Half-Life: Source in low resolution [320x240]

No, I did not make it 256 colors, but I did try out as an experiment how Half-Life would look like at 320x240, a very low resolution by today's standard but once rather standard for gaming.
There is no point to this video except to show how it looks like at 320x240.
One may immediately notice that the lack of antialiasing is rather distracting. Jagged edges of polygons, and what's more difficult to fix, moire artifacts in transparent textures such as the steel grid wall at 3:07. Adding proper antialiasing, for example by rendering in 4x size and then lanczos-rescaling to 320x200 with a slight sharpening factor, would improve the appearance dramatically.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• valve
• half-life
• game
• low resolution
• resolution
• computer graphics

[RJLeffmann]

Loved this game, but the sound and voices were really bad quality even back then IMO.

[Bisqwit]

@RJLeffmann I accidentally recorded this video in 22 kHz though. But yes, you are right, the sound samples were not sampled at very high rate. Possibly because there were so many of them; they didn't want the game to take excessive amounts of disk space.

[OtherLoc]

I'm surprised at how good it looks to me. I doubt any textures in the game were near 320x240 so I don't notice much loss in those. But detail at distance and in geometry is lost. Congratulations on another unusual experiment.

[Bisqwit]

@OtherLoc Animation helps overcome a lot of the coarseness. The eye & brain can interpolate the smooth details from coarse samples when they vary along time. It is partially the same phenomenon as what allows perception of 3D (depth) in a animation of two static images, taken spatially a little apart and shown alternated.

[logos2600]

needs either anti aliasing or scanlines

[AlexFolland]

It looks like an N64 game. Honestly, I'm used to these sorts of 3D graphics, often watching Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, Zelda: OOT, Mario 64, etc. Looks fine to me.

[LunaVorax]

Today's standards for gaming = shit.

People are unable to enjoy a video game if it's not in 3D with a shitload of Hollywood-like visual effects.

I consider theses people modern rednecks.

[Bisqwit]

@F2bnp Allright, thanks for the explanation. I think I vaguely remember that as well.

[MikeMayer]

"F-LIFE"... ha

[Xkeeper0]

There's something vaguely ironic about watching a video specifically made at 240p in 1080p...