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Bill Van Buren Talks Half-Life 2
node writes "Pixel Kill has up a summary of the talk Bill Van Buren recently gave in London on the development of Half-Life 2. It's an interesting insight into some of the design decisions that resulted in such a fantastic game, plus there are some bits about the direction they're taking the upcoming expansion."
without connecting to a remote server through teh internets yet?
Half Life 2 = 1 whole life
Listening to Bill Van Buren talk about Half Life 2 I realised a key reason for its excellence - it shows you the story rather than telling you, just like a good author showing you rather than telling you scene details. it doesn't parade the story in a cut-scene but rather puts you right in the middle of it.
It's little surprise only Valve have really gone down this path properly as it clearly took a lot of work making the "cut-scenes" unbreakable by the player. The powerful scripting system did often allow the designers to create scenes without the assistance of animators or story boards - they just threw together a rough cut with existing animations and rough voice over files (apparently Marc Laidlaw created some great ones, so much so they were tempted to leave in his Father Grigory).
As you may be aware they spent a lot of time getting eyes right - how they focus and even how your eyelids dip when looking down. They also used real people as character references (I wish I had a photo of the slide, it was really interesting to see the comparisons), though they ended up stylising them somewhat as having them too realistic was "just creepy" as Bill put it. They're continuing to move forward in the area of facial animation and have even hired Bay Raitt who worked on Gollum's facial animation.
Their character animation system is particularly impressive too - at one point Eli Vance was running, looking to the side and typing (!), all blended in real time. To create a scripted scene you kind of layer things (an eyebrow movement here, a wave there and so on) and adjust line graphs to alter movement intensity. It's all extremely intuitive looking stuff so the designers can more easily get on with making the game.
One thing I didn't realise was that Half life 2 rewarded the inquisitive - players who looked around not only saw newspaper clippings and photos but in doing so triggered revealing comments from other characters.
Someone pointed out how much time was spent alone in Half Life 2. Bill replied that they were aware of this and were working on keeping NPCs with you for more of the time in Aftermath. This brings with it the problem of ever-present characters becoming irritating, but they're aware of that and working to address it so they're helpful rather than annoying.
One final interesting detail - they narrowed the field of view from 90 to 75 in Half Life 2, narrowing it even further to around 50 during the final cut-scene with Breen.
It's pretty evident just how much attention Valve pay to details and how eager they are to keep moving forward with new ideas. Aftermath can't come soon enough.
One final interesting detail - they narrowed the field of view from 90 to 75 in Half Life 2, narrowing it even further to around 50 during the final cut-scene with Breen.
Anyone know why this would be? For artistic purposes? I don't play first person shooters, so I don't really understand why someone would want this...
Would I hesitate to kill a combine soldier if the face was too real? Would I develop a pathetic geek crush on Alex? I'm really curious about this. And I want to see this level of realism that they deemed to be too much.
It seems like your major beef with the game has more to do with the installation process then the actual game. I don't know how far you actually got into the game, but perhaps checking out the Xbox version will be a lot more user friendly for you. ( If you own an Xbox that is. )
Is it just me our was that article about as informative as something not very informative?
d ays=0&postorder=asc&start=2385.
More interesting to most slashdoterd would be the recent completion of the Alyx nude skin. You can get that here http://www.hl2world.com/bbs/160-vt16821.html?post
Valve attempted to change things by setting up direct download rather than buying from the shelf. Interesting as it changes delivery, but there was no compelling reason to buy it on-line once it hit the shelves. (Compelling to me would have been a couple bucks savings) Starting to see some of the retail box versions sold off in the bargain bin, but with the expansion set probably getting positioned as a steam delivered game - I may never see it. I'm not holding my breath for a $4.99 version at Office Max in a couple years.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
... state of current Half-Life development?
While Valve has always liked people developing closed source mods for their messy, buggy, and poorly organized SDKs, they've been downright evil with mod-independent development for Half-Life 2. (Note: I'm talking about engine plugins, not entire mods).
With Half-Life 1, the engine was very "open" in terms of API and functionality, and because of this, tons and tons of mini-mods sprung up for popular games like Counter-Strike. In fact, you could attribute the massive success and continuing livlihood of Half-Life 1 to this.
However, Valve's new stance with HL2 is that mods shouldn't be, well, moddable. They've threatened developers and locked out hugely potential functionality. The level of PR Valve does to ease this over makes my blood boil. They've been uncooperative, rarely listen to the community, and let _known bugs_ go unfixed for months and months, even after numerous release cycles. Read the hlcoders mailing list sometime. You'll hear Valve employees like Alfred Reynolds say that mod developers are "hackers holding Valve hostages", with regards to trivial things like printing to the screen. I'm not kidding.
It's not fun. Before Half-Life 2, I was a Valve fanboy. Now I can't stand them. I've had Doom 3 mod developers brag to me about the level of control they have with the Doom 3 SDK. Maybe I'm programming for the wrong game.
Also, with regards to the expansion... they've released one screenshot, and an onlooker realized it was actually a screenshot from HL2 Single Player. Oops. I guess we can file the expansion with VAC2 and DoD:S, which will be released on the Tweltfh of Never.
My name is Bail, and I'm a distressed Half-Life modder. *sits back down*
If you say "here goes my karma" I will bite you!!!
It's little surprise only Valve have really gone down this path properly as it clearly took a lot of work making the "cut-scenes" unbreakable by the player.
Out of interest, is this true? I'm not entirely experienced with such games in particular, but I felt that at least the System Shock series (off the top of my head; I haven't finished the Marathon series yet, so I'm not sure about those) also did it "properly". Is the article-writer exaggerating a mite?
!sig
I've read all the excuses about why valve acts the way it does about the state of their games. Frankly its a load of crap.
Other companies have had their development of games WIDE open practically like Never Winter Nights and the fans appreciated it MUCH more.
Everytime Valve talks it smells like a snow job with lies. Take the current development of Day of Defeat. They SOLD that game to people as part of the Half-Life 2 package implying that it would be out "soon" almost a year ago and it still is'nt out. I don't mind waiting, in fact if they would of said something like "we really have'nt put many resources into it because we've been working on half-life 2. Don't look for it anytime within the 6-10 months" I would of said "OK", respected them a bit more and patiently waited. Only recently did they talk about it once the Public Beta came out.
Now it's just a game and I don't get real worked up over these things (sounds like it though). But this arrogant attitude they have sucks.
My big beef with Half Life is the restrictive level of its liscence. I realize its just game, but I hate the dangerous precident it states in showing how easily the entertainment industry can control us. They can actually convince us to pay money to take our digital rights away from us, and the population will not resist.
At a time when we are facing an orwellian future of DRM, the cost of our digital civil rights is: Playing a game.
This is tragic in nature. Its a betrayal of free thinking principals by the population itself. The popuation of people who were willing to - without a second thought, buy this game when the full knowlege of what buying and installing this game meant as far as DRM goes is an unpardonable crime.
Half Life 2 proved that the public was willing to suffer major digital freedom loss to play a game. The evidence was right in front of the viewing public and the consumer ego mass still made the bad choice anyway.
I didn't buy HL2. (Don't Run Windows) but the fact that I made the choice not to really doesn't matter. It was the fact that the majority of computer using consumers who will buy freedom destroying software did so.
The choice that the consuming public makes affects everyone by what is availible in the future. I'm sure HL2 is an excellent quality game, but the terms of the game are simply cruel and malicious.
Again, its not about whether or not *I* choose to buy the game or not, its about what the majority of the consuming public was willing to do, and it is with the consuming public the fault lies.
There was a choice. They made the wrong choice and we will all pay for that choice years down the road.
halo 2's single player mode was just a multiplayer game with a vague storyline. They put in level after level that consisted of nothing more than running down identical corridors shooting at various things. I'm sure the counterstrike players loved it, and I'm sure it makes a fine multiplayer game. But it's a shit single player game. HL2, on the other hand, I absolutely loved. some of the outside scenes are amazingly realistic and fun to play. Riding the airboat down the canal system and finding random deserted buildings with huge landscapes was great.
From the article:
"It's little surprise only Valve have really gone down this path properly as it clearly took a lot of work making the "cut-scenes" unbreakable by the player." Rather, they just ignore you and run through the script regardless (even if you shoot them, drop heavy objects that should kill them onto them or block their path with items they should not be able to move).
For example, if you block a path the game doesn't want you to (including dynamically 'in game', not just 'in cutscenes') the game would completly disregard the usual rules of physics and simply walk through pushing aisde any and all obstacles like they were made of cardboard (making setting interesting traps impossible in some area's, it's clear your supposed to 'stick to the rails' - like so many games thinking outside the box is not encoraged).
Of course playing with things like grary's modshows this isn't a limiation of the HAVOK physics engine - the best thing about Half Life 2 IMO, and which is entirely 3rd party - it's just the way Valve implimented it.
Half Life 2 is nowhere near as impressive as the origional was for the time IMO. Admittedly the origional had lots of distinctly tedious jump puzzles towards the end, but in the first half it had far more atmosphere and felt much more immersive to me. This is not just a case of seeing it through rose-tinted glasses either, I've played it through again recently and it's still head and shoulders above HL2 IMO.
To me, it just seems like Half Life 2 is riding entirely on it's use of the HAVOK physics engine, which of course lots of other titles have used (Halo 2, Ghost Recon, Max Pane 2, Full Spectrum Warrior, and many more) it's just that Half Life 2 use it _so_ extensively and happen to give the player a really fun toy to use to manipulate objects.
Sure I think the artwork in HL2 was okay, but the underlying engine quality was poor IMO - with kludges like the use of 2 sprites and careful map design used to try to cover up problems with a lack of proper LOD handling (with large objects like whole ships just appearing and disappearing at random in front of you on the beach, and things like tree's being redered as 2D sprites - Yuck!). The lack of a decent lighting model was pretty prevolent in some areas (something well discussed), though I was equally urged by dodgy map design featuring such delights as points where enemies could infinately spawn from points apparently in mid air (the sort of crap Doom 3 pulled and that is a big no-no in my view).
I found it particularly disappointing because we know they are capeable of better.
Half-Life 2 is not a "fantastic game". It is a good game, but there is nothing revolutionary, spectacular, or all that above what should be the norm about it. This is not 1995, and we should not still be expecting the par to be only slightly above a twitch-and-shoot FPS.
No, quite simply put, HL2 is a good game, but not a fantastic game. The only reason it shines is because there's such a slew of mediocre or plain bad games out there these days. Too little flash and not enough substance.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Why yes it's true... even geeks can kick ass in the video games and movies created by geeks. Why just the other day I imagined I took out an entire cell of terrorist ninjas who had formed an alliance w/ alien invaders.
W. Mitty
For those that found this interesting, there's actually a good deal of this in the book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar , including the side-by-side character references.
Hmm... I had quite the opposite experience.
I purchased it via steam - entered my credit card number, and the game was streamed to my HD over the course of a few weeks leading-up to release without me having to do anything (except reload the steam client occasionally to trigger a download).
On release day, the game unlocked itself at 12:01am and was ready to play about 10 minutes later. No problem.
I'm quite happy with how it works. I have steam installed on my office computer now too and I can play CS/HL in my office when I get bored and have some time to kill. Fully authorized and patched just by logging-in from another location.
So for me, steam worked just fine. And now that they've started to ban asshat cheaters FOREVER from secure servers using VAC2 (no debates, no account unlocks - if a cheat is detected, you never play a source game on a secure server online again unless you pay for a completely new copy and create a new steam account), it's making things even more desireable for us honest players...
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Well, I *loved* HL1. Played it a lot, spend (much too much too much) time designing maps and generally having fun with it. Played it through several times since then, too.
HL2 blew me away. I was amazed, loved it. Played all the way through it slowly, enjoying each place.
Steam irritated me, though. And then, when I was through and wanted to play with maps and the like, it became a Major Hassle. Every time I loaded up a map, I got into trouble. I couldn't simply apply a crack and play and edit and design away. I couldn't design on my laptop, sitting outside somewhere (no WiFi). It was never a 'just fire it up quickly and do something for a few minutes'.
And so... I just stopped. Lost my interest. Haven't played it again. Haven't designed any maps. Haven't even looked at it for a long time, and am probably not going to.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
"The first several hours of game play are incredibly lame. First you have the 5 Cd's you have to put in your computer."
This is why god invented the DVD, which fixes this problem.
"Then when you START the game you have to wait an hour for it to do something. What, no one knows, but you just get to watch dialogue box after dialogue box."
Your hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
"Then of course there is the TSR they put on your system that is always connected, whether you are playing or not. If MS did this, there's be lawsuits!!"
I stopped starting Steam, until the game is started. Works fine for me.
"And then, when you finally get past all that crap, the game tells you to download the latest Nvidia driver, WHICH DOESN'T SUPPORT THE GAME AND CAUSES IT TO CRASH INSTANTLY!"
That would be an NVIDIA problem, wouldn't it, not a Half-Life 2 problem?
I've installed the game, I played it happily, and it's a fantastic game. You have posted no problems with the game.
I was disappointed to find that the interview was not present at the link, only a short discussion about the interview. For the actual interview see here: http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=66
Oddly enough, I solved that "set up the little tripod turrets and try not to get overrun" in a different way, that shows some interesting details.
In that scene, you trigger the Combine attack by jumping down off a balcony. I did 2 things very different from the designers' expectations: 1) I laboriously dragged the first two tame tripods I got with me through many rooms, all the way to that balcony (there are some FUN things you can do with the tripods, even before Alex hacks them, such as pointing one at the king ant-lion in the big shower room and letting the tripod take him out, or hiding safely behind a crate while the tripod I'm holding shoots the attacking mob of Combine toughs). 2) I then set up a tripod-crossfire trap at the top of the stairs leading up to the balcony with my "extra" tripods, remotely built the stack of boxes-to-climb using the gravity gun (before jumping off the balcony), and finally threw a tripod up onto the balcony as the attack started and climbed up after it (with no invisible barrier - different balcony than the one you were trying for, I think.)
The *really weird* thing was that, now being in a hallway with *one* very defensible entrance (especially with two extra tripods for crossfire), Combine soldiers kept spawning out of thin air in a dead-end dark corner behind me. (Stand a tripod in that corner and they're hosed, as they can no longer knock it down before it whacks them). Spawning baddies outta thin air in a cul-de-sac kinda breaks the illusion, methinks, so I was clearly supposed to be downstairs getting hammered.
Further proof that I was not supposed to solve the scene like this came when I whacked the last Combine soldier -- the Alex NPC appeared out of thin air in the upstairs hall I was in, right before my eyes, and failed to "see" me until I jumped down and away onto the first floor, at which time the scripted sequence continued.
Overall, I noticed several places throughout the game where I outwitted the scripting and went "behind the scenes", as evidenced by walkways with no top textures, round tanks with no back sides, and Combine soldiers I could see and shoot (at) but could not damage until I passed a certain point and they activated.
I found these interesting rather than annoying for the most part, and unlike some posters, I think I definitely got my money's worth out of the game.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."