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From his blog:

"Yesterday I made pirate versions of Garry’s Mod pop up an error. This error only happens when people pirate the game. 48 hours ago there were no results for this phrase on Google. As I type this there’s 717 results (and climbing by the minutes). This is partly as a result of me stupidly mentioning it on Twitter and lots, and lots, and lots of news sites posting about it. I don’t get why it’s getting so much attention.

The overwhelming response has been supportive. Which to be quite honest I don’t really understand. If EA or someone does something like this people go crazy. Maybe it’s the motive.."

More @ http://www.garry.tv/?p=2410

He's posted a write up:
Shading Polygons

It's not the first time an indie sandbox game sells good. Ask Garry Newman, he might have an answer.

Has nothing to do with Uncanny valley, well, almost..

This is amazing stuff, also something which can be used for future computer animations:

http://www.garry.tv/?p=623

I sometimes wonder where all those "magical algorithms" come from.

[...]but the only title I can think of for the PS3 that isn't a sequel to a PS2 title is LittleBigPlanet[...]

It may not be a sequel to anything, but I swear I've seen it someplace before.

Well, I think the times are shifting. Just take a look at Garry's Mod; the game was coded by one guy in his free time. It became popular because of Garry's interaction with the community, he both listened and responded to the user. He will be selling the latest version for $10 on Steam, making 50% profit. Not only that, but he's receiving the full engine source for Half-Life 2, and he's getting it at no cost. This is a huge deal, considering most companies will pay several thousand dollars for a license to the engine. Big news for the indie crowd.

Personally, I hope that the new power of Next-gen consoles will let game developers explore new ideas in games, an area mostly limited to PCs due to processing power and licensing issues, such as the groundbreaking Garry's Mod, a physics-based sandbox in which you can build mechanical contraptions, vehicles, etc, and make them really work. Hopefully the revamped systems should give game makers room to forge new genres.

You would love Garry's Mod http://gmod.garry.tv/ for Half Life 2.

Gary's mod for Half-Life 2.

thats what i thought. LUA programming. I play Garry's mod a great deal. http://gmod.garry.tv/

I wonder if this is in any way related to the success of Garry's Mod, which lets users build all sorts of contraptions based on Half-Life 2's engine, characters and other objects. It already supports multiplayer, and some cool users have made giant fire-breathing robots, Rube Goldberg machines, helicopters, etc.

From the article:

"It's little surprise only Valve have really gone down this path properly as it clearly took a lot of work making the "cut-scenes" unbreakable by the player." Rather, they just ignore you and run through the script regardless (even if you shoot them, drop heavy objects that should kill them onto them or block their path with items they should not be able to move).

For example, if you block a path the game doesn't want you to (including dynamically 'in game', not just 'in cutscenes') the game would completly disregard the usual rules of physics and simply walk through pushing aisde any and all obstacles like they were made of cardboard (making setting interesting traps impossible in some area's, it's clear your supposed to 'stick to the rails' - like so many games thinking outside the box is not encoraged).

Of course playing with things like grary's modshows this isn't a limiation of the HAVOK physics engine - the best thing about Half Life 2 IMO, and which is entirely 3rd party - it's just the way Valve implimented it.

Half Life 2 is nowhere near as impressive as the origional was for the time IMO. Admittedly the origional had lots of distinctly tedious jump puzzles towards the end, but in the first half it had far more atmosphere and felt much more immersive to me. This is not just a case of seeing it through rose-tinted glasses either, I've played it through again recently and it's still head and shoulders above HL2 IMO.

To me, it just seems like Half Life 2 is riding entirely on it's use of the HAVOK physics engine, which of course lots of other titles have used (Halo 2, Ghost Recon, Max Pane 2, Full Spectrum Warrior, and many more) it's just that Half Life 2 use it _so_ extensively and happen to give the player a really fun toy to use to manipulate objects.

Sure I think the artwork in HL2 was okay, but the underlying engine quality was poor IMO - with kludges like the use of 2 sprites and careful map design used to try to cover up problems with a lack of proper LOD handling (with large objects like whole ships just appearing and disappearing at random in front of you on the beach, and things like tree's being redered as 2D sprites - Yuck!). The lack of a decent lighting model was pretty prevolent in some areas (something well discussed), though I was equally urged by dodgy map design featuring such delights as points where enemies could infinately spawn from points apparently in mid air (the sort of crap Doom 3 pulled and that is a big no-no in my view).

I found it particularly disappointing because we know they are capeable of better.

It's a shame that Valve haven't tried to add image-based lighting like that in to Lost Coast!

The technique is certainly possible to do in realtime. Perhaps we'll see something like garry's mod incorporating it soon?

Would you say that HL2 has substantially better physics than Halo2?

I haven't played Halo 2 (plus a PC port sounds ... unlikely), but its physics would have to be bloody good to compete with Half-Life 2's.

Yes, I know it's a licensed Havok physics engine Valve used, but it's rather nicely integrated into Source. You can do ridiculous things with it in Garry's Mod for instance, like affixing a spinning wheel to each corner of a ragdoll mattress, strapping a rocket booster to it then tying it down to a broken car with rope to stop it flying off.

Okay, HL2 itself doesn't have such ludicrously over-the-top physics simulation examples as the one I've just given, but the game definitely makes intensive use of the physics engine. Basically, if it moves and it's not an animation, it's the CPU-humping Havok at work... ;-)

Really isn't that great. Too much time, lots of movable parts. I prefer the HL2 Rube Goldbergs (see gary's mod forum for more details).

Gotta love depth-of-field. Boy that mod looks awesome.

On a side note: this just gave me a new sig.

Gotta love depth-of-field. Boy that mod looks awesome.

On a side note: this just gave me a new sig.

Ropes/cables, machines, constraint systems, ragdoll physics, vehicles, kinmetic-animated bones, and a materials system make the Source Engine the undisputed champion of physics gameplay.

The cool thing worth mentioning for Doom 3 is it uses the CPU instead of soundcard to create the sounds. This produces great sounds for people with cheap soundcards, but your new, $200 soundcard won't be able to improve on it much.