Water
Historically, replicating believable water has been one of the trickiest challenges facing game developers. Previous
Tomb Raider games have been no worst than any other titles of similar age but that merely deflects the fact that we had to make do with crappy translucent blue textures scattered with white lines to simulate waves.
In 2006, thanks to the power of pixel shader technology and Direct X 9.0, it is relatively easy for developers to implement kick-ass water. As geeky as it is to get excited about the rendering of water in a game, let's take a look at the different settings within
Tomb Raider: Legend:
Here we can effectively see the evolution of in-game water thanks to the control panel settings. Starting in the top left, we find the entry-level setting that was once the best on offer circa 1996; these days we call it Everything Off. The next shot (top right) adds Reflections=On and you can see that we have already moved past
Tomb Raider II water.
The bottom left screenshot enabled Reflections and Water Effects, which generates ripples and distortion of objects under the water line. Until very recently, this level of detail would have been more than acceptable; it still looks like a computer game, but it looked good. The fourth image transports us well and truly into 2006, by enabling "Next Generation Content" to the previous settings. We will go into more detail on this setting in a minute but for now, just admire the full environmental reflections and advanced shadowing.
Before we continue, we just
have to show you this comparison. Anyone who has played the demo already will recognise this scene, but since the demo had the Next Generation Content option disabled for filesize reasons, we wanted to show you what a difference this makes to the water in this part of the game. There's actually not much to say - it's like chalk and cheese.
Shadows
A quick look at the Shadows option. As should be obvious, they are disabled on the left and enabled on the right. As with all these screenshots, you can click for larger versions. Flick between the two and it will become obvious that the game has far more atmosphere with shadows than without.
To AA or not AA - that is the question
There used to be a time when Anti-Aliasing was a luxury. These days, we'd like to hope that almost everyone reading this has enough GPU grunt to enable at least 2x, if not 4x. The difference is clear: above left is without and above right has it enabled. Click to open both screenshots in new windows and compare the two. Without AA, we see
massive jaggies on the power lines and on Lara's body, from her boots and legs, up to her arms and hair. Jaggies are also evident on the hard edges of the building, archway and jeep in the distance.
In short, playing with no AA sucks. Avoid it if you possibly can.
