Project Borealis, the fan-made Half-Life 2: Episode 3 is still continuing along, with the release of a second performance to test so we can stress-test their work.
For those who didn't see the previous article, a proper reminder of what this is:
Project Borealis is a fan-game aiming to create the long awaited 3rd episode of the Half-Life 2 episodic trilogy based on Marc Laidlaw’s Epistle 3.
The Project Borealis performance test is a comprehensive analysis of a system's performance under our current working environment. Though this test shows our progress on performance so far, we hope to make more progress before releasing the Ravenholm tech demo, and will continue to make improvements up to the release of the full game.
They've managed to get Linux support in early and the latest release 2.0.0 (and a minor fix with 2.1.0 just recently) has added quite a lot of new bits. They've updated to Unreal Engine 4.21.2, there should be reduced hitching and microstuttering in OpenGL and Vulkan, CPU particle multithreading for simulation and collision, optimized audio performance, improved texture store and streaming and a whole lot more.
As far as fan creations go, Project Borealis could end up becoming quite a big thing in the gaming community especially considering how badly fans want a proper end to Half-Life 2.
Considering how Valve are perfectly fine with the Black Mesa fan game, I can't see them having a problem with this either.
See more on itch.io.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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17 comments
hmm Vulkan perf seems worse but is a lot smoother than OpenGL one.
OpenGL 1440p
[
Vulkan 1440p
[
edit: ahh now i see why, OpenGL is High instead of Ultra somehow
Last edited by Xpander on 7 January 2019 at 1:27 pm UTC
OpenGL 1440p
[
Vulkan 1440p
[
edit: ahh now i see why, OpenGL is High instead of Ultra somehow
Last edited by Xpander on 7 January 2019 at 1:27 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
Hmm getting a lot of flickering for some reason, however the performance is somewhat expected for my RX580.
1 Likes, Who?
Mountain Man Jan 7, 2019
I just wonder if this game is going to have the right "feel" being on the Unreal Engine. It might look like a Half-Life game, but will it feel like one?
1 Likes, Who?
Arehandoro Jan 7, 2019
Considering how Valve are perfectly fine with the Black Mesa fan game, I can't see them having a problem with this either.
Though true, not quite the same I think :)
0 Likes
What makes you say that? Put it this way, has Valve ever gone after a fan game?Considering how Valve are perfectly fine with the Black Mesa fan game, I can't see them having a problem with this either.
Though true, not quite the same I think :)
0 Likes
I just wonder if this game is going to have the right "feel" being on the Unreal Engine. It might look like a Half-Life game, but will it feel like one?There's a section about it in this Half-Life documentary (highly recommended, by the way). They seem to have spent quite a lot of effort in making sure it does.
1 Likes, Who?
Arehandoro Jan 7, 2019
What makes you say that? Put it this way, has Valve ever gone after a fan game?Considering how Valve are perfectly fine with the Black Mesa fan game, I can't see them having a problem with this either.
Though true, not quite the same I think :)
They haven't, and hope they never do, but it's not the same the remake of their first game that a new iteration of their most hyped/expected game. Obviously I don't want Valve to cancel any fan-made game but I would rather understand more the cancellation of Project Borealis than if they had done it with Black Mesa. If that makes sense :)
1 Likes, Who?
hmm Vulkan perf seems worse but is a lot smoother than OpenGL one.
OpenGL 1440p
[
Vulkan 1440p
[
edit: ahh now i see why, OpenGL is High instead of Ultra somehow
Minimum fps is waay better on Vulkan.
1 Likes, Who?
Only Vulkan works for me, with some flickering (random). There was quite a bit of stutter on my first run, with a high number (>100, maybe > 1000) of sub-60 frames, which I attributed to shader caching. No stuttering in the next runs.
OpenGL crashes after the first corner, Vulkan low-en doesn't show a single window before crashing.
Quite good results with Vulkan
OpenGL crashes after the first corner, Vulkan low-en doesn't show a single window before crashing.
Quite good results with Vulkan
0 Likes
What makes you say that? Put it this way, has Valve ever gone after a fan game?Considering how Valve are perfectly fine with the Black Mesa fan game, I can't see them having a problem with this either.
Though true, not quite the same I think :)
They haven't, and hope they never do, but it's not the same the remake of their first game that a new iteration of their most hyped/expected game. Obviously I don't want Valve to cancel any fan-made game but I would rather understand more the cancellation of Project Borealis than if they had done it with Black Mesa. If that makes sense :)
If anything, it would be less understandable given that Black Mesa is remaking an existing property with the same story, whereas Boealis is making a pretty much entirely new game in a new engine, working from a synopsis of what could have become HL3. In effect, PB is simply fanfiction. Which we already know Valve is fine with.
0 Likes
By chance just now I finished watching this documentary and wanted to comment on that aspect. Indeed, for Half Life fans (and not only) this is a must see and I do feel that PB is in good hands regarding HL feel.I just wonder if this game is going to have the right "feel" being on the Unreal Engine. It might look like a Half-Life game, but will it feel like one?There's a section about it in this Half-Life documentary (highly recommended, by the way). They seem to have spent quite a lot of effort in making sure it does.
Though who knows for how long we'll have to wait (I can only think about how long Black Mesa took/takes).
Not complaining though, respect for this volunteer work out of passion.
0 Likes
Can anyone send Epic an AMD GPU so that they test their fucking Unreal Engine on one? Jesus Christ, I'm so sick of this engine. Not only their Windows D3D11 part is annoying, no, this little Linux demo doesn't even work. Not on RADV (massive flickering everywhere), not on AMDVLK (flickering shadows), not on RadeonSI (crash).
And running it with validation layers enabled indicates that there are quite a few bugs in the Vulkan render path. Including invalid shaders, invalid image layout transitions, out-of-bounds image copies, all the fun stuff that leads to undefined behaviour. How does this even work on Nvidia?
Last edited by YoRHa-2B on 8 January 2019 at 1:00 am UTC
And running it with validation layers enabled indicates that there are quite a few bugs in the Vulkan render path. Including invalid shaders, invalid image layout transitions, out-of-bounds image copies, all the fun stuff that leads to undefined behaviour. How does this even work on Nvidia?
Last edited by YoRHa-2B on 8 January 2019 at 1:00 am UTC
6 Likes, Who?
I tried this on my Intel notebook, and OpenGL runs terribly, but vulkan runs much better.
Both crash at repeatable places in the benchmark, (but different for each renderer).
It can even hang my system if I set it to high quality.
Both crash at repeatable places in the benchmark, (but different for each renderer).
It can even hang my system if I set it to high quality.
0 Likes
What makes you say that? Put it this way, has Valve ever gone after a fan game?Considering how Valve are perfectly fine with the Black Mesa fan game, I can't see them having a problem with this either.
Though true, not quite the same I think :)
No , but they should at least go after the lazy asset flip mess.
That's how we ended up with Hunt Down the Freeman.
0 Likes
Big improvement from the previous benchmark. I'm surprised my old hardware seems to still be relevant.
Running Project_Borealis-Vulkan_Lowend.sh results in a UNreal engine crash.
Last edited by minidou on 8 January 2019 at 8:53 pm UTC
0 Likes
i tried it a few times
lot of flickering and bugs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDRchgATtms
start again and it seems almost fine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN-p7Yj-sxY
didnt change anything
lot of flickering and bugs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDRchgATtms
start again and it seems almost fine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN-p7Yj-sxY
didnt change anything
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