I sure hope there'll be a non-VR version as well.
I'm sure you will be able to watch the story on YouTube at some point.
Half-Life: Alyx
181–190 of 444 posts
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#182As 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.
Hard to say. VR might be a gimmick in the game space. On the other hand, taking a step back and looking at the hardware, there's been a progression since at least the '70s of working immersive infrastructure getting cheaper, easier to use, and less nausea-inducing.
This local maxima of design and hardware may be a fad, but if it is, I expect in my lifetime to see another fad in maybe 10 years. The tech is just getting too cheap for people to not risk throwing a few mil at it every so often.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not pleased that Valve has shifted its focus from developing great games to being a digital platform rent-extractor that tinkers with VR and disinterestedly ships occasional updates to Dota and CS:GO, but I'm optimistic this might be good, even if it's only out of motivated self-interest to drum up the VR hype again. What I mean is, I get the sense Valve is unhappy that VR hasn't had its system-selling killer app…
> 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…
+1 to steam for how easy it is to enable mods via steam. modding can be a little daunting to your average user but steam enables communication about a mod (via the comment section which is really helpful for communicating with mod owner), quick and easy installation and uninstallation (underrated feature esp for non tech users), and discovery via the workshop
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Under 600 is not going to get you a pc that will work 2 years from now. If you have extreme budget concerns sure, but VR is a luxury item so if you are willing to shell out for the equipment, spend a little more to build a PC that will last.
I think he means that if you dont have a VR ready graphics card, that costs another $200.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how far that could go. If you had people play as spiders could you get people to actually sympathize with spiders?
If it were part of a designed and controlled therapeutic program maybe. But a regular and 'by design' aspect of a game, presumably online? Dunno if I, as an arachnophobe who plays plenty of games online-trust griefers not to ....well grief with that kind of power, heh.
Well, I was thinking something like a single-player game where you are the spider and, through the course of whatever the gameplay entails, you struggle as a spider to stay alive. This could perhaps build empathy for spiders and cause people to think twice before casually killing one. So beyond conquering arachnophobia, what if we can give people a positive affinity towards spiders?
A multi-player spider game sounds potentially terrifying.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. That helped also to make gems such as Black Mesa, a 100% fan made recreation of the first HL using HL2 engine and graphics. I wonder what would become of this game if they added a proper story, characters interactions, NPCs, subplots etc. (think Mass Effect style). Here's a full walkthrough for those living under a rock when it came out:*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brFEN4x9Xao
Thanks for posting! Impressive. By the way, back then I really liked the first stages of HL2 -- the dystopian intro absolutely rocks -- but eventually had to stop playing, partly because it was getting too long, and partly because of motion sickness. This really took me by suprise because I was a gamer, had enjoyed the original HL without problems... and suddenly there was a new breed of 3D games where I got motion s…
I had much the same experience, and it bummed me out, because I really enjoyed the series.
Two things basically eliminated the problem for me- first, like the other commenter said, increasing the FOV. The default is way too narrow, especially on modern widescreen displays. Adding another 10 or 20 degrees makes a noticeable improvement.
The other change was to eliminate the head-bob while running. There's a console command that takes care of that. Between the two, I went from nausea within a couple of minutes to being able to play for half an hour+ with no issues.
Hopefully this helps you, too!
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#187Pretty lame that there's no Linux support. Valve was supposed to be on our side. Oh well :(
I'll see what we can do about that ;)
If I know I can play day 1, I'll gladly shell out the $1k for the full index package. I just spent about that on new gpu + monitor so I was gonna wait to save up, but tux == bucks.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. That helped also to make gems such as Black Mesa, a 100% fan made recreation of the first HL using HL2 engine and graphics. I wonder what would become of this game if they added a proper story, characters interactions, NPCs, subplots etc. (think Mass Effect style). Here's a full walkthrough for those living under a rock when it came out:*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brFEN4x9Xao
Thanks for posting! Impressive. By the way, back then I really liked the first stages of HL2 -- the dystopian intro absolutely rocks -- but eventually had to stop playing, partly because it was getting too long, and partly because of motion sickness. This really took me by suprise because I was a gamer, had enjoyed the original HL without problems... and suddenly there was a new breed of 3D games where I got motion s…
It happened to me too and a lot of other players. [0]
[0] https://ca.ign.com/articles/2004/11/24/half-life-2-motion-si...
Changing the fov helps.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#189Frankly, I would rather play a new Portal.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#190On Tuesday I said: >Due to some of the technical limitations with people (motion sickness does not make a popular game) I don't think this is not going to be an open spaces and free-movement heavy game like HL2. Not having some really good expansive panorama scenes would be a disservice to the VR tech but don't expect to be able to drive a go-kart around in them. I'm expecting a lot of semi stationary scenes where th…
https://half-life.com/en/alyx/vr This is interesting to me, though I haven't played many VR games. Is this common with other games?
It's been 2yr since I was in VR but the only thing that stands out to me is support for finger/gesture tracking controllers which was more bleeding edge back when I was working on it but may be standard now. Everything else looks industry standard. No obvious omissions, no out of the ordinary inclusions.