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Bah. It depresses me how bad the AI still is in FPS games after I made my own bots for CS years ago (when I didn't have a decent internet connection - when I got broadband I stopped making the bots). My bots had different personalities, can't remember if you specifically had to specify rusher/camper/whatever or if it was just a certain courage level, but you could specify obedience level (for responding to radio commands), weapon preferences, ability to use grenades, aiming skill (higher skill levels would use more controllerd fire and be more likely to HS you on the first shot, while lower ones would start at about chest level then just spray and pray), whether they were able to look sideways to check for enemies down side alleys as they were running along a path etc, all per bot so you could create awesome bots (modelled on myself and my friends :P), and noobs, etc. In the last incarnation they were starting to pick up knowledge of stuff like where they had killed enemies or died themselves which affected their 'courage' and how likely they were to start sneaking around or rushing (made a big difference because you can't hear walking enemies in CS and the bots respected that). Those were the days.. AI is fun, at least for games like Counter-Strike.. it's not quite so much fun for stuff like board games..

If anyone still has CS 1.5 and wants to try them out they're called TEAMbot and one of the last releases is still up at http://www.planethalflife.com/teambot . I probably still have the latest version of the source on one of my old HDs..

Prey, at least, takes the gooey look to its fullest; many of your weapons are actually alive, and some were formerly pieces of enemies. As you're walking along, your weapon might hiss at you menacingly. This little touch is so clever and appreciated that it makes the boring sameness of the enemies and corridors that much more drab.

Ah, so like Half Life and Opposing Force then? Nice to see cutting edge ideas.

You already lowered your standard when you chose to use linux as a gaming platform. Linux does many things well, gaming is not one of them, especially not windows gaming.
Getting proper audio support alone is a crapshoot, I'd say 90%(*) of all linux desktop systems get no more than stereo audio, with one sound source at a time locking the sound (so no mp3s + game, or game + gaim im sounds letting you know you should alttab out and see whos talking to you).

Then theres video support, which has improved a lot thanks to nvidia, but I hear it's still pretty bad for most ati's. Not sure if this has changed, I stopped using ati back in the RageXL days. Either way its never as simple as just shoving the card in and running install.exe off the cd.

Then you have the games themself. Selections improving a lot (Unreal/Doom engines), HL just isnt a linux game, sorry.

To the original poster/grand parent who says Valve took a cross platform game and locked it in, No, No they didn't.
HL1 was never cross platform unless you count the week or two they had it running on Macs before they decided it would be more cost efficient to swallow all development costs than to release it and let it fail in the market. See here for reference.
If you were refering to Quake being cross platform and HL1 not, then you'd be closer to accurate but still not really, Read the wiki entry for details on the sillyness behind the quake port. For some reason, I doubt that all came with the sdk Valve recieved from idsoft. For that matter, that even predated any 3d accel in quake, so even if Valve could do a software-only linux port based on the code they recieved it would hardly be worth any hours spent testing it or releasing it.

(*)NumberIPulledOutOfMYAss

It's a conspiracy! See also Planet Half-Life and Wizard of the Coast.

My favourite game reviews site is probably Eurogamer - surprisingly, it's Europe-centric (conveniently for me), and I've found that the reviews (and previews) are usually well worth reading. It's helped get me to broaden my gaming horizons a bit, too - I bought Darwinia on the basis of the Eurogamer review, and found it to be one of the best games I've ever played.

As for GameSpy, someone from one of their sub-sites recently asked if they could make my MINERVA mod the level-of-the-week, or something. Unfortunately, there was a corporate-mandated requirement - that in the review, there had to be a Fileplanet download link.

To their credit, they did ask (the MINERVA terms of distribution coincidentally forbid mirroring on subscription-based download sites without permission) - but awkwardly for them, I said no. Citing a sheer distaste for Fileplanet, its queues, its Win32-Internet-Explorer-only download system, etc.

I never got a reply. And I've yet to see a review!

I could never get the hang of Radiant, Worldcraft was/is so much easier to work with. It's unfortunate because back when I was a mapper, I saw some of the things other mappers were doing with Quake 3, and Radiant, and they were great. I was spoiled with Worldcraft and couldn't make the transition to radiant's clunky UI.

http://www.planethalflife.com/features/lotw/lotw04 1702.shtm

ahh the pimpage.
-manno

The beginnings of CS were, also, "underground". From Wikipedia:

The Counter-Strike team was formed by Minh Le ("Gooseman") and Jess Cliffe ("Cliffe") in 1999. Counter-Strike Beta 1.0 was released in June that same year, followed by a relatively quick succession of the beta releases (by the end of 1999, beta 5.0 had been released). CS gained in popularity just as rapidly. The Counter-Strike team was acquired by Valve to turn the fan-created mod into an official mod for Half-Life. In November 2000, Counter-Strike 1.0 -- the first non-beta, official retail version of the game -- was released. The retail version was a standalone alternative that does not include or require Half-Life; alternatively, existing Half-Life owners can download the Counter-Strike mod free. Later, Counter-Strike was bundled with Half-Life and several other expansions in the Platinum Pack. The newest version of CS is 1.6 and was released in September 2003 through Valve's new distribution platform called Steam.

Nowadays, no, it's not underrated, but I think the lesson to learn from this is any game, even just a hacked mod, can become world-famous, and that all those "underrated" games might need is a little street team action, and showing your friends.

Having played a good deal of Half-life mods, when I ran a few servers/lan parties/scripted for clans, I can tell you that I personally think MANY are underrated. The problem comes when too many people latch onto one (CS) and thus ignore servers for other mods. Then, those mods lose support when volunteer coders see their work isn't popular. For some other really good mods, check out:

• The Hidden
• Vampire Slayer
• Scientist hunt
• and my favorite Sven Coop!

Basically, the point of this post is to say that, CS at one point was also an underrated game, and if you want something to be recognized as a good product, you need to take initative and get its name out there. Support the project financially, or bugtest, so the creators know it's wanted.

The beginnings of CS were, also, "underground". From Wikipedia:

The Counter-Strike team was formed by Minh Le ("Gooseman") and Jess Cliffe ("Cliffe") in 1999. Counter-Strike Beta 1.0 was released in June that same year, followed by a relatively quick succession of the beta releases (by the end of 1999, beta 5.0 had been released). CS gained in popularity just as rapidly. The Counter-Strike team was acquired by Valve to turn the fan-created mod into an official mod for Half-Life. In November 2000, Counter-Strike 1.0 -- the first non-beta, official retail version of the game -- was released. The retail version was a standalone alternative that does not include or require Half-Life; alternatively, existing Half-Life owners can download the Counter-Strike mod free. Later, Counter-Strike was bundled with Half-Life and several other expansions in the Platinum Pack. The newest version of CS is 1.6 and was released in September 2003 through Valve's new distribution platform called Steam.

Nowadays, no, it's not underrated, but I think the lesson to learn from this is any game, even just a hacked mod, can become world-famous, and that all those "underrated" games might need is a little street team action, and showing your friends.

Having played a good deal of Half-life mods, when I ran a few servers/lan parties/scripted for clans, I can tell you that I personally think MANY are underrated. The problem comes when too many people latch onto one (CS) and thus ignore servers for other mods. Then, those mods lose support when volunteer coders see their work isn't popular. For some other really good mods, check out:

• The Hidden
• Vampire Slayer
• Scientist hunt
• and my favorite Sven Coop!

Basically, the point of this post is to say that, CS at one point was also an underrated game, and if you want something to be recognized as a good product, you need to take initative and get its name out there. Support the project financially, or bugtest, so the creators know it's wanted.

The beginnings of CS were, also, "underground". From Wikipedia:

The Counter-Strike team was formed by Minh Le ("Gooseman") and Jess Cliffe ("Cliffe") in 1999. Counter-Strike Beta 1.0 was released in June that same year, followed by a relatively quick succession of the beta releases (by the end of 1999, beta 5.0 had been released). CS gained in popularity just as rapidly. The Counter-Strike team was acquired by Valve to turn the fan-created mod into an official mod for Half-Life. In November 2000, Counter-Strike 1.0 -- the first non-beta, official retail version of the game -- was released. The retail version was a standalone alternative that does not include or require Half-Life; alternatively, existing Half-Life owners can download the Counter-Strike mod free. Later, Counter-Strike was bundled with Half-Life and several other expansions in the Platinum Pack. The newest version of CS is 1.6 and was released in September 2003 through Valve's new distribution platform called Steam.

Nowadays, no, it's not underrated, but I think the lesson to learn from this is any game, even just a hacked mod, can become world-famous, and that all those "underrated" games might need is a little street team action, and showing your friends.

Having played a good deal of Half-life mods, when I ran a few servers/lan parties/scripted for clans, I can tell you that I personally think MANY are underrated. The problem comes when too many people latch onto one (CS) and thus ignore servers for other mods. Then, those mods lose support when volunteer coders see their work isn't popular. For some other really good mods, check out:

• The Hidden
• Vampire Slayer
• Scientist hunt
• and my favorite Sven Coop!

Basically, the point of this post is to say that, CS at one point was also an underrated game, and if you want something to be recognized as a good product, you need to take initative and get its name out there. Support the project financially, or bugtest, so the creators know it's wanted.

This would have been really sweet ground-breaking news for me, if a GoldenEye mod hadn't already been made for the original Half-Life. I played it back in the day just before the big 50MB Half-Life/Team Fortress 1.5 update. It's cool to see a new mod for HL2 though.

Don't know why it's in the developers section... Here's my list, don't know why TFA didn't list these, so I came up with 10 for you guys.

steampowered.com
Wikipedia.org/CounterStrike
CSS Fraggers Forum
Filefront?
GameFaqs (never link directly to a faq, kids)
CSBanana
Counter-Strike.net
Planet Half-Life
Sierra: Half-Life
CS Nation - The future of CSS

Aside from the "wow" factor, how much does Raytracing really add?

This is one of their raytraced scenes, and this is a shot from the half-year-old Half-Life 2. Notice how while the shadows and lighting in HL2 are burned-in, they're still pretty convincing. This is a shot from a raytraced Quake 3. Notice how it's single-pass raytracing with no reflections and sharp edges... For the full benefit of raytracing you need multipass.

This is an early, leaked shot from Quake 4, a traditionally poly model engine. Traditional racing Games always have great lighting. This is a scene from GTA based on the Q3A raytracing engine, and this is a vaguely similar scene from the game.

With normal mapping coming into it's own and polygon edges mostly a thing of the past, what benefit does raytracing give us? Shadows? It costs us less than one character to draw a drop shadow. Dynamic lighting? There are tricks to doing pseudo dynamic lighting in many circumstances. Generally, though, you don't want too many moving lights in your scene anyway, as the effect is quite nauseating.

The only major benefit that I see with real time raytracing is that it would free up the artists and coders to drop some of the tricks they've been putting in place for the usual lighting stuff.

But for lighting effects, we've got a lot already going, and more coming in soon. I personally can't wait for relative light levels to make their way into more game engines. And normal mapping to become really normal. For many years I had wanted realtime raytracing, but now it seems so unnecessary.

It just seems like raytracing will always be so much more expensive, that the flat-polys-with-tricks models will always look better for the same hardware.

Of course, knowing this industry in 5 years we'll probably have chip boards that have one processor spit out a traditionally drawn 3d polygon scene and another which renders and layers upon that a 2d greyscale light map at a slightly lower resolution using a reduced parallel geometry set or some such. Instead of making things easier, they usually tend to make things harder. Oh well.

Can anyone here with more experience than I explain what raytracing gives you that you couldn't fake more cheaply?

Maybe this is what's used for the other games where you get glimpses of Freeman on trams and running into portals?

Nope, it's this version of Gordon, screenshot courtesy of the Half-Life Nostalgia Project.

Yes, some of the old Half-Life content is unintentionally hilarious. :-)

Maybe this is what's used for the other games where you get glimpses of Freeman on trams and running into portals?

Nope, it's this version of Gordon, screenshot courtesy of the Half-Life Nostalgia Project.

Yes, some of the old Half-Life content is unintentionally hilarious. :-)

Well considering a modern "good" graphics card can render something like this at over 3 megapixels and 60 frames per second, I would certainly say they have!

Not THIS Gordon Freeman affair, I presume.

"The Source Engine once again takes the title and rightfully so as the most popular FPS multiplayer game Counter Strike was developed by Valve."

I'll take a moment to plug our indie-developed first-person shooter, Inago Rage. We tried to make the game different from most by focusing gameplay on short burts of flight (MPEG), but what we really concentrated on was the ability for players to create their own arenas (scroll down) without having to use external mod tools. Basically, we've implemented a drag-and-drop system to allow players to place buildings, towers, bridges, enemies, prizes, and particle generators.

The graphics are not likely to outdo those of this past year's AAA titles, but I'm happy with what we were able to produce. There are a good number of reasonably-priced tools that (I think) make it possible for smaller studios to create visually attractive games.

We're hoping to release a demo by the end of Janary, and have experimented with attempts at web commercials to get the word out. (The holy grail of the Viral Video eludes us, as yet -- we'll keep trying). We're also in the alpha test stage of an overhead shooter using the same technology called Last Man on Mars (WMV video).

Here's hoping Inago Rage will be a contender for the top 10 indie titles of 2005.
__________________________
Inago Rage

Don't forget TFC

Having had more time to think about it, this happens at the start of the Blue shift, before the resonance cascade when everything went pear shaped. Somewhere or other you come across a security panel with a bank of screens for security cameras. If you 'use' the panel you get to see a scientist pushing the cart with the sample. I think that the scientist was female, but I'm not completely sure. There was just one though. [quick google for walkthrough] Actually here is a picture

One of the neat things with Opposing force & Blue Shift is the way that they let the stories converge a little. So in Opposing force you see Gordon make the leap into the portal. In Blue shift you are the security guard you see pounding on the door when you are on the trainride in Half Life.

However... [shameless plug] Weapons Factory for HL2 is coming and will feature much of the such gameplay offered by TFC. I like to think of it as TFC on steriods. If you want to help with models, sounds, and/or mapping, come to the HL2WF website and drop me a line.[/shameless plug]

Not me, I am not getting some radioactive (er.. addicting) stuff with a Half-Life of 2 days that make me motion sick

Sure, but Valve was founded by ex-Microsoft employees who got rich early on and decided to make games. Which is good because if they'd continued at Microsoft, we might have seen a sequel to Microsoft Bob.

So it's really not all that surprising that there's not a whole lot of direct support for Linux from Valve.

Only released more than a year after the original release date of September 30, 2003. Now to buy a new video card (good thing I didn't get a 9800 Pro back when they were released, hey?).

I should have linked to this in the story, here it's anyway:

[...] Valve has announced that they will be delivering an RC (release candidate) to Vivendi around the 15th of this month. That does not mean that HL2 will be out immediately thereafter. Vivendi will still have to approve the RC, a process that could take another two or three weeks, depending on their QA department and how fit the RC is to be released. If it were rejected, Valve would have to cook up another one and submit that for approval. Once an RC is approved, we should get a "gone gold" announcement. Those of you who preloaded HL2 and intend to buy it online would *may* be allowed to purchase it shortly afterward and start playing it once you've downloaded the last few files (I'm still not certain whether Valve contractually obliged to wait until it's on the shelves - I don't have Fragmaster's psychic spy network). For those of you still intending to buy a physical copy, it would be at least another few weeks before the game hit the shelves; duplication, packaging and shipping take a while. Damn our lack of transporters. - Jabberwocky

"conced"? You've been playing too much TFC : )

Alright, nothing is confirmed yet, and this gets a little complicated...

First, read this. There will be two common means of purchasing the game: the $50 retail box and the $10 monthly subscription. Valve is making it sound like the retail box will be able to play multiplayer like everyone else, including mods. But the subscription people will have "future expansion" stuff. This doesn't sound so bad at first, but I strongly suspect vavle's motivation is to get everyone on the monthly subscription. I think we'll see the original HL2 community segregated from the subscribers by means of updates and enhancements. I'm being speculative, but given vale's track record with the fans, I don't think I'm wrong. In the end, you'll either be able to purchase HL2 and play a stripped-down version online, or pay the monthly fee to get the real thing. But I could be way off. Though given their track record with cyber cafes, I doubt it.

I just reinstalled Half Life for the first time in years, specifically to play They Hunger: http://www.planethalflife.com/manke/
Now to download and try this one!

um... rated [3]? imho this previous post is far more informative than the mod rating it might have perceived it as: while not checking windows update too often, i never see any new patches, even on boxen not using the automatic update feature. i don't know about anyone else, but i find it surprising and uncoincidental that m$ have reacted to threats to their product(s) this "quickly" and massively after an m$ developper - erm.. SPY ;-) - may have noticed this /. post... interesting turn in events... possibly a test... but now i feel i'm turning into that paranoid HL2 fan caricature in the cartoon mockings of Valve available at Planet Half-Life...

It's bascially capture the flag but also has player classes (Support, Engineer, Sniper, Heavy Weapons, etc) to encorage co-operative team play. The player classes were the most significant element IMO. There were also other level varients with things like multiple points to hold, as in BF1942 or BFVietnam.

More info on TFC

It was somewhat 'superceeded' (not exactly, but in the eyes of many players) by the likes of Tribes (to which many TFC players jumped). I mention this as in many ways, the closest thing to a modern version of TFC these days is SOE's PlanetSide, whos lead developer worked on Tribes 2, and indeed a lot of ex TFC players play PS.

Well, most of us have been training for this day for quite a while. I think the world will be safe.

Stupid me, forgot to say get the install here (full install) or here (update only) or here There are other links here

Except Half-Life had a much stronger single player experience from the get-go, where as the campaign in Halo is rather redundant and tedious.

That's funny, I remember a ton of tedious platforming/jumping elements in HL...different strokes and all.

And HL1 had a ton of buzz for well over a year before it came out. I remember watching prerelease vids, reading all of the various magazine articles, salivating at the thought of various features they hyped yet never included in the game (It was originally supposed to play more like a Metroid, in terms of exploring the base nonlinearly, AFAIK - complete with ecosystem that would change as time passed). Plenty of hype for the game is archived here.

Reminds me of various people always posting that the first Matrix film was better because there was no hype for it. The hype was certainly there, it just happened to be off some people's radar. :D

"I would loved to have seen a Fallout FPS"

You're welcome

For example, you can make small talk about what happened on 24 this week, or you can even join various mailing lists/message boards to discuss the same. You can't really do that with Counterstrike.

I've asked Valve itself about this, but didn't get a reply. However I asked Planethalflife and got a response.

It's the first one down. Or anyone have proof it has Q2 bits in it?

Also, the Planet Half-Life Screenshot Gallery, a page with a huge number of interviews with Valve staff and previews of the game, and Videos. The huge one is awesome.

September 30th! I can't wait!

Also, the Planet Half-Life Screenshot Gallery, a page with a huge number of interviews with Valve staff and previews of the game, and Videos. The huge one is awesome.

September 30th! I can't wait!

Also, the Planet Half-Life Screenshot Gallery, a page with a huge number of interviews with Valve staff and previews of the game, and Videos. The huge one is awesome.

September 30th! I can't wait!

What is a Haz Mat Suit? When do I need one?

We highly recommend the H.E.V. hazardous environment suit with optional jump module.

Will help you escape exploding buildings in case of attack by alien terrorists from the planet Xen.

A must have for every research scientist working in an anomalous materials lab!

Doom3? What's that? Half Life 2! (<-- 550mb video, bittorrent link) Half Life 2!

Why does that sound like scientist porn?

"Oh! How I do enjoy a good Rammstein."

fucktard first apeared on usenet in 1994. half life was released in 1998.

A fucktard is you.

I wonder if the experiments will coincide with the release of Half-Life 2. Hmmmmm.....Coincidence, I think not.

Half Life 2 is using Valve's homegrown engine called "Source". They've been developing it for the past couple of years in secret. You can find out more about the source by following these links:

Gamespot
Gamespy
Screenies

Found an ever better shot...

http://www.planethalflife.com/screenshot.asp?src=/ images/screensnew/hl2_042003_2.jpg

Being that the engine is mainly Quake2

After far too much digging, I finally found what I was looking for...an old mailbag on PlanetHalfLife that answers which engine HL is based on:

From: Stupid Newbie
Subject: Half-Life: Quake or Quake 2?
Uhh, something has been bugging me about HL. I see in various magazines and articles either "Half-Life is based on the Quake code", or "Half-Life is based on the Quake 2 code". Just exactly which game is it based on?

Half-Life is primarily based on the Quake engine, although Valve had access to the code for GLQuake, QuakeWorld, Quake II, etc. The game is about 70% original code, and the rest consists of a mix of id code. For example, QuakeWorld code is used in HL's net code, and I believe some elements of Quake II's rendering system is present in the game as well. But most of the id code that remains in the game is from the original Quake engine.

Well, a large part of HalfLife still being a popular game today doesn't have to do solely with the game engine, but the fact that Valve released the source code and SDK. Try here

Hell, same thing for just about any skilled work that combines technical expertise with creativity EXCEPT FOR PROGRAMMING.You never even tried to look around for musicians, mappers, texture painters, modelers and animators that put their work on the net for free did you?

If you look at the work that went into some of the commercial quakeIII engine games (sof-ii,jediknight-ii,startrek something) then you will know that there are people out there who can do more and better in a three to ten people teams in their spare time!
The process of going to good gpl games will be in two steps:
- getting (gamecontent commercial like quake 1/2?) games with sufficient gameplay to iron out the bugs in the engine, get the physics for gameplay that feels good and get the and tools to build for it

- getting the current hl/ut/q3a modders to come to the new engine and build good games from scratch, they have what it takes (just play some of the free single player half-life maps and look at the models build for half-life multiplayer mods)

No "financial incentive"? Well some people think there is not reason to write gpl code for free and therefore there will never be any good gpl code, I dont think this is the case and looking at the mappers and animators working on all of the populair mods out there who work mostly becouse they know their work will get spotted and get them a job I have high hopes of games equivalent in size to the current mods getting made available for free as in beer.

btw: When you go looking for programmers you can find them on every street corner (although not linus level ofcourse) but when you want people who know how to make games where do you look? The best of the modding community has proven to be a great place to start your search, moddelers and mappers know that!

Hell, same thing for just about any skilled work that combines technical expertise with creativity EXCEPT FOR PROGRAMMING.You never even tried to look around for musicians, mappers, texture painters, modelers and animators that put their work on the net for free did you?

If you look at the work that went into some of the commercial quakeIII engine games (sof-ii,jediknight-ii,startrek something) then you will know that there are people out there who can do more and better in a three to ten people teams in their spare time!
The process of going to good gpl games will be in two steps:
- getting (gamecontent commercial like quake 1/2?) games with sufficient gameplay to iron out the bugs in the engine, get the physics for gameplay that feels good and get the and tools to build for it

- getting the current hl/ut/q3a modders to come to the new engine and build good games from scratch, they have what it takes (just play some of the free single player half-life maps and look at the models build for half-life multiplayer mods)

No "financial incentive"? Well some people think there is not reason to write gpl code for free and therefore there will never be any good gpl code, I dont think this is the case and looking at the mappers and animators working on all of the populair mods out there who work mostly becouse they know their work will get spotted and get them a job I have high hopes of games equivalent in size to the current mods getting made available for free as in beer.

btw: When you go looking for programmers you can find them on every street corner (although not linus level ofcourse) but when you want people who know how to make games where do you look? The best of the modding community has proven to be a great place to start your search, moddelers and mappers know that!