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Games with reflections in (i.e. with working mirrors)
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Kerr Avon
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 3:59 am    Post subject: Games with reflections in (i.e. with working mirrors) Reply with quote Back to top

On another forum, the question arose of why modern games mostly don't have reflective mirrors, when they have almost every other visual effect you could name. Having a mirror in a first person game does tend to make the game more immersive, as it hammers home the fact that you are that in-game character, when you see him (or her) in the mirror, controlled by you, so why not have a mirror or two, especially in places you'd expect to find a mirror, such as bathroom or a clothes shop? And the number of wrecked homes and shops you pass through in many first person shooters should mean you see dozens of mirrors, but no, unless the mirror is conveniently smashed of course.

The games I can remember seeing a mirror, or other reflective surface, are;

Bioshock Infinite - almost at the beginning of the game, you see yourself reflected in a bowl of water (is it holy water?),

The Darkness - You see yourself (Tommy) in the mirror, can't remember where, as it's been a long time since I played the game.

And in Doom 3, Duke Nukem 3D, Prey, Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy in it's American release), and Deus Ex, you see yourself in bathroom mirrors. Plus in Shadow Warrior you see yourself in a mirror in a manager's office.

Oh yes, and in Metroid Prime (Gamecube) there is a great little touch - occasionally if you are close enough to some sort of energy flare, then you see part of your face reflected in your visor. It's a bit shocking when you don't expect it, and is representative of the expertise and thought that went into designing that game.

Plus in Bioshock 2 you see your face (well, the suit mask) reflected in the water at the start of the game just before you first get control, plus before that, in the non-interactive cut-scene you see yourself and the Little Sister reflected in the glass wall, but these two instances don't count really, as they are part of a pre-rendered FMV video.

Anyway, what other games with mirrors/reflective surfaces (that reflect the player-character I mean, i.e. not racing cars that reflect the sun) are there? And what was the first game with a working mirror?.



The reason why so few modern games have working mirrors in them is explained (or speculated on) at;

"The reason functional mirrors appear in Duke Nukem 3D, and not in many modern games, is because of the way the Build Engine (the engine running Duke Nukem 3D) handles the drawing of the game-world. The Build Engine is a so-called "ray-caster" engine (much like the engines running Wolfenstein 3D or Doom) which produces "pseudo 3D", or sometimes called " 2.5D" graphics.

To keep it short, a ray-caster engine functions by "shooting" rays from the game's viewport into a level's geometry. When the ray intersects with with a wall, it traces the distance the the wall and thereby deciding the size of the texture which needs to be shown on the screen. A mirror in the Build Engine, is just a wall flagged as a mirror, which sends incoming "rays" back in a new direction and thereby hitting a new wall. The total distance (length from viewport-to-mirror plus length from mirror-to-wall) is calculated and the corresponding texture is shown on the screen, thus creating the illusion of a mirror.

Build Engine Fun Fact: If a player encounters two walls opposite of each other both marked as mirrors, the game will never finish calculating the final distance, since the mirrors keeps sending the rays back and forth. The result: The game freezes.

"Real" 3D engines (also known as rasterizers) such as id Tech 2, Unreal Engine etc. draws their images in an entirely different way, which makes it impossible to use the rather simple Build Engine method. In most cases, a mirror in a 3D engine (like in Max Payne 2 or Condemned: Criminal Origins) is a smaller secondary viewport projected onto geometry as a texture. This is the same method used for creating the real-time image-in-image effects as seen in e.g. Half-Life 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum, and taken to the extremes in Portal, where the projected viewpoint is a literal connection to the depicted area that the player is able to walk through. The additional viewports are often kept in a small resolution to increase performance, which is why they often are blurry or very small.
"

Source: http://www.giantbomb.com/functional-mirrors/3015-4618/
 
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SilverEye
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 6:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Goldeneye for the Wii had a mirror in the facility level I think Smile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lX7o6GGWPs

check at 02:40.
 
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 7:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

I don't have any of the HD consoles so I always assumed mirrored surfaces were something very usual in modern games.

The first time I saw a mirrored texture was in Duke Nukem 3D. Heh, you could even walk to the "mirror world" with a cheat that let you walk through walls.
In the N64 era it was something very cool to see. Games like Super Mario 64, GoldenEye, Jet Force Gemini and Perfect Dark has some areas which reflect the backround and some even the characters. The trick was modelling the background twice and even have two sets of characters.
Of course, a lot of racing games had mirrors too.

In Metroid Prime you have the inmersive visor effects, but there are also some orbs where you can see a reflection of Samus. The effect is poor since it's a low quality texture, as explained in Kerr Avon's message.
In Wave Race Blue Storm for Gamecube there are some cool effects on water too, but you can see it's a trick too.

I don't know why, but with the arrival of shaders I assumed reflections would be something very common. Until then you could have reflections in flat surfaces with some wit, but with shaders even reflections on wavy water seemed something very easy to do.
Guild Wars was the first game were I had that impression; a game where water was something very secondary but its quality was almost perfect.

So if you are telling me that reflections aren't something common on modern games I'm really dissapointed. I was hoping things like breaking a mirror and having all the little pieces reflecting the surroundings would be possible.


Another big dissapointment are projected shadows. Vampire The Masquerade Redemption perfected the shadows from Jet Force Gemini, and Blade: Edge of darkness first, and Neverwinter Nights later, had a more ambitious lighting engine.
Now shadows are pixelated textures just like they were in JFG.
 
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 7:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Duke Nukem Forever
 
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 8:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Sogun wrote:


Another big dissapointment are projected shadows. Vampire The Masquerade Redemption perfected the shadows from Jet Force Gemini, and Blade: Edge of darkness first, and Neverwinter Nights later, had a more ambitious lighting engine.
Now shadows are pixelated textures just like they were in JFG.


This is very true, in games like Assassin's Creed 3 the shadows look horrible.From a far they look nice but if you actually stand still and observe them you notice how pixelated they are, hell, banjo tooie had better "shadows" that most games these days do.
 
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 8:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Blame the consoles, the reflections on PC games compared to their console counterparts are much much better.
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 11:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Conkers Bad Fur Day....real reflection from the water and others
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 11:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Euro Truck Simulator II has them. (Surprisingly killer game, by the way).
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 PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 11:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Not sure which Metal Gear Solid games have reflective surfaces, but I know that "The Twin Snakes" remake on the GameCube had some mirrors where you could see Snake and other characters reflected back. Actually pretty neat that you can use your camera to take photos of yourself, too.
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Kerr Avon
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 PostPosted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Sogun wrote:
I don't have any of the HD consoles so I always assumed mirrored surfaces were something very usual in modern games.

The first time I saw a mirrored texture was in Duke Nukem 3D. Heh, you could even walk to the "mirror world" with a cheat that let you walk through walls.


Wow! I didn't know that. So there was a whole room that was reversed, and the 'mirror' was basically a window that looked into the room? But if that's the case, then the explanation I quoted is wrong, as that describes the mirror effect as being a rendering effect specific to the mirror, not to a reverse copy of the current room being made and shown through a window.



Quote:

So if you are telling me that reflections aren't something common on modern games I'm really dissapointed. I was hoping things like breaking a mirror and having all the little pieces reflecting the surroundings would be possible.


Nope. I have *never* seen a game on any platform where you have a mirror, and if you break it then the shards on the floor show the reflection (and from slightly different viewpoints, as the shards wouldn't all fall onto a perfectly horizontal orientation).

Also, a fair few games with otherwise great graphics (Gears of War 1 and 2 (I've not tried GoW3 yet), Deus Ex: Human Revolution, etc) only have a limited colour pallette, for some reason. I don't know why this is, but I Know that by comparison the 8MB game Super Mario 64 is uttery gorgeous, compared to the 6GB graphical fests you see on the XBox 360.

Quote:

Another big dissapointment are projected shadows. Vampire The Masquerade Redemption perfected the shadows from Jet Force Gemini, and Blade: Edge of darkness first, and Neverwinter Nights later, had a more ambitious lighting engine.
Now shadows are pixelated textures just like they were in JFG.


Seeing Conker's shadow in Conker's Bad Fur Day was amazing. Shadows are another thing that haven't kept pace with graphical development.

And my all time (least) favourite graphical (sort of) irritant; why, in so very many third person game, does the ingame character you control still moves his legs when you're running him into the wall. It does this on tons of games, the latest being Dead Space 3. You'd think that when the game detected that he was touching the wall, and so can't move forward, that the game would stop animating his legs, but oh no, instead his legs keep moving as though he's running full speed, even though he's not advancing one inch.

Alright, so that's not a graphical fault in the sense we were discussing, but it is ridiculous, and very common.


Spyster wrote:
Blame the consoles, the reflections on PC games compared to their console counterparts are much much better.


That doesn't make sense; the XBox 360 and PS3 are much more powerful than the XBox 1, PS2, even than PCs from the XBox 1's time, so why don't the 360 and PS3 have reflections as good as (if at all) the XBox 1, PS2, PC from 2001, etc?
 
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 PostPosted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Kerr Avon wrote:
Sogun wrote:
The first time I saw a mirrored texture was in Duke Nukem 3D. Heh, you could even walk to the "mirror world" with a cheat that let you walk through walls.

Wow! I didn't know that. So there was a whole room that was reversed, and the 'mirror' was basically a window that looked into the room? But if that's the case, then the explanation I quoted is wrong, as that describes the mirror effect as being a rendering effect specific to the mirror, not to a reverse copy of the current room being made and shown through a window.

It was a very long time ago and I don't remember all the details, but I have found a video that shows what I described. This mirror world is a little different than the real world, hehe. And when you break the mirror you also break that world.
http://youtu.be/1NG1cIjv-mA?t=35s

Kerr Avon wrote:
And my all time (least) favourite graphical (sort of) irritant; why, in so very many third person game, does the ingame character you control still moves his legs when you're running him into the wall. It does this on tons of games, the latest being Dead Space 3. You'd think that when the game detected that he was touching the wall, and so can't move forward, that the game would stop animating his legs, but oh no, instead his legs keep moving as though he's running full speed, even though he's not advancing one inch.

Alright, so that's not a graphical fault in the sense we were discussing, but it is ridiculous, and very common.

This kind of things should have been absolutely fixed by now.
Super Mario 64 had Mario leaning against the wall when you touched it, and he bounced back when you hit the wall at full speed, falling to the ground touching his harmed face. Super Mario 64 animatios still amaze me to this day.
Perhaps they keep the character running because in these fast paced shooter games making the player stop everytime they touch a wall or an obstacle would make it near unplayable, but with the power beasts that consoles are today I'm sure there can be better solutions (do an animation where the character leans with one hand against the wall and slow down if the player doesn't change direction, trip if necessary...).


One thing I like from modern FPS shooters is that the character is not a floating gun anymore, hehe. In Crysis you were able to see your legs, your shadow and even your arms while swimming. I think in Halo 4 your shadow also projects to the gun which is very inmersive. Not sure if these were the first games to do it, but the ones I know about.
Oh, heh, I know there's a PC game from the late 90s or early 2000 where the main character was a girl and you could look down to see your chest. There was a heart tattoo that showed your health there. I don't remember the name, though
 
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 PostPosted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 6:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

It is not always a good idea to put reflections in first person games, check it out:

The biggest concern in this game is the animation, usually the main loading animation is very detailed, it makes the game winning points for their beauty, but if you see in 3rd person, the animation is ugly and clumsy.

PD Remake have some mirrors, however, ugly ^^'
 
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 PostPosted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 8:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Sogun wrote:
Oh, heh, I know there's a PC game from the late 90s or early 2000 where the main character was a girl and you could look down to see your chest. There was a heart tattoo that showed your health there. I don't remember the name, though
That would be Jurassic Park: Trespasser.
 
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 PostPosted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 9:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Kerr Avon wrote:
That doesn't make sense; the XBox 360 and PS3 are much more powerful than the XBox 1, PS2, even than PCs from the XBox 1's time, so why don't the 360 and PS3 have reflections as good as (if at all) the XBox 1, PS2, PC from 2001, etc?


Because the reflections on the XBOX, PS2 and PC from 2001 were prebaked, as in, not realtime.

An example of this would be the mirror in Banjo Tooie, or the "reflection" of Egyptian in Goldeneye. The mirror in Banjo Tooie was just an exact copy of the room on the opposite side of the mirror, with you inside it too. The reflection in Egyptian was just the room copied underneath it.
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 PostPosted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 10:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Even MGS1 PS1 has mirror.. especially love how the menu background is the VR's animated skybox

Check out bleem!cast to play in 640x480 with anisotropic filtering
 
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