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G4TV To Preview Half-Life 2 Expansion

Posted by Zonk on from the it-was-screensavers,-dangit dept.

Voodoo Extreme has word that new technology for the Steam engine, as well as a HL2 expansion entitled 'The Lost Coast', will be shown off on G4TV's Attack of the Show (formerly The ScreenSavers). From the article: "On Wednesday's show, Valve's Doug Lombardi will give an exclusive demonstration of the previously unseen 'The Lost Coast,' an upcoming expansion that utilizes a brand-new technology that Valve is implementing into the Source engine. Called 'high-dynamic range lighting,' this new technology enables a leap in lighting realism from even the current high benchmark set by Half-Life 2 and the existing Source engine."

73 comments

  1. Old News by Winckle · · Score: 1

    This was mentioned in the steam news system, a long time ago, I remember valve said that it would be a graphics intensive level, designed only for high-end systems

    1. Re:Old News by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 2, Interesting

      First announced in early February, yes, but I think this'll be the first we see of it beyond some rough concept sketches.

      I'm intrigued as to what the Source engine will be able to do when given room to breathe - Half-Life 2's maps were highly optimised, with just about every unnecessary surface made invisible or clipped-off to make the physics simpler. The seemingly huge, far-reaching environments usually weren't, but instead were clever simulations thereof. Okay, so it did mean it could run pretty well on my old PC, but I've got a new one now... ;-)

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    2. Re:Old News by Winckle · · Score: 1

      I am indeed looking forward to the new level (but not to having to uprgade my x300 :( ) Also a bit of-topic, but those environments in your sig look beautiful, even if the text is somewhat cryptic

    3. Re:Old News by Gothic_Walrus · · Score: 1
      You know, not everyone has Steam.

      I'd love to get the game - and will, once I can afford to run it - but I don't have Steam on any of my machines because I don't have any Valve software at the moment.

      First I've heard of it, if nothing else.

      --
      Goo goo g'joob.
    4. Re:Old News by Ahnteis · · Score: 1

      I'm confused -- you want an expansion to the game without actually getting the game? (Steam comes with HL2 and is a required part of the game.)

    5. Re:Old News by MatthewNewberg · · Score: 1

      You can use Steam and Download the Half-life demo (and I think a few other things) without having any Half-life products.

      --
      mnewberg.com
    6. Re:Old News by Gothic_Walrus · · Score: 1
      "The game" is HL2.

      Probably should've been a bit clearer there.

      --
      Goo goo g'joob.
  2. G4 by Bootle · · Score: 1, Insightful
    God I hate G4TV and their borg-like consumption of the greener pastures of the one and only techtv

    I never watched the show, don't watch any TV and I don't need someone showing me how to plug in an ethernet cable, but the shows were still great fun.

    Now I catch a couple minutes of G4 and I want to die (or kill them). How's that for media-induced violent tendencies? I hope the channel sinks like a rock!

    1. Re:G4 by Grand · · Score: 1

      The screensavers should be renamed "Useless crap we found on the internet" They have slowly taken out any useful information on anything "Tech".

    2. Re:G4 by filth+grinder · · Score: 1

      I never watched the show, don't watch any TV and I don't need someone showing me how to plug in an ethernet cable, but the shows were still great fun.

      How would you know if the shows were great fun or not... you never saw it.

      Did you just have great fun hearing other people talk about the show? Where is the lie, did you watch the show, and therefore watch tv and are a mindless brainless zombie like the rest of us, who you are trying to act superior to with your "I don't watch tv statements"?

      Just wondering how the show you never saw was great fun.

    3. Re:G4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, now they've done away with the Screensavers and replaced it with a show that seems like it's going to be a lame attempt at reporting Internet news and rumors while doing its best to make the cast look like underground hacking gods instead of the posers they really are.

  3. Re:G4 - Proof that video gams make you violent by Winckle · · Score: 1

    Don't you see what's happened, the video games and video game programs are amking you suicidal and violent, just like the media said they would

  4. ... this will be great! by enrico_suave · · Score: 0, Troll

    until the source code is stolen and it's delayed for a zillion years...

    How can anyone take what valve says seriously about release dates,etc anymore?

    With that said, HL2 was awesome and almost worth the wait, and i'll end up buying the expansion. *sigh*

    There's someone out there on /. (or another forum) with a sig about how they "stopped watching MTV when it became the shiny things network"... that's how I feel about what was TechTV about now...

    e.

    --
    Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
    1. Re:... this will be great! by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 4, Informative

      With that said, HL2 was awesome and almost worth the wait, and i'll end up buying the expansion. *sigh*

      Well, I'm definitely not going to buy this particular expansion...

      'Cause it'll be a free download!

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    2. Re:... this will be great! by enrico_suave · · Score: 1

      oooh! I RTFA(s) and somehow missed that. are they doing this more as a tech demo than a true add-on?

      It's my future I see... cursing a really slow Steam update or unable to connect... =)

      e.

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      Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
    3. Re:... this will be great! by Winckle · · Score: 1

      You're preaching to the converted mate, remember two months ago when they tolds us VAC 2 will be out soon

    4. Re:... this will be great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      With that said, HL2 was awesome and almost worth the wait, and i'll end up buying the expansion.

      Actually, the article is a bit mistaken in its choice of words. "Lost Coast" is not an expansion; it will be a free download via Steam for those that already bought HL2. There are rumors of an expansion featuring Alyx as a playable character, but those are still just rumors.

    5. Re:... this will be great! by chromaphobic · · Score: 1

      It seems like it will be more of a tech demo than anything else. They described it as a "short" single level (whatever "short" means in Valve's vernacular.) Also that "it will be made available free of charge to Half-Life 2 customers that meet a specific set of high end hardware requirements." So I'd assume it will only run on the latest and greatest cards.

    6. Re:... this will be great! by Lisandro · · Score: 1

      I think it already has... the Unreal team has been showcasing HDR ligthning for a while now, and it's part of what they have coming in the Unreal Engine 3.

    7. Re:... this will be great! by T-Ranger · · Score: 1

      I bought HL2 (works great under Cedega) and playing through it I had the feeling that the entire thing was a tech demo.

      I mean, it was great fun and all (and so far as Im concerned, better then Doom3; and not just because HL2 runs about twice as fast). But the repetition. In the boat sequence, say, you had 3 "puzzles"; make a ramp work, smash a big gate, and make a ramp work. How you made the ramps definitly involved different parts of the physics engine (though I suspect that while the floating barrels was purely map based, the pully system was coded, if that makes any sense), but as a player, same deal. So why did you have to make two ramps? To show off that you could make ramps in two different ways.

      Not that this is at all related to this story but: I think the major technology hurdle for games is not the engines, but the map creation. It takes weeks to build even a fairly simple map. So far as Im concerned, you should be able to export some topo data from Grass, and have a map built from that. Add some spawn points, and your good to go. Even if you can increase the map creation tools to a point where someone experience can knock off a map in a day, then you could get: MMORPG using FPS engines. What would be cooler then Fallout Online with the source engine? Have a Enemy Tournement "campaign" that has 100 maps, but you might only play through 10 of them.. and past actions influence future maps; destroy the supply depo and you spawn with 30% less ammo. Attack a very hard map, or two easier maps to get to the goal map. Whatever.

      Mayby Im just bitter that the Source SDK is screwed up under Cedgea.

    8. Re:... this will be great! by mconeone · · Score: 1

      the Unreal team has been showcasing HDR ligthning for a while now

      So has Valve... HDR was originally supposed to be in HL2 from the start but was shelved to speed up the game's release.

    9. Re:... this will be great! by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

      So if they don't like my video card I don't get the map? Thats kinda lame...

      I'd like to play around with it even if it's a laggy mess on my system.

  5. High dy-whaty? by The-Bus · · Score: 2, Informative
    nVidia Guru David Kirk Answers Your Questions

    Paul Debevec Executive Producer, Graphics Research Research Assistant Professor, USC, who has a LOT of information on the subject.

    And the intro to the presentation for SIGGRAPH2004:

    Current display devices can display a limited range of contrast and colors, which is one of the main reasons that most image acquisition, processing, and display techniques use no more than eight bits per color channel. This course outlines recent advances in high-dynamic-range imaging, from capture to display, that remove this restriction, thereby enabling images to represent the color gamut and dynamic range of the original scene rather than the limited subspace imposed by current monitor technology. This hands-on course teaches how high-dynamic-range images can be captured, the file formats available to store them, and the algorithms required to prepare them for display on low-dynamic-range display devices. The trade-offs at each stage, from capture to display, are assessed, allowing attendees to make informed choices about data-capture techniques, file formats, and tone-reproduction operators. The course also covers recent advances in image-based lighting, in which HDR images can be used to illuminate CG objects and realistically integrate them into real-world scenes. Through practical examples taken from photography and the film industry, it shows the vast improvements in image fidelity afforded by high-dynamic-range imaging. [more]
    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

  6. High Benchmark by fozzmeister · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeh HL2 is superb, but there is nothing new about it really, the Lighting is not even dynamic except shadows of objects. All the standard lighting is there because it uses the same sortof radiant technology that was in Quake1-Q3 (although at higher detail levels). Yeh sure it looks great, probably mostly because of High Polygon count and High Res textures, and some nifty effects (reflection et al).

    If you want to see the "Benchmark" Technology, look at Doom3, Sure its got low polygon count, and low (in comparison) texture quality, But the whole world is lighted at run-time.

    In summary, HL2 looks great, and probably as good as Doom3, but its doing nothing new or revolutionary. The future has to be engines like Doom3 even though the computers of today are maybe not quite upto the point of realising that potential.

    1. Re:High Benchmark by game+kid · · Score: 1

      Agreed. The shadows (which aren't cut off by surfaces--notice how the magnet casts a shadow through the opaque steel box? Take a close look if you can) are hardly as good as Doom3's.

      A game with HL2's detail, reflections, and normals, and Doom3's shadowing, will make me want to go to a store, buy it, and give the vendor a 50% tip (I got HL2 with the ATI offer with a card I bought, and via Steam).

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    2. Re:High Benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But the whole world is lighted at run-time.

      Don't you mean one or two pixels are lighted at run-time?

    3. Re:High Benchmark by chris_oat · · Score: 2, Informative
      I have to disagree. The lighting is by no means standard and is far more advanced than Quake1-Q3 lighting. Valve uses a directional radiosity basis for storing light on static scene surfaceses which makes it work very nicely with normal maps (standard light maps don't have this property). Valve also stores volumetric lighting using what they call an "ambient cube" basis, this is a lot like the irradiance volume which is used for accelerating offline rendering and has no equivalent in any Quake or Doom. You can read all about the interesting lighting techniques they're using in Gary McTaggart's 2004 GDC presentation. This volume is static in the sense that it's precomputed but it's used for dynamic lighting in the sense that characters/objects can move through the volume and are lit dynamically. Doom3 on the other hand is using fairly vanilla real-time lighting techniques... per-pixel Phong lighting, while it works and looks just fine, has been used for interactive graphics for a few years now. Doom3's stencil shadow volumes were all the rage for a while but aren't so popular these days because they tend to have fairly nasty performance characteristics (and there really is no such thing as a hard shadow in the real world... light sources aren't infinitely small). Anyway, both games look great, I'm certainly not trying to slam anyone here... I just wanted to point out that your statement:
      ...but its doing nothing new or revolutionary. The future has to be engines like Doom3 even though the computers of today are maybe not quite upto the point of realising that potential.
      isn't true at all. HL2 *is* doing stuff that's new and revolutionary and in my opinion this is the direction many game developers will be going.
    4. Re:High Benchmark by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yup. Half-Life 2's lighting system is startlingly advanced in places, but a lot of its more interesting effects are a bit ... Subtle.

      I'm admittedly not too keen on the (rather crude) dynamic shadows from model entities - if the shadows took account of nearby bright lights then things wouldn't be so bad - but I really like a lot of the other aspects, such as those directional lightmaps and lighting on models which is gloriously subtle and realistic.

      I'm intrigued as to what Valve will do with HDR. I got Far Cry running with HDR the other day, and it looked genuinely horrible. Over-saturated colours, too much bloom in the wrong places and none of the right ones, and everything looking terribly unrealistic. With a bit of luck, Valve might do something a bit more understated and photographically realistic - they've managed it with shaders and normal-mapping, which people seem to assume aren't in Half-Life 2 because they're used so well...

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    5. Re:High Benchmark by Wwolmack · · Score: 1

      There's already a HL2 mod out that adds a HDR Bloom effect.
      Its made by Studio Radi-8, who are working on a mod called neotokyo.

      http://forum.neotokyohq.com/viewtopic.php?p=6486#6 486

    6. Re:High Benchmark by fozzmeister · · Score: 1

      Yeh, I take your point HL2 is revolutionary in its own way. It's got a load of new, beautiful stuff added to it, some of which is very good looking (and probably not done before), But It's of it is all an expansion of old ways, rather than revelutionary.

      Doom3 on the other hand, while you say that these things aren't new, they are new in games, but (to my knowledge) it's the first total real time lighting model in a game, which absolutely has to be the way of the future, the fact that they are stencil shadows and light sources are infinetly small are not important. It's a leap into a new direction, every bit as revolutionary as Wolf3d, Doom1 or Quake1 were.

    7. Re:High Benchmark by DeadScreenSky · · Score: 1

      Eh, and radiosity has been used occasionally since early Voodoo-based games. Both games heavily tweaked already existing lighting approaches.

      Plenty of other videogames use normal mapped characters with light maps and manage to make it look great. Not many games manage to pull off the dynamic lighting of Doom3 yet...

      --
      There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
    8. Re:High Benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      basically we'll leave it at slashdot has a lot of carmack dick riders

    9. Re:High Benchmark by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

      I wonder if the lower tech lighting in HL2 is an engine restriction, or a developer decision. I would hope that dynamic lighting capabilities are part of the Source engine, and Valve simply didn't use them in HL2 for the sake of playability.

      It would be very short sighted of Valve to NOT include next-gen capabilities into their next-gen engine.

      Anyone know for sure?

  7. I loved HL2 by kyager · · Score: 1

    Althoguh I never "finished" the game, I came pretty close to it, and I'll definately play it through a second time just for the expansion.

    1. Re:I loved HL2 by game+kid · · Score: 1

      I doubt I got even close; I suffered HL2 fatigue after some save states disappeared. I hope this expansion doesn't start after the end, 'cause I'm not playing through the progress I lost. College makes me a bit busier.

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    2. Re:I loved HL2 by superpulpsicle · · Score: 1

      I never could finish HL2. The part where we got to the giant spiders and the bungie racer was giving me way too much chills. I was getting uncomfortable staring at insects for that long. My game is a waste now.

    3. Re:I loved HL2 by mst · · Score: 1

      A pity that you stopped there - you missed some of the best levels in the game... including the beach racer levels, IMHO.

    4. Re:I loved HL2 by wickedj · · Score: 1

      Gee... I played the game all the way through and didn't "finish" it either. Still, it did provide 10 hours of entertainment.

    5. Re:I loved HL2 by Turn-X+Alphonse · · Score: 1

      DONT!

      As soon as you get to the citadel don'tcontinue on, even if you want to. It's the worst part of the game, the ending sucks and the only thing worth while in the ending theme... just find a torrent for the sound track and skip the crap.. you'll respect the game more for what you missed.

      --
      I like muppets.
  8. Nerdgasm by uglysad · · Score: 3, Funny

    Playing my PSP and I saw this article. I just suffered a nerdgasm

    1. Re:Nerdgasm by rapett0 · · Score: 1

      Don't worry thats as close as your ever going to get ;)

  9. What the hell. by TouchOfRed · · Score: 0, Troll

    What is all this talk about source "technology"? it pisses me off to no end. What people dont get is that its still a botched hl1 engine, which in turn is a botched up quake engine. Building your levels completely out of BSP geometry is completely unnacceptable these days. I nearly puked when i got to the city portions of the game and buildings are comprised of one single cube, no detail whatsoever. As for higher polygon counts, only MODELS in the game were increased. The geometry of the levels(most important) is still very simple, uses the same old csg, bsp, vis and rad tools. The engine is NOTHING NEW. NADDA. The story was half assed too.... They expect to have these memorable characters made from the end of HL1 and you're supposed to remember all their hero characteristics, when all they did was play a wav file that said "Catch me later ill buy you a beer" or "Oh do be careful gordon" to inaccurate lipsyncs. The whole ONOALIENSLOLZWTFKDIE is getting old, and cs-s is a joke. Biggest waste of 99$CAD for the "gold" version. PS: Steam sucks ass too.

    1. Re:What the hell. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Just for your information...the Unreal 2.5 and Doom3 engine both use bsp geometry. And I'm pretty sure the Unreal 3 Engine coming in 2006 will also use bsp. Open up the editors and you'll see. I can't say much for other engines, but I'm willing to bet that if the most advanced engines use them, so do the rest. No surprise that the Source Engine does as well.

    2. Re:What the hell. by TouchOfRed · · Score: 1

      Just for YOUR information, they dont use 100% BSP geometry to make their levels. Unreal and Doom use BSP brushes to block out their levels, and static meshes for pretty much anything else, which are MUCH more efficient and look *A LOT* prettier.

    3. Re:What the hell. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is parent rated troll? All the arguements provided are factual and true.

  10. Exactly. by game+kid · · Score: 1

    Just after the launch, many fans here expected it to get a 10 or a 9.5 from GameSpot. When they gave it a 9.2, I wasn't surprised. It still had some quirks, and that damn StutterBug was hardly acceptable (though I was running it on a proc just 0.1 GHz below minimum). If anything, I'm glad it got the 9.2--it seemed awesome, but a bit too creaky to me. Steam's memory-hogging (since it uses .NET I believe but IANA Steam expert) didn't help either.

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    1. Re:Exactly. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IANA!!?? English mother fucker. Do you speak it?

    2. Re:Exactly. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I Am Not A ... but you are a moron.

  11. Does anyone watch/care about G4TV? by HycoWhit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Screen Savers used to be great. Tried to watch the G4TV version but in the end I saved myself $350 buck a year and canceled the digital tier of cable. TechTV was the only thing worthwhile and G4 ruined it. Watching G4TV made me feel like an idiot for being a gamer. Who is the idiot now? Me for reading/posting under a G4TV thread or the /. editor that decided this story was worth the front page. Who cares about G4TV? And who cares about HL2 hype? I lived through too many years of HL2 hype--I'm cool with waiting for the product to hit the shelves and learning about the new stuff then...

    1. Re:Does anyone watch/care about G4TV? by chromaphobic · · Score: 2, Informative

      Personally, I don't care about G4 but I do care about HL2 hype as it's one of my favorite games of all time. :-) Next Wednesday will be the first time in months I've watched anything on G4, let alone The Screen Savers... err.. Attack Of The Show.

      Attack Of The Show? Excuse me while I go in the corner and laugh out loud for several minutes. That has to be the WORST name for a show EVER. So it should fit in real well on G4.

    2. Re:Does anyone watch/care about G4TV? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who is the idiot now? Me for reading/posting under a G4TV thread or the /. editor that decided this story was worth the front page.

      You, the story didnt make the front page, just the games section.

    3. Re:Does anyone watch/care about G4TV? by chrish · · Score: 1

      I still watch X-Play (formerly known as Extended Play); they've been tarting up Morgan Webb something fierce, but her and Adam Sessler still seem to be their sassy, sarcastic selves, and then reviews generally tend to jive with how I feel about the games.

      Just waiting for them to replace Adam with some "cute" but clueless chick, then I'll cancel the channel.

      --
      - chrish
  12. HDR Lighting by LunchTableGoat · · Score: 1

    I thought Farcry version 1.31 had HDR. if is the same technology it isn't exactly new.

  13. Not another expansion! by paulius_g · · Score: 1

    Already their Source engine is "messed up". It contains hundreds of bugs and performance issues. To top it all off, their Steam distribution platform also has sinister bugs that do affect some people (Steam always worked for me)

    I'm sure that they want to create this expansion pack for the money... But, their current technologies require really a lot of work.

    And, where is TF2? Guess that it will be never finished... And what about the bugs in Source, I guess that CS:S will never get into CAL.

    That's just my $0,02!

    --
    The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
    1. Re:Not another expansion! by frostbane · · Score: 1

      I'm sure that they want to create this expansion pack for the money... But, their current technologies require really a lot of work.

      They aren't selling this "expansion pack" its just a patch and new map that will be available to all owners of HL2.

      And, where is TF2? Guess that it will be never finished...

      Try Fortress-Forever I'd personally rather play a 3rd person mod that is currently being worked on than some vaporware that will probably never see the light of day.

  14. Ummm... sure by shoptroll · · Score: 1

    HDR isn't all that new... Everyone is doing it now. Age of Empires 3, Unreal Engine 3...

    Besides, wasn't HDR supposed to have been implemented in HL2 a long-time ago?

    And I thought The Lost Coast was just a new level, not an expansion...?

    --
    Insert Sig Here
    1. Re:Ummm... sure by Ahnteis · · Score: 1

      New set of levels = expansion. Doesn't mean it'll be packaged as a separate product. Think of it as a free expansion pack!

      HDR was implemented, and you can see it, in the source engine. It was not used in HL2 (the game). And of course, the new levels themselves take time to finish.

    2. Re:Ummm... sure by shoptroll · · Score: 1

      I agree with a new "set" of levels being an expansion. Epic Games has been doing this since Unreal 1's Fusion Pack. AFAIK, "The Lost Coast" is a standalone level. Unless Valve's updated their story, it's a single map.

      --
      Insert Sig Here
    3. Re:Ummm... sure by space_jake · · Score: 0

      Unreal 3? By everyone then you mean everyone in two years then right? Aye and you're correct on it just being a new level to stress test high end cards, said so back in January or early Feb on Steam News.

  15. Valve Should Do Other Things With Their time by jmole · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know Valve probably has different divisions that work on different aspects of their games, but if they have enough resources to come out with new improvements to the source engine and a new expansion can't they shift some of those resources to the areas that need more attention?

    They are working on expansions when HLDM and CS: Source are practically incomplete. Its been 5+ months (counting beta) that CS: Source still has only two available player models. I just think there are more important things that need to be added(especially VAC2)/fixed with the games already out rather then start on something new. There is a good portion of the servers out there now, which are being exploited with the falling skulls and purple boxes. I could care less about lighting when I can't even play in a server without it crashing due to exploits.

  16. Performance problems? by APE992 · · Score: 1

    My lowly Sapphire Radeon 9600 256mb with 5ns ram runs this game just fine maxed out at 2xaa and 4xAF. None of that slow down or skippage people spoke of. Even when I had 512mb of ram on this barton 2500+.

  17. This article was timeshifted from 2003... by TheGuano · · Score: 1
    Not only is high-dynamic-range-lighting old news for everyone else, but isn't it even old news for Valve? It looks like Source has always had HDR lighting, supported in DX8 and DX9. It was featured in all of those Blink videos Valve was putting out before the game's release,

    On a related note, it should really be called LOW dynamic range lighting - anyone with a DSLR knows that viewing HDR in the same color space decreases contrast and brightness in order make every color viewable, whereas low dynamic range gives images brilliance and pop and high contrast between colors, and washes out into pure white (the effect Valve and FarCry tout as HDR) easily because there aren't as many levels of brightness(hence, low dynamic range) to work with before it oversaturates.

  18. g4tv interviews w/voices of Dr. Kleiner and Alyx V by dayeight · · Score: 1

    http://www.g4tv.com/mediaplayer/index.aspx?video_k ey=9032
    The guy who plays Dr. Kleiner is pretty weird.

    Very weird.

    --
    when Push Comes to Shove
  19. SOURCE engine. Not Steam. by Ahnteis · · Score: 1

    Voodoo Extreme has word that new technology for the Steam engine, as well as a HL2 expansion entitled 'The Lost Coast', ....
    From the article: "On Wednesday's show, Valve's Doug Lombardi ... utilizes a brand-new technology that Valve is implementing into the Source engine. Called 'high-dynamic range lighting,' ...."

    See the difference? It's the SOURCE engine that is being shown off, not the STEAM "engine".

  20. Priorities! by Dubpal · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Lighting effects and a new level's all well and good, but surely the folks at Valve could be putting their energies to better use?

    I for one certainly could have waited another month or two for this release if it had meant they could put more manpower into delivering Day of Defeat: Source or Team Fortress 2 (Valve's very own Duke Nukem Forever) to the people earlier.

    With the constant delays their fanbase endured during the development of HL2, releasing something more gamers actually want would have been a tremendous sign of good faith.

    --
    If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
    - George Orwell
    1. Re:Priorities! by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 1

      Has it occurred to you that they may have different teams working on their different projects?

      Personally, I'd much rather have new single-player content than, well, anything else - so I'm really looking forward to whatever their single-player mapping team produces!

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  21. Screw G4 by samdu · · Score: 0, Troll

    They screwed TechTV, so screw them.

  22. I can't decide what's bigger news... by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    the fact the Half-Life 2 has an expansion or that G4TV might show something I care about!

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  23. Half-Life 2 64-Bit Edition? by thebagel · · Score: 1

    Personally, rather than expansion packs, etc, I'd like to see Valve port HL2 to Windows x64 - like was done with Far Cry.

  24. Attack of the Show by istewart · · Score: 1

    They renamed Screen Savers to "Attack of the Show." Now seriously, what kind of stupid name is that? How could you watch that and take it seriously?

  25. Great, Better lighting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Boy, when I finished the game the first time, left confused and abandoned in a sea of half-answered questions about what the hell just happened...

    When I pondered the non-plot of the sequel to a game that introduced "plot" to FPS games, my first thought was:

    "Gee I hope the expansion pack has better lighting"

    Valve, you suck.