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Half-Life: Alyx

half-life.com

101–110 of 444 posts

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or to put it another way it desensitizes people to violence.

It can. And if you're the victim of violence, that may be desirable. Likewise, if you have a fear of spiders bad enough that it interferes with your quality of life, you likely want to be desensitized to spiders.

I wonder how far that could go. If you had people play as spiders could you get people to actually sympathize with spiders?

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#102
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not pleased that Valve has shifted its focus from developing great games to being a digital platform rent-extractor I actually kinda am. Because they created a really great platform that has helped the market thrive even for tiny nobody indie devs. They've set a seriously high bar for digital store fronts and distribution services. I think I've got a lot more enjoyment from the games Steam has enabled to exist…

> They've set a seriously high bar for digital store fronts I agree with your general point, but no. No they have not. The Steam client is terrible. Unresponsive, un-intuitive, and surprisingly bad for searching in as well.

Some of those things are true, but their competition isn't generally better and who else provides the same level of community features and discovery tooling? The new Steam Labs stuff is actually a pretty big improvement over traditional systems.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#103
post #54

I think a fascinating part of Alyx is Valve choosing a female protagonist. 85%+ of VR users are male, compared to say 70/30 male/female balance of say Fornite. (1/2) Any way you carve it the audience for Alyx is going to weight heavily male. And research suggests that gender-swapping in VR is a profound psychological experience: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8260949 (1) https://www.rakutenintelligence.com/blog…

How is this different than a gender swap in a non-vr game?

I'll have to join vr chat as a girl tonight and see how things go.

That said I normally play star citizen w/ a female avatar, and other than thinking "the person I'm talking to might think I'm a girl" my mindset doesn't change much...

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#104
post #84
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does your body and the non-rational parts of your brain know that it is not real?

The short answer is yes, I replied to the other comment with several citations.

> Of course, if virtual reality is real enough to treat the disorder, could it still cause it? Rizzo doesn't think so. "I think that somebody would have to be psychologically compromised to begin with to mistake the events that go on in the virtual world for real events," he explains.

Rizzo thinks you can't because it doesn't seem real, not because there's no actual danger. Make it seem real enough, and their point doesn't stand anymore.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#105
post #38

This has got to be the most narrowly targeted game ever. I played through all of HL/HL2/Ep1/Ep2 IIRC, but I can barely even remember the story clearly it was so long ago. And it's such a blur maybe I never finished Ep2. I was 21 when HL1 came out but I didn't get to play it till I was like 24 maybe when I had gotten out of school and got a nice computer & some money. HL2 came out when I was 27.. still playing games b…

I understand what you're saying and I can see why you'd think that, but it's helpful for me to think of Half Life like the videogame equivalent of Star Wars. Not being alive during the release of the first films doesn't preclude one from entering at any point and enjoying the continuation of the story. Even if they haven't played it, kids today know of Half Life as a first person shooter that changed how we play first person shooters, so they're a warm lead for the sequel/prequel.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#106
post #69

Assuming I'm starting from scratch, what's the minimum cost these days to get the hardware that'll play this?

I'd say $400 for a great VR set (including hand controllers), and under $600 if you build a PC from scratch. Cheaper if you reuse some parts, cheaper if you buy any parts used. My 3-year old video card (bought for $300 then) is still kicking butt in any VR title I throw at it.

This is a valve flagship game. It's made for the index, which is a $1000 piece of hardware

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#107
post #73

Assuming I'm starting from scratch, what's the minimum cost these days to get the hardware that'll play this?

400 for an oculus, plus around 1000 for a competent pc? You could probably do less for the PC but at that point you are making compromises that I wouldn't personally make.

If you're going for something like the Rift S which is 2560×1440@80Hz you'd probably want to go up some from that to not compromise on the graphics. The lower resolutions on the other headsets would be less demanding.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#108
post #79
post #38

This has got to be the most narrowly targeted game ever. I played through all of HL/HL2/Ep1/Ep2 IIRC, but I can barely even remember the story clearly it was so long ago. And it's such a blur maybe I never finished Ep2. I was 21 when HL1 came out but I didn't get to play it till I was like 24 maybe when I had gotten out of school and got a nice computer & some money. HL2 came out when I was 27.. still playing games b…

The Oculus Quest I bought a few months ago is amazing. It's definitely not going to play this, even if it could support it (it can't on the hardware it comes with), but that's not to say in a year or two maybe there will be a relatively cheap system that can. At $400-$500 the Quest is more along the lines of a new high-end dedicated console, but it also offers an experience at that price point which I don't think can…

You can play it using Virtual Desktop's Steam VR mode (sideloaded) or running it on your computer and streaming to the Quest using the new Link mode, running on your desktop PC, or suitably equipped laptop.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#109
As much as a Half-Life fan I am, VR is a gimmick. It's expensive and will not be a "thing" in the foreseeable future. This is such a wasted opportunity. A normal Half-Life 3 would have brought back a lot of goodwill for Valve.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#110
post #89
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember everyone saying Blizzard would release map making tools for Overwatch like they did for Starcraft and Valve did for TF2/CSGO. Seems like a great way to add longevity to the game and the community content can even help fund the game.

Workshop was huge, albeit late, addition for the community, even without a map editor. But even Blizz couldn't reliably make maps using their internal tools that kept Reaper where he was supposed to be.

Was definitely a step in the right direction, they like to say their map making tools are too complex to release which is almost offensive. If employees can learn them then surely dedicated community members can figure out enough to get by. Community maps are never expected to be perfect and if one was ever picked up for the official rotation they could clean it up as needed.
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