- Zeph
- |
- Exalted Legendary Member
Posted by: Iggwilv
Other then that, it probably that Valve did a better job of optimization then Gearbox did.
O_o
How can you compare the graphical settings of the two games anywhere remotely near as you just did? Halo is designed as a console title. By that, it has an exact and constant limit on what it can do. The engineers who wrote the engine code designed it to that. Valve designed their game with a dynamic hardware spectrum in mind. When you change the settings of what your video card spits out in a Source game, you're literally changing what it spits out. When you change the graphics settings in Halo, you're just changing the values of what it spits out (drastically cutting the amount of data needing to be processed).
If Halo were a Valve game designed to run on computers specifically, and you were to turn off specular, then when the engine went through a shader looking at everything, it wouldn't load the cubemap data at all. In Bungie's Halo, if the cubemap data isn't there, you get an exception and the game crashes itself to prevent harm to your computer.
You cant say Valve did a better job of optimization than Gearbox simply because Gearbox had virtually no control over at all. Gearbox didn't design the engine and had very little sway over the graphical statistic side of the port and even less on the management side of the engine. The best they could do in the short time permitted was ensure everything worked with minimum specs, appeared apropriately with recommended specs, and rewrite their server sided netcode to include 56k support. With Bungie breathing down their neck making hair-pulling changes in what they wanted after the deal was signed on, I'm surprised it turned out as great as it did.