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If you take the number of employees into account then Valve Corp with a little more than 70 employees made $70mil in 2005. That is $10mil per employee. Compare that to the number of human resources involved in the "Titanic" or "Star Wars" and you get a better picture of who's making a more efficient use of human resources.

As a sort of related question, does anyone (Ford?) know if the episode 1 content (zombines and others) is available in the sdk? I looked last night and didn't see anything. It would be quite nice to play around with some of that stuff.

The SDK's well overdue for an update anyway, so I wouldn't be too surprised if the Episode One FGD and game configuration file gets added sooner or later. It's probably one of the smaller tasks in fixing the various broken features currently present... ;-)

Site seems to be down - perhaps due to slashdotting?

Nah, more that I'm moving web hosts, and it would finally appear to be taking effect. The real site should be back up again sooner or later - but in the meantime, here's the MINERVA page on the Valve Developer Community.

Some download links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yes, I'm using friends in UK academia for download bandwidth. But if old-fashioned HTTP isn't your thing, there's always BitTorrent...

Still, huge thanks for all the comments, and I guess I really should get back to the third and final part of Metastasis. (There will definitely be future chapters, so don't worry.)

(N.B.: Difficulty levels have been tweaked a bit, with an altered skill.cfg which monkeys around with the damage taken and inflicted by the enemies. Try loading standard HL2 maps through the console from MINERVA - it's like a whole different game.)

From what I can tell, you want a demo recorded of someone good playing the game. Definately doable. http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Demo_Recor ding_Tools for the specifics, to anyone interested.

If they weren't sold out, you get your own headcrab for your desktop. :P

Have you even read the Steam Subscriber Agreement? Accessible via Help -> Steam Subscriber Agreement or here: http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=subscri ber_agreement

C. Acceptance/Rejection/Returns The terms of this Section 3.C do not apply to European Union consumers. You will have a period of thirty (30) days after the date of receipt of any Merchandise to examine the Merchandise to confirm that it conforms to this Agreement and the offer for such Merchandise presented to you at Steam. If the Merchandise does not conform to this Agreement and the offer for such Merchandise presented to you via Steam, you may reject the Merchandise by returning it to Valve (at your expense) along with a copy of the receipt or other proof of purchase. Additional policies and instructions for returning defective merchandise to Valve can be found at http://storehelp.valvesoftware.com./ After Valve has received your valid return, Valve will, within a reasonable time and in Valve's sole discretion: repair the Merchandise, replace the Merchandise with an equivalent item, credit to the credit card used to pay for the product an amount equal to the value of the Merchandise (as determined by Valve in its reasonable discretion), or provide another remedy that Valve determines in good faith is appropriate in the circumstances. All claims whether based on contract, negligence, strict liability or otherwise are waived unless made in writing and received by Valve within thirty (30) days after your receipt of Merchandise.

If you thought a game you bought via Steam sucks did you try to return it to Valve? Valve's not an evil company, if you really feel legitimately ripped off by a Valve product that was completely misrepresented and you bought it because of misleading information from Valve then you should completely return it. Unlike CDs purchased in stores, Steam does allow a license code to be deactivated and therefore makes software returns possible. Did that ever cross your mind? Of course, if you buy it, play it and then just think, meh, it wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be and try to obtain a refund then well...

I did a comparison with my desktop PC (an AMD Athlon 64, 3200+ running at 2GHz, 1GB of speedy memory) versus my MacBook Pro (Intel Core Duo at 1.83GHz, 1GB memory) with VRAD on the second MINERVA map, with the Source SDK running on Windows XP Pro.

VRAD definitely takes full advantage of the dual-core nature of the Intel processor - typical compile times on the desktop PC were around 50-60 minutes, while on the laptop they were just over 30 minutes. It's a fairly artificial test, admittedly (although I'm really happy with the increased speed) - but it certainly shows it's a rather fast processor at certain floating-point-intensive tasks, anyhow.

Yup. And it works really well. Really, really well. Better than on my desktop PC.

At the Valve Developer Community, a few of us are logging how Valve games run on these new Macs, so if you've got any new information, feel free to contribute.

I do think it will kill most native MacOS gaming, or at least cause a major shake-up. But I'm not surprised - paying through the nose for years-old ports of PC games just didn't appeal to me, to be honest.

But what I've got now is a Universal Computer, capable of running Mac software (both PowerPC and Intel), UNIX stuff (thanks to Fink and X11.app) and now Windows stuff. I've been dual-booting on my PCs between Linux and Windows for years, so I'm familiar with the drawbacks, but the advantages are great. By day, for work and for my photography, I have a high-powered Mac laptop, and by night, for gaming and modding stuff, I've got a high-powered PC laptop.

Not bad!

If you own Half-Life 2 then you can download the SDK. It comes with quite a few example maps and also the code for the game logic.
There's lots more information at the developer wiki.

You can also get a free version of the modeling/animating software they used, which is called XSI.
http://www.softimage.com/community/xsi_mod_tool/de fault.aspx

Hard disk is never the problem- games are not disc intensive. You might speed up laods slightly with a faster disc, but not by much.

... Which is one reason why loads of people suffer from the infamous 'stuttering' in Half-Life 2.

The game uses a 'soundcache' to keep the first 125 milliseconds of all referenced sounds in memory. If a sound needs to be played which isn't fully in memory yet, it starts playing that 125ms while streaming the rest of the data in from disk.

If many new sounds are needed simultaneously, or the hard disk is particularly slow, then you get a glitch in the audio.

Have a fairly fast disk, and things improve considerably - and maps load much more quickly too, thanks to the many megabytes of textures... ;-)

Teh Hammre is classic.

Perfect story for this question. What books, and other resources does the slashdot audience recommend for the beginning modder?

I haven't seen any useful books (although admittedly I've never looked) - I guess the best way of learning is by doing. If you're interested in the Source engine, have a look at the Valve Developer Community wiki, which has a huge amount of information available. There are also innumerable web forums and other communities dedicated to mapping, modelling, coding and whatever - I'm sure there'll be one aimed precisely at whichever game you're interested in.

My best advice would be to start small. Don't make the usual mistake of creating a team intent on building the next Counter-Strike killer - instead, start off by building something like a deathmatch map, a new prop, a new texture or some altered behaviour in the game's code. If it's worth releasing, then release it - otherwise, continue learning and having fun.

You don't have to create a massive total conversion to get recognition - for example, the first MINERVA map has no new code, a couple of modified textures, a few transplanted sounds and a new music track - other than the map itself, it's all standard Half-Life 2 content. But well over 160,000 downloads and counting. :-)

Personally, I'm more impressed by a "God" that can design the rules to the universe

His name is Gabe Newell. ;-)

9. How long is Aftermath Episode 1?

We're aiming for around five hours. The last time I played through it took me six hours, so your mileage may vary.

but don't forget Aftermath is episodic.

That is, it will be released in small portions each of them costing $12.99. You can expect them to have about 5 hours worth of gameplay (disclaimer: salesperson's estimate, you may finish it in 2 hours or less)

Valve is out for money, and I'm not sure they are going to get mine... no matter how much I like half life 2

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Gabe_Newel l's_FAQ

You might want to check out this mod project page at http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Zork_Chron icles

Basically someone interested in making a Source version of Zork. It's got some interesting potential, as long as the original feel is kept and it doesn't go overboard w/"stuff"

If this "F.E.A.R." game really requires a $500 graphic card to play then they can keep it. It's just a game, you'll play it and be bored within a week. Meanwhile you're still out the $500 and your computer is taking "yet more power" to run.

I've only played the demo for F.E.A.R., but I was singularly under-impressed by the graphics - or rather, the design and artwork. Yes, it had fully dynamic shadows (but no radiosity), all sorts of refractive shaders and gloss-mapped, normal-mapped and parallax-mapped everything, but it didn't seem to do anything with that capability, beyond some hopelessly generic, cramped warehouses and pipe-filled rooms.

Turning the graphical settings up to maximum was a bit of an eye-opener on my not-cutting-edge GeForce 6600. I ended up with incredibly simple, blocky corridors making the game run at around 15fps, presumably because of the computationally expensive shadows and (naff-looking) shaders on the walls - despite all that, it wasn't exactly aesthetically pleasing.

When Half-Life 2's engine can do something like this on my PC with a decent resolution and 4X anti-aliasing at around 30-40fps, when F.E.A.R. might manage this at around 15fps, I do wonder if games engines are heading in the wrong direction. It's not so much 'optimisation' as 'making the best use of what's available'...

Half Life 2 runs like a dream on my Athlon 1200, 768MB RAM and GeForce 4 ti4800 card. The Doom 3 engine is a pig in a wig.

Probably because the artwork behind Half-Life 2 is of such a high quality that it doesn't lean on the engine too much - I was really surprised how nice things looked when testing it with different DirectX capability settings.

Source is, in some ways, a very old-fashioned engines. That's probably what makes it so great, in that it takes stuff which worked well in the past and extends it to today's hardware. So far, the only way I've managed to slow it down on a fast PC is by using far too many materials with complex shaders - it munches its way through geometry like there's no tomorrow. So much so that I'm not sure if there is a way of directly checking scene polygon counts, merely the system load that's induced...

So that those who prefer SP games don't get their hopes up,

IT'S MULTIPLAYER ONLY

Of course, if you want some single-player HL2, there's always my episodic MINERVA (less cryptic site), which had its first chapter released just over a week ago.

And yes, the first map is a bit of a homage to Halo's Silent Cartographer (it was originally nicknamed 'Flatulent Geographer' for a start), but they should all come with a liberally Marathon-flavoured dollop of mystery and intrigue, through text messages sent by an unnamed third party which guide, goad and cajole the player through the story.

Entirely different approach to Dystopia too: while they've got some immensely talented modellers, texture artists, sound engineers etc., I'm repurposing existing HL2 content for my own needs. There is some new music, but that was an unexpected gift from someone who really liked the look of the mod when first publicised by Valve themselves. Everything else is done by me - it's the closest you'll get to a one-man mod these days... ;-)

Still, there's half-an-hour to an hour of gameplay there, so do have fun!

Regarding distribution, look at Valve's online distribution, Steam.

About the initial $50 investment, I agree to a point, then my reasoning takes a different tack. Most games on initial release tend to suck, especially MMOs. If you are allowing free access for a month and everyone tries a game during its first month, almost nobody will be back to pay-to-play for half a year or so. I fairly agree with the rest of your points/examples. There are good chances that something else will be released taking eyes away from last month's offerings, reducing the number of people returning at that six month mark.

Again, it comes down to percieved value. If you get something for nothing your initial expected percieved value is quite low. If you pay $50 for it, that initial value is expected to be higher. The more value we percieve the more likely we are to continue paying a monthly fee.

I have practically downloaded every free mod available for HL2. So far they all feel very beta-ish. Plan of Attack, Garry's physics mod, strider mod, you name it... it seems like the HL1 mods were much more fun.

Well, if you look at the first year of single-player maps for the original Half-Life, for example, there wasn't a huge amount of quality content appearing. A couple of classics, such as USS Darkstar and ETC, but even they seem somewhat lightweight when played now.

Half-Life 2 is undoubtedly a great modding platform, but everyone's been very busy figuring out how it all goes together. Until recently, the documentation was a bit lacking (it ranged from a little being great to the majority being non-existent) but fortunately the Valve Developer Wiki has changed the situation tremendously.

I've been learning single-player Half-Life mapping since about late January - I assumed it would be easy (the software is superficially similar to the original Half-Life) but some months later I'm only now feeling proficient enough to consider releasing the map I've been working on (less cryptic version!)...

The best part of a year for around 45 minutes of gameplay? It's hard work!

Of course, the second map's going to be far easier, and I suspect Valve themselves are finding something similar now they've learned how to operate their Source engine...

I have practically downloaded every free mod available for HL2. So far they all feel very beta-ish. Plan of Attack, Garry's physics mod, strider mod, you name it... it seems like the HL1 mods were much more fun.

Well, if you look at the first year of single-player maps for the original Half-Life, for example, there wasn't a huge amount of quality content appearing. A couple of classics, such as USS Darkstar and ETC, but even they seem somewhat lightweight when played now.

Half-Life 2 is undoubtedly a great modding platform, but everyone's been very busy figuring out how it all goes together. Until recently, the documentation was a bit lacking (it ranged from a little being great to the majority being non-existent) but fortunately the Valve Developer Wiki has changed the situation tremendously.

I've been learning single-player Half-Life mapping since about late January - I assumed it would be easy (the software is superficially similar to the original Half-Life) but some months later I'm only now feeling proficient enough to consider releasing the map I've been working on (less cryptic version!)...

The best part of a year for around 45 minutes of gameplay? It's hard work!

Of course, the second map's going to be far easier, and I suspect Valve themselves are finding something similar now they've learned how to operate their Source engine...

... And Valve would throw away all its modders?

It's highly likely that a Half-Life 3 would be ported to at least one console, like with the first two games, but a successful PC game developer chucking away modders, its Steam distribution platform, audience etc.? Hmm...

The emphasis track scales the intensity of phonemes during playback. For certain phonemes, you may want to author a "weak" and "strong" version and add these to the "phonemes_weak" and "phonemes_strong" expression class files. Note that Valve did not actually use this feature in shipping HL2 (but in theory, it should work).

Interesting question imo, since Valve been spouting off how they've build the Source Engine themselves, yet, when the alpha-code-leak happened, various people found entries from the Quake-C code inside (either commented out, or still in use) :

I'm fairly sure that it's QuakeC (or a derivative) that's extensively used in Half-Life and Half-Life 2's model animation system. It seems a bit coincidental that they'd choose the '.QC' extension for a simple, compiled-to-bytecode scripting language...

From the point of view of a mapper like myself, the Source engine has many design ideas in common with the original Quake engine, but they've been extended so far that it's a near-complete rewrite. I imagine the only aspects left unchanged, if any, weren't worth changing anyway.

HL2 units are CDs and booklets, nothing more, and valve can mass produce them like crazy.

Hellooo, Mr. Ieshan, 2005 called. Remember that Steam thing?

My copy of Half-Life 2 is just bits and bytes, and my authorisation details in a database somewhere. No physical packaging whatsoever - and I believe this is how many of the ATI vouchers were redeemed.

If the cost per unit allows them to hire talented people and take as long as they like on Half-Life 3, just like 2 was funded by the sales of the original game, then I'll be happy. Plus I've had excellent value for money out of the game so far anyway... ;-)

You have to have a Source developer licence, they probably check your registered email address.

The email address does appear to be optional, though - and I didn't get any confirmation email when I signed up.

I've yet to see any vandalism, and it's been public for quite a few days already - but hopefully its mention on Slashdot doesn't change anything... ;-)

It's definitely not the first HL2 Wiki - the HL2World.com Knowledge Base has been around for ages, but really hasn't got that much in the way of useful content. Most of the entity documentation seems to have been nicked from the HL2 FGD entity definitions, for instance, and nobody's added too much to it.

However, this new Valve-sponsored one seems to have got past that problem. There's a lot of Valve-authored content in there already, and the enthusiast-written stuff seems very promising. I learned more about the ai_goal_assault entity from this article than I've done from everywhere else combined, for example.

The site's semi-affiliated with the good old VERC Collective and that's always been very strictly (and fairly) moderated with a good signal-to-noise ratio, so good things may lie ahead...

It uses the Source engine (the Half-Life 2 one).

Vampire: Bloodlines
Source engine feature list

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.

That sounds specific and reproducible enough that you should report it to valve. Valve Contact Information I don't know how good they are at listening to bug reports, but chances are, something specific like that could be fixed pretty easily.

I must say, it's nice to see someone with as big a name as Molyneux apologize to the community for this. Most people that are in the "industry pioneer" category tend to be just a bit arrogant. He made some claims about features, gamers were pissed they weren't there, and he took the blame. Admirable.

Maybe next time, he won't blab every wild feature he plans.

Good news for LithTech, GameBryo, Unreal Engine, Source Engine, id Software licensing and so on. All the other options available to middleware-using developers now that they have a good reason to make a switch.

He announced that he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version, "Fischerandom," ... Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats.

I think Valve should hire this guy to patch up Counter-Strike.

The link in the story goes to ValveNET, which certainly isn't Valve Software.

This is about how Valve's Steam system works with VAC (Valve Anti Cheat).

VAC doesn't get updated REALLY fast, and it doesn't catch every cheat. Those who use the latest "cutting edge" cheats can still cheat. HOWEVER, here's the big difference: if it catches you, you're screwed - banned for 5 years from ALL Valve game servers running cheat detection. Currently this is about 85% of all servers running Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, etc.

So the basic model for VAC is to have not the best cheat detection, but by BY FAR the strongest penalty for being caught.

So if you're a cheater, Valve's being like old Dirty Harry. "Was it 5 bullets, or 6? Feeling lucky, punk?"

Non commercial just means it's not for sale.

Look Valve Software's at Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat games. They are "non commercial" and have been since the start of their creation. But they also are commercial.

To install Steam and play on any Steam-validated Half-Life servers (Including Counter-strike servers), one must agree to Valve's privacy statement. Here's a little snippet:

"Storage and Security of Information
Personally identifiable information will be processed and stored by Valve in databases hosted in the United States. Valve has taken reasonable steps to protect the information users share with us, including, but not limited to, setup of processes, equipment and software to avoid unauthorized access or disclosure of this information."

Reasonable steps, eh? Like the same steps they used to protect the Half-Life 2 source code?

This is all clearly a hoax, or possibly even a PR stunt by Valve themselves.

There's even a funny employee bio (Chris Newcombe) that changes on the Valve site very often (here), and the employee's name is found in this "leaked source" also.

Read more commentary here: Halflifesource.com Don't believe everything you read on slashdot.

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

Valve might want to take a look at this lawsuit considering their potentially devestaing loss reported earlier today. According to Gabe Newell, from whom the source code of their latest was stolen, a hacker gained access to his machine "via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane." Read his entire message here.

bani? The same bani thats trying to turn Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory back into Return to Castle Wolfenstein?

Wow, for such an influential guy you're kinda an idiot.

Gabe Newell = Valve = Half-Life
Nerve = Nerve = Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Man, the just plain wrongness is staggering. Wait until I tell your boys at PlanetWolfenstein. Next thing you know you'll be claiming Splash Damage made Unreal Tournament. You think whoever let you in on the ET source would like to hear about you spreading this kind of slanderous false information about Nerve and Activision?

+1 Inaccurate is more like it.

Day of Defeat has all hand done animation. It is published by Activision and is from Valve .

I also believe Counter Strike has all hand done animations as well.

http://www.steampowered.com

This is Valve's technology to perform this kind of function. Not only can it perform a licensing function beyond being a point of purchase, it has the advantages of being an automatic updating/patching system. Because it manages licensing it could be used for "trial" play of a game. Pay $1 to play for a week. Decide if you like it. Pay the difference to buy it forever else your license expires. A risky proposition - but only for those that make crappy games.

Actually mod up, Vivendi Corporate Bio. No where on this page does it mention them owning Valve, however it lists the other companies it owns. Also on the About Valve Page does it mention Vivendi owning them. Show me some proof or mod me up.


Whoops, forgot the links
Valve Bio
Vivendi Bio

It's interesting to see the changing styles of game companies as they begin to view their community as a resource for continuing the viability of their games. Can you imagine a company creating a computer language and then making themselves the only source of applications written in this language? Possible, but pretty foolish in this day and age.

Valve Software started it early on with Half-Life, creating and releasing editing tools, an SDK, and more importantly a real community for the development of mods and conversions to their game Half-Life. Valve's been by far the most successfull company at leveraging this to their advantage. I dare say they would not be the same company at all if it were not for the popularity of Half-Life mods such as Counter Strike, Team Fortress Classic and Day of Defeat.

It's great to see other companies getting on the ball to continue this trend.

I'm one of the developers of the now retail Half-Life MOD called Day of Defeat. We developed a free Half-Life MOD, had it become successfull, and now are regular developers for Valve, and the game is a retail product.

First, don't look for developers, become one. A really common joke in the MOD community is some guy that says something like, "I got a great idea for a MOD! It's gonna have lots of guns, and models and explosions and stuff. I've got it 90% done but just need a coder and a modeler and a skinner and a mapper and a sound guy. As soon as I get them we'll finish the last 10%!" Basically, "idea guys" who can't actually contribute content are worthless for a MOD team. Everyone must contribute real value and content. No dead wood.

Second, the best way to get a MOD on the road to success is to be successful. By that I mean release it to the public (even in a crude beta format) and get the world to check it out. There is a new Half-Life mod called Battle Grounds that's come out recently. It's a US Revolutionary War game. Very crude in some ways, but it's already got some people playing it. 32 servers and 66 players in the last hour. That's not many, but if you look at the stats for a lot of other mods, it's doing pretty well. Anyway, the makers of that game are learning something and evolving their game because it is being played. Not just "conceptualized" on a piece of paper.

Third, don't think you need to be a game developer to develop a game. None of us that made Day of Defeat were. Sure we had some skills but none of us were professionals. But we learned quite a bit and came pretty far in the process of creating and reviving our game.

The summary? Don't talk about it, do it.

That would help more if people would stop writing articles that read like:

"There's an article on CNN about a new sequel to the popular PC game Half-Life by Valve Software (and published by Sierra Entertainment. I'm sure all of Slashdot will be glad to hear this news. GamePro also has an article. The White House had no comment.

It is. Here is the scoop on how Sierra was sold, then castrated and left pretty much useless (FYI, Half-Life was produced by Valve, Sierra is a distributor).

Also here Leisure Suit Larry's man Al Lowe gives hints that managements talks of old Sierra's rebirth are just that - talks:

• "Feb. 1, 2002, I met with [Sierra's president] Mike Ryder in his office. He said he was interested in "reviving the franchises that made Sierra," including Larry. I was ready, but skeptical. There were many details to consider. We agreed to work via email that week and get together again soon.

  After hearing nothing from him for the next month, I emailed him to see what had happened. It took him a month to email back that he was really busy and would get to me soon. More than four months have passed since that email and I've still heard nothing more from him."

This is how the company treats one of its most successful game creators; you can figure out the rest.

Andrius

P.S. While we're on Al Lowe, his CyberJoke 3000 jokes mailing list is highly recommended. See archives.

This is a nice way to run a benchmark on a new chip. In a straight port of code highly optimized for x86-32, Counter-Strike dedicated server tests with both 32- and 64-bit versions revealed a 30% clock-for-clock gain, and is expected to show further performance gains in future upgrades. Its also nice to see Valve putting in the effort to keep it customers happy and running at high speeds. www.valvesoftware.com Operon web page at AMD

By the time this comes out (they say 2004, more like 2005)

Nope, it's due out next year. id Software are generally pretty good at predicting the year of release, unlike some companies.