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Half-Life: Alyx

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Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#351

Post by Miraste »

duncancarroll wrote: post #288
neals wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Eh, Echo's IK works great 98% of the time. The other 2% it's anywhere from slightly off to completely unaligned and pointing nonsense directions. I don't think there's a way to do better than this with current sensors. Valve probably decided they didn't want that kind of amateur-looking content in a game they're betting the (VR) farm on.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#352

Post by frakkingcylons »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #222

"Play on any SteamVR system. If you have VR hardware that works with a computer, then it works with SteamVR." Bravo Valve. This is why anyone interested in this should get a Vive and stay well clear of Oculus/Facebook's headsets. They are busy trying to capture the VR market by setting up exclusivity arrangements with studios to lock games to their platform to cut others out which just divides up the already small ma…

Valve has picked a market to focus on (PC VR) at the cost of foregoing the much larger audience of standalone VR customers. You can’t blame these customers for not buying the Index since it doesn’t meet their needs. If Valve made their own standalone headset at a similar price point, I think people would be all over it.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#353

Post by dom96 »

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.

I wonder if I'm the only one who's getting a TF2 vibe from this trailer. The game's art style doesn't seem like it's going for realism, possibly a decision to make it playable on more hardware?

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#354

Post by dom96 »

martin1b wrote: post #321

We've been waiting for decades for the release of this. I'm a HUGE fan of HL but not a fan of prequels. Hopefully this will showcase VR as a viable medium. IMHO, I think Portal VR would have given a more immersive experience, along with less locomotion issues. However, I'm sure Valve has done their research. My concern is, if this isn't met with favor, will Valve bow out of game development permanently? It just feels…

> IMHO, I think Portal VR would have given a more immersive experience, along with less locomotion issues. However, I'm sure Valve has done their research.

This was covered in the interview video[1], Valve employees mentioned that they considered Portal but they thought that a game where you spend a significant amount of time jumping through portals at high speed would make you sick.

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9K0eJEmMEw

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#355

Post by test98344 »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #202
skyyler wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have not played an FPS for over a decade, and am considering buying a PC for this.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#356

Post by [deleted] »

mikl wrote: post #159

Hope they’ll make a non-VR version at some point. Much as I enjoyed previous Half-Life games, I don’t want to buy a VR-rig. They’re obviously hoping that a Half-Life game will be enough to get gamers to adopt VR, but I don’t see a lot of people willing to remodel their living room to make space for a VR setup, at least over here in Europe, where people have fairly small homes in comparison to the U.S.

[deleted]

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#357

Post by himinlomax »

reificator wrote: post #291
himinlomax wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a fascinating part of Alyx is Valve choosing a female protagonist. There has been other games with a female protagonist, but the backlash was so bad against them that they were completely forgotten. I know it's obscure, but you can look it up, there's those two games called "Portal" and "Portal 2", and the two main characters are female. You've probably never heard of them because of all the misogyny. ... o…

To be honest I'm surprised that there wasn't any backlash. I find the weight and attractiveness jokes that GLaDOS throws at the player absolutely hilarious. But that can be a touchy subject, especially with Chell as the protagonist instead of, say, Gordon Freeman.

There was no backlash because nobody whatsoever has a problem with a female protagonist.

What some people have a problem is recasting an iconic character as a woman for the sake of "diversity," or any form of forced diversity for that matter.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#358

Post by reificator »

himinlomax wrote: post #357
reificator wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I'm surprised that there wasn't any backlash. I find the weight and attractiveness jokes that GLaDOS throws at the player absolutely hilarious. But that can be a touchy subject, especially with Chell as the protagonist instead of, say, Gordon Freeman.

There was no backlash because nobody whatsoever has a problem with a female protagonist. What some people have a problem is recasting an iconic character as a woman for the sake of "diversity," or any form of forced diversity for that matter.

I ask this earnestly: Did you read past the first sentence in my previous post?

I wasn't suggesting that there would be backlash with a female protagonist. I was suggesting there could have been backlash to the way that protagonist was treated, due to her gender.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#359

Post by MaximumMadness »

wayoutthere wrote: post #8
MaximumMadness wrote: post #4

Looks like this game's focus is going to be on the player, rather than the game world itself. Where HL1/2 were focused on making the objects, enemies, and places you interacted with feel like real life. HL:A will be focused on the character you control, giving you complete autonomy with finger capture and motion control. Valve is pushing forward gaming with Half Life once again

Given the accuracy (or lack of it) of individual finger movements on the Valve Index controller, it's not going to be anything more than a gimmick. The tech looks impressive in a demo, but our hands are used to manipulating things with a much finer touch than the Index controller allows so it doesn't translate very well to games.

I can't help but disagree here. Hand movements and interactions with the world of VR today are like having cinderblocks for hands. The nuanced control that this is going give will be huge IMO

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#360

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

reificator wrote: post #263
drivers99 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember specifically where I was in the game when I got motion sick. I guess the brain is good at remembering things like that for survival reasons. What I've learned as a strategy: Stop playing as soon as you start feeling ill. Just save and come back to it tomorrow. Do not try to get back into it (or anything similar, like watching videos of FPS games) after a short break. Wait until the next day or later. You s…

> As for FOV, which seems to be the cause, I found a reference that says the fov is 75 until you meet Alyx. (Wait, what?) Agreed: What? Can someone please shed some light on whether this is true and why that would be?

I don't know if it's true, but maybe they want you to look around City 17 and admire the scenery in the earlier part of the game (larger FoV) and later want you to focus on action once you meet Alyx (smaller FoV)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs8yldyeoZg

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