New Aftermath Information

[Musopticon?]

No, I'm perfectly sane, Mister Child.

[Llyranor]

We all like to think we have a bit of sanity within ourselves.

 

We're obviously not in denial.

[Antagonist]

But Dog sticks his big eye in through some rubble in the preview, so I was going with that and asuming he was rescuing Alyx ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Very unlikely because so far the games always have been told from Gordon's perspective and I doubt that Valve will break the concept. It's one of the features they became known for. My theory is that the G-Man placed him there to avoid having Gordon pop out of thin air although that didn't stop him from dropping Freeman in the train at the beginning. I think he tries to avoid unknown publicity and unnecessary questions by outsiders, especially Alex who he decided to save for some unknown reasons.

 

A point of interest:

Dr. Breen mentioned that he knows Gordon's "contact" and that he is open for the highest bidder. It's ironic that Freeman is probably more enslaved than the citizens of City 17.

 

[metadigital]

Yeah, it was a long shot ...

 

Reminds me a little of that sixites series recently made into a film: The Fugitive; Dr Richard Kimball has to endlessly chase after a phantom in to guise of a one-armed-man, to prove he is innocent of the murder charge that escaped jail for ...

[213374U]

Those were called Gargantua.

 

[alanschu]

It's hard...but it is possible to kill one of those with conventional weapons

[Bokishi]

I'm looking forward to this and Lost Coast.

[metadigital]

Those were called Gargantua.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's hard...but it is possible to kill one of those with conventional weapons

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You mean "Blue Meanie" wasn't the official name ..?

[alanschu]

I vote Blue Meanie for official name.

[metadigital]

Right, you programme the Baley bot to spam Valve with the new name for the old character; I'll have my people contact your people and we'll do lunch.

[alanschu]

Lunch sounds good.

[Antagonist]

For all you lovers of Blue Meanie:

 

 

Blue Meanie Reloaded

 

It's a new 3-D model taken from a fan project dedicated to make a Source version of Half-Life 1 because Valve couldn't be bothered to make a proper one themselves.

 

Black Mesa: Source

[metadigital]

I heard about those dudes in the last gamer mag. Thanks for the link!

 

*sigh*

 

That music takes me back. Y'know, I think I might even prefer a Source Half-Life to Half-Life 2!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PS Of course they can't call them "Blue Meanies" now, they're white!

[alanschu]

It's a new 3-D model taken from a fan project dedicated to make a Source version of Half-Life 1 because Valve couldn't be bothered to make a proper one themselves.

 

They didn't want to for artistic reasons.

[Antagonist]

They didn't want to for artistic reasons.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sure, must be the reason they couldn't include the High Definition Pack in Half-Life: Source.

 

Valve already delayed the release of Half-Life 2 and had to cut content. They probably had no time and manpower to make a decent port of HL1 because it would mean to make new models, textures and modifications to the levels to make proper use of HAVOC.. Instead they obviously used a conversion tool so they could sell their Silver and Gold packages through Steam to people who actually expected graphics and physics on HL2 level. That was pretty shabby and I hope Valve doesn't shut down those guys at Black Mesa: Source.

[alanschu]

They said straight up that Half-Life: Source would not include updated graphics models.

 

I knew full well what I was getting when I got Half-Life: Source. If you were expecting more, it's because you weren't keeping up with the info on the game.

 

Furthermore, shortly afterwards, they commented that they wholeheartedly supported the actions of the mod team that was redoing Half-Life with upgraded models.

[Antagonist]

I was informed about the sad state of HL:S that's why I only bought the regular package. It was still misleading because Valve made a lot of promotion about Source being the next-best-thing so it is naturally that people expected it to be a total conversion of the original game.

 

Not every customer will check message boards and interviews from developers before buying a game. Right now there is almost no reason to buy HL:S. The upgraded water is not worth it and the models look even worse. For the same price you get a better looking version with both expansion packs.

 

And you still haven't explained why they didn't use at least the High Definition Version of the models (Blue Shift). Valve was just lazy and used the hype to squeeze out some extra bucks from their customers before word got out that HS:S was a scam.

[metadigital]

Well, considering how far behind the eightball Valve got with the whole development cycle, I don't see it being such a crime; after all, there is a very healthy mod scene (that Valve have always actively encouraged) who would be more than pleased to re-tool and re-engineer everything, anyway.

 

 

http://www.steampowered.com/Steam/Marketin...05/img/RDKF.jpg

 

Don't press this button

[Llyranor]

HL:S, meh. I bought the Silver version for DoD:S.

[metadigital]

I don't know how, but just going to the http://www.blackmesasource.com/ webpage and listening to the Flash presentation, made me want to play Half-Life again.

 

I think they really cracked one of the best soundtracks for a game, ever.

[Child of Flame]

I for one think more dev companies should wise up like Valve and let their consumers do a lot of their work for them.

[213374U]

Furthermore, shortly afterwards, they commented that they wholeheartedly supported the actions of the mod team that was redoing Half-Life with upgraded models.

Of course they do. They can always take over and make a retail version of it if their work is good enough. "

 

It's real neat to have people doing your job for you for free, ain't it?

[metadigital]

John Carmack gives the Doom 3 engine to open source (the GNU Public Licence).

 

 

John Carmack on the future of the gaming industry, during his traditional extemporaneous speech, at the recent Quakecon 2005.

 

Carmack, Quakecon 2005

 

...

Here Carmack heaped praise on the decisions that Microsoft has made with the Xbox 360. "It's the best development environment I've seen on a console," he says. Microsoft has taken a very developer-centric approach, creating a system that's both powerful but easy to code for. This is in contrast to Nintendo, Sony, and (formerly) Sega, who generally focused on the hardware.

 

Carmack ruminated on how throughout history consoles have swung back and forth between providing high-end hardware or development tools. Until the PS1 came out, nearly everything was done at the register level, but Sony's first console shipped with tools to help speed the development process. This was in opposition to the Sega Saturn, which was very powerful but nearly impossible to efficiently code for. Then, with the release of the PS2, Sony flip-flopped: the PS2 had much more complicated hardware and you basically had to program it at the low level again. Then along came the Xbox, which didn't have low-level access but was way easier to program.

 

Carmack looks forward to what's coming up. "It'll be real interesting to see how this next generation pans out," he said. This time around, the Xbox 360 is coming out sooner and is easier to program; will it be enough to supplant Sony's market lead?

...

Sony's position seems to be similar to the company's stance with the PS2: Sure, it'll be hard, but the really good developers will suck it up and figure it out. But Carmack wonders aloud: wouldn't it have been better to use multi-threaded processors to begin with?

...

Multiple Processors for AI or Physics

 

Proponents of faster and faster processors sometimes argue that now that graphics are reaching their 'peak,' extra processing power can be dedicated to calculation-intensive physics or Artificial Intelligence. (Carmack relates how an Engineer at IBM told him that graphics were basically "done.") Carmack disagrees, seeing that graphics still have a long way to go. "We'd like to be doing Lord-of-the-Rings type rendering in real-time," he states. That's still an order of magnitude more than what's possible with current machines, and Carmack is looking forward to it.

 

That aside, Carmack spent a few minutes talking about Artificial Intelligence as something that can be offloaded to another processor for a cutting-edge game. Carmack is skeptical. AI is a very bleeding-edge science, and it can often be processor intensive, but when applied to games AI is usually a matter of scripting. What game designers want is a way to act as the 'director,' telling enemy and friendly characters where to stand and what to do. This doesn't take a ton of processing power.

 

Moreover, even if you did throw tons of resources toward the AI, it might not be the best thing for gameplay. For instance, writing tons and tons of code to enable monsters to hide in the shadows and sneak around behind the player would be interesting, but often these types of things could be scripted for a fraction of the effort and - for most players - the experience would be just as cool if not cooler. Carmack recounts how players of the original DOOM would think that the monsters were doing all sorts of scheming and plotting and ambushing when, in truth, they were just using the equivalent of one page of C code and running the most basic of scripts.

...

Open vs. Closed Console Platforms

 

Carmack's talk changed gears at this point, starting with an aside about Sony. Although he raves about the Xbox 360 development tools, Carmack noted that Sony is making noise about making the PS3 a more open platform. As a big proponent of open source and - well, open anything - the programmer is excited to see if this goes anywhere. His biggest pet peeve with the console market is how closed off it is: you have to apply to be a developer and get a special development kit and get product approval from the hardware manufacturer, etc. (As opposed to the PC market, where anyone can develop and game creators can release content updates, point releases, and so on.) That's just the nature of the market. If the PS3 opens up, it'll be more like the old Commodore Amiga, a platform anyone can use for a variety of applications. Certainly Microsoft will never do this with the Xbox product line, but Carmack is holding out hope that Sony could experiment.

 

Following that train of thought, Carmack asked how many people in the room had HDTVs at home. (I was surprised at how few people raised their hands - from where I sat it looked like less than a quarter of the audience. And these guys are hardcore!) Carmack pointed out that any sort of plan for using a console or set-top box as a computing device really requires the high resolution of an HDTV or computer monitor to be effective. Bringing the topic around full circle, he pointed out that Microsoft may enact a policy of requiring all Xbox 360 games to be rendered at HDTV resolutions, regardless of whether or not that decision helps with the design of the game. He says that some marketing person probably made that decision, another thing that bothers him about the console industry.

...

Open Source, Modding, and Innovation

 

Carmack is aware of the difficulties for new programmers who want to get into the business: it's a long way from staring at a blank page in a compiler to having Doom 3. What can be done? Over the past several years Carmack has done his part by releasing the source codes to his previous game engines. Which led up to a big announcement:

 

Sometime over the next week or so, the Quake 3 source engine will be released under the GPL license. Since Q3 is still a viable development platform, the community should learn a lot from tearing into it. Carmack notes that the Punkbuster code has been removed so he hopes that cheating won't be a huge problem.

 

Carmack thinks that innovation in the game industry, since it won't often come from large professional development houses, will likely come from the modification or open source communities. There, people can try random ideas to see what works. Example? Counter-Strike, one of the most popular games played online today, which started out as a handful of mod-makers trying to make something fun.

 

The GPL license will allow people to take the Quake 3 engine and even go so far as to release a commercial product with it - provided that the source code is published alongside. Nobody has done this with any of the Quake engine games yet, but he hopes to see it happen someday.

 

As an aside, he noted that most companies are too secretive with their source code. "It's not about the magic in the source code," he says, it's about the tons of little decisions coders make along the way to producing a finished game. It's all in the execution.

...

When asked about the differences in platforms, Carmack noted that there's less of a distinction between developing for the next-gen consoles as there is for this generation. The difference between the Xbox and the PS2 was massive, but going back and forth between the Xbox 360 and the PS3 looks to be less of a problem. (Although still difficult.)

...

[alanschu]

Furthermore, shortly afterwards, they commented that they wholeheartedly supported the actions of the mod team that was redoing Half-Life with upgraded models.

Of course they do. They can always take over and make a retail version of it if their work is good enough. "

 

It's real neat to have people doing your job for you for free, ain't it?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I have a feeling Gooseman was compensated when Counterstrike became retail.

[metadigital]

Yeah, I bet he knows all the backdoor codes to gimp the opponents and make his PC god-like on ALL the servers ..! "