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Half-Life: Alyx

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Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#191

Post by macjohnmcc »

the_af wrote: post #136
squarefoot wrote: post #37

Earlier 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…

A game that gave me motion sickness but only when I watched someone else play was Turok on the Nintendo 64. Watching someone else play was sickening.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#192

Post by outworlder »

s9w wrote: post #133
outworlder wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a gimmick. It seems that you have not yet tried it. There are a few improvements required, such as resolution and the freedom of movement. Note that I did not mention price. It will come down – even more, that is. Also, they need Half Life 2 Episode III. The series ended in a cliffhanger.

No one tried it because it's expensive AF. And you need space. And there are so many of them. And the storefronts don't match. And there are no games. And you sweat. And they're heavy. And you need a monster PC. And it doesn't work. And and and. It's a gimmick. Alyx is a $2000 game for a normal gamer, counting an index and a sizeable PC upgrade.

> No one tried it because it's expensive AF.

If you already have a gaming PC, you just need a headset. I got mine for $300 on a Black Friday. Is that 'expensive AF'?

If you are buying a PC for the sole purpose of using it with a VR headset, then fine. But who does that?

> And you need space.

Not that much. And depends on the game. If you are playing flight simulators you need zero additional space. I have a small room and it is enough space.

> And there are so many of them

It's the first time I hear that. There's Vive, there's Rift (and now the Index). Forget about all the Windows reality or whatever it's called. That's not much.

> And the storefronts don't match

Who cares. Get your games from the Steam store. Same storefront.

> And there are no games

Debatable. There's quite a few VR-only games, and even more games that support VR (even the good old Skyrim has VR support).

> And you sweat.

That will never be solved, you are moving after all. If you are talking just around the headpiece, than it's a case of YMMV.

> And they're heavy.

Not really. May be a bit inconvenient, but at least the Rift doesn't seem to weight more than my bike helmet. And, you know, I move much more with the latter.

> And you need a monster PC

No you don't. That's again game dependent. The kid's $600 PC runs all VR titles he cares about just fine. You just have to prioritize the GPU, as you should with any 'gamer' PC.

> And it doesn't work

It works great.

> It's a gimmick.

It's an uninformed opinion. You need to try it, rather than regurgitating opinions you saw somewhere.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#193

Post by dariusj18 »

dntrkv wrote: post #151
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #138

On 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?

Yes, the teleportation mechanic was great in Robo Recall. Much better IMO than movement with the analog sticks.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#194

Post by dole »

vorpalhex wrote: post #78
empath75 wrote: post #50

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.

VR therapy for fear of spiders made the news [1] a few years ago, so it's quite possible there's been more (professional?) progress in the field.

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/16/technology/fearless-vr-spid...

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#195

Post by neogodless »

wccrawford wrote: post #82
neogodless wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm assuming that means that Valve programs this in a way that dictates the hardware, instead of having an abstraction layer that accepts player position, viewpoint and hand inputs regardless of the hardware? Is that something you have a source to confirm? I would like to think that if Quest is going to release a way to hook up to the PC to play SteamVR, they'll be sending all that positional data from the headset…

The Index Controllers need the lighthouses to know where they are in space. They simply don't work without them.

Oh I missed that rather important point that they want to add the Index controllers to the mix!

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#196

Post by ofrzeta »

delive wrote: post #7
huhtenberg wrote: post #2

I sure hope there'll be a non-VR version as well.

Doubt it, the website says it was built 'from the ground up' for a VR experience.

I don't doubt this but I think it should be quite easy to make a regular 3D FPS from an original VR game.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#197

Post by 24gttghh »

cdirkx wrote: post #172
fhood wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to play games that make them sick. Ever. It will not happen. This is not a solved problem, and VR will never be anything but a niche technology until you can walk in a video game without needing to throw up.

Do people still get motion sickness from 3D movies?

I definitely have in the past. It's very disorienting and not worth the extra 5-15$

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#198

Post by shadowgovt »

fhood wrote: post #161
outworlder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Steam client is terrible. Unresponsive, un-intuitive, and surprisingly bad for searching in as well. I can only agree with the last one. It works fine for, you know, downloading and playing games. It rarely ever has issues. The store could use some work, but it does a better job than, say, Apple App Store – the discovery queue has shown me titles I would have never seen before, as did the curators. Have you tri…

Steam's only real purpose is as a store right? I can open an executable pretty well most of the time. And Steam makes enough money through said store that I think they need to be held to the standards of Amazon, rather than their contemporaries.

Store, purchase tracker, platform identification system, and analytics engine to push data on game performance and hardware configuration back to the Steam service itself as a mass aggregator so they can keep their finger on the "pulse" of real PC deployments and thereby come quite close to solving the problem that was once the bane of the entire industry ("Game doesn't work on my PC because drivers").

I think people tend to overlook how valuable Steam has been as a clearinghouse to aggregate that last piece of data.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#199

Post by riversflow »

zerocrates wrote: post #49
dvtrn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not going to be anything more than a gimmick. Not sure if I share this sentiment, I read elsewhere Valve is treating this as their next "flagship" release, a true first class VR game (hopefully not just some 30 minute "experience" that ends right as it's getting good). It this were literally any other game studio I'd have an eyebrow raised right now, but when Valve puts their full muscle and creative energy behi…

> When Valve puts their full muscle and creative energy behind something as a flagship, lead-off hitter, they've yet to disappoint. Genuine question: when would you say is the last time they did that? I don't really think of Dota 2 or CS:GO or whatever to be "flagships." I'd have to go back to, Portal 2, I guess, but I'm not sure even that I would call a "flagship," just a really good game. Certainly the Orange Box a…

Seriously curious, how is CS:GO not a flagship? It’s core to the esports scene, and is always one of the most played games on steam.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#200

Post by mlindner »

aresant wrote: 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…

Female protagonists in game is the new fad. It has nothing to do with the gender ratio of the players playing the game.
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