Shading a Bigger, Better Sequel: Techniques in Left 4 Dead 2 [pdf]

Valve publications: http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/publications.html

The graphics in L4D2 are great, the game runs very fast on Ubuntu, Valve has done a great job. I hope more games keep coming to Ubuntu and Linux for Steam overall. I tried the Source SDK recently and the sample builds and runs successfully on Ubuntu. Now as far as game play, L4D2 and TF2 seem similar to me, too Hollywood, I like more muted game play, similar to L4D which I tried on Steam on Wine once. If that was on Linux now I'd buy that one and probably play it more. Also more Minecraft like games where when a grenade goes off you see damage to the walls, ground, etc. and you can build stuff, defenses, machines, etc. that would be unreal.

This is from 2009/2010, and I came across it after re-playing L4D2 in the wake of its one-day-giveaway by Valve. It's aimed at graphics devs but has a lot of interesting insight about visual design and perception, procedural generation techniques, and how to simplify in general.

The last few slides are pretty great, showing how they render the gaping internal zombie wounds in a computationally efficient way. Some fun bullet points: "Culling a torso as easy as culling an arm"..."1.5x as expensive...156x the number of ways to die"

If you've ever played the game, the graphic touches are so well done you just take it for granted. But it's interesting to see how important they were to the developers, especially to serve as visual feedback to emphasize the power of certain weapons. That's not an option for most realistic shooters, or at least it seems the ratings board is more approving of gibbing zombies than human baddies.