh start to the week comes a fresh look at Left 4 Dead. CVG gives us their take on the battle of the year. Self-shadowing, normal mapping, and post-processing are the talk of the town at Valve.
Left 4 Dead is still slated to be released on November 4 in North America (Nov. 7 for Europe) on the PC and Xbox 360 platforms.
On paper, and even in screenshots, it'll seem like nothing more than a visually pleasing effect - and one, we hasten to add, that's been seen in other PC titles.The article continues on to talk about post-processing visuals and how they add a movie-like experience into the game.
In motion though, when surrounded by 30 infected maniacs, the shadows give a staggering degree of unconscious feedback, and spatial awareness. Now here comes the science.
"In self-shadowed normal mapping," begins [Jason] Mitchell, having taken a deep breath, "instead of doing all your light calculations on strictly flat polygons, you have a texture map that contains normal information mapped to those polygons, and locally, you're changing the lighting."
We'll cut to the final product of this tech-wizardry, which is a subtle but striking lighting effect that goes way beyond your average bump mapping.
If you've ever placed a torch along a brick wall and seen how the light picks out and exaggerates every detail of the surface, that's what's happening in L4D.
Combined with the other visual effects Valve are bolting on to the Source engine it makes a serious difference.
A number of per frame post-processing effects are being employed to ensure L4D will be nothing less than a feat of visual engineering.
Left 4 Dead is still slated to be released on November 4 in North America (Nov. 7 for Europe) on the PC and Xbox 360 platforms.