But episodic content means we get to playing installments sooner..... 
Last edited:
Half-Life 25th Anniversary Documentary
- Thread starter SpudMaster
- Start date
I was at college, one of the guys had access to a room above a nightclub in town we'd use for LANs - mostly Quake 1 at that point, we had one couple of days or so before HL released and he turns up with a top spec PC with a Voodoo 2 IIRC (most of us on software rendering or ATI Rage, etc. I think I'd just bought a Voodoo 1) and somehow a copy of the game (IIRC he worked part-time for Game or EB so probably somewhat dubiously acquired) and we were all just standing there watching the monorail intro in awe.
I'll never tire of hearing about experiences like this. I really miss the excitement and awe of being younger and the rapid advancements in gaming tech.
Rarely get that feeling any more and even rarer I'm technically impressed (but Nintendo still managed to impress with their quality and creativity)
My over-riding memory though is the fun and games with the BNC network with T-connectors and people taking out the whole network due to the topology it used :s that and why they used "Are you local" as the workgroup name - something I've seen used a few times over the years but not sure the origin of.
IIRC it was from a comedy shows maybe the Fast Show? Where they'd end up saying things like "this is a local pub for local people"
Edit. It was League of Gentlemen which started in 1999.
Last edited:
IIRC it was from a comedy shows maybe the Fast Show? Where they'd end up saying things like "this is a local pub for local people"
Edit. It was League of Gentlemen which started in 1999.
I might be misremembering, maybe was first used later, but most of those LAN that I recall were July-Dec 1998, pre-dating League of Gentlemen.
I know, now, some of them were League of Gentlemen fans though - which leads on to another anecdote:
Guy in question had dark patches around his eyes, couple of the lads in question were from my course at college.
Last edited:
Soldato
Watching this and hearing all the old alien sound effects give me the shivers! What a game this was.
The one thing I remember fondly about Half Life and it's mentioned in the documentary, is when watching the train journey intro sequence for the first time and you touched the mouse - holy crap I can move around here! Like a little kid running to the windows of the train to see what I could see outside 
.
.
Last edited:
Soldato
Well, I've been gaming pretty much from the ages of 7 in one form or another, now 48. My introduction to half life was in my early 20s, was shopping in town and walked past a Tiny and purchased a pc bundle on a whim, came with half life, played through that along with Combat Flight Simulator amongst others, blew me away and it wasn't long before I installed TFC/CS beta, my first experience with online multiplayer, I can remember it very well, couldn't believe that my opponents were real life humans, I still fire up the original CS from time to time and it's hard to believe I've being playing it on and off for well over 20 years now.
Last edited:
But episodic content means we get to playing installments sooner.....
Yup, that barely even lasted to episode 1, episode 2 was delayed, then episode 3 just vanished.
Soldato
Half life 2 was 2004, always seems in my head it was more recent and that there was more of a gap in between. That's 20 years ago in itself.
If you look at how much progress there was between the first and second, then the second and a modern day FPS game today.
If you look at how much progress there was between the first and second, then the second and a modern day FPS game today.
Soldato
You would think the ending of HL Alyx was the strongest hint so far that part three is potentially in the works. Hard to believe we're almost 20 years past the launch of Hl2 and still waiting on the story concluding.
Half-Life 3: The complete history of the greatest game never made
The rumours, rhetoric, and running out of hope.
www.pcgamer.com
I found something really interesting what happened to Half Life 3 and realised Valve released Source engine back in October 2004 then released Half Life 2 1 month later on 16 November 2004. 11 year later Valve released Source 2 engine in 2015 and they was originally planned to started Half Life 3 development in 2015 or 2016 but everybody at Valve cant agreed Half Life 3 should be flat screen or VR game then later everybody agreed that Half Life: Alyx should be VR game, development started in 2016 and released on 23 March 2020. Counterstrike 2 was released on 27 September 2023.
Source 2 engine was used DirectX 11 and it was past outdated after 2018 so I think Valve will release new Source 3 engine and Portal 3 in 2025 that will support modern DirectX 12 Ultimate with Variable-rate shading, Mesh shaders, Sampler feedback, Ray Tracing, Path Tracing and DirectStorage then November 2028 will be perfect time to release Half Life 3 to celebrate Half Life 30th anniversary. I think Valve engineers figured out they can get both flat screen and VR mode worked with Half Life 3. It worked well with DOOM VFR, Obduction, Resident Evil VII: Biohazard, Fallout 4, Skyrim, GTA V, Alien: Isolation, Hitman 3, Cyberpunk 2077, The Talos Principle and Alan Wake 2 with VorpX.
Associate
I have been watching a playthrough of Half Life by Dario Casali, one of the original level designers on Half Life:
It struck me that the enemy soldiers AI in Half Life is pretty great, even compared to games from 2023. They will flank you very effectively and can flush you out using grenades.
Dario is playing through the game on hard difficulty and provides lots of interesting insights into the making of the game. Worth watching I think.
It struck me that the enemy soldiers AI in Half Life is pretty great, even compared to games from 2023. They will flank you very effectively and can flush you out using grenades.
Dario is playing through the game on hard difficulty and provides lots of interesting insights into the making of the game. Worth watching I think.
Good doc. It seemed like a relatively healthy envionement to work in, which is reassuring to hear. It's amazing how influential it was. I mean, just seeing the clips of CS which has now grown to be one of the biggest multiplayer games ever says it all.
I'd be interested in a similar one for HL2. Personally, as an industry-shaker, I feel HL2 was more impactful. The graphics, facial animation and physics were mind blowing at the time, the latter of which still hold up today, and physics are pretty much a standard feature these days.
On a semi-related subject, if no one's seen the "HL VR but the AI is aware" series, it's a fun watch. They managed to sound exactly like the original scientist voices. Some NSFW language...
I'd be interested in a similar one for HL2. Personally, as an industry-shaker, I feel HL2 was more impactful. The graphics, facial animation and physics were mind blowing at the time, the latter of which still hold up today, and physics are pretty much a standard feature these days.
On a semi-related subject, if no one's seen the "HL VR but the AI is aware" series, it's a fun watch. They managed to sound exactly like the original scientist voices. Some NSFW language...
Last edited:
Associate
Do yourself a favour and play Black Mesa insteadIt captures the HL magic wonderfully, but suited for 2023.
Never heard of this one and it's 80% off at the moment, definitely grabbing this and it seems to play nicely on the Steam Deck as well
Associate
Will be watching it tonight. Ill have to pick up black mesa again then.
Yeah especially when you know how the AI is setup in the level editor it is quite impressive what they manage with it. It annoys me a lot how little imagination, etc. is put into AI in games these days - even without proper navigation data and a neural network or similar it is possible to make AI a lot more interesting than the implementation in so many games, never mind with proper navigation data and some kind of learning AI.
Last edited:
AI programmers in the games industry have been pretty much non-existant since the 00s. Many games don't even seem to have an AI, just quicktime events or go to X and repeat some action, soak up 100s of hits. In the HL1 days it was a big selling point.
Hopefully with things like OpenAI though it could make its way in to games. But then people would probably cry that it's to difficult.
Hopefully with things like OpenAI though it could make its way in to games. But then people would probably cry that it's to difficult.
Last edited: