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Half-Life 2 Targeted for Summer Release
Gudlyf writes "According to CNN Money, Valve's director of marketing Doug Lombardi announced that the company is 'currently targeting this summer for the completion of Half-Life 2'. From the article: 'Valve does not plan to reveal any additional information until the time surrounding the E3 trade show, where the game will once again be shown this year. E3 will be held in Los Angeles May 12-14.'" The game was delayed following a previously covered code leak, and the article also notes: "Arkane Studios, an independent French developer that created the critically-acclaimed role-playing game 'Arx Fatalis,' has licensed [Half-Life 2's Source engine] for a forthcoming title [as has Troika's Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines]."
will there be a Linux version finally? (perhaps that could be some of the mystery?)
I would buy it, if it was out for Linux.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Didnt Valve announce that they were going to release HL2 in february instead of december because of the source code leak? So what happened to change the release date to 'somewhere in the summer'?
Or was the leak just a nice excuse for the clueless managers who wanted
game shipped around the Christmas shopping spree?
If E3 this year is anything like last year's, remember the fact that Vampire uses the same engine.
The queue for Halflife was crazy, stretching around the booth and back again. Vampire on the other hand had hardly anyone interested in it. Knowing it was the same engine, I got about an hour with the guys, going wherever I wanted in the game, getting every last question I could think of answered - while the people who queued for twice as long for the H2 demo got a fraction of that.
Good for Half Life 2, now when will Thief 3 be released?!
The "simple" theft of the source code is not the reason to the extended delay, its simply that they where just not finished and have required this much more time to get it to a release state. Securing the network code or even outright changing it would only require a couple months at most to fix to prevent cheaters; so that option is not valid either. I think they screwed up on stating the release date and this was an excuse that would satisfy reporters.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
The original HL is incredible work--nobody will deny that. The net play was nothing short of impressive across the board and it only got more enjoyable as follow-on additions came out.
So, like any sequel, it's to be determined if they're riding on the value earned by the original half-life name. This, to me, raises the repeated issue of the nature of first-person gaming improvements. For me (and prolly for most ppl here), the fun of HL1 was in plot solo-play elements, well-done net play, and a decent 3D experience Note I said "decent", not outstanding--we enjoy games ultimately because of non-graphical related quality. We've all played Zelda in the original Nintendo--it was incredibly done. How much "better" would HL1 or Zelda be with twice the graphical quality? I'd argue not much. The real innovations are in anything but graphics. How about Starcraft? Anyone here thing WC3 is a major leap over Starcraft (other than basic visual/GUI/resolution improvements)?
I guess I'm just saying that in the realm of professional games, non-graphical innovations are what make the game. These modern game companies have a real challenge ahead of them.
G-Force music visualization
It's a conspiracy and a half, there was no code stolen. The reasons why it was delayed.
1.) The game is waiting longer, so the video card prices will drop lower. Same with CPU prices really.
2.) There are too many bugs anyways, so they need time to fix it.
3.) They need to test how mods fit into the out-of-the-box engine.
4.) They don't want it available in Christmas 2003, cause a million deals later, this will have this game selling for $29.99 by Christmas day.
5.) Directx9a and 9b caused a lot of confusion in 2003. Not the best time to launch a game that tests the water.
That is not how I remember it. Wallhacking, which as I understand it is a driver issue that is very difficult to code against, and speed cheats, which were defeated shortly after they appeared, appeared long before CS went to retail. The only real cure for cheaters was active server moderators. Still is. Server mods, which owe their existance to the open source, could discourage certain kinds of griefing and cheating, but there is no substitute for a good moderator.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
This one is "the game that liscensed the Thief title". It's not being produced by the guys at Looking Glass studios, because Looking Glass no longer exists. Don't expect it to have anything to do with the other Thief games.
Eventually it will be delayed by a planck-second, and as any increment of time smaller than that is meaningless, it will get released after that. It's not calculus, it's physics we need to thank.
Unfortunately they don't (and according to a source at Valve, won't) make a FreeBSD server binary, so my dual opteron server is sitting struggling running the 32-bit linux version of CS under emulation.
Niiiiiiiice.... not.