Valve & H-L 2 Scuttlebutt Worth Reading.

[Terry Penrod]

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Here is a blistering farewell post by the founder of Planet Half-Life about the state of Valve Software and Half-Life 2 that sheds some behind-the-scenes light on several related issues that have been discussed on PC game forums far and wide for a number of years now.

Just a simple warning though - it's fairly long and not always pretty

http://www.forumplanet.com/planethalflife/topic.asp?fid=6549&tid=1352802

Cheers, Terry

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[Kalbrecht]

yeah I saw this - very interesting.

The main thrust that I get out of it is that the whole thing seems to be an orchestrated wool-pull by Gabe, just made up to look like he doesn't agree with Vivendi.

[Cronus]

Can't even trust Valve anymore?! *sob* The amount of my money they have...

[Mr. Natural]

I was going to comment on this but since I'm involved with 3D Gamers directly I will keep my mouth shut. Interesting story.

[Bruenor]

Valve has become a joke, and this blistering post just furthers that belief. We all make fun of 3DR, DNF and the "when it's done" statement. Valve to the opposite route but ended up on the same train. The joke that Steam has become, the alienated relationships that Valve screwed up (how happy do you think ATI is right now?), etc.

Meh, my interest in HL2 is waning more and more by the second, especially when there are great games like Far Cry that essentially come out of nowhere and the surprise the hell out of a lot of people.

[Cronus]

Precisely, especially if everything was not as was promised, other games will come out and be better. Steam really annoys me. I hate it.

[Mr. Natural]

Along with that bit of news I stumbled across a newsbit from Citizen-132 (http://www.citizen-132.com/) which was supposed to be a HL2 mod. They are abandoning HL2 and going with Far Cry for their mod.

[Ravanor]

Along with that bit of news I stumbled across a newsbit from Citizen-132 (http://www.citizen-132.com/) which was supposed to be a HL2 mod. They are abandoning HL2 and going with Far Cry for their mod.
When they can do pretty much the same thing it's not surprising. To think most of the amazing things that were going to be in HL2 are now in the new games coming out. It's not that much of an impressive 'gimic' anymore.

[Circlebreaker]

Meh.

That's pretty much my attitude towards HL2 right now. We'll see what happens, if it's good I'll buy it, if it's a dud I won't waste my money on it, and I won't regret it for a second. To be honest, the most important reason I'm looking forward to the release of HL2 is that it will mean that Vampire: The Masquerade won't be far behind. Now that's a game I'm looking forward to. :):

[Gaim Mastr]

Thanks for the read, Terry.

The moment I'd read that HL2 was going to be delayed by as much as six months because of the 'code theft', I had serious concerns about the actual state that the game was in.

Six months to adjust some source or engine code to make it just different enough not to work with the leaked code ??

I'm not a programmer, but that seemed very suspicious to me at the time.


Where is Half-Life 2 now? Beats me. I haven't kept up with the past 5-6 months of development and E3 is coming up anyway, so you'll see for yourself. I do know that content has been cut from the game in an attempt to get it to ship sooner. Will it ship this year? I guess there's a 50/50 chance, but keep in mind that this is the same company that took three years to add bots to a mod they didn't even make and slap it in a box. (http://www.planethalflife.com/features/articles/csczhandson/)


I agree with the previous comments here in that the delays of what was to be a great new game with superior graphics and such have likely rendered it as mediocre compared to recently released games.

I seriously hope that Valve is counting on a rich atmosphere and intriguing gameplay more than just pretty graphics at this point.


Valve needs to learn how to properly communicate with their online fan base and treat their fans with respect.
[..snip..]
That means not streaming a couple hundred megs of cache files to Steam user's hard drives without their permission or knowledge.

I've been on quite a few gaming forums and I can't recall anyone claiming to like or enjoy the Steam project. Anyone here think that Steam is a good thing ??

[DanTheManPR]

It takes absolutely FOREVER to launch steam, but once it does, I think it works good.

[Cronus]

It works ok, but it is a system hog and annoying. I just want to play a game! I don't want a million other games or anything weird.

As long as HL2 doesn't end up like Breed, it will be ok.

/me shudders.

[Ravanor]

Being on dial-up it goes without saying I haven't used Steam, but I don't like the idea of it. Especially with them transfering data without your knowledge. What about people who have download limits? Plus such conditions are breeding grounds for spyware, if noone is notified when data is being transferred how hard would it be to transfer other stuff. You might even be fooled into thinking that this transfer was related to Value and allow it to proceed. Plus if other game companies make thier own ones it'll fill up the hard drive something feirce.

[readville]

As long as HL2 doesn't end up like Breed, it will be ok.

/me shudders.

:lol: A platoon of drunks trying their hand at game design for the first time could produce something better then the dreck known as Breed.

It was absurd to think 7 people (only 1 programmer!) and a 4th rate publisher were going to create a "Halo killer".

[Cronus]

It looked so promising. Really needed so much more polishing. Was like a shareware game or 1990's game or something.