A criminally overlooked feature of this game is the release of the dev tools used to make maps and mods. Giving the tools away for such a powerful base game is what gave HL1 and HL2 it's incredible staying power.
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Half-Life: Alyx
281–290 of 444 posts
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what all these posters are talking about, VR simulates your elbow + arm position 100% with normal IK. If you don't believe me just load up Echo VR and look at your arms. Valve probably just doesn't want them blocking your view.
The same controller pose can correspond to different arm positions, so VR games/apps that do IK are making a guess that is generally going to be somewhat inaccurate. I do like the implementation in Lone Echo, though.
Whatever they're doing is pretty accurate. I've never noticed any issues.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I agree. I have no idea why so many people praise steam endlessly. The last two games I tried to play through the app were unfixably buggy at times. These games were Portal and Doom2016. Boooooo.
Steam is a shop, it has little to do with the quality of the games sold there.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#284This 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…
The Quest can play this - Oculus Link, ALVR, Virtual Desktop, etc.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#285I hate that In The Valley of the Gods was cancelled for this.
Has it been officially canceled, or is this still speculation based on people removing it from their twitter bios? The game's steam page is still up.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#286A criminally overlooked feature of this game is the release of the dev tools used to make maps and mods. Giving the tools away for such a powerful base game is what gave HL1 and HL2 it's incredible staying power.
Overlooked? I'm confused...
> "A set of Source 2 tools for building new environments will ship with the game, enabling any player to build and contribute new environments for the community to enjoy. Hammer, Valve’s level authoring tool, has been updated with all of the game’s virtual reality gameplay tools and components." [0]
They do have that feature coming with it? Or am I confused on what you are referring to?
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/ (appears in the description under the "Community-built environments" header)
EDIT: I misread what you meant. Haha I thought you meant overlooked by their team, as if they didn't include it.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#287I 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…
OH NOES VALVE IS GOING TO MAKE US ALL TRANS WHAT A TRAGEDY
As a trans person, I welcome this cis introduction to gender dysphoria.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably just that they would get in the way. IK works brilliantly in VR for arm simulation, see: Echo VR.
Yes, it does work great in general, not just in VR. It just that IK can't know if you have your elbow to the left or right, which would be confusing.
Humor me for a moment and just load up Echo VR and stand in the main menu looking at your arms.
Where in that scenario would you say you are confused about the position of your elbow?
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#289A cool idea that I'd never ever ever try. Half Life 1 on low res was scary enough. In all seriousness though – is there any studies done on potential PTSD-like effects that arise from this sort of VR game?
I play mostly FPS games in VR. To be honest stabbing a dude was a pretty jarring experience the first time I did it in VR. I also remember hitting the ground pretty hard the first time I heard rounds whizzing over my head. But that kind of adreneline pumping experience goes away really quickly. Once it's normalized your body stops having a reaction to it.
As a counter anecdote, I had no such reaction. It felt no more "real" than a game played with my mouse and keyboard.
The only time I hit the ground was when I tried to go into a crouch and had the floor height misconfigured. That left a mark.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx
#290[deleted]