Problem is that money doesn't really motivate Valve anymore. They rake in so much money off of Steam and Hats that even if Half-Life 3 was the bestest selling game of all time, it still probably wouldn't be as an effective cost-to-return ration as, say, DOTA2's cosmetic market.
If HL3 comes out of Valve, it'll be because the people working there have a desire to make it, and they manage to make something they're happy with. As you've mentioned, there's a lot of expectations tied to Half-Life and that's going to make it difficult to create something that can even remotely live up to the hype, as well as being as groundbreaking as HL1 and HL2 were back in the day.
EDIT: While it sucks that we've lost a lot of the old guard who rightly should be in charge of finishing out this section of the Half-Life saga, Valve is still hiring new people, and I'm betting a lot of those people grew up playing Half-Life and would love nothing more to help produce the next Half-Life. As great as Epistle 3 is at giving some finality to the saga, I'll never truly move on from the idea that we may see a new Half-Life some day.
Valve has certainly blown money on worse ideas (PowerPlay, Steam Machines). Hell, they keep spending money on VR and we've seen how tepid that launch was.
Perhaps I was unclear, but this was the exact point I was trying to make.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
edited September 2017
The solution here is hats! Hats in HL3! singleplayer hats! gman hats! headcrab hats! hats for a single player game that no one will see ever! hats!
The solution here is hats! Hats in HL3! singleplayer hats! gman hats! headcrab hats! hats for a single player game that no one will see ever! hats!
HATS!
Honestly, it worked really well for Borderlands 2, so it's not like it's unheard of.
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Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
I honestly wonder what stopped developed or created such a mess that they turned to other projects. People can mention all the money from Steam and DOTA and all that but I have to imagine there was a core issue that came up that wasn't dealt with properly, maybe some kind of legal impasse for one reason or another that no one's willing to discuss. Maybe there had been a window of opportunity to resolve it and the ball got dropped, leaving a horrible pile of wasted efforts behind. Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking but, but...a long time ago Half Life was a major thing, and despite what we may think we know about Steam and other money makers for Valve, Half Life was their flagship, their mascot, and their seal of quality all rolled into one. So...something went wrong. Something crippled this project. And I really don't think it was about Valve's other projects being so lucrative.
They probably wanted to, but couldn't come up with, some kind of ground-breaking gameplay element. And then slowly drifted away from the project over time.
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AkimboEGMr. FancypantsWears very fine pants indeedRegistered Userregular
They probably wanted to, but couldn't come up with, some kind of ground-breaking gameplay element. And then slowly drifted away from the project over time.
That's very likely it. I recall Valve (Newell?) stating that they were aiming for a significant step up with HL3. Less Ep1 -> Ep2, more HL1 -> HL2.
Give me a kiss to build a dream on; And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss; Sweetheart, I ask no more than this; A kiss to build a dream on
Problem is that money doesn't really motivate Valve anymore. They rake in so much money off of Steam and Hats that even if Half-Life 3 was the bestest selling game of all time, it still probably wouldn't be as an effective cost-to-return ration as, say, DOTA2's cosmetic market.
If HL3 comes out of Valve, it'll be because the people working there have a desire to make it, and they manage to make something they're happy with. As you've mentioned, there's a lot of expectations tied to Half-Life and that's going to make it difficult to create something that can even remotely live up to the hype, as well as being as groundbreaking as HL1 and HL2 were back in the day.
EDIT: While it sucks that we've lost a lot of the old guard who rightly should be in charge of finishing out this section of the Half-Life saga, Valve is still hiring new people, and I'm betting a lot of those people grew up playing Half-Life and would love nothing more to help produce the next Half-Life. As great as Epistle 3 is at giving some finality to the saga, I'll never truly move on from the idea that we may see a new Half-Life some day.
Valve has certainly blown money on worse ideas (PowerPlay, Steam Machines). Hell, they keep spending money on VR and we've seen how tepid that launch was.
Perhaps I was unclear, but this was the exact point I was trying to make.
Sorry, I misunderstood your reference to about leaving money on the table.
Good, the slugs can be killed. See you in hell, Breen.
No Commander Shepard though, nuts.
If Valve's intention is to see this become the public domain of mod and indie teams, I welcome such a notion.
Though I doubt my idea for Gordon Freeman would ever see the light of day, the one where traveling between realities stretches his mind to the point where based on a "theoretical physics" point buy RPG class, we each individually build our own versions of Gordon Freeman with various super powers developed from his altered mind that he eventually uses to challenge the mercenary G-Man, his employers, and their enemies - who all seem to display TK, TP, and other such notions as well. Cue thinking with portals and then some.
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
Black Mesa: Xen, which was due by the end of the year, got delayed yet again.
Straight to the bad news: we are pushing back the release of Xen. We are truly sorry for getting everyone's hopes up and then delaying... again. We worked very hard to make December, but we are not yet ready. As a team, we take FULL responsibility for that. We have an internal deadline we are confident in, and we will be getting everyone more details as we get closer to that date.
Thank you again to our community and Early Access supporters. The funding from Early Access has allowed us to hire many new talented developers, and has allowed older developers to put more time in the project. Simply put, Xen has proven to be an enormous undertaking, and while we are managing it to the best of our ability, it is proving to take longer than we estimated.
The good news is that we will be releasing a large update in December to test all of the new features that have been developed for Xen. We have changed a number of things within the Source Engine, and we want to make sure they all work on the myriad of PCs out there. By enabling the new tech on the Earthbound section of the game, we can get the engine/code fully stabilized on Steam before we drop the final chapters.
In December we will also have an update on where our Xen chapters stand, show some additional media, and deploy the engine update.
Here are some features that will be in the update:
Lens Flare
We've created a custom lens flare entity, and have added lens flares to important light sources in the game. Don’t worry, we will spare your eyes and not go overboard with our new lens flare tech. We think it adds a nice layer of polish to the Earthbound lighting and we hope to use it to really sell the alien feel of Xen... and add endless frustration to the debate about whether or not Gordon wears a helmet.
Dynamic Lights
We’ve shown some dynamic lights in the last update. Here are a few other sections that got the dynamic light treatment. Lights can simply cast light, cast shadows, and even cast volumetric godrays.
4 Way Texture Blends
We incorporated a 4 way texture blending system like the one seen in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and improved upon it. Our level designers have 4 texture layers to blend, each with its own bump map and environment map (SSBM OR Normal Bump). Like other versions of the shader, level designers and artists can blend between the 4 layers procedurally using light and dark values of the diffuse textures.
Image Based Ambient Lighting
Lighting can now be generated from the image of the skybox texture. This gives level designers a very quick and accurate base lighting for outdoor maps. The example below has just a light_env in the scene, with no colors. All colored lighting is created automatically from the skybox image.
CSM and Godray Performance
We’ve improved the performance on Cascade Shadow Maps and Godrays and made them both more straightforward to implement on the Hammer side. Godrays are now placed with our newLight_Dir entity and automatically get ray angles from the light_env. Rays not only run better, but look smoother as well.
Xen Concept Art
Concepts as seen in PCGamer. In addition to the Xen screenshots we have released, these Interloper concepts highlight the difference in environment types we have.
Black Mesa 60% Off
We are also on sale until November 28th for the Steam Thanksgiving sale!
Stay Tuned
We will have a bunch more information next month!
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
Is this mod still free? I know they charge for a version of it, right?
I replayed OG Half-Life a while back, soon after I finished Black Mesa, and wondered how they would make Xen work. It's different from the rest of the game and the boss fight has to be hard to implement.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Just tried out a bit of Black Mesa for the first time. The only part I'd ever seen before was part of On A Rail when they had freshly made it. It's weird how, for as much they've touched things up, there's still a lot of 90s going on with the way people are animated. And yet that has a charm to it.
I consider Black Mesa to be the definitive version of HL1, I'll probably never play the original again. So it's a good purchase if only to support their work on the main campaign IMO. I figure their version of Xen almost certainly won't be any worse than the original's when it eventually happens.
Xen Engine Hotfix and Public Release
APRIL 29 - [BMS] ADAM-BOMB
Xen Engine Public Release
We have patched the latest version of the Xen Engine and released it to everyone. Please let us know on the Steam forums if you run into any game breaking issues. As we have mentioned before, this is important to test our new features so that the Xen release can be as flawless as possible. We will probably do one more “Engine” release just before we drop Xen, in order to make sure that everything is running smoothly on everyone's machines. We want the Xen release to be as close to a simple content release as possible! Here is what is in the latest patch:
April Patch List
Fixed screen freezes / crashes on Radeon RX 3XX 4XX 5xx cards!
Fixed most dynamic shadows flickering and improved the overall quality and performance
Fixed most dynamic lights flickering on lower quality levels Nvidia GPUs (and some AMD GPUs)
CSM quality and perf improvements
Fixed CSM not working on some AMD cards
Fixed decals flickering in some maps
Fixed full screen blur when using dynamic light godrays
Fixed zombie headshots with the crossbow. Now when you headshot a zombie using the crossbow, they will no longer spawn a live headcrab.
Fixed assault points for Houndeyes
Added texture scrolling for dynamic light cookie textures
Fixed tilemap animation bug in light cookie textures.
Fixed rim lighting not working with old light entities
Fixed Phong/skin shader specular not working on static props
Flashlight intensity and range increased
Settings optimization for new deferred lighting and shadows
December Patch Notes
Known Issues
Flashlight Doesn’t Have Shadows
We have a more advanced plan for the flashlight in the works. This will be deployed at a later date.
Haloing Around Props/Object
MSAA is causing outlines around certain objects. MSSA is a performance killer and we hope to have a better solution for anti-aliasing with the Xen release. To remove the haloing/outline, simply turn off MSAA.
Dynamic Shadows Flickering On Moving Dynamic Lights
These should be completely fixed, but if you DO get them try:
Try running the game in windowed borderless mode.
Try turning off Vsync, lowering your overall settings, or turning off dynamic shadows entirely.
Stencil Shadows
We have removed the old Source stencil shadows. This helps performance and fixes the double shadows that happen in outside environments where CSM is used. We plan on using new dynamic lights to get more realistic shadows in key interior sections.
Always Run
Always run has an issue where after every map load you have to press “shift” for it to work. We will be fixing this for Xen.
Outlines Around Weapons
If you move the screen fast in areas using dynamic lights, you may see small outlines around your weapon. This is very minimal and is something we will look into fixing.
Fixes and Multiplayer Servers
APRIL 30 - [BMS] ADAM-BOMB
Hey all,
A quick mini update for everyone.
Fixes
We have deployed a number of fixes for the latest version of the game.
We fixed:
The tentacles in Blast Pit not responding to explosives
Problems with CSM on lower settings and improved CSM performance
Humvee using experimental texture that caused FPS drops
Invalidated old saves as we forgot to set that with the first deployment. Sorry if that inconvenienced anyone.
We are currently troubleshooting
Flashlight not working on some machines with dedicated video cards
Game not launching on some machines
Black screen on Linux when launching
Multiplayer
We also found a nasty bug on our Linux servers. We are working on getting that sorted as soon as possible. For the time being our MP servers are down. Once we have them up, we will plan a play date so we can REALLY test the servers and blow off some steam with everyone!
Thank you to everyone who reported bugs and helped the community fix problems.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
One of my brothers gifted this to me like... three years ago, and I decided to wait for the singleplayer to actually be done. Everyone was still waiting for Xen.
I'll believe Xen is happening when I see it.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I haven't touched the game since the first couple days I bought & installed it. The Xen thing has me thinking it's not worth blitzing through the game because I'll just hit that roadblock.
I don't fault the devs for the time it has taken though. I guess I'm relatively forgiving compared to most.
Three years since the first commercial release, six years since the first playable release (as a free mod), and fourteen years since the beginning of development.
If they can make it another year before going gold they'll tie with Duke Nukem Forever (1996 to 2011) and will have been in development five times longer than Daikatana.
Three years since the first commercial release, six years since the first playable release (as a free mod), and fourteen years since the beginning of development.
If they can make it another year before going gold they'll tie with Duke Nukem Forever (1996 to 2011) and will have been in development five times longer than Daikatana.
To be fair, up until three years ago, these guys were just fans working on a mod.
Also, christ was the mod version really released SIX YEARS ago? Time really needs to slow it's role.
Apparently there was a sizable newsdrop back in June
Summer Update 2018
Jun 21st 2018
Xen
There has been lots of progress on Xen. We have started external playtesting. The first two chapters, "Xen" and "Gonarch's Lair", clock in around two hours. For reference, all five chapters of Xen in HL1 can be completed in approximately one hour! We are really excited to show our work to everyone, but we also want to save the majority of Xen as a surprise.
Here is a brief breakdown of our current progress in each chapter:
Xen - Final Polish
We have locked the majority of the Xen levels. Most of the design and art is completed, and we are polishing one or two rough edges in the design.
Gonarch’s Lair - Art
As you can see, we have a good amount of art completed for Gonarch. We are doing some last minute design revisions to get the gameplay tight and consistent throughout the chapter, and then we can drop in our already created art. As you might guess, this chapter is very heavy on code and animation. The first map is locked, the second map is finishing its main art pass, and the final map is undergoing some design iterations, with some art already implemented.
Interloper - Final Gameplay
This chapter has gone through a hefty number of positive and ambitious design revisions since we started it. We are really happy with the direction and iterations that have gone in, for all five maps. They are very close to gameplay complete, and are playable start to finish. We are currently finishing the modular art pieces, trimming some of the chapter’s “fat”, and polishing the last of the rough design edges to produce a streamlined and action-packed conclusion to Xen’s main story.
As Interloper is a significant departure from the rest of Xen, our intention is to get Xen and Gonarch’s Lair completed through the final polish stages first, before shifting the entire team onto Interloper at once, to finish this chapter up in one quick fell swoop.
Nihilanth - Gameplay/Art
The art for this level is completed. Without giving too much more away, we have a really exciting evolution for this chapter, and we are starting the final push to get this chapter completely coded, scripted, and animated.
Endgame - Final Polish
This chapter is locked. There are some dependency assets and some polish we have to implement once the rest of the game is complete, but other than that, it is ready to go.
Celebrating 20 Years of Half-Life
Oh cool, so it’s already JUNE. Time flies when you are grinding toward a deadline having fun. As many of you are probably already aware, Half-Life will be TWENTY this November. We obviously plan on doing some BIG THINGS to celebrate the game that inspired us and became such a huge part of all our lives.
One of the events planned is Black Mesa (Crowbar Collective) having a booth at Syracuse’s Retro Game Con November 3rd and 4th. Stop by if you are in the area and chat with us. I went last year as a guest and had a great time (and got some sweet video game themed magnets too). More info on this event to come.
We are also considering doing a dev marathon stream of Black Mesa, Half-Life 2, Episode 1, and Episode 2. Would anyone be interested in watching us do that? We would have to figure out the logistics, as we are all not in one place, but that is something that sounds like a good time to us.
There are some other big ideas we would really like to do, but can’t talk about just yet. If you have any ideas, please let us know!
Hey, there's a new big mod out called Half-Life: Echoes. It's basically another perspective of the Black Mesa incident. So far it doesn't seem to be anything we haven't seen before (Unless you haven't seen a mod use Mr. Friendly) but it seems alright. Ammo is at a premium on the hardest difficulty, though.
Posts
Perhaps I was unclear, but this was the exact point I was trying to make.
HATS!
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
That's very likely it. I recall Valve (Newell?) stating that they were aiming for a significant step up with HL3. Less Ep1 -> Ep2, more HL1 -> HL2.
Sorry, I misunderstood your reference to about leaving money on the table.
Good, the slugs can be killed. See you in hell, Breen.
No Commander Shepard though, nuts.
If Valve's intention is to see this become the public domain of mod and indie teams, I welcome such a notion.
Though I doubt my idea for Gordon Freeman would ever see the light of day, the one where traveling between realities stretches his mind to the point where based on a "theoretical physics" point buy RPG class, we each individually build our own versions of Gordon Freeman with various super powers developed from his altered mind that he eventually uses to challenge the mercenary G-Man, his employers, and their enemies - who all seem to display TK, TP, and other such notions as well. Cue thinking with portals and then some.
Here's to another 10 eventful years! :razz:
Thanks valve, for turning me into the robot from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
The mod version isn't getting updates anymore, and won't be updated with Xen.
The paid version is in early access right now, and is only $8 on Steam, which is pretty good price, all things considered.
13 years since the mod was first announced.
Over 5 years since the first mod release.
Like 2.5 years since it first came out on Early Access.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
2004 or 2005?
I'll believe Xen is happening when I see it.
I don't fault the devs for the time it has taken though. I guess I'm relatively forgiving compared to most.
Three years since the first commercial release, six years since the first playable release (as a free mod), and fourteen years since the beginning of development.
If they can make it another year before going gold they'll tie with Duke Nukem Forever (1996 to 2011) and will have been in development five times longer than Daikatana.
To be fair, up until three years ago, these guys were just fans working on a mod.
Also, christ was the mod version really released SIX YEARS ago? Time really needs to slow it's role.
https://forums.blackmesasource.com/index.php/Thread/45485-Summer-Update-2018/
actively disappointed the back windshield wiper isn't painted to look like one
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes
Also that makes me wonder how advanced the sac physics will be in Black Mesa.