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Steam has also shown if you put the price of your game at a level gamers think is a good deal - you sell like crazy.

G'day, I'd like to point out that Valve isn't usually this quick. Take for example Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, the multiplayer component for the famous single player game. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=248425 http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76660 These two links list quite a few bugs. There hasn't be a decent update for HL2: DM in about 2 fucking years.

I gather that a copyright notice has no been added to the Steam DosBox distribution but all the interest has now led people to carefully check how DosBox is being distributed. Currently it looks like someone went and modified DosBox.exe to make it check in with Steam (I can't verify this myself though). If this is true (it's not clear what has happened to this exe) a can of worms has been opened (and the half-chance "easy" way out might have been closed).

The licence oversight was just that and needed fixing but if the modified exe business is true then someone made one small problem and another larger problem with this particular distribution.

Here are the links:

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1 28297&page=5

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=233 2925&postcount=61

Here are the links:

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1 28297&page=5

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=233 2925&postcount=61

Yes, here's the link:

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1 28297&page=5

Looks more like an oversight than a deliberate violation.

Overclock all you want and you are still playing the same game as everyone else.

Rendering power is overrated when talking about game graphics. If you look at World of Warcraft, the game looks incredible. But it looks incredible on lower-end systems too... the art direction is just spot on across the board. Half-Life 2 uses some neat graphical tricks, but in general the game looks amazing because the artists had a clear vision of what they were creating and ensured that every pixel that went on the screen supports that. Look at the detail in the tree leaves... they're not super high-poly, they're just beautiful.

If your graphics card is good enough to run all of today's games, your graphics card is good enough. There really is no reason to spend 300 dollars every two years when spending 80 every two would be sufficient. If you want better looking games, look to lead artists, not to GPU engineers.

Couple things about that:

1) Sprays, at their maximum, take up less area than that. There is a pixel limit, so the largest a spray can be is about 3 in-game 'feet' wide. Those ads are about 7 or 8 in-game 'feet'.
2) Read the article I linked to in my reply. The company that offers this service definitely exists.

Just some clarification and citing: I originally read this story here.

And this advertising is being implemented on multiplayer servers by server admins, not by users or Valve.

Just after the launch, many fans here expected it to get a 10 or a 9.5 from GameSpot. When they gave it a 9.2, I wasn't surprised. It still had some quirks, and that damn StutterBug was hardly acceptable (though I was running it on a proc just 0.1 GHz below minimum). If anything, I'm glad it got the 9.2--it seemed awesome, but a bit too creaky to me. Steam's memory-hogging (since it uses .NET I believe but IANA Steam expert) didn't help either.

A vacation in Azerbaijan?? I bet you are there for reasons other then vacation.. perhaps you are a missionary or are volunteering there to provide aid? Though personally I am intrigued by the country myself, mostly from light bit of research I've done on it.

"Local scientists consider the Abseron Yasaqligi (Apsheron Peninsula) (including Baku and Sumqayit) and the Caspian Sea to be the ecologically most devastated area in the world because of severe air, soil, and water pollution; soil pollution results from oil spills, from the use of DDT as a pesticide, and from toxic defoliants used in the production of cotton" (source)

And here's another beauty:

"Towns once located on the coast are now as far as fifty miles away from the shoreline, the salinity of the water is heavily increased, and the fishing industry is destroyed. As if these problems were not enough, the receding sea is beginning to expose a land bridge to an island used by the Soviet Union for chemical and biological agent testing. Although the facility is closed, the remains of lab equipment had been simply buried and could become easily accessible." (source)

I also read somewhere that they fear animals will/are making their way accross that land bridge and becoming infected with the agents in the facility and possibly spreading the agents amongst the local wildlife and people. Can't find that article now though but in any case be on the lookout while you are over there!

Or maybe you are over there looking for the true location of CITY 17? Thats how my fascination with Azerbaijan began anyways.

And yes I knew where Baku was without looking at a map ;) But I blame VALVE for that.

at least you can play it.

There's a large group of us out there who can't run it at all: Install, ok, connect to steam, ok, update, ok, run game.....wait.....dvd drive spins up....wait.... nothing happens.

See http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php? s=&threadid=176998&perpage=15&pagenumber=1 or http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=6 9940b3af0c4026c73f52b06585fe6ba&t=52983

Seems to be a problem with DVD+R/RWs.

Is there any area of IT that actually requires the best available graphics card?

Yes there is. It is called recreation and fun time.

Otherwise, all most people need is a 32MB on board graphics card. No big deal.

I remember that when the HL2 source code was leaked, Gabe Newell (VALVe founder) sent out a request to the HL community. It worked. Pretty soon, they managed to get a few leads and tracked down the guy who initially distributed it. Best part was, all this happened over IRC rooms when some guy started boasting about his exploits.

This is setting a very positive trend, IMO. (Besides showing that IRC is not *just* the home of the pirates and the script kiddies :) It shows that the community will back a game publisher/developer who gives them quality stuff, and is willing to pull down shitty publishers like EA.

Anyway... long story short, this is Very Good(TM). I hope this continues

Sorry.. but World of Warcraft is simply going to destroy EQ2.

EQ2 only took almost 6 years to be released after the original - way too long, imo. I hear it isn't ready, and they rushed it to compete with WoW. Sony is probably nervous.. and for a good reason.

Blizzard is poised to win big with this game. They've had HUGE success with Warcraft, an extensive fanbase, and the MMO really does immerse you. I was part of the limited beta(s) and it's been quite a trip.

The graphical stylings of WoW (and the sheer attention to detail) really make it a contender. Sorry to come across sounding like a fanboy, I probably won't play due to the fact that i'm broke and i've got other things on my plate. But if I had the time & money, i'd be on my troll shaman right now.

I urge any MMO fan to give Blizzard's new project a shot, it's worth your cash. Oh, and play on Sargeras, cause I said so.

I don't know if he is as responsive as the others, since he was marketing I emailed him asking if the stuff offered in the gold edition would be offered separately, and he never got back to me.

Looking through this thread, it looks like Gabe Newell (gaben@valvesoftware.com) is more responsive, so you are better off contacting him. If he does respond, please consider posting his answer there so that the question doesn't get repeated, and this helps make him more likely to answer other questions people might have.

Computer and Videogames reports that, "As far as Vivendi is concerned, the game is finished."

Valve hangs a pinata in their office to be broken when the game goes gold (Here's a picture of it in pre-broken state). Gamespot has learned from an "informed source" that the pinata has been broken.

When the game is submitted to the BBFC as this is reporting, it means it is a final build and we can expect a gold announcement on Monday.

The U.K. magazine PC Zone also reviewed HL2 in their latest issue.

They gave it a score of 97%, which is the best score they've ever given a game.

Doesn't look too spectacular though.
Here's the only screenshot available right now.

OK, let's think about this. Why would a company with the marketshare of Valve ever make a deal with a publisher?

Because they want to sell some games?

Possibly out of date, but here's an overview of the different Half-Life 2 SKUs. Apparently, they expect a very significant proportion of the sales to be the base, single-player-only version, as this will be distributed in Wal-Mart and similar.

Counter-Strike only became particularly popular after it went on sale in shops in a similar manner, despite being a free-to-download modification for years...

Steam is an interesting variation, but I still reckon the majority of sales for HL2 will be in boxed form. There's a huge number of people out there without broadband, or who simply don't follow games sites and similar, who will still purchase the game.

Besides fan speculations, there hasn't been much said about it besides Gabe's vague "The third is the collector's edition SKU with lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff."

So it is anyone's guess as to what the CE will contain, along with the rumored HL: Source it might include a music CD, a making of DVD, an official Half-Life 2 crowbar, Source versions of the HL add-ons, or maybe a head-crab figurine. Until they release more info or the game gets released, all we can do is guess.

Info here:
http://www.csnation.net/comments.php?id=7475
http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3 4798&page=1&pp=15
http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php? threadid=132122
All the info you need to know this is probably fake.

Q: Can I play HL modifications with Half-Life 2? A: The original and sequel use two very different game engines and it's not possible to play mods from one game with the other. I got this from the HL2.net FAQ

Left out a '"' in a tag and it dropped the link. Links are below:

Insurgency Mod
HL2.net - Great coverage of HL2 mod news

More info about Counter-Strike source:
CS Banana FAQ
CS-Nation info page
Video
HL2.net forum post about the Seoul apresentation.

Slightly more detailed discussion at HL2.net:

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2 6804
More screenshots:

http://myhome.hanafos.com/~dream111/de_korea/dust2 _b.jpg
http://myhome.hanafos.com/~dream111/de_...ayablecs s.jpg

Today was my day in the test chamber too! It's just that I was running late, and they hid my HEV suit in a far-away bank of lockers I'd never been to before.

Maybe that guy in the suit had something to do with it, I sure see a lot of him around here.

- Gordon F.


Yeah, off topic, but, c'mon, it's coming.

Here's a post from a Valve employee confirming that CS: Source is not CS2.

Uhh... I call Shennanigans? Reading the Half-Life faq, you will find:
Q: What are the minimum hardware specifications?

The bare minimum you will need is a Pentium II 800Mhz processor, 128MB RAM and a DX6 class graphics card.

"http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s= 67205fdb6a1ffe615dac11bc2e13e478&threadid=10781&pe rpage=15&pagenumber=1" If these are the real people behind this, they are about to get /. rage all over them. Good find by this Ruroni fellow!

Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

Here is what we know:

1. Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.
2. Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.
3. For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.
4. Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.
5. At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).
6. Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.

Well, this sucks.

What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.

We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.

Gabe

__________________
Gabe Newell

check this out, no leaks, Valve has been hacked!

Source (umm, please excuse the pun)

----

Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

Here is what we know:

1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.

2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.

3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.

4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.

5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).

6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.

Well, this sucks.

What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.

We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.

Gabe

__________________
Gabe Newell

Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

Here is what we know:

1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.

2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.

3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.

4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.

5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).

6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.

Well, this sucks.

What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.

We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.

Gabe

__________________
Gabe Newell

From HalfLife2.net Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.

2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.

3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.

4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.

5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).

6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.

Well, this sucks.

What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.

We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=& threadid=10692

Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

Here is what we know:

1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.

2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.

3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.

4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.

5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).

6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.

Well, this sucks.

What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.

We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.

Gabe

__________________
Gabe Newell

Now don't you feel like an idiot?

----
this is a load of bullsh*t.

What has been "released" is some doctored HL SDK files made to look like HL2 code by members of a hacking clan called myG0t.
They are just a bunch of losers who have nothing better to do than ruin games for others.

HL2 has been re-written from the ground, so why some code that looks like HL SDK would be included in HL2 is beyond me.

Judge for yourself, but I think you'll find this is an elaborate hoax!!

Gabe Newell
Managing Director
Valve Software
02-10-2003 10:04 PM

Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

Here is what we know:

1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.

2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.

3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.

4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.

5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).

6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.

Well, this sucks.

What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.

We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.

Gabe

__________________
Gabe Newell

Read more

There are also a few threads on steam, PlanetHalfLife, and arstechnica.

Thread here.

Be interesting to see what the verdict of the Slashdot code gurus is.

FISKER_Q: you've said you wanted P2P in the steam, is that going to be a reality?

greg_coomer: Right now we're wishing it already was a reality... down the road it probably will be.

halflife2.net

BT is the way to go. Check out transfer on the full installer 1+TB

gametab

Untrue. For fuck's sake, give them a little credit.

Seriously.

They're confusing anti-aliasing textures (ie: making them smooth out instead of pixelate when up close) with FSAA (smoothing out the whole screen/scene, trying to reduce jaggedness, etc).

These are totally different.

Just read the response from Gabe that gedanken linked to:

Gabe Newell's response

~Rayme

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=& threadid=3071

The gist: This isn't a big deal.

Check out the gamespot vids, available here (scroll down in the news items) and other places around the net (if you don't wanna pay to access them from gamespot). They are just plain sick.

These vids also definately come from a later build. In the teaser, the scene with the soldier getting stabbed by a big blue tentacle is amazingly cool. But in the gamespot vids, they've changed the terrain to be much less blocky, added incredible new animations to the soldier and the girl, and the water splashes and ripples oh so convincingly when the soldier is smacked into it.

They should have saved the name "Unreal" for THIS game.