Half Life 2 to be revealed @ E3

[SheepFactory]

:eek: Cant wait for e3!!!

Halo 2 , half life 2 ...../me feints

[Lunatique]

Finally! I've waited for...what, FIVE years for this? Half-Life changed my life as a gamer. I have VERY high expectations for HL2.

And we want that damn Team Fortress 2 too!

I was talking to a friend at Valve the other day, and I asked her, "What do you guys do when you see all the jokes and articles out there saying HL2 and TF2 are vaporware?"

She said, "We just pass around those links in the office and we all laugh smugly about it."

:D

[froggyplat]

i can't believe it....hell has finally frozen over.:beer:

[ceql]

OMG!!! Wow!!! :applause: :applause:

[MaDSheeP]

i need a new video card! :buttrock:

or do you guys think a 4400 will work well?

[Knut]

...---...---...---...

OMG! My summer is ruined.

Edit: Ah..not to be released until end of this year, i hope. Need some sun.

[heavyness]

i need to hurry up and beat the 1st one.... kept playing to much counter strike instead!

[Neil]

Damn you brain. Why did i learn English, i can't read half of those articles!

I can't believe i didn't hear about any of this release information, this just adds to my frustration of not going to E3.

Lunatique: Why are they laughing? B/c they know they are jerking the public around, and are lazy? I mean come on, TF2 has been in production so long it's ridiculous!

[KOBALT_KORE]

Screenshots scanned in from ... somewhere!!!:

http://www.cscentral.com/forums/attachment.php?postid=193322

http://www.inet.hr/~srjurak/1051029326_0.jpg

:buttrock: :buttrock: :buttrock:

[SheepFactory]

:eek:

/me feints again

[Seven]

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,6636950~root=pcgames~mode=flat

Theres some very VERY poor quality photos taken from the same ....umm place

Sev

[KOBALT_KORE]

Whoa nice find Seven!

If you squint hard enough (lol) some of them look pretty sweet:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/r0/download/335182~6846b59965b60ed2218d17aa23b70143/hl6.jpg
http://www.broadbandreports.com/r0/download/335180~56770c86091b328d32a9dc221c1288e2/hl4.jpg

[Seven]

/me takes a bow :)

[Seven]

[ edit.. images i linked to have been removed :( :( ]

[Steveyola]

Great news,I think it will do justice to the first one.Cannot wait.:beer:

[Seven]

http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_21.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_23.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_22.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_20.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_19.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_16.jpg

[KOBALT_KORE]

All nice finds Seven :)

Here's some magazine cover scans:

http://www.bluesnews.com/screenshots/games/hl2/20030422/pcgamer_6_03.shtml

http://www.bluesnews.com/screenshots/games/hl2/20030422/06_cgw_cover.shtml

(those issues are apparently out now)


Those pics that went down can be found here too:
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_10.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_11.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_12.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_13.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_14.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_15.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_17.jpg
http://www.halfrules.net/upload/hl2_18.jpg

[Agent D]

:eek: :drool: :eek: :drool: :eek: :drool: :eek:

[Neil]

I heard that PC Gamer wants all these pics down b/c they got the rights to the screen shots, yet Blues News is hosting one too....
so i'm not sure if they can stay up or not.

Not saying that it's gonna effects anyone's decision to spread them.
Gimme that pcgamer cover without the text and it's my desktop!!!
Gordon actually has hair, real hair, amazing.....

[ceql]

Wow!! Wow!! :drool: /me bounces around the room :bounce: :bounce:

[Nahaz]

Role on E3.

[ceql]

more screenies!!

http://www.pbase.com/magentichead/half-life-2&page=1

:drool: :drool:

[Kananga]

half life...the only game that ever made me jump out of my chair:eek:

[blindsleeper]

well one wait almost over... now if hell really freezes over they'll release a deus ex 2 (ok so im a big fan)

[Seven]

Nice one guys... nice find ceql

Cant wait for E3 :) ! !

[goodlag]

:bounce: :buttrock: :bounce: :buttrock:

[KOBALT_KORE]

Originally posted by blindsleeper
well one wait almost over... now if hell really freezes over they'll release a deus ex 2 (ok so im a big fan)

They're making Deus Ex 2 - it's supposed to come out during the summer ;)

[KOBALT_KORE]

Originally posted by Neil

Gimme that pcgamer cover without the text and it's my desktop!!!
Gordon actually has hair, real hair, amazing.....

I don't think that's a screenshot. Although, judging by this pic of Alyx, I don't think that magazine cover seems too far off from what the characters will look like in the game:
http://www.eurogamer.net/screenshot.php3?name=/pics/screenshots/half-life2_pc/12b.jpg (thanks to cycron for that link)

[CGmonkey]

OMG.. This is the dawn of computer game revolution!

I wanna get the mod tools for half-life.. me wanna, me wanna :drool:

[Neil]

Yeah i didn't expect that to be an ingame shot, but i just love the picture. His hair is seriously so good.


half life...the only game that ever made me jump out of my chair


Don't mean to get off topic, but i give that credit to Silent Hill. When i was in the nightmare school playing at night, i had to stop and go to bed, i was too tense and wound up :)

[KOBALT_KORE]

My friend just got his copies of PCGamer (lucky bastard) and Computer Games magazine.
Here are the main points from each preview:

Half Life 2's release date = September 30 2003 (W00T!!!! :buttrock: )

All the money from Half Life 1 went into developing Half Life 2

Story - Gordon is now working for the "G-Man" (the mysterious guy in the suit). Gordon has a partner called Alyx (a daughter of one of the scientists from Half Life 1). Story takes place primarily in a fictional city called "City 17". There's a new alien threat that's more "organized and sinister". You'll get to ally yourself with some of the original aliens from Half Life 1

It uses a proprietary engine called "Source" that took Valve from October 1998 to September 2002 to complete.

They've been working on game content since September 2002.

The engine will take advantage of everything from a "mid-range" (Pentium 700 ) PC with a TNT2 card (!!!) running DirectX 6, all the way up to a P4 3 Ghz with the latest DirectX 9 stuff ("Optimal" will be P4 2 Ghz with a Geforce 4).

Half Life 2 will support normal mapping

Character models will average about 5000 polies (sweeet)

The engine will be able to do big-ass outdoor scenes

The engine also has a bunch of sweet-sounding lighting tricks, purty water tricks ("refracted and distorted" underwater scenes, etc.), reflection stuff, particles, skeletal animation, 'ragdoll' physics care of the "Havok" engine, inverse kinematics, no hassle lip-synching (the game reads a sound file, and does it for you !!!), higher res textures, bump-mapping


You'll be able to pick up any object in the game (that could be lifted by a human in the real world) and use that as a weapon, or a shield. This will allow for creative problem solving like dropping objects into gears to stop a machine, using a metal grill as a shield to get closer to a turret, etc.

Incredibly smart sounding AI (for some critters). Ex. a tall alien trying to get accross a bridge - it's too big (several stories high), so it tries to break the bridge by stomping on it.... doesn't work, so it sticks its head in to figure out if it can fit through... yep, so it drops down to the ground, and pulls itself through. Good pathfinding skills - some aliens will also jump gaps if they can. Less suicidal sidekick characters (ex. Barney won't run into a room and try to take out a 100 foot monster with his pistol this time :p )

Sidekick characters - one of which is Gordon's partner Alyx Vance (the lady in some of the previous screenshots). Sidekicks will be able to notice things of interest in the world and will point them out.


Scripted sequences won't be as obviously scripted

Bullets leave marks on everything in the world - walls, characters, objects, etc. They make different sounds depending on the surface they hit.


It's apparently even more "robust" it comes to modding the game than Half Life 1:
When texturing a level, the game knows that it's a (for example) a brick texture, and so when you're in game and you shoot at it, it's already got the brick-wall-getting-hit-with-a-bullet sound attached to it automatically, so the level designer doesn't have to spend stupid amounts of time assigning sounds manually.

Characters have actual musculature, and their bodies will deform realistically when moving. They also have a wide range of emotional expressions, as well as lip-synch. Valve hired Paul Ekman - an expert in emotion expression recognition to make the NPC's facial movements as realistic as possible. The facial animations don't (apparently) take up a ton of processing power either.


And it comes out at the end of September!!!!! :buttrock:

[ceql]

Wow!! Woww!!! omg this game is just sounding better and better :drool: :drool:
and whoa, they got Paul Ekman in too? Wow! :D

[TheFrumpster]

Bling! All the pages right here. Big images. :D
http://home.socal.rr.com/inevitability/HL2/

[JA-forreal]

Now that's 3d News!

-Check it here

http://www.planethalflife.com/







-forreal

[KOBALT_KORE]

Yeah Frumpster! :beer:

I just thought of something - wouldn't it be sweet if CGtalk had a 'make your own 5000-poly Half Life 2 character' for one of the challenges after the game comes out? That'd give the mod scene one hell of a kick in the ass :p

[CGmonkey]

KOBALT_KORE - Yeah, but that wouldn't work out since they've got normal mapping, advance facial rig, muscle structure, ik handles and all that stuff that you don't usually see in todays games.. So perhaps when doom 3 hits the shelfs ;) Awesome Idea though.. I'm starting on my hl2 characters already :p

[heavyness]

09.03.03!!! cool, i should a new computer by then!

"When texturing a level, the game knows that it's a (for example) a brick texture, and so when you're in game and you shoot at it, it's already got the brick-wall-getting-hit-with-a-bullet sound attached to it automatically"

i've been working in UT2003 making my own levels and noticed the metal plates automatically do this. i made a brick floor followed by a metal floor and the sound changed, i didn't have to do anything. just letting you know, but then again it might mean Valve has a better/faster way of doing it.

game looks great! can't wait to make a huge outdoor level in that!

[gnarlycranium]

OOooooOOooooooh... it's so preeeeeettty! :drool:

[Neil]

I can't read enough about this game. It looks incredibly slick. The specs are even more realistic than Doom3, i heard that HL2 gets like 70fps maxed out, as appose to D3 15fps (same standards)

Now what's the deal with these pics going up and down, i know the mags want them down, but they were released in the magazine right? So isn't a magazine public domain once it is released?

[KOBALT_KORE]

CgMonkey - aahhh well - only 5.5 more months to wait anyway :p

kole - still, it's pretty cool that it has a feature like that (and it's very considerate to new modders too). Oh, and you had the release date wrong - it's Sept 30.. still, it's better than waiting for Duke Nukem Forever for 8+ years ;)

Neil - that article was a fake (the one talking about 70fps, and having to manually clean your gun after a battle).
I don't know what's up with the mags. I only know that some people (apparently) have their copies now, while me (a subscriber) will have to wait at least 2 more weeks until I get my copy :annoyed: . Therefore, I'm quite alright with getting an advanced preview :p

[Lunatique]

Am I the only one that finds it odd that Valve says they've only begun working on the content in Sept/2002? I mean, for a game that huge, it doesn't make any sense to only have 1 year on the content. What the hell were they doing from 98 to 2002? 4 years of doing nothing?

I can understand the engine being developed for that long--since technological leaps don't happen overnight--the consumer end of PC's got to catch up anyway. But, I seriously doubt they only started on the game content since sept/2002. I BET they have started all the design/writing/level design..etc loooooong before that. Anyone who works/worked in games knows you just can't do a AAA title in one year--especially Valve isn't known as having a huge staff.

[The Don]

Lunatique I was also astounded by this. I assume it must be bad research or simply an error, surely the games content can't be made in just 1 year!?

[Scilynt]

I really can't wait for this either. soo many cool things coming our this year with games and movies I have plenty to keep my busy being unproductive, like usual :p

[krisr]

I believe that Valve might have switched over to XSI some time ago so does this mean they used XSI for HL2?

[Knut]

Originally posted by Lunatique
Am I the only one that finds it odd that Valve says they've only begun working on the content in Sept/2002?

I think that is a misunderstanding. In the article they clearly states that the development started when "Half-Life shipped out the door in 1998".

It was their "proof of concept" that was finished in September 2002. I do not have intimate knowledge of the game industry, but it would have been bad for HL2 if they had stopped developing the game engine in 1999 to build the story on the back on that.

So i think they made the story first, then the levels, and simultaniously developing the game engine. Then, when the engine is finished (September 2002), they polish the story and the levels to fit into that.

That is what i think they have been doing since September 2002.

[Neil]

Kobalt: Ok, thanks for the tip. How do you know exactly? Not questioning it, just wondering... do you have some sorta 'insider' info? :D

I really doubted they would make you clean your gun, there is always a separation between reality and making it fun, and that would be crossing the line. I could never stand the headshots in CS (call me bitter) :)

[frameless]

omg what a game!!!:eek:
hmm may be the game supports a resolution of 512*384:p
...because my pc sucks (Athlon 750 mhz, GeForce2 mx 400, 384 sdram)!

[KOBALT_KORE]

Originally posted by Neil
Kobalt: Ok, thanks for the tip. How do you know exactly? Not questioning it, just wondering... do you have some sorta 'insider' info? :D

I wish I had 'inside info'!! :p
There has only been 1 non-Valve viewing of Half Life 2 - which was back in March for a few people from print magazines. The print magazines weren't supposed to start printing the story until April 28, meaning that readers wouldn't get their copies of the story on Half Life 2 until May 8 or so. (I'm assuming they wanted it to be that way so that there'd be a week or so until it was unveiled at E3 - that's just my opinion though)....

What the fake article you were talking about had, was information that was completely different than the print mags - there were no similarities at all. Also, since there was only 1 viewing of HL2 for magazine journalists, that means there would only be 1 story (if you've read the Computer Games and PCGamer previews, there's almost no difference between the two). Also, since that viewing was only for magazine journals, there's no way that an online site would've been able to do a preview.

That's also the reason that PCGamer must be asking people to take down the pictures of Half Life 2 - the magazines are the only ones that are supposed to have them - Valve hasn't released anything to the online community (which is odd), other than actually saying that they're making it.


****

Although, now there's an official, non-scanned pic that Valve released:

http://www.planethalflife.com/images/screensnew/hl2_cnn.jpg

read CNN's thing here:
http://money.cnn.com/2003/04/23/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm

[Lunatique]

It doesn't matter if you know anyone on the inside. I know someone who is an artist at Valve, and boy, I could never pry anything out of her whenever I try! Most people in the industry are pretty tight-lipped about what they're working on--especially when told to be so by their company. It's a good thing people take their NDA seriously too, or else you couldn't trust anyone.

[CGmonkey]

Hehe yeah I know an artist from Valve to.. He said that he was working on team fortress 2! hehe..

[britney]

at last :applause:

[KOBALT_KORE]

CgMonkey & Lunatique:
Try harder! :p (j/k)

There's a sweet site that "bentllama" posted in another thread, but I figured it would be better to keep all the info in this one. Anyway, here it is:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/nimda/hl2hc/index.htm

(Scroll down a bit - there are hi-res scans from Computer Gaming World's article on it). Thanks again bentllama! :thumbsup:

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