Gabe Newell Talks Half-Life 2

Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for pointing to GamingNext's new interview with Gabe Newell of Valve Software - he's the managing director and co-founder of the company currently working on Half-Life 2. Topics include the scalability of the Source graphics engine: "A lot of the tricky work in Source is getting it to work across a wide variety of scenes (indoor, urban, outdoor) and across a wide variety of hardware. Not only do you have to run acceptably fast on a TNT or an Intel 810 based PC, but you have to fully exploit the capabilities of the current and next generation high-end cards." On a related note, the 500+MB Half-Life 2 gameplay/engine demo (BitTorrent link) from E3 is a must-download if you haven't seen it yet.

Comments

Scalability

[Wuukie]

Wow, Gabe said HL2 should run on a P-III 800MHz and a DX6 class graphics card. That's amazing. I wonder does it sacrifice physics calculations, ie. do objects begin to act weird when low on computing power. At least I'd think the physics seen in the demonstrations need a lot of cpu. Maybe it penalizes graphics more.

With a bit of luck, I'll get to play it with my Duron 1.2GHz. If not, then I'll have to re-prioritize savings in favor of HL2.

Re:Scalability

[wolrahnaes]

you'd be surprised what you can make work. i can run any game that doesn't blatantly reject my hardware on my P2-350 w/ a Rage 128.

They actually play semi-decent most of the time. Age of Mythology causes my neighbors Duron 800@833 w/ Ti4200 to creep occasionally, and even that holds a playable ~12 FPS on my machine

Re:Scalability

[Wuukie]

You might be right. We'll see that later.

But throughout the day I've found myself thinking how to optimize those physics calculations. Or rather how to cut down them.

It's quite certain they aren't calculating physics for all moving objects in the world (or the current level). Probably calculations are cut down also for objects that aren't visible. So suppose I shoot the wooden platform with barrels on top seen in the demonstration and the barrels begin to move. Then I immediately run far away from this place. And after a while I go back to check how those barrels fell down. I wonder if the barrels have really been simulated properly or are they placed really weird.

Oh crap, HL2 is supposed to be "just another" FPS, why do I even bother thinking these physics... Well, what can I say. I was _really_ impressed with the demo. Gotta watch it over once again.

Re:Scalability

[burns210]

so what you are saying is...

"If a tree is shot at on the server, and noone is around, is it still rendered?"

One observation, and one desire

[wowbagger]

The observation:
Has anybody else noticed how cadaverous the new G-Man looks? Especially his eyes - he looks like a dead man walking. Hmmmm.

The hope:
Either that HL2 runs under Wine, or that Valve releases a native version.

HL2 and CS2!

[Ese L0C0]

As long as I don't have to spend 500$ to be able to play it and it look badass...then i will be happy...... But if i have to spend 499$...well you gotta do what you gotta do.... I can't wait to see what they are gonna do with Counter Strike 2...