Games with reflections in (i.e. with working mirrors)

On another forum, the question arose of why modern games mostly don't have reflective mirrors, when they have almost every other visual effect you could name. Having a mirror in a first person game does tend to make the game more immersive, as it hammers home the fact that you are that in-game character, when you see him (or her) in the mirror, controlled by you, so why not have a mirror or two, especially in places you'd expect to find a mirror, such as bathroom or a clothes shop? And the number of wrecked homes and shops you pass through in many first person shooters should mean you see dozens of mirrors, but no, unless the mirror is conveniently smashed of course.

The games I can remember seeing a mirror, or other reflective surface, are;

Bioshock Infinite - almost at the beginning of the game, you see yourself reflected in a bowl of water (is it holy water?),

The Darkness - You see yourself (Tommy) in the mirror, can't remember where, as it's been a long time since I played the game.

And in Doom 3, Duke Nukem 3D, Prey, Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy in it's American release), and Deus Ex, you see yourself in bathroom mirrors. Plus in Shadow Warrior you see yourself in a mirror in a manager's office.

Oh yes, and in Metroid Prime (Gamecube) there is a great little touch - occasionally if you are close enough to some sort of energy flare, then you see part of your face reflected in your visor. It's a bit shocking when you don't expect it, and is representative of the expertise and thought that went into designing that game.

Plus in Bioshock 2 you see your face (well, the suit mask) reflected in the water at the start of the game just before you first get control, plus before that, in the non-interactive cut-scene you see yourself and the Little Sister reflected in the glass wall, but these two instances don't count really, as they are part of a pre-rendered FMV video.

Anyway, what other games with mirrors/reflective surfaces (that reflect the player-character I mean, i.e. not racing cars that reflect the sun) are there? And what was the first game with a working mirror?.



The reason why so few modern games have working mirrors in them is explained (or speculated on) at;

"The reason functional mirrors appear in Duke Nukem 3D, and not in many modern games, is because of the way the Build Engine (the engine running Duke Nukem 3D) handles the drawing of the game-world. The Build Engine is a so-called "ray-caster" engine (much like the engines running Wolfenstein 3D or Doom) which produces "pseudo 3D", or sometimes called " 2.5D" graphics.

To keep it short, a ray-caster engine functions by "shooting" rays from the game's viewport into a level's geometry. When the ray intersects with with a wall, it traces the distance the the wall and thereby deciding the size of the texture which needs to be shown on the screen. A mirror in the Build Engine, is just a wall flagged as a mirror, which sends incoming "rays" back in a new direction and thereby hitting a new wall. The total distance (length from viewport-to-mirror plus length from mirror-to-wall) is calculated and the corresponding texture is shown on the screen, thus creating the illusion of a mirror.

Build Engine Fun Fact: If a player encounters two walls opposite of each other both marked as mirrors, the game will never finish calculating the final distance, since the mirrors keeps sending the rays back and forth. The result: The game freezes.

"Real" 3D engines (also known as rasterizers) such as id Tech 2, Unreal Engine etc. draws their images in an entirely different way, which makes it impossible to use the rather simple Build Engine method. In most cases, a mirror in a 3D engine (like in Max Payne 2 or Condemned: Criminal Origins) is a smaller secondary viewport projected onto geometry as a texture. This is the same method used for creating the real-time image-in-image effects as seen in e.g. Half-Life 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum, and taken to the extremes in Portal, where the projected viewpoint is a literal connection to the depicted area that the player is able to walk through. The additional viewports are often kept in a small resolution to increase performance, which is why they often are blurry or very small."

Source: http://www.giantbomb.com/functional-mirrors/3015-4618/

 

Splatterhouse

At the time was a wower. Obviously not true reflection, but the effect was rad.

 

Quake 3 Arena - off the top of my head, maybe unreal/unreal tournament?(not sure on them 2)

 

Breakdown - Very interesting though, happens quite a few times in the game too.

 

Pokemon, can't remember which one, one of the early CGB in one area you see reflection of yourself in puddles.

Ultima 5, see your own reflection in mirrors.

It is possible to fake mirror reflection but true reflection requires ray tracing, which isn't used often in anything because it's CPU intensive.

 

SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle. I think your character (as well as the NPCs) even blink sometimes.

 

Luigi's Mansion on the GameCube - in several rooms including the main hall.
Resident Evil on the GameCube - Also in a few rooms including the bathroom and one of the upstairs hallways.

 

GTA San Andreas, Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul silver, loads more that I can't remember

 

Shocked nobody said Nights, one of the best levels too the warpy level has a section with mirrors.

 

World of Padman



Voodoo Vince




Silent Hill 2

 

world of padman is quake 3 engine, was a great mod, i think its stand alone now? not played in a long time lol

 

Mario 64, in that one room where you can see the "cameraman" Lakitu flying behind you.

 

Do Portal 1 & 2 count? You can see yourself through a portal if you place them right.

 

I think Duke Nukem 3D was the first game where I saw myself in a mirror.

 

they should do a duke nukem reboot, and get bruce campbell to do the voice of duke

 

This is mentioned at the end of the first post. As for why games aren't often seen making use of mirrors is due to how resource intensive it might be (depending on how it was coded).

Source Engine games began including the reflective glass entity ever since the Orange Box update. All it simply does is re-draw every model, decal, bsp chunks, & effects that it determines would be in view. As far as I know, this entity is never officially used by Valve, but included for modders. They then re-worked this coding into what Portal now uses to render the world through portals. I would assume they never used it due to how intensive it is, as whatever it is able to reflect effectively doubles what the engine must draw, not to mention the fact that it is bad with "portaling" off what isn't even in view. They updated this heavily for Portal.

So that's why I think it is usually a rather rare feature to see, or if you do, it will usually be used in a small room (such as a bathroom), with low amounts of things to have to re-draw. Or it is faked with a fixed camera & a pre-rendered picture behind the character model. As games get more graphically advanced, you would expect to see more reflections, but it seems to be a delicate balance. If a game is pushing the limits both with its engine and/or today's computers, including mirrors/reflections everywhere would be hard to handle (Unless they are backed by some amazing coding, or the game was built from the ground up with that in mind.)

Also, that Metroid Prime comment totally reminded me of that effect (seeing Samus' face reflect). That really was a superb idea, I might have to steal it for my game. :highly_amused:

 

Dead Rising, Postal 2

 

I recall the first AVP game had a mirror in the room for the marine.

 

Except for one mirror, something was amiss with the reflection signaling the correct mirror to jump through.

You have to be kidding. Duke Nukem took many years for a sequel to come out. It would take them around 15 years to do a reboot.

 

I want Bruce Campbell to sing at my wedding.