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[Half-Life] End of an Era

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Posts

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    It always bugged the shit out of me that Freeman would stop "thinking" when he was in water.

    Like...how do you forget the whole premise of your series?

    YL9WnCY.png
    Zerocz
  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    It always bugged the shit out of me that Freeman would stop "thinking" when he was in water.

    Like...how do you forget the whole premise of your series?
    It was always rather indecisive on whether he was talking or thinking.

    NocrenPLATeeMan
  • augustaugust where you come from is gone Registered User regular
  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited March 2015
    Did a little Google'ing, and apparently late last year, Valve announced they'd be participating at the Game Developers Conference.

    Which happens to take place in February/March.

    One of their panels ("Physics for Game Programmers : Physics Optimization Strategies") will be on March 3rd.

    At 3pm.

    There is no way this is unintentional.

    iama3.jpg

    Or more likely just another notch on Valve's trolling belt.

    But I want to believe.

    Forar on
    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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  • Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    I am trying so very hard not to get hype. But 3pm on the 3/3? C'mon Valve. Don't be like that.

    Also we're at 2 on pretty much all of their franchises - TF2, Portal 2, L4D2, DotA2. Literally any of em could get a third before HL. :P

    Oh brilliant
    Panda4You
  • subediisubedii Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    I am trying so very hard not to get hype. But 3pm on the 3/3? C'mon Valve. Don't be like that.

    Gabe Newell takes the stage and says "Psych, we're in 2015! You're going to need to wait another 98 years."

    subedii on
    Mr FuzzbuttTychoCelchuuuCurly_BracecB557BurnageRoz
  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    subedii wrote: »
    I am trying so very hard not to get hype. But 3pm on the 3/3? C'mon Valve. Don't be like that.

    Gabe Newell takes the stage and says "Psych, we're in 2015! You're going to need to wait another 1,318 years."

    cB557 on
    Donovan Puppyfucker
  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    'The Blue Box: Episode 3 of everything. Available on Steam... about ten minutes ago.'

    They could charge $Texas and it wouldn't stop me from ponying up.

    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
    EupfhoriaPanda4You
  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    I am trying so very hard not to get hype. But 3pm on the 3/3? C'mon Valve. Don't be like that.

    Also we're at 2 on pretty much all of their franchises - TF2, Portal 2, L4D2, DotA2. Literally any of em could get a third before HL. :P

    That's pretty far-fetched. Valve didn't plan the GDC date and 3pm was probably the slot available for them.

    Someone at Valve is reading this and facepalming so hard. Come on, guys.

    XBL : Figment3 · SteamID : Figment
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Yeah, I doubt Valve will announce a new game at GDC. (At best we'll see tech work that later turns out to be early work on a new game.)

    Valve hasn't been in the habit of announcing games at press conferences. they either drop the news early, or do some kind of ARG. I think Left 4 Dead 2 at E3 and Portal at PAX are the only ones I can think of.

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    The number 3 will appear.

    The words "Half-Life" will appear in front of the 3.
    Then the 3 will move over so that the number 2 can appear between Half-Life and itself.

    And then a D will appear behind the 3.

    DarkPrimus on
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  • DarmakDarmak RAGE vympyvvhyc vyctyvyRegistered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    The number 3 will appear.

    The words "Half-Life" will appear in front of the 3.
    Then the 3 will move over so that the number 2 can appear between Half-Life and itself.

    And then a D will appear behind the 3.

    And then the angry mob rushes the stage and tears everyone apart with their bare hands

    JtgVX0H.png
    DrakePanda4You
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    I still think it would be funny if Valve just announced a "3" and then holds off on saying what game it actually is.

    Undead Scottsman on
    McFlynncB557Dark Raven XBurnage
  • NEO|PhyteNEO|Phyte They follow the stars, bound together. Strands in a braid till the end.Registered User regular
    On the one hand, that is a glorious tweet.

    On the other, I kinda wish it was serious, because B&W was good times.

    It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
    Warframe/Steam: NFyt
    LaCabraIcemopper
  • HardtargetHardtarget There Are Four Lights VancouverRegistered User regular
    I'd 100% play it

    steam_sig.png
    kHDRsTc.png
    LaCabra
  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    So tommorow may be a historic day for video games. Please be real, I can't take the hurt any longer. #ibelievegabecancounttothree

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  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    it won't be

  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    LaCabra wrote: »
    it won't be

    DONT YOU DARE TAKE MY HOPE FROM ME WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF BREENGRUB?!

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  • reVersereVerse Attack and Dethrone God Registered User regular
    Someone might announce a sequel, oh yeah, that's totally historic, stuff like that never happens in the entertainment industry.

  • JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    I'm interested in seeing the new controller, the new VR headset, and everything else will be gravy.

    That being said, the first "3" that Valve is likely to show is L4D3. But if I were to put money on ANYTHING, it would be demonstrating Source 2. Showing some stuff off which may or may not be related to any game, but demonstrating the engine, and having it be built-in that it supports normal monitors and Vive automatically - it detects what's plugged in and drives that seamlessly.

    20130806_valve_office_left_4_dead_3.jpg

    source2closeup.jpg

    SorcecB557
  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    reVerse wrote: »
    Someone might announce a sequel, oh yeah, that's totally historic, stuff like that never happens in the entertainment industry.

    The announcement of a new Half Life game would indeed be historic. To say otherwise is to deny the reality that A. Half Life is one of the most beloved franchises of all time and B. That there has been a significant amount of anticipation and hype built on the fact that it's been years since the last installment. Think what you want about the franchise but to deny this is to deny realIty.

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  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    It is highly unlikely that Valve will announce HL3 at this event.

    Although if they did, I'm pretty sure Kim Kardashian's attempt at "breaking the internet" would pale in insignificance in comparison to the sheer bedlam that such an announcement would unleash.

    SorcecB557eelektrikPanda4You
  • JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    http://www.vrworld.com/2015/03/04/valve-wont-holding-gdc-2015-press-conference/

    tl;dr Internet gets up to stupid things again.

    For the ACTUAL Valve talks, here's the timeline:

    Monday
    Nothing Valve related.

    Tuesday
    11:15am-12:15pm: Physics for Game Programmers: Robust Contact Creation for Physics Simulation by Dirk Gregorius (Valve)

    3:00pm-4:00pm: Physics for Game Programmers: Physics Optimization Strategies by Sergey Migdalskiy (Valve)

    Wednesday
    10:00am-6:00pm: GDC expo: Valve doing press demos of HTC Vive, showing off new Steam Controller/Machines etc.

    5:00pm-6:00pm: Advanced VR Rendering by Alex Vlachos

    Thursday
    10:00am-6:00pm: GDC expo: Valve doing press demos of HTC Vive, showing off new Steam Controller/Machines etc.

    10:00am-11:00am: glNext (now named Vulkan): The Future of High Performance Graphics (Presented by Valve)

    Talk description:
    A technical preview of the Vulkan API, with advanced techniques and live demos of real-world applications running on Vulkan drivers and hardware.

    Gabe Newell on Vulkan:
    Valve and the other Khronos members are working hard to ensure that this high-performance graphics interface is made available as widely as possible and we view it as a critical component of SteamOS and future Valve games. (source)

    Friday
    10:00am-3:00pm: GDC expo: Valve doing press demos of HTC Vive, showing off new Steam Controller/Machines etc.



    So Tomorrow and Thursday are the bigger days, not today.

  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited March 2015
    Half Life 4 confirmed?

    O.O

    I kid, I kid.

    Forar on
    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Honestly, given how everyone freaks out about the slightest thing, Valve should just say they're announcing their next game on at a certain time of day on a certain website, and then sell advertising out the ass for that website.

    I mean, its not like they need the cash, but companies would shell tons of money for this.

    cB557
  • Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    So was this nothing after all? :P

    Oh brilliant
  • JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    So was this nothing after all? :P

    Hey, a discussion about physics isn't nothing!

    Also it doesn't happen for another 37 minutes.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    So was this nothing after all? :P

    It was always nothing. Even ignoring that Valve typically doesn't announce games at events (and has NEVER announced a game at GDC), there was nothing indicating that Valve had any game announcements at this thing. The only questionable thing was a "secret" to be shown off at an event next week, and that is going to be the new VR headset.

    Like, you can't even be smug about Valve not announcing anything here becuase he was painfully obvious they weren't going to announce something here. The only people saying otherwise were either sarcastic or delusional.

    DrakeSorce
  • augustaugust where you come from is gone Registered User regular
    I wouldn't expect any Half-Life news without an intense months long ARG leading up to it.

  • JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    March 3, 2015 -- Valve announces a number of product and technologies at this week's Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.
    "We continue to see very strong growth in PC Gaming, with Steam growing 50% in the last 12 months," said Gabe Newell, Valve's president. "With these announcements we hope that we are helping build on that momentum."

    Steam Machines, Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux PCs will be able to take advantage of a new product announced at GDC called Steam Link. Designed to extend your Steam experience to any room in the house, Steam Link allows you to stream all your Steam content from any PC or Steam Machine on the same home network. Supporting 1080p at 60Hz with low latency, Steam Link will be available this November for $49.99, and available with a Steam Controller for an additional $49.99 in the US (worldwide pricing to be released closer to launch).

    Steam Machines from partners Alienware and Falcon Northwest are being shown, with Machines from a dozen other partners slated to release this November. Steam Machines will start at the same price point as game consoles, with higher performance. Customers interested in the best possible gaming experience can choose whichever components meet their needs. Epic will give a demonstration of the newly announced Unreal Tournament running on a 4K monitor driven by the Falcon Northwest Steam Machine. "We love this platform," said Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games. "Whether you're running incredibly detailed scenes at 4K or running 1080p at 120 FPS for an intense shooter experience, this brings world-class gaming and graphics to televisions with an open platform true to Valve's PC gaming roots."

    Valve will show a virtual reality (VR) headset. Developer versions of the headset will be available this spring, and partner HTC will ship their Vive headset to consumers by the end of the year.

    Two new technologies are part of the VR release - a room scale tracking system codenamed Lighthouse, and a VR input system. "In order to have a high quality VR experience, you need high resolution, high speed tracking," said Valve's Alan Yates. "Lighthouse gives us the ability to do this for an arbitrary number of targets at a low enough BOM cost that it can be incorporated into TVs, monitors, headsets, input devices, or mobile devices." Valve intends to make Lighthouse freely available to any hardware manufacturers interested in the technology.

    "Now that we have Lighthouse, we have an important piece of the puzzle for tackling VR input devices," said Valve's Joe Ludwig. "The work on the Steam Controller gave us the base to build upon, so now we have touch and motion as integrated parts of the PC gaming experience."

    "We've been working in VR for years and it was only until we used SteamVR's controllers and experienced the magic of absolute tracking that we were able to make the VR game we always wanted to make," said Alex Schwartz of Owlchemylabs.

    VR demos being shown at GDC include work from Bossa Studios, Cloudhead Games, Dovetail Games, Fireproof Studios, Google, Owlchemylabs, Skillman & Hackett, Steel Wool Games, Vertigo Games, and Wevr.

    Valve announced the Source 2 engine, the successor to the Source engine used in Valve's games since the launch of Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2. "The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the productivity of those who use the platform. With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games," said Valve's Jay Stelly. "We will be making Source 2 available for free to content developers. This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform."

    Also as part of supporting PC gaming, Valve announced that it will be releasing a Vulkan-compatible version of the Source 2 engine. Vulkan is a cross-platform, cross-vendor 3D graphics API that allows game developers to get the most out of the latest graphics hardware, and ensures hardware developers that there is a consistent, low overhead method of taking advantage of products. Vulkan, previously called Next Generation OpenGL, is administered by the Khronos Group, along with other standards such as OpenCL, OpenGL, and WebGL.

    GDC 2015 will mark the 13th anniversary of Valve's first public announcement of Steam, which has since become the leading platform for PC, Mac, and Linux games and software. In the last year, Steam realized the addition of many new services and features - including In-Home Streaming, Broadcasting, Music, and user-created stores - as it grew to over 125 million active accounts worldwide.

    For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com/universe

    Emphasis mine.

    https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/

  • TeeManTeeMan BrainSpoon Registered User regular
    Jragghen wrote: »
    Steam Machines, Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux PCs will be able to take advantage of a new product announced at GDC called Steam Link. Designed to extend your Steam experience to any room in the house, Steam Link allows you to stream all your Steam content from any PC or Steam Machine on the same home network. Supporting 1080p at 60Hz with low latency, Steam Link will be available this November for $49.99, and available with a Steam Controller for an additional $49.99 in the US (worldwide pricing to be released closer to launch).

    Emphasis mine.

    https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/

    Isn't this In-House streaming what we already get from the client for free? I do pretty much what it's describing already, I hope they're not now putting a price on it

    steam_sig.png
  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    Hmm. I expected this re Source 2. I know their level editing tools in it are some of the best, but the UI is kind of a clusterfuck compared to Unreal. I wonder if it'll be worth switching away from UE for anybody - I kind of doubt it just based on their track record with support.

    Also I wonder what "free for content developers" actually means

  • PeewiPeewi Registered User regular
    TeeMan wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    Steam Machines, Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux PCs will be able to take advantage of a new product announced at GDC called Steam Link. Designed to extend your Steam experience to any room in the house, Steam Link allows you to stream all your Steam content from any PC or Steam Machine on the same home network. Supporting 1080p at 60Hz with low latency, Steam Link will be available this November for $49.99, and available with a Steam Controller for an additional $49.99 in the US (worldwide pricing to be released closer to launch).

    Emphasis mine.

    https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/

    Isn't this In-House streaming what we already get from the client for free? I do pretty much what it's describing already, I hope they're not now putting a price on it

    They're not. They're making a box you can hook up to the TV instead of a computer.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    TeeMan wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    Steam Machines, Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux PCs will be able to take advantage of a new product announced at GDC called Steam Link. Designed to extend your Steam experience to any room in the house, Steam Link allows you to stream all your Steam content from any PC or Steam Machine on the same home network. Supporting 1080p at 60Hz with low latency, Steam Link will be available this November for $49.99, and available with a Steam Controller for an additional $49.99 in the US (worldwide pricing to be released closer to launch).

    Emphasis mine.

    https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/

    Isn't this In-House streaming what we already get from the client for free? I do pretty much what it's describing already, I hope they're not now putting a price on it

    No, they're selling a $50 box that you can Stream to rather than having a second computer hooked into your tv.

  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    edited March 2015
    I just wish Valve would have communicated more about the fact that they are now some kind of wierd publisher hybrid thingy and no longer make video games. Didn't they always use to talk about how they hated publishers after what happened with Sierra or Vivendi or whoever they were? Obviously I knew that the chances of anything HL related being announced were sparse at best, but I hoped they would say something, anything, video game related (engines and platforms don't count) because they are kind of running out of chances to be a great video game developer again like they used to be. I'm not sure they even care anymore, I know I don't. It's like that saying goes, you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villian.

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  • NEO|PhyteNEO|Phyte They follow the stars, bound together. Strands in a braid till the end.Registered User regular
    I just wish Valve would have communicated more about the fact that they are now some kind of wierd publisher hybrid thingy and no longer make video games. Didn't they always use to talk about how they hated publishers after what happened with Sierra or Vivendi or whoever they were? Obviously I knew that the chances of anything HL related being announced were sparse at best, but I hoped they would because they are kind of running out of chances to be a great video game developer again like they used to be. I'm not sure they even care anymore, I know I don't. It's like that saying goes, you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villian.

    As far as publishers go, valve has a pretty big leg up on the competition by way of not being a publicly traded company, so they aren't obligated to make bad decisions in the name of short-term profits. But yeah, kinda miss when valve made games, because they've made some good ones.

    It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
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  • JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    DOTA2 came out a year and a half ago, and it and TF2 have been getting pretty great regular support. Yeah, pretty long gap before that, and I personally don't play DOTA2 so I don't pay as much attention to it, but a year and a half with no games for a single developer isn't that bad.

  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    edited March 2015
    NEO|Phyte wrote: »
    I just wish Valve would have communicated more about the fact that they are now some kind of wierd publisher hybrid thingy and no longer make video games. Didn't they always use to talk about how they hated publishers after what happened with Sierra or Vivendi or whoever they were? Obviously I knew that the chances of anything HL related being announced were sparse at best, but I hoped they would because they are kind of running out of chances to be a great video game developer again like they used to be. I'm not sure they even care anymore, I know I don't. It's like that saying goes, you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villian.

    As far as publishers go, valve has a pretty big leg up on the competition by way of not being a publicly traded company, so they aren't obligated to make bad decisions in the name of short-term profits. But yeah, kinda miss when valve made games, because they've made some good ones.

    I get it, they are making stacks of fat cash being a publisher. Problem is their core fans who got them to this point in the first place don't give a shit about that. It just sucks going back and watching those documentaries where they were all so excited to build a great video game. How devastated they were when hl2 was leaked. I just feel like that passion is gone from them and it's sad. A fucking VR headset is not raising the bar Valve, I remember when you used to do things not based on beating the next big trendy device to the market, but to revolutionize gaming. would have been real cool to have seen the next Half Life in collaboration with JJ Abram's or whatever crazy awesome idea they would have came up with if they still had a soul.

    But I'm not mad or anything.


    Jragghen wrote: »
    DOTA2 came out a year and a half ago, and it and TF2 have been getting pretty great regular support. Yeah, pretty long gap before that, and I personally don't play DOTA2 so I don't pay as much attention to it, but a year and a half with no games for a single developer isn't that bad.

    DOTA 2 was not valve being awesome and truly taking the time to make something amazing like they used to, DOTA2 was valve taking advantage of a friggin Warcraft3 map that had become insanely popular. I'd hardly say that's raising the bar like valve used to strive to do. And I have no beef with DOTA I think it's a pretty good game and an amazing story (the story of how the game came to be, not the ingame lore)

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