FMPONE

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Interseting.

Really interesting. I'm not sure if this is true, but it seems like consoles have given up some space on the pie to PC. Or, PC at least seems to be holding its own.

Under no circumstances

You’re right, the tested video was so bad and boring and the footage so poorly presented that although my hype levels are high for Alyx I couldn’t watch it one sitting and it took me two days to get through. But maybe they just didn’t have a solid trailer cut in time and didn’t want to disappoint when expectations were really high and the trailer would be beside a lot of other AAA titles. And I still also doubt they make March, so that’s probably part of it.

I think they’re just bracing us for a delay in March. It’s whatever, a late game is better than a bad game.

Yes, I used WallWorm for every model in the new Cache. It’s an excellent tool that I highly recommend, I don’t even want to know how people managed without it because I’m sure it was painful

Been watching this show. I know it’s a bit old and many people may have seen it, but I think it could be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Every episode is a 10

The sand one is probably a mistake, I’ll fix that. Probably related to WallWorm material selection default or something. The mud was indeed deliberate as you slide on mud, not intended and bad for gameplay. Makes a nice sound though.

Ultimately I'm not sure yet another traditional sp campaign would really raise the stakes much. So, let’s say they did do a really nice Titanfall 2 style HL3... I'm not sure that would be that hype or new or different or exciting enough at this point, or even a few years ago. They themselves raised the stakes so much by delaying EP3 on and on, to the extent that they would really have to do something crazy. At least VR is a big enough risk to meet that burden.

I think there would need to be a radical re-thinking of the formulas that went into the Half-Life games. Not really on-topic per-se, but if you look at Black Mesa for example, the basic formula is something like 1) enter new area 2) fight 3) locked door has to be unlocked in some puzzle/combat way 4) encounter some vistas, friendly AI 5) move onto the next area. 99% of Black Mesa fits into that groove, and I think it becomes very samey after a while. When the game does mix it up, such as when Gordon Freeman gets "captured" or when some friendly AI stops your railcar and has forced dialogue, that's much more akin to how HL2 would break up the pace by having Alyx or some other AI talk to you. But generally speaking this level of variety is just not much compared to other full-price Single-player games these days. What do people think of as amazing, world-class single-player pc games nowadays? Something like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Skyrim or GTA5 or The Witcher or soon-to-be Cyberpunk, etc. They are not only mostly open world, but they have a level of replayability inherent in the experience. I think HL3 would need to have moved more in that direction rather than trying to do the Call of Duty route and just do "really polished" short SP campaigns, which aren't replayable and only barely justify their price tag. I think the HL style of games in the traditional format became too formulaic, too linear, and not replayable enough to sit comfortably by the open world games which really push the envelope for singe-player. When people think amazing single-player games these days, that's more what they think of IMO. The days of just a 16 hour linear campaign being enough to justify the HL3-level hype, to me those days are over. Even if those 16 hours were balls-to-the-wall, incredible, super polished... I just don't think that would be enough for all the hype. Again, all of this is slightly off topic, but since you asked, I thought I would elaborate a bit. As for why VR changes the calculus more than just more polish/production values, IMO filtering a time-honored formula through a totally novel headset adds enough benefits to be worthwhile. It's a format you're used to, but with all these little new gameplay experiences such as kinetic reloading, immersive presence, etc. Perhaps the most important point of all is, with VR, Valve is at least taking a risk with doing something new and exciting. With a HL3 that was mostly just what EP3 would have been, that's not taking any big particular risk, and it's a lot easier to make a case that's a let-down.

They could have hired a couple of people to polish the first half of the game. There are stock HL2 assets in there, and custom stuff that’s not much better. Then there are also the rough sound effects (shotgun in particular sounds pretty clippy), and clunky weapon switching. It’s not the super polished feeling experience now that it was a few years back when it first came out, it’s a bit clunky at times. As the game is a commercial product I’m just evaluating it on those lines, but the real context is that the first half is a community mod for sale, it’s probably not fair to expect a new Xen and a repolished first half. But having played through Xen which felt a little bloated at times, maybe in hindsight that’s one approach they could have taken instead. I did notice some new sprites they were using everywhere that looked pretty nice and helped modernize the old chapters pretty nicely as for lighting. Source aged well in terms of particles/effects IMO, some of those hold up pretty well. The rocket launch in particular looked better now, it looked great.

Just beat Xen. Overall, impressed with the experience. I think it was guilty of perhaps trying to do *too* much, it felt a bit overstuffed and repetitive at times in terms of always having three distinct puzzle triggers, always dragging sequences on too long, always wearing the player out. Gonarch Lair felt endless at times. Nihilanth is an OK boss fight, but like a lot of Xen, felt overpacked and over the top. I think if you look at Nintendo boss design for example, it’s a bit more segmented out into digestible chunks, this one just felt like it was slapping you in the face with stuff for the sake of impressing you, not allowing you to breathe. I think Xen was simply too long given how abstract/alienating it felt to be in that kind of environment. It starts out on an incredibly high note, slows down a great deal in the middle and wears you out by the very end. Replaying Black Mesa completely probably contributed to these feelings. I disliked Residue Processing, that chapter should have been cut or significantly reduced, it slows the game down to a glacial pace. Blast Pit was far more tedious than it needed to be. And Lambda Labs, while it has some awesome memorable moments, also has some more tedious machine-enabling that you’ve already done enough of by that point. I was completely sick and tired of the Earth environments the game was presenting me with long before Xen, there wasn’t enough editing. The first portion of the game also looks noticeably worse now beside Xen. Overall, I think Black Mesa is very good, stunning for a community project. But as a game in and of itself, it just needed much more editing and not continuously try to justify itself by padding the length out so much with trivial tasks. Fans of the original would say this was cutting too much, but it *needed* those cuts, badly. The game could have used a lot more exposition, vistas, and far fewer busy-making tasks. You can really feel the lack of other meaningful characters, and how that dates the game quite a bit. It felt great to immerse myself in the Half-Life universe again, but I can see why Valve decided only VR would be suitable to bring Half-Life back. These games consist of novel ways to press the player forward, and I think many of the best ways have already been explored in the traditional game format: Black Mesa includes every single possible permutation of how to unlock a door, climb into a vent, boot up a machine, enter a portal, etc. Playing this game felt really cathartic and reaffirmed that the community is capable of much more than people think, but I doubt a Half-Life 3 following the same pattern would have lived up to the hype — we know the formula to the recipe by now a little too well.

Here’s a straight up version of the trailer Yeah, hopefully it’s typical trailer non-gameplay shit

I haven’t spent much time in Source 2 yet. I’m very curious about: -Animating character models in Source 2 (Source Film Maker style?) -PBR materials in Source 2 -How accurate editor lighting is (are there compiles to finalize?) -Scripting/coding stuff Perhaps someone can enlighten me.