i seem to find older games with elaborate baked lighting more visually appealing than newer games with elaborate dynamic lighting. perhaps it's because it's carefully placed for artistic effect, like in photography, and it has that wonderful soft fall-off at the edges.

it's a trade-off of course. in Final Fantasy XIV, there's dynamic shadows everywhere, so they can respond to the angle of the sun and make the world feel less static, which is cool. on the other hand, many angles are visually unappealing, and it being real-time reduces fidelity

interestingly, those two techniques are like polar opposites when it comes to how much texel density they need. nobody likes a shadow map that isn't razor-sharp, but if anything a baked lightmap looks best when it is quite blurry

(i know there's other kinds of dynamic lighting)

these trade-offs suit those games' worlds. the Source æsthetic is defined by built environments, and humans struggle in darkness, so they build things that only look good when lit up. FFXIV, on the other hand, has lots of natural landscapes. https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01H22Y8RGFMH9E389Y8DCAES57

there are no purely technical choices, huh. everything is also an artistic consideration.

oh my god there's so many interactible objects in hl2 from the very first moment. i just never thought to press the use key until "pick up that can"

…i wonder how it's like, playing this game as an american. to me, city 17 feels like a normal city. if all you've ever known is asphalt grids, maybe it feels hyper-foreign?