Newest Half-Life 2 Movies Impress

Thanks to several readers for pointing to the release of a second trailer ('The Docks') from Half-Life 2, via Valve's Steam content delivery system, as well as via GamersHell, IGN, 3D Gamers, and the obligatory BitTorrent link, courtesy GameTab. This follows the first movie, named 'G-Man,' that was posted a couple of days back -- all of these new Bink-encoded executable movies are direct-feed parts of the large shakycam E3 movie we mentioned a few weeks back.

Comments

id

[miruku]

id software are not doing themselves any good by not releasing doom 3 teaser vids like this. bad marketing tactics imo..

Re:id

[Henry V .009]

Yeah. I'm gonna grab HL2 when it comes out, but I'm definitely gonna wait on Doom III to find out whether it's all it's cracked up to be first.

Re:id

[PyroMosh]

They have. And it looks awesome. It's just that, frankly. The Half-Life 2 stuff looks MORE awesome, and is overshadowing it.

Re:id

[miruku]

thats not a rolling demo, thats only a cinematic trailer that says nothing about the actual gameplay of doom 3

Re:id

[miruku]

and the half-life 2 rolling demo specifically shows of all the amazing new new engine features with commentary

Interesting if true...

[CaptSisko]

I must say I'm extremely impressed with the graphics so far. However, these are movie files and it remains to be seen how playable the actual game will be on my P4 3.2 with GF4 Ti4600. I haven't heard any comments from Valve on the minimum system requirements other than the usual game-developer cliché "the game will require a medium-end PC ...", and they haven't said if they meant a moderate PC at the time of the statement or at the time of the game's release :-)

Re:Interesting if true...

[enigmatichmachine]

actually, i was talking to the game programmers at e3, and watching the game run on a system similar to your's. pretty much what he said was that the textures etc that they had were ridiculusly high res, and that the whole game was desigened to scale down graphicly to whatever you have, it just won't be as pretty on a GF 1 as on a new high end pc. and seeing it RUN on a plasma monitor, I can tell you, it's worth the upgrade!

Re:Interesting if true...

[smg_mrBlonde]

The minimum system specs are currently targeted at a 700 MHz PC with 128 MB RAM and a DX6-level video card TNT2 etc, meaning you won't need a supercomputer to run Half-Life 2.

But on the machine above don't expect to see reflective water,dynamic shadows and bump-mapped textures. The game running at maximum detail 50/60 fps, machine required for this is approx 1600Mhz cpu, 256 mb ram, GeForce4 Ti card.

In real life you need the best from a new game so I would recommend a 2000 cpu, 512 mb ram, GeForce4 Ti4800 128 ddr or ATI Radeon equivalent.

The more power the better but not essential with this game.

You just have to google for it.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe =utf-8&safe=off&q=half+life+2+system+requirements& spell=1

Re:Interesting if true...

[Mascot]

Valve have stated them many times, just do a search for it. I did and the first site I found was an interview with Gabe Newell (Managing Director for Half-Life 2) where he states the min specs are a P3 800 and a DX6 (e.g. TNT) graphics card. I've seen 733 mentioned elsewhere but the difference isn't exactly a huge one.

The Source engine's been feature complete since Q4 last year so they should have a pretty good idea of its performance by now.

Re:Interesting if true...

[DavidLeblond]

In the most recent issue of the magazine MaximumPC, they go in depth to show you exactly what to expect based on what video card you have. I don't have it with me right now, but its worth looking at.

Re:Interesting if true...

[brkello]

My philosophy on this was to wait to buy a new computer. Once half-life 2 is released, I will get the fastest computer out (processor, vid card, ram, hard drive, etc). That way I will be "safe".

Re:Interesting if true...

[leifm]

Offtopic, but I like your sig very much sir.

Re:Interesting if true...

[Anonymous Coward]

The word given to EB Games on requirements is that it will run 'perfectly' with 'all features enabled' on a 2GHz machine with a GF4 Ti4600.

Now I'm running a Athlon 3200+ with a GF4 Ti4600, but I would bet you I'll be shelling out for a new video card the day after it comes out. Game companies tend to define 'perfectly' as 30fps (TV's use that, so it's perfect, right?), but I'm not happy unless I'm at 60+. Also, all features enabled means in-game features, not driver-based ones. I doubt it'll really be playable without some serious FSAA on (even the video had jaggies galore), which'll butcher framerates again.

I can hope though. I don't have the money for a GFX5900.

Yeah great movies

[NewsWare]

Yeah great movies but there are some DIVX movies out there.

You could check this 160MEG Divx movie over here:
Half-Life 2 Gameplay Video - Registration Required!
(It includes all the Valves Bink movies!)

Re:Yeah great movies

[Zathrus]

Yes, but they're much lower quality -- they were grabbed via a steadycam, while these are direct screen captures. People who have watched them frame-by-frame (not me, I'm not insane) have noticed some irregularities like things breaking before they're hit -- apparantly caused by the hyper compression done on the steadycam shots and multiple re-encodings.

The downside to the Bink movies is that you don't get the commentary given at E3. This is pretty valuable (and humorous) stuff at points, since it's exposition for what's being shown.

If you have bandwidth to burn, get both... the video quality of the Bink videos puts the DivX to shame.

Stupid

[grimani]

This is the exact same footage of one 30 second segment from the E3 demo.

And a stupid, boring segment of the demo at that. There were so many other parts that were much more interesting.

Gordon controlling alien spiders against soldiers for one.

The Godzilla-like battle between human resistance and alien behemoths.

Why anyone would waste time watching a crowbar swing a few times is beyond me. And even if someone would, the physics of crowbar impact don't even look right.

What a waste of time.

Valve, E3 was great. Now please continue to surprise me.

Re:Stupid

[jantheman]

Agreed. 50mb for that?

Re:Stupid

[__aafkqj3628]

I agree that there should be new content. However, Valve are releasing this primarily (or so they want) across their Steam network. So it's probably to test the content delivery (of video) across Steam or to try and get more people to download and use Steam, rather than actually providing new content.

(Besides, for those of us who are too poor to download the 600meg beast, this is a nicer alternative).

Re:Stupid

[Mascot]

Seems people are missing the point indeed. One is to get some stress testing of Steam going. Another is to give people high resolution videos to really be able to appreciate the graphics. I've seen the 600MB QT a ton of times, and these new clips is like another world when it comes to seeing just what the engine's capable of.

For the whiners, Valve are going to keep releasing clips until they've run out of E3 footage. They'll then start releasing previously unseen footage. They posted this promise in the Steam forums.

Re:Stupid

[Hard_Code]

You dork. They are releasing one per day. Keep your britches on.

Re:Stupid

[Teddeh]

"And even if someone would, the physics of crowbar impact don't even look right."

According to a post on HalfLife2.net from someone who mailed Gabe Newell about this (find it yourself! :) ), that's a screwup in the demo player, not the engine. The E3 footage was a pre-recorded demo. You are right about the choice of footage though. The Striders would have been much better.

Re:Stupid

[mrkh]

As somebody else said, they're releasing them one at a time.

You can find the lab one (far more impressive than the docks, I think) here:

http://www.filerush.com/torrents/hl2-kleiners_la b. exe.torrent

Great marketing there Valve

[__aafkqj3628]

Valve sure knows how to publicise this product well.
Releasing heaps of high-quality video every so often and using their Steam service to distribute it (which gets a heck of a lot of CS beta players (and people who were too cheap to buy HL 5 years ago)).

Valve have stolen the spotlight from Doom3 and will impress everybody, no matter what id software pulls from it's magical hat.

I just hope that id isn't dumb enough to release D3 at the same time that Valve releases HL2 (which they hinted at last yeat). In a 1v1, there is no competition.

Re:Great marketing there Valve

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! Great insight.

And how many times have you played Doom3?

Or even seen it, and not some trailer, for that matter?

I think HL2 looks awesome also, but do you not think Carmack has tricks up his sleeve?

The real question..

[JavaLord]

Is there going to be a counter strike 2 with the half life 2 engine? Will it come with a built in wallhack?

Re:The real question..

[awakened tech]

In one of the interviews they said they would be releasing the tools early to the CS team so that it would be available as soon as possible, possibly before xmas

Works with WINE

[The Iowan]

Hey, and this .exe file works with WINE, too! No problems. Stock Mandrake 9.1 with nvidia card. Cool!

Too bad my computer is such a dog. :(

Oh man

[aliens]

I just started playing HL after seeing the HL2 trailers. Such a good game, I can't wait for 2.

Re:Oh man

[Maserati]

Ditto. I dropped $20 on HalfLife and am slowly cruising my way through the early stages hoping to have it beaten by the time HL2 comes out.

Re:Oh man

[aliens]

The AI is great. I don't know if you're up to the part where you fight soliders but it is definitely a challange. I'm playing on difficulty level one up from the medium setting.

Amazing that it's running on a quake2 engine and has such good AI, etc. That and I can play it with 6X AA and 16X AF :)

Re:Oh man

[Maserati]

Nothing with 46 cromosomes has started shooting at me yet, but I remember those SOB's from Blue Shift (*cough* Gnutella *cough*). I'm not hardcore at FPS games, so I'm just playing it at "Medium". Even playing it in early afternoon with the sun out I can still get spooked into spraying rounds in panic. This is pure fun.

The beauty of going back to the classics is that you can run 'em at max quality and still get amazing framerates. Try the original Jedi Knight, it looks fantastic on a modern system.

Not new content

[__aamkky7574]

It's an excerpt from the E3 half-hour trailer. Higher resolution admittedly, but nothing to get excited about, and nothing you should rush a 50 meg download for. Let's see some new stuff! P.

Re:Not new content

[EMR]

bummer, then I'm not going to bother downloading it.. I already downloaded the full HIGH-RES E3 demo. (500 MB) I want something NEW!!

Re:Works with MacOS too

[Ahaldra]

Just download the Bink Player and drag&drop the .exe on it.

But yeah it's rather choppy on slower computers (mine happens to be one too), so I think this is just a frindly hint from valve to upgrade ;-)

Oh boy

[swat_r2]

That's one of the reasons I turned to console gaming, upgrading is way too expensive! But I'm sure the drool factor will be worth it ;)

I'm impressed with Steam

[LiberalApplication]

I started up Steam when I heard the news, selected the second HL2 teaser video, and was honestly expecting to wait twenty minutes for a 640x480 movie to appear in a little window. I run to the bathroom to let loose the flood from my bladder, and by the time I get back, there's full-screen-video playing, without compression artifacts, and it really looked like... like... the game. Sharp polygons and all. What format was it in?

Re:I'm impressed with Steam

[JJC]

What format was it in?

Bink

Crowbar?

[czion3]

Is it just me or when they hit the big bad guys with the crowbar in one of the promo movies the effect looks like a retro arcade game(Area 51). This is the only thing I see wrong with the engine.

sound in these movies...

[Rendi]

I have been talking to many people, and some have had sound working, some not... I know it doesn't work on any computer I've tried it on. Any ideas?