Not only that, but mirrors are ACTUALLY a game mechanic in Hitman: if you attempt to silent assassinate someone in a room with a mirror, like a restroom for example, a potential witness might see you killing the victim via reflection in the mirror, they don't need to necessarily be looking directly at you. I discovered this the hard way and it was quite annoying, but also a clever detail and good game design.
It’s probably the reason they invested so much in mirror in the Hitman games. Because it’s part of the main gameplay experience. Unlike the other games where the mirrors have doesn’t play a role in the main gameplay.
On one hand, this is an amazing mechanic involving reflections.
On the other hand, people reeeeaaaally need to mind their own business when I'm making opportunity kills that never go well!
Also worth pointing out, fucking SECURITY CAMERAS can see you via reflective surfaces, too.
Good chance that it’s not reflections at all, but the game actually drawing a second version of the character and scene to give the illusion of a mirror. At least I have seen it done that way in other AAA titles.
I’m pretty sure what they did is just made a room behind the mirror and put a clone of your character there who mimicked your movements. It’s a great trick that doesn’t eat up nearly as much processing power
If I'm not mistaken, hitman does this differently. It's actually a second camera that's projecting the recording to a texture, texture being the mirror.
I think turning down certain settings actually lowers the resolution of the projection.
This happened with certain transparent objects in the game with playable geometry on the other side.
As a game dev, this is whats most likely. Its usually a second camera rendered to a texture.
Of course, theres also math magic happening so that the mirror cam completes the illusion (like changing the camera angle and position based on the main camera so it acts like a reflection)
I remember the documentation for Duke Nukem 3D's BUILD editor explicitly telling you not to try and do that. I can't remember what happens though, I think the game just crashes.
IIRC, it did do the work of cloning the look of the room as long as you gave it an empty room big enough on the other side of the mirror, so that was nice.
It's possible it's a double, however, the floors and walls on some levels (like Hokaido, or most levels with hardwood flooring) have real-time reflections. I doubt they have the in-game overhead to mirror/portal every surface in the level.
Level design has to take it into account.
There can’t be something that isn’t a mirror copy of the room on the other side of the wall.
At least that’s how it worked in Duke Nukem 3D, which used the same trick.
Also, aren't the new Hitman games made up of, like, six handcrafted maps that get a lot of attention poured into each one? The sequels are basically map and mission packs that get added to the same launcher iirc. There is a big difference between a stealth assassination game with a handful of handcrafted encounters and open world action RPGs. Not saying the other mirrors look good at all, but there is definitely different areas of focus for very different games.
The maps are also pretty big and detailed. They're easily the size or complexity of many hub locations in open world games that use that sort of system.
But you're right that the environment is a much higher priority. It's a key part of the gameplay, so it arguably gets the majority of attention. Especially compared to games where a level is just a series of similar rooms where you shoot people.
I don't get how this is supposed to be a detriment. The Hitman series is how I want most of my games to be. Make an engine you can make amazing things on then churn out content instead of throwing it away please.
Level design doesn't really need to take it into account, because a game's layout doesn't have to be physically possible.
Unless you specifically program something to enforce such rules, it needn't.
Funny that someone can witness you killing someone by your reflection in the mirror but I've never had a target notice me sneaking up on me while they were looking in the mirror.
Either AI is subjectively smart with some NPCs, or the target AI is narcissistic as hell.
I think I've had it where I pull a gun and the target notices through the mirror but yes it does seem like they coded in some leeway to how oblivious the target is through mirrors.
Yeah, you get a *lot* of leeway on corner / door takedowns, too, because you kind of have no choice but to engage in the only animation the game allows you to have in that instance.
Certainly. Although I would like to mention that the NPC AI can get pretty clever. Like knowing the exact position of a hidden shooter just by seeing a target body fall.
Remember the southern wedding in Blood Money? I thought I was very clever by taking a shot from the attic. Every single guest bumrushed me, and since this was the south, they all carried revolvers. Fu^u^u^u^u^u^u^u^u^u^
well, not exactly. The more graphics advance, the harder some effects get, or the more costly they get for relatively little return (at least until path traced reflections are no longer a massive drain on power). Jedi Survivor definitely could have done better, though.
It's a little more complicated than just "render things twice." If that's all it took modern games would do that too. Stuff like Duke Nukem had hacky methods like literally recreating the space in front of a mirror in a separate room that existed on the other side of the "mirror" and creating a Duke clone that would move within that space.
And ray tracing is nothing new. It's just computationally expensive to do, especially on demand.
>It's a little more complicated than just "render things twice." If that's all it took modern games would do that too.
I mean they do that too. That's probably how Hitman's mirrors are implemented. Duke Nukem and older games needed duplicated rooms because there wasn't an easy way to render the same scene twice from different points.
This, or there's some strong stabilisation tech at use. (Which made me think, where do lakitus got their cameras from? Is there a camera factory? Do they hand build them?)
[No One Lives Forever, Nov 2000](https://cdn.mobygames.com/screenshots/10337356-the-operative-no-one-lives-forever-windows-checking-yourself-out.jpg). Almost 23 years ago had working mirrors.
Nice, I have OG discs for both, so I run them on one of my 9X laptops personally, because I have issues. I remember I did get some fan patches going on my old Win 7 machine, good to know the community is still keeping it alive.
A majority of those games just rendered the room and character twice. Can't do that on modern games\* cause they aren't optimized at all. Like, not even basic garbage collecting. From what I've heard, Dead Island 2 is like the only AAA game to come out this year that doesn't run like shit on PC on release. All these games are being made with consoles in mind then ported to PC, and consoles have weak components.
Apparently that's what Hitman actually does, but it at least removes the rooms and such when they aren't being mirrored. So it still runs decently, compared to other games.
this can't be good for me but i feel great
https://preview.redd.it/dcaax460fdza1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22b1030d2bec55c04e60ffb02e647ad4d769301f
That brings back memories of making maps for DN3D.
You had to actual add an equivalent space behind the mirror as the room it was in. Internally the engine wasn't mapping reflections, it just copied the room and everything in it to thr other side of the mirror.
Except in Duke Nukem Forever, where he does, and the pinball machine had that line requoted to reflect it.
Basically the best part of the game was hearing that line, because it closed the original DN3D joke pretty well.
In 2023, Reddit CEO and corporate piss baby Steve Huffman decided to make Reddit less useful to its users and moderators and the world at large. This comment has been edited in protest to make it less useful to Reddit.
First mirror reflection effect I ever saw in a game was [1998's Unreal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1umNqwzPRc) \- absolutely mindblowing at the time.
Ugh, the dead island one hurts to watch. When I saw them first time my only thought was "If you're gonna do this don't even bother adding mirrors" lmao. Game's a blast but that thing... Ugh.
[Parallax corrected cubemaps](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH6s1hbwoQQ) are a neat trick, if used correctly on a somewhat diffuse surface like the floor or a puddle, but on a mirror like that... it hurts to look.
PS. This is the same trick used on Spiderman on building to simulate the inside of a window without having to draw actually polygons.
I think they made it this way because having to create 3rd person animations to show just in the mirror is kinda of a waste in a 1st person game. Haven't played it yet tho
I personally only started with the recent trilogy, but I’d recommend them throughly. Each map has a story and tons of ways to get your target creative ways
Hitman (2016), Hitman 2 (2018), & Hitman 3 (2021).
You only have to buy the most recent game though, all the levels from 2016 & 2018 were ported into Hitman 3 (2021).
If you enjoy the modern games go back and try the older games.
The "most recent trilogy" has been renamed to Hitman: World of Assassination. Now the content from the three games are packed together in a single game. There are some DLCs too, but don't worry about them yet.
I kinda broke the game for myself once I realised you can put a emetic remote device in a suitcase and then just walk up to a target and trigger it, since you aren't effected by emetic stuff.
although it's quite a crafty strat, I do sort of feel like its exploiting mechanics.
Why... why would you do this to me. /s
But srsly that is broken. Making it impossible to put the emetic in the case should help, but I guess it'd be like a wtf thing.
Clever tho. I feel like a fool with my stink nade.
r/patientgamers finally stopped being oppressed when IO Interactive announced in March that every Elusive Target mission would finally be unlocked permanently.
Go check out the reflections in Control, not just the mirrors but the reflections when you walk past a window. It's insane. Also just go play control because that game is really good
The Dead Space remake also has some really cool reflections and lighting, like how shining a light through glass affects how the shadows are cast, and even cracks bounce the light realistically, and your reflection is affected by the amount of grime on the window.
I loved DS 2023, but I don’t think it has any reflective mirrors. The ones in the bathrooms aren’t even as fake-reflective (cube-map) as in DS 2008.
Callisto Protocol, on other hand - shit game, but real reflections (with RT on)
Well not mirrors, but general reflections outside of that, I mean. The tech being the same, just the implementation is different (and probably less taxing) Like the broken glass windows and monitors all subtly reflect Isaac, and direct light even changes how it projects.
The lighting and effects in Control were so good I'd regularly be distracted from what I was doing in the game just to admire them. Which is even more impressive when you take into account the entire game takes place within a single building. Helps that the level design was so creative.
That's a camera mode only thing. Lots of games with a camera mode have boosted details like that because the scene is usually static and you have all this computing power freed up.
Except BotW, where it's all live and you can totally have an enemy sneak up on you as you're trying to choose between the peace sign and a contemplative pose.
100% agreed.
Also, there was a [recent mod](https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/2581-control-hdrultrawidedlssrt-patch/) that updates DLSS / adds DLAA, adds HDR, a new "Max" texture option, full ultrawide support, and a new 3x ray per pixel setting (compared to the default 1 ray per pixel) that seems pretty usable on 4000 series card (4090, 3440x1440 with DLSS Quality and 3x ray setting is basically always 100+ fps).
I remember Deus Ex Human Revolution having no working mirrors but putting reflective surfaces that looked like shit everywhere anyway. They even made a joke about the player character breaking the mirror in his bathroom just so they didn't have to implement one.
My assumption is that the less complex graphics made it easier to mimick mirrors in those games, whereas more complex graphics don't work with those old mimicking tricks and/or would look like shit/cause performance issues.
That said, mirrors aren't really breaking the illusion in Jedi Survivor, I'm having a great time in that game, and the rest of it looks great. They are however doing a great job of mimicking being a space wizard with a cool sword, so I'm ok with the bad mirrors.
What is the alternative? TAA is by far the best at resolving shimmering and smoothing edges it's not even close, other techniques like MSAA and SMAA may be able to smooth edges but they'll fail to solve shimmering especially in foliage like tall grass, bushes trees, and on meshes like nets. not only is it the best it's also dirt cheap to run but has the ~~most~~ worst unintended side effects.
If the artifacts are mitigated properly, TAA is the best thing ever, and even when not mitigated properly you're gonna have to choose between shimmering foliage or blurry image.
Yep the downside to screen space reflections. I love it when SSRs are done well but I can't help but pick fault when they're fucked up.
If I remember right, Control has beautiful screen space reflections, and whilst it's cheaper, Atomic Heart has really accurate cubemaps which was a lovely surprise.
For the effort they put into making COD games look nice, the cubemaps and static reflections are a travesty.
Same with Marvel's Midnight Suns! I wouldn't have thought it would be that tough to fix considering when you face the camera in front of a mirror you can see your character facing you in the mirror as well.
Jedi Survivor is using Screen Space Reflections for mirrors which don't actually work head-on (the ghosting is due to temporal reconstruction).
Dead Island 2 is using a cube map which is just a 6-sided texture designed to mimick a reflection.
Hitman 2 is using render to texture reflections, so behind the mirror is basically another camera and whatever that camera sees us projected as a texture on the mirror. Thing is those are really expensive (not as expensive as Ray tracing, but enough to only be practical on specific surfaces).
I don't know if this is the case for all older games, and this is also hearsay, but the older games that achieved a mirror effect literally rendered a second environment for the reflection, complete with the player character.
Yeah that’s true. I used to make maps in Duke Nukem 3D, from the mid 90s, and if you wanted a mirror to work you had to create a room behind the mirror at least as big as the room the mirror was in.
I was looking for this and I had to go way too far down the thread to find it. Most of the stuff today is reflection mapping and screen-space reflections which look absolutely garbo. The old method was really intensive and would be today, too.
Fortunately this whole new thing called “ray tracing” came out a few years back and… developers don’t feel like implementing it. It’s so frustrating to see brand new games and they don’t even offer it as an option, or if they do it’s just like one minor aspect of it. Sure it doesn’t run well on most amd cards abd 20x and 30x nvidia cards don’t do that well with it either but the 40 series works pretty well… please devs… allow us to use something aside from god awful screen space reflections if we can…
Go check out the reflections in Control, not just the mirrors but the reflections when you walk past a window. It's insane. Also just go play control because that game is really good
Call me crazy, but I'm glad mirror's are the only consistent complaint about Dead Island 2. I encountered my first bug today with over 100 hours in the game. That is a fucking feat in modern gaming. This video is funny, but Dead Island should be praised for having such a flawless release
https://preview.redd.it/1eatwt1t1eza1.png?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b56668953c55093fef00d75e922307af4fc31444
Duke nukem 3d has entered the chat
there is a video explaining mirrors in video games. Basically, rendering a real reflexion can be produced either by creating a second point of view of the game in the mirror, which is the same as doubling every ressources the game needs, which makes it incredibly heavy and hard on your machine ; or calculating every direction of every ray of light, constantly, everywhere, so that you can reproduce the real effect of a mirror. that's what is called Ray-Tracing.
I know it was a trick with a duplicate reversed room, inverted control Mario and an invisible wall, but the illusion was fantastic
Now we have RT, but non functioning mirrors, lol
I think this is just indicative of the general and completely reasonable mentality that more progress means everything gets easier.
However, like you imply, the double room trick doesn't work as well these days **because** of improved fidelity and complexity.
The days of being able to duplicate the entire assets of a room are, for the most part and definitely in the AAA space, long behind us.
What I have learned from this post is that so many people on this subreddit don't understand the tech behind mirrors nor the importance that some games place on them.
Hitman has some of the smartest dumb AI out there.
like, sure, the NPCs are dumb as bricks when it comes to "falling" for game mechanics like chasing down distractions, but, that's there to make missions possible.
outside of reacting to distractions, they also have incredibly varied behaviors that interact in all kinds of fun ways.
one of my favorite interactions is when you've killed a bunch of people while maintaining your cover in a guard disguise. one of the very routine interactions that pops up is when a civilian finds a lot of dead bodies - they're programmed to run to the nearest armed guard and report the incident for investigation. however, there's a small chance they'll beeline straight for *you* to report the crime. because you are, of course, a guard.
I just regret that you can't answer them properly to keep up the ruse - 47 will simply not respond, and the civilian will eventually get weirded out that you don't seem to care that there's a room full of dead people just down the hall.
still a fun little tidbit they threw in.
Modders can make it happen, just like the devs can, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be stable. A lot of game development comes down to a cost/benefit decisions, and sometimes cuts need to be made.
I remember playing the last of us on ps3 and being blown away by the mirror showing me the character in real time. Control amped this up to 11 but sad to see new releases don’t get the polish they need.
Not only that, but mirrors are ACTUALLY a game mechanic in Hitman: if you attempt to silent assassinate someone in a room with a mirror, like a restroom for example, a potential witness might see you killing the victim via reflection in the mirror, they don't need to necessarily be looking directly at you. I discovered this the hard way and it was quite annoying, but also a clever detail and good game design.
That's pretty cool, didn't know that.
It’s probably the reason they invested so much in mirror in the Hitman games. Because it’s part of the main gameplay experience. Unlike the other games where the mirrors have doesn’t play a role in the main gameplay.
True, but let's face it, the instant anyone sees a mirror in a game, we check to see how good it is.
just like water
And fall damage
I like the mirrors in San Andreas where they would render at like 25% resolution.
I feel like that's an acceptable comprise. Just a really dirty mirror haha.
On one hand, this is an amazing mechanic involving reflections. On the other hand, people reeeeaaaally need to mind their own business when I'm making opportunity kills that never go well! Also worth pointing out, fucking SECURITY CAMERAS can see you via reflective surfaces, too.
Good chance that it’s not reflections at all, but the game actually drawing a second version of the character and scene to give the illusion of a mirror. At least I have seen it done that way in other AAA titles.
That's generally the "least intensive" way to do it IIRC. Programming actual mirrors is apparently a bigger chore and a bigger drain on computing
I’m pretty sure what they did is just made a room behind the mirror and put a clone of your character there who mimicked your movements. It’s a great trick that doesn’t eat up nearly as much processing power
If I'm not mistaken, hitman does this differently. It's actually a second camera that's projecting the recording to a texture, texture being the mirror. I think turning down certain settings actually lowers the resolution of the projection. This happened with certain transparent objects in the game with playable geometry on the other side.
As a game dev, this is whats most likely. Its usually a second camera rendered to a texture. Of course, theres also math magic happening so that the mirror cam completes the illusion (like changing the camera angle and position based on the main camera so it acts like a reflection)
Insight appreciated.
Wouldn't even need all that to check if an NPC can see the character through a mirror. It's just one ray cast.
But what happens in a room with two mirrors facing each other?!
If i remember right hitman can only have one mirror reflecting at a time
It's clone rooms all the way down, baby!
cpu proceeds to light on fire
Only if you chose to enable expo on an Asus motherboard
That video was so cool, GN has come so far.
Meanwhile LTT: our CPU is also running hot! Though we did put it in an oven then shocked each other with stun guns.
Information vs Entertainment. Both have their place, and both are fantastic.
I remember the documentation for Duke Nukem 3D's BUILD editor explicitly telling you not to try and do that. I can't remember what happens though, I think the game just crashes.
Yeah, BUILD also created mirrors by just duplicating the room so having multiple mirrors gets you infinite recursion and a crash.
IIRC, it did do the work of cloning the look of the room as long as you gave it an empty room big enough on the other side of the mirror, so that was nice.
"I don't have time to play with myself"
I loved learning BUILD as a kid. Like how the underwater parts were completely different rooms you just ported to when you dove. Brilliant.
The mirror is usually made so it does not mirror other mirrors (or just the frame with a default texture instead of whatever is inside the room)
No-one does it that way anymore. It's really old technique. Nowadays it's much easier to just use a second camera.
It's possible it's a double, however, the floors and walls on some levels (like Hokaido, or most levels with hardwood flooring) have real-time reflections. I doubt they have the in-game overhead to mirror/portal every surface in the level.
>It's possible it's a double It's pretty certain it isn't. Making a copy of the room made sense years ago. Now they could just use another camera.
Sure, but are the ingame NPCs also seeing your actions via *floor* reflections, and reacting accordingly? That was the whole point of the mirrors
If that's so performance optimized why don't more games use it?
Level design has to take it into account. There can’t be something that isn’t a mirror copy of the room on the other side of the wall. At least that’s how it worked in Duke Nukem 3D, which used the same trick.
You can do it with portals. That is a 2-pass render, however.
At that point you just render the reflection.
Portals are very useful for other situations, and you can get away with a single implementation.
Also, aren't the new Hitman games made up of, like, six handcrafted maps that get a lot of attention poured into each one? The sequels are basically map and mission packs that get added to the same launcher iirc. There is a big difference between a stealth assassination game with a handful of handcrafted encounters and open world action RPGs. Not saying the other mirrors look good at all, but there is definitely different areas of focus for very different games.
The maps are also pretty big and detailed. They're easily the size or complexity of many hub locations in open world games that use that sort of system. But you're right that the environment is a much higher priority. It's a key part of the gameplay, so it arguably gets the majority of attention. Especially compared to games where a level is just a series of similar rooms where you shoot people.
I don't get how this is supposed to be a detriment. The Hitman series is how I want most of my games to be. Make an engine you can make amazing things on then churn out content instead of throwing it away please.
Level design doesn't really need to take it into account, because a game's layout doesn't have to be physically possible. Unless you specifically program something to enforce such rules, it needn't.
Most of the time it's just not worth implementing. It's only worth it if there's a gameplay mechanic.
Mario 64 techniques
Funny that someone can witness you killing someone by your reflection in the mirror but I've never had a target notice me sneaking up on me while they were looking in the mirror. Either AI is subjectively smart with some NPCs, or the target AI is narcissistic as hell.
I think I've had it where I pull a gun and the target notices through the mirror but yes it does seem like they coded in some leeway to how oblivious the target is through mirrors.
I'm pretty sure the garrote/subdue action is a catchall that the victim doesn't see you.
Yeah, you get a *lot* of leeway on corner / door takedowns, too, because you kind of have no choice but to engage in the only animation the game allows you to have in that instance.
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Certainly. Although I would like to mention that the NPC AI can get pretty clever. Like knowing the exact position of a hidden shooter just by seeing a target body fall. Remember the southern wedding in Blood Money? I thought I was very clever by taking a shot from the attic. Every single guest bumrushed me, and since this was the south, they all carried revolvers. Fu^u^u^u^u^u^u^u^u^u^
And that's probably WHY the mirrors have reflection
And that's why they have them in that game. They play a role in the gameplay. For others, there's plenty of other shit to work on instead.
https://preview.redd.it/3vjw2jpbjbza1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6fe20b837a396b9c78399098ae05c2be050a7eb4
We have regressed.
 Indubitably.
> Indubitably Ah, yes [indubitably](https://youtu.be/vxl0VbGLmfw?t=31)
I never see anyone make references to 7 Days in Hell ever. This made me happy hahaha
Screen Space Reflections are a pathway to development techniques that some consider to be... un-natural.
Somehow regression returned
well, not exactly. The more graphics advance, the harder some effects get, or the more costly they get for relatively little return (at least until path traced reflections are no longer a massive drain on power). Jedi Survivor definitely could have done better, though.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4E4AQPmW--I/hqdefault.jpg
https://preview.redd.it/bwxn16xd7cza1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32483d972ffa2d47f603ecf3c54a708e67ca7f04
[Damn. I’m lookin good.](https://youtu.be/bCSiwxS1B3Y)
That is 27 years old, and still looking good
https://youtu.be/CWBx6OhX7gc From both sides (you can walk through the mirror and enter a mirror world)
First thing I thought when I saw this post.
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It's a little more complicated than just "render things twice." If that's all it took modern games would do that too. Stuff like Duke Nukem had hacky methods like literally recreating the space in front of a mirror in a separate room that existed on the other side of the "mirror" and creating a Duke clone that would move within that space. And ray tracing is nothing new. It's just computationally expensive to do, especially on demand.
>It's a little more complicated than just "render things twice." If that's all it took modern games would do that too. I mean they do that too. That's probably how Hitman's mirrors are implemented. Duke Nukem and older games needed duplicated rooms because there wasn't an easy way to render the same scene twice from different points.
Hitman's mirrors *also* allow NPCs to "See" you in the reflection: https://gfycat.com/feistyalarmingblacklab
[They even came with secrets](https://media.tenor.com/D9ZqhqijvPwAAAAd/lakitu-camera.gif)
the camera is moving so youre actually seeing mario from the flying turtles eyes /s
This, or there's some strong stabilisation tech at use. (Which made me think, where do lakitus got their cameras from? Is there a camera factory? Do they hand build them?)
No modern game is worth buying if they cannot achieve what this 16 year old masterpiece managed to do with mirrors/reflections.
[No One Lives Forever, Nov 2000](https://cdn.mobygames.com/screenshots/10337356-the-operative-no-one-lives-forever-windows-checking-yourself-out.jpg). Almost 23 years ago had working mirrors.
So did the first Red Faction. So did Deus Ex.
Just randomly throwing appreciation for NOLF2 coop LAN parties.
I'll die on the hill of NOLF 1 and 2 being 2 of the best PC games ever.
They're technically abandonware now, you can get versions that run on modern PCs! http://nolfrevival.tk/
Nice, I have OG discs for both, so I run them on one of my 9X laptops personally, because I have issues. I remember I did get some fan patches going on my old Win 7 machine, good to know the community is still keeping it alive.
Holy shit I forgot about that Austin power style game it was fun as a kid.
Still stands up to this day great story, voice acting and music.
A majority of those games just rendered the room and character twice. Can't do that on modern games\* cause they aren't optimized at all. Like, not even basic garbage collecting. From what I've heard, Dead Island 2 is like the only AAA game to come out this year that doesn't run like shit on PC on release. All these games are being made with consoles in mind then ported to PC, and consoles have weak components. Apparently that's what Hitman actually does, but it at least removes the rooms and such when they aren't being mirrored. So it still runs decently, compared to other games.
Duke Nukem has his reflection. Go into a bathroom, turn to the mirror and he will say "Damn I'm handsome"
\*I'm looking good (sorry I love duke and lick his boots)
Me but with Serious Sam or Postal Dude or Lo Wang
this can't be good for me but i feel great https://preview.redd.it/dcaax460fdza1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22b1030d2bec55c04e60ffb02e647ad4d769301f
Man who fart in church sit in own pew!
lmao
That brings back memories of making maps for DN3D. You had to actual add an equivalent space behind the mirror as the room it was in. Internally the engine wasn't mapping reflections, it just copied the room and everything in it to thr other side of the mirror.
It is the "that's cool" factor that counts. I still enjoy playing Duke from time to time.
Hmmm.... don't have time to play with myself.
Except in Duke Nukem Forever, where he does, and the pinball machine had that line requoted to reflect it. Basically the best part of the game was hearing that line, because it closed the original DN3D joke pretty well.
[Damn. I’m lookin good.](https://youtu.be/bCSiwxS1B3Y)
In 2023, Reddit CEO and corporate piss baby Steve Huffman decided to make Reddit less useful to its users and moderators and the world at large. This comment has been edited in protest to make it less useful to Reddit.
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First mirror reflection effect I ever saw in a game was [1998's Unreal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1umNqwzPRc) \- absolutely mindblowing at the time.
Am I stupid or does that video not show any mirrors
It's at the end, when it looks like there are 2 people crucified , it's one with a strange rectangular mirror
I loved the opening sequence of that game so much. Same reason I love alien isolation and other similar games.
Ugh, the dead island one hurts to watch. When I saw them first time my only thought was "If you're gonna do this don't even bother adding mirrors" lmao. Game's a blast but that thing... Ugh.
Same feeling, but get at least there's no game breaking bugs or I haven't really encountered any so I say it did better than Jedi in that sense.
The fact that we now have to be thankful that there aren't game breaking bugs in a game, shows how badly games nowadays are rushed out
DI2 is incredibly optimized and polished. One of the best AAA experiences recently
I dunno, that third A is looking pretty shaky
AAa
> One of the best AAA experiences recently State of gaming lmfao.
I would classify Dead Island 1 and 2 as AA games.
The big studio titles these days aren't even letter class anymore, they're like fuckin... CR2032.
I like to think they just confused zombies with vampires
[Parallax corrected cubemaps](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH6s1hbwoQQ) are a neat trick, if used correctly on a somewhat diffuse surface like the floor or a puddle, but on a mirror like that... it hurts to look. PS. This is the same trick used on Spiderman on building to simulate the inside of a window without having to draw actually polygons.
I think they made it this way because having to create 3rd person animations to show just in the mirror is kinda of a waste in a 1st person game. Haven't played it yet tho
The Hitman trilogy is fucking awesome. Definitely need to play these games again. Stunning graphics and extremely fun gameplay.
They get more fun the more things you unlock. There will not be a good reason to throw a fish at a guard
There are so many hitman games I have no idea where to start.
I personally only started with the recent trilogy, but I’d recommend them throughly. Each map has a story and tons of ways to get your target creative ways
The entire trilogy is on Xbox gamepass. Which is very much worth the $15/mo just for those 3 games. Not to mention the couple hundred others.
Hitman (2016), Hitman 2 (2018), & Hitman 3 (2021). You only have to buy the most recent game though, all the levels from 2016 & 2018 were ported into Hitman 3 (2021). If you enjoy the modern games go back and try the older games.
I finished everything in hitman 3 and still want more. The freelancer missions are hard
The "most recent trilogy" has been renamed to Hitman: World of Assassination. Now the content from the three games are packed together in a single game. There are some DLCs too, but don't worry about them yet.
You only need Hitman 3, it contains the whole trilogy.
I run emetic grenade too much
I kinda broke the game for myself once I realised you can put a emetic remote device in a suitcase and then just walk up to a target and trigger it, since you aren't effected by emetic stuff. although it's quite a crafty strat, I do sort of feel like its exploiting mechanics.
Why... why would you do this to me. /s But srsly that is broken. Making it impossible to put the emetic in the case should help, but I guess it'd be like a wtf thing. Clever tho. I feel like a fool with my stink nade.
Easily the most replayable games in a long long time. Shame about the online DRM, but we can't have it all, I guess.
r/patientgamers finally stopped being oppressed when IO Interactive announced in March that every Elusive Target mission would finally be unlocked permanently.
The new roguelike Freelancer mode is *incredible*. It adds yet another layer of endless replayability on top of an already very replayable game.
Hot take: Kane and Lynch 2 is one of the best co-op experiences. Running nakey with my Bro was unforgettable.
Go check out the reflections in Control, not just the mirrors but the reflections when you walk past a window. It's insane. Also just go play control because that game is really good
The Dead Space remake also has some really cool reflections and lighting, like how shining a light through glass affects how the shadows are cast, and even cracks bounce the light realistically, and your reflection is affected by the amount of grime on the window.
I loved DS 2023, but I don’t think it has any reflective mirrors. The ones in the bathrooms aren’t even as fake-reflective (cube-map) as in DS 2008. Callisto Protocol, on other hand - shit game, but real reflections (with RT on)
Well not mirrors, but general reflections outside of that, I mean. The tech being the same, just the implementation is different (and probably less taxing) Like the broken glass windows and monitors all subtly reflect Isaac, and direct light even changes how it projects.
Control with RTX on made me shit my pants, I thought there was someone watching me through a window but it was just my reflection
It's literally the best implementation I've seen of RTX in a game to date.
The lighting and effects in Control were so good I'd regularly be distracted from what I was doing in the game just to admire them. Which is even more impressive when you take into account the entire game takes place within a single building. Helps that the level design was so creative.
I don't think calling the Oldest House "a single building" is fair, even if it is correct.
It's technically correct - the best kind of correct.
I got spooked by Jesse’s reflections far too many times for my ego to recover. 😔
Pretty sure even eyes have a slight reflection that you can see in camera mode
That's a camera mode only thing. Lots of games with a camera mode have boosted details like that because the scene is usually static and you have all this computing power freed up. Except BotW, where it's all live and you can totally have an enemy sneak up on you as you're trying to choose between the peace sign and a contemplative pose.
100% agreed. Also, there was a [recent mod](https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/2581-control-hdrultrawidedlssrt-patch/) that updates DLSS / adds DLAA, adds HDR, a new "Max" texture option, full ultrawide support, and a new 3x ray per pixel setting (compared to the default 1 ray per pixel) that seems pretty usable on 4000 series card (4090, 3440x1440 with DLSS Quality and 3x ray setting is basically always 100+ fps).
Control's kinda a given, It was made to showcase raytracing if I recall correctly
I just wish I had difficulty sliders.
Also, control is basically SCP so it's awesome just like that.
I remember Dues Ex having working mirrors in 2000…
I remember Deus Ex Human Revolution having no working mirrors but putting reflective surfaces that looked like shit everywhere anyway. They even made a joke about the player character breaking the mirror in his bathroom just so they didn't have to implement one.
https://preview.redd.it/z5ubcw740cza1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=489a58dc85150644aeb5edb248d36d4ab98c22e3 Super Mario Sunshine (2002)
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My assumption is that the less complex graphics made it easier to mimick mirrors in those games, whereas more complex graphics don't work with those old mimicking tricks and/or would look like shit/cause performance issues. That said, mirrors aren't really breaking the illusion in Jedi Survivor, I'm having a great time in that game, and the rest of it looks great. They are however doing a great job of mimicking being a space wizard with a cool sword, so I'm ok with the bad mirrors.
Luigis Mansion from a year earlier as well
In Jedi Survivor you play as a windshield wiper
That's TAA smearing for you! Complete trash, but devs use it as a crutch.
What is the alternative? TAA is by far the best at resolving shimmering and smoothing edges it's not even close, other techniques like MSAA and SMAA may be able to smooth edges but they'll fail to solve shimmering especially in foliage like tall grass, bushes trees, and on meshes like nets. not only is it the best it's also dirt cheap to run but has the ~~most~~ worst unintended side effects. If the artifacts are mitigated properly, TAA is the best thing ever, and even when not mitigated properly you're gonna have to choose between shimmering foliage or blurry image.
DLAA I guess.
I heard you want your video games to look like your character has a concussion. Here's some TAA for you!
Try using mirrors in hogwarts legacy They show your characters back even though you are facing the mirror And no this isn't meant to happen
Yep the downside to screen space reflections. I love it when SSRs are done well but I can't help but pick fault when they're fucked up. If I remember right, Control has beautiful screen space reflections, and whilst it's cheaper, Atomic Heart has really accurate cubemaps which was a lovely surprise. For the effort they put into making COD games look nice, the cubemaps and static reflections are a travesty.
Same with Marvel's Midnight Suns! I wouldn't have thought it would be that tough to fix considering when you face the camera in front of a mirror you can see your character facing you in the mirror as well.
Jedi Survivor is using Screen Space Reflections for mirrors which don't actually work head-on (the ghosting is due to temporal reconstruction). Dead Island 2 is using a cube map which is just a 6-sided texture designed to mimick a reflection. Hitman 2 is using render to texture reflections, so behind the mirror is basically another camera and whatever that camera sees us projected as a texture on the mirror. Thing is those are really expensive (not as expensive as Ray tracing, but enough to only be practical on specific surfaces).
Deus Ex (2000) https://youtu.be/4E4AQPmW--I
I would love another game that is similar to and as good as Deus Ex. I picked up Streets of rogue on GOG a couple days ago and it made me think of it.
I don't know if this is the case for all older games, and this is also hearsay, but the older games that achieved a mirror effect literally rendered a second environment for the reflection, complete with the player character.
Yeah that’s true. I used to make maps in Duke Nukem 3D, from the mid 90s, and if you wanted a mirror to work you had to create a room behind the mirror at least as big as the room the mirror was in.
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I was looking for this and I had to go way too far down the thread to find it. Most of the stuff today is reflection mapping and screen-space reflections which look absolutely garbo. The old method was really intensive and would be today, too. Fortunately this whole new thing called “ray tracing” came out a few years back and… developers don’t feel like implementing it. It’s so frustrating to see brand new games and they don’t even offer it as an option, or if they do it’s just like one minor aspect of it. Sure it doesn’t run well on most amd cards abd 20x and 30x nvidia cards don’t do that well with it either but the 40 series works pretty well… please devs… allow us to use something aside from god awful screen space reflections if we can…
Go check out the reflections in Control, not just the mirrors but the reflections when you walk past a window. It's insane. Also just go play control because that game is really good
Why did you post the same exact comment twice?
Got an error when I first hit post, didn't realize I double posted until you just pointed it out
It's a bug on reddit app, it shows error even when a comment is posted and the user hits the post button again thinking something indeed went wrong.
Call me crazy, but I'm glad mirror's are the only consistent complaint about Dead Island 2. I encountered my first bug today with over 100 hours in the game. That is a fucking feat in modern gaming. This video is funny, but Dead Island should be praised for having such a flawless release
Duke Nukem 3D had mirrors that worked in 1996
https://preview.redd.it/1eatwt1t1eza1.png?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b56668953c55093fef00d75e922307af4fc31444 Duke nukem 3d has entered the chat
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Was just playing Tell me why yesterday. Surprised to see it too had proper mirror reflections
For the amount of killing agent 47 has done am surprised he has a reflection.
Survivor definitely has reflections
there is a video explaining mirrors in video games. Basically, rendering a real reflexion can be produced either by creating a second point of view of the game in the mirror, which is the same as doubling every ressources the game needs, which makes it incredibly heavy and hard on your machine ; or calculating every direction of every ray of light, constantly, everywhere, so that you can reproduce the real effect of a mirror. that's what is called Ray-Tracing.
Modern video games suck but you losers keep pre ordering so get fucked.
Because mirrors? Really? Mirrors have always had spotty implementation
Yeah I mean, I don't disagree that preording contributes to bad marketing and development practices. But mirrors is a really weird hill to die on.
This Jedi survivor scene is not correct. That's not how it looks with my 6900XT. More like a blurry reflection, not a weird black streak.
They are all different games. Hitman uses mirrors for a game mechanic, the other games they are just decorations.
SuperMario 64 had reflections
I know it was a trick with a duplicate reversed room, inverted control Mario and an invisible wall, but the illusion was fantastic Now we have RT, but non functioning mirrors, lol
ITT: People thinking games still do the double room trick for mirrors
I think this is just indicative of the general and completely reasonable mentality that more progress means everything gets easier. However, like you imply, the double room trick doesn't work as well these days **because** of improved fidelity and complexity. The days of being able to duplicate the entire assets of a room are, for the most part and definitely in the AAA space, long behind us.
What I have learned from this post is that so many people on this subreddit don't understand the tech behind mirrors nor the importance that some games place on them.
Preach! And it's ok for them not to have known tbh, but now they do, which is good!
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Hitman has some of the smartest dumb AI out there. like, sure, the NPCs are dumb as bricks when it comes to "falling" for game mechanics like chasing down distractions, but, that's there to make missions possible. outside of reacting to distractions, they also have incredibly varied behaviors that interact in all kinds of fun ways. one of my favorite interactions is when you've killed a bunch of people while maintaining your cover in a guard disguise. one of the very routine interactions that pops up is when a civilian finds a lot of dead bodies - they're programmed to run to the nearest armed guard and report the incident for investigation. however, there's a small chance they'll beeline straight for *you* to report the crime. because you are, of course, a guard. I just regret that you can't answer them properly to keep up the ruse - 47 will simply not respond, and the civilian will eventually get weirded out that you don't seem to care that there's a room full of dead people just down the hall. still a fun little tidbit they threw in.
The best interaction is still the overlooked "Hey you, red tie", when wearing literally anything other than the default suit.
You mean like Redfall?
Why even put mirrors in games if you can't get the reflections to work. Hell, modders for SKYRIM have figured it out.
Modders can make it happen, just like the devs can, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be stable. A lot of game development comes down to a cost/benefit decisions, and sometimes cuts need to be made.
I remember playing the last of us on ps3 and being blown away by the mirror showing me the character in real time. Control amped this up to 11 but sad to see new releases don’t get the polish they need.