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Halflife 2 Delayed Again?
erax0r writes "Gamespot reports that HL2 could be delayed yet again. "Court filings show VU Games has the right to sit on finished Half-Life 2 code for up to six months. Could it be deja vu all over again?"
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When the first videos came out from and after E3 more than a year ago, the physics were considered breathtaking and simply amazing. Same with the AI of your comrades.
Doom3 already beat them to the punch on the physics. The only salvation H2 will have is if the CounterStrike mod is quickly adapted to it. They'll probably have the graphics of Doom3, but hopefully with better multi-player gameplay.
Always sad to see something miss the boat like this, simply due to a late release.
VU is between a rock and a hard place. On one hand they won't see the bottom line boost from the revenue from HL2, on the other Valve is ready to cut them out of the picture to the point where they might not see enough of a return to justify publishing it.
They likely would take a bigger loss in the future if they were to back down now and prove themselves weak. They are doing this to show that they play hardball with their developers. Lord only knows that any sign of weakness now might be exploited by any developer VU works with who wants to renegotiate their SPA.
There is no better way to prove that you mean business than to take one on the chin and shrug it off.
No to mention the fact that they've probably been paying for Valve to finish this, and if they don't see some return on it, then thats bad.
It's capitalism at its very best.
Honestly, it couldn't happen to a better set of companies.
Insert Sig Here
I never understood why someone stealing the source code caused a delay before.
Right. You're working on something, you're falling behind, you're not going to meet the announced release date, when - BLAM - a large proportion of what you were working on, private stuff definitely not for distribution, gets distributed all over the internet.
Your office network turns out to be completely untrustworthy, as are most of the machines on it (who knows what could have been installed without your knowledge) - basically, you don't have a clue what's safe and what's not.
Put simply, all work has to cease. While rabid fanboys, crackers and 'warez dudes' are all busy dissecting your unfinished work.
Must be pretty dispiriting, yes?
Even when things did get back to normal, people at Valve must have reckoned their game just wasn't right for release. After all the complaints recently about other games being released 'unfinished', I'm glad they at Valve had the guts to delay the game, and fix whatever they saw was wrong with it. Maybe they really weren't happy with the gameplay, maybe it needed some dedicated tuning - who knows.
The release candidate is out. Valve may have finished the game. It's already partially distributed over Steam. I wouldn't be surprised if the game is out pretty soon - assuming this latest hassle blows over, which it most likely will...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Depending on the contract between Vivendi and Valve, the argument could swing either way. If Valve is doing this and it turns out that this is a breach of contract, hats off to Vivendi. If Valve can do this and its within the contract, truckloads of extra money for Valve for cutting out the middleman. If nothing else, Vivendi has the whole 'Steam sucks and is unreliable' argument on their side, so this doesn't look good for Valve.
This court thing that Vivendi Universal Games is pulling seems to me to be a very bad PR choice. If I were a developer and saw that VUG was willing to take me to court over its right to hold my game for up to six months before releasing it according to my desire, I would step past VUG and find someone else to distribute, or I would distribute the game myself.
But then, maybe it's just me...
On the other hand, if Vivendi delays release beyond the Christmas season, and somehow manages to prohibit Valve form releasing on Steam, they will not be able to post that revenue in Q4 and there's a real chance sales will be lower than they would have been had the game been released in time for Christmas.
I think you're wrong. The people who are going to buy Half Life 2 are going to buy Half Life 2. If it comes out around the "Christmas Season" makes no difference for a game like this. The marketing folks may not get that, but really, either you're waiting on the edge of your seat for this game or you're not going to buy it. Waiting VU out is a win for Valve.
The only way Vivendi can win this is by compelling Valve not to release on Steam and still getting the game out in time for Christmas.
This is true, but let's hope that doesn't happen. The sooner all these traditional publishers die off the better off we all are. Let's hope Valve has the cash to sit around and wait VU out on this one and that almost everybody buys the game off Steam. What the hell do we need the middle-man for anymore? All they do is keep the small developers out of the market.
They go off.
:)) but is anyone that interested when they have bad guys to blow away? Might be more relvant in future games made with the Source engine.
:P). The thing is, these advances are rapidly becoming old news - if they don't release soon - this carton of milk is going to start to smell. I'm sure Vivendi don't want it stinking up their refrigerator.
Games have a very definite shelf life. I watched the latest Halflife 2 video the other day (the one with yer man on a quad bike of some kind shooting some spiders that looked a bit familiar..) and whilst it still looked like a game I might want to buy, I had just finished Doom 3 and whatever you can say about Doom 3, one thing I don't think you can deny is that it looks damm fine. HL2 just looks pretty ordinary to me now.
It may have a more comprehensive physics engine that lets you interact with objects (You could knock stuff over in Doom3 and the swinging crane was very well done but that was about the limit of your interaction - kicking the office furniture about - although I did manage to get inside a barrel in MP, or at least end up in a barrel...
HL2 may also have a more interesting game behind the eye candy and certainly has more varied environemnts then Doom3 (although nobody does Hell like ID
This is already the case. The best comparison is Doom 3. From what I've seen in the HL2 videos, DOOM 3 has it spanked as far as lighting and shadows are concerned. This is very visible in the outdoor areas. HL2 will shine moreso with it's AI, and the interactivity of the enviroment. Hopefully the story will rock too.
Had HL2 released last year like it was supposed to, it would have blown away the competition by a wide margin. There was just nothing on the market that comes close. Now because of the delays, they've lost a huge advantage. Now it will be just another good game.
Both the psycis and the graphics of HL2 are already "we-have-seen-this-before". Doom 3 and FarCry have excellent graphics, in the same league of HL2, if not better. Games like Painkiller make excellent use of the Havok physics engine.
But that's not the point. The original HL wasn't either revolutionary in graphics or implementation (the sound though was quite good at the time), but the game itself. The story, the settings, the atmosphere. I'm EAGER to play HL2, and the reason it's not the graphics but the memory of the original HL.
Having said that, there's a few things on the Source engine that are quite impressive. The graphics, never mind being not original anymore, are excellent, same with the phyisics. Some game clips with characters talking, complete with facial animations, put to shame many actual games.
I just hope it comes out in time.
This is very visible in the outdoor areas.
Doom 3? Outdoor areas? Huh?
While it's true Doom 3 has a more robust engine, HL2 has much better looking textures and character models. This isn't as much due to the engine as it is the effort of the artists. Half Life 2 tries for photorealism while Doom 3 has blocky models with bland textures. Look at the Character Comparison Shot here to see the difference. And all Doom 3 has shown so far is that its engine can render dark laboratories and dark office buildings. We're going to have to wait for either an exceptional mod or a new game using the engine to see how pretty it is when the lights are on. I'm not sure if Quake IV is going to accomplish this, given the Quake series's tendency to take place in brown, gothic, industrial locales. Apparently, Quake IV is going to be rather dark as well. I hope it isn't a new trend.