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Half-Life: Alyx

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Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#201

Post by murph-almighty »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #81
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…

It's a pattern with Valve. Remember Chell? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chell_(Portal)

True, but Chell had no speaking lines (not hating on Valve, Gordon Freeman/basically all their 1st person protagonists are mute). We've seen Alyx as a developed character who's gone through some trauma (not spoiling here) so I'd argue this is a bit more exciting.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#202

Post by OnlineGladiator »

skyyler wrote: post #71
ben7799 wrote: 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…

24 year old here. I played video games in my teens, including the HL series. I stopped playing video games roughly five years ago. I will be building a computer to play this game. Peers my age are also very excited for this. Not just because it's a new Half Life game, but because it's the VR game we have been waiting for since the VR craze started.

But how many people are going to spend $2000+ to play this? You're building a new gaming PC and possibly buying a new VR headset just for this game?

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#203

Post by bilekas »

Critics : "Development studios are making games for Valve hardware, sure, but they're not using everything properly"

Valve : "Hold my beer, lets give them what they wanted in 3D, in VR"

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#204

Post by ihuman »

neogodless wrote: post #31
rocky1138 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to make this work, hardware-wise, you'd need the lighthouses, too.

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…

No, there's an abstraction layer [0], the problem is the quest and valve's controllers use incompatible methods to track position. The Vive/Index uses its camera to detect the motion of fixed markers (the lighthouses), while the Quest analyzes the surrounding environment directly. The Quest's cameras are looking for lights on the controller to track it, while the controller's cameras are looking for the lighthouse's lights to track themselves.

[0] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#205

Post by Baeocystin »

bluthru wrote: post #158
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…

Gordon was famously mute and his hands and forearms were hidden. This allowed anyone to easily immerse themselves. (Same for Portal.) Unlike a third person game where you're controlling a character, I could see how having a different voice and hands in VR would be odd. I bet Valve realized that a mute protagonist no longer works in a story-driven environment.

I remember reading various making of stories regarding the half-life world back when it was still relatively new, and even then the designers spent a lot of time talking about how difficult it was having a mute, non-interactive protagonist. What they pulled off is excellent considering the state of gaming at the time, but I think you're right in that it just wouldn't fly today.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#206

Post by criddell »

thatguyagain wrote: post #131
s9w wrote: post #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.

Nope. It is not a gimmick and will definitely be a "thing" in the foreseeable future. So we have different ideas of the foreseeable future, interesting.

I've been saying the same thing ever since I tried VR in 1989.

One day it's going to be great. Probably not soon, but one day!

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#207

Post by shadowgovt »

dariusj18 wrote: post #168
eanzenberg wrote: post #21

I still remember the first time I saw screen grabs of screenshots of Half Life 2 from PC Gamer, back in 2004 (or was it 2003). I thought I was looking at real-life photos and didn't realize they were from a video game initially. Then, watching the tech demo with all the cool physics really excited me. Maybe it's because I'm older now, but this didn't "knock me out" like that did.

VR is tricky to get a sense for without actually wearing a headset. When a coworker brought in his Oculus for the first time I thought it was going to be gimmicky, and I was blown away by how immersive it is.

Oculus is the first headset kit I ever used that effectively solved the lateral motion problem. Specifically, the human neck isn't hinged so that the head rotates around a pivot right behind the eyes; if you tilt your head up and down, your point of view is moving forward and backward, not just tracking.

3DOF trackers (like Google Daydream) and low-fidelity 6DOF trackers don't capture that dimension of data, and even if you don't consciously notice it's missing, strapping into anything of equivalent fidelity to Oculus Rift or better makes you really notice the difference. It's night-and-day.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#208

Post by outworlder »

the_af wrote: post #165
outworlder wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just seems like a small target of players who are old enough to fondly remember the original + still have time to play long form games + still have gaming equipment + have VR/are willing to buy VR. Are they making playing the previous games a requirement? Games can stand on their own, even if they are best enjoyed when you already have some emotional investment.

No idea, but my guess would be the previous games are a requirement, or at least HL2. The Half-Life series is "story heavy" single player. These are characters we know.

As was, for example, Baldur's Gate II. And yet you could enjoy it without playing the first. You'd miss all the references though.

They could just as easily take a similar route. And they should, because it's on a different medium.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#209

Post by willis936 »

Here is a light read for any fans of the series who want a nice conclusion to the story. This is a bit of a myth to me, as I don’t know how substantiated the story is, but it is nice to think that this is a conclusion written by the author. Considering its darkness, it is more likely a piece of fanfiction. It reads like its fanfiction. Anyway, it was nice to go for one last ride with the characters. It sounds like Vincent’s VA is different and the overall tone is lighter. The tone of the trailer did feel very much like the writers involved with portal, which managed to treat its setting with proper respect while still managing to be light for those not paying too close attention. I hope HL:A manages to keep the themes of the series intact.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/08/half-life-3-plot-marc...

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#210

Post by criddell »

fhood wrote: post #149
thatguyagain wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It is not a gimmick and will definitely be a "thing" in the foreseeable future. So we have different ideas of the foreseeable future, interesting.

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.

Not all video games involve walking or lots of motion.

I think a game like Myst with puzzles that you manipulate with your hands could be pretty interesting.

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