‘Achieved with SOURCE 2’
Counter Strike 2 has had wingman mode added, an option to toggle what happens when you hold
secondary fire down, new Vertigo and Overpass maps, but most importantly:
The new water in this new version of Overpass looks beautiful!
And also: I pointed out in the previews for this game that these tree models were SOOO last year,
which Valve took to heart and so have updated them with these new versions instead! I mean
their trunks are equally hideous but their leaves look nice. They’ve also enhanced this
hedge that splits the map in two. You can see Source 2’s new optimisation in action
if you peer through gaps in this hedge as most of what’s on the other side won’t be rendered.
But yeah: back to the water! Somebody at Valve has recently taken a trip to the SEWAGE
FACTORY recently cos (unlike in the previews) the water here now has sludgy SHIT all over the
surface. It’s quite possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. There’s even an oily layer
on the surface, giving everything a rainbow sheen. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
They’ve done to CS2’s sewage what Half Life Alyx did to its alcohol, by adding layer upon
layer upon layer to the effect until it looks so good you can almost taste it. But why stop there?
Don’t just stare at it; touch it! Run about in it. Really go to town in this stuff. Shoot the poo and
it disappears, before reforming on the surface again moments later. And in the fountain here,
there are a few different effects like water caustics, which are still somehow displayed
on the water’s surface, and you can also see crinkly micro-reflections, as if the water’s
been clingfilmed. If you ask me this was done to obscure the low-resolution nature of the
reflections themselves. And the water itself looks different and cleaner. While there’s no sludgy
shit in it (yet) there is debris floating on the surface that appears to splosh out of the way if
you shoot at it. Just as it does in real life! Here's a bunch of people stood in fecal matter.
Here they are, running back and forth through the stuff. Look at how their legs (sometimes)
break holes in the surface foam. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it done in a game with this much
precision before. Also notice how their shadows cast over the solid regions, but not on the clear
bits. It’s just a shame the solid bits of sewage don’t cast shadows on the ground beneath them.
The sun’s reflections sparkle off the surface almost aggressively. Especially off this muddy
stuff. Unfortunately, the cut-off between wet and dry materials is too abrupt, Valve pls fix.
But the water itself looks satisfying wet, and it generally succeeds in being
reflective enough to look like it’s reflecting stuff, whilst still being murky and ripply
enough to not reveal their cubemaps. You can see what I mean in connector,
where the cubemapped reflections don’t make any sense if you look at them, failing to
match up with the pipes, the walls… anything really. So let’s return to this water again!
This water effect is, believe it or not, completely flat. Any 3D ripples are but
an illusion, probably using the same parallax’d tricks as the 3D-looking bullet holes do in this
game. However they’re doing it, it’s really effective. Let’s talk about the ripples some
more. So of course, characters running through the water cause ripples around their legs. And your
bullets cast 3D-looking ripples, and then lots of secondary ones as the droplets thrown up from the
first hit the surface again. God it’s wonderful. Jumping in and out of the water whips up a foam,
and little bubbles which dash about on the surface before popping. Shotguns are especially effective
at conjuring up the foam effect, and I love how it isn’t in any hurry to disappear again. Why
do other games not bother with all these lovely little effects? How has Valve achieved all this,
using effects that won’t slow your PC down? Well, apart from firing the shotgun into the
water at point-blank. That’s enough to bring even my Geforce 4090 to its knees. Grenades don’t slow
it down, though. Yet they cause complete chaos, with foam sloshing out, large bubbles later rising
to the surface and stuff that was floating in the water takes ages to reappear again,
fearful that there might be a second explosion. Even the reflections are disrupted by this effect.
Notice how the sun’s fine sparkles are split into hundreds of smaller ones by the shot,
until they eventually reform into their brighter former selves again. The grenade’s
disruption takes upwards of 7 seconds before the foamy distortion clears again.
And in a Source-engine first, this water supports extremely subtle screen space reflections. If I
get my face right down into the sewage, like this, you’re in for a treat as you can stare
at the reflections of these metal bars, and yet they’ll disappear as the bars pass off
the top of the screen. But when they’re within the screen’s space, they reflect. Ah that’s why
it’s called screen space reflections. This is how player reflections are done too.
So colour me impressed with these reflections. They’re using a bunch of terrible methods,
but they’re done subtly enough not to not show their weaknesses. And there
are enough different layers interacting with one another to make it look awesome.
And by not reflecting players when they’re not visible onscreen,
they’ve managed to avoid exploits involving character reflections showing up before the
players can be seen. But it’s not perfect. Smoke grenades touch the surface, but because
this 2D looks 3D there’s still a visible gap between the smoke and the water. But I
don’t think there’s any playable position in the map where this will be a problem.
What WILL be a problem is that players’ reflections showing up in the reflections,
while the smoke grenades do not. Meaning that you can see people hidden
in a smoke grenade. Valve, pls fix. And there’s a fecal face, just here.
There’s also some sort of pixellated appearance to the ground beneath the water, but it’s most
noticeable when your face is right into the water, and is barely noticeable in standard
play unless you’re really looking for it. In conclusion: this is a very solid effort
from Valve who haven’t let this sewage go to waste; they’ve really made it look like crap.
Now please, add it to Half Life Alyx so I can enter VR and literally stick my face in it.
‘What is that?..... Ohhhh OOHOHOHHOo hHOHOHOFhoahohfgohoag’