Hi,
I am writting a game engine for my fps game that uses C++ as the language and OpenGL as the renderer.
I find though that the graphics are looking more like Half-Life 1 rather than Half-Life 2 (if you know what I mean).
Even though both these games used DirectX to render the graphics I would like to know what techniques can be used in OpenGL to raise the graphics quality from basic (hl1) to more pretty (hl2).
Thanks,
James
OpengGL gives you the means to create any visual effect that you want. HL2 use OpenGL as well as DirectX since it is avaliable for Mac.
How your graphics look depends on mainly three things. Geometry, textures, and lighting. But the really main thing is lighting. I would recommend not using the fixed function pipeline in openGL for doing your rendering. You should instead use shaders so you can implement lighting effects of your choice, or if you want to use, for instance, normal or bumpmapping effects, that can also be done in the shader. You can find a lot of shader examples on how to implement various effects of lighting, try doing some googling on that.
Its a huge subject and not just a settings or something like that that needs bo be changed. You might also want to look into existing game/graphics frameworks. You probably don't want to implement your own dynamics or physics or graphics engine.
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