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Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

half-life.com

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Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#201

Post by chmod775 »

behringer wrote: post #70
the_snooze wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve isn't beholden to any external shareholders, and Steam is as close to a money-printing machine a private company can have. Combine that with the fact that Gabe and company seem to have pretty decent values in line with their customers' interests, and you get nice outcomes like this.

And let's be realistic, this is going to sell an absolute crapload of HL2 to a whole new generation of gamers.

They make 30% on almost every PC video game sale in the west. Even if they sell 10 million copies of HL2 tomorrow, it's only going to move their bottom-line marginally.

And that's ignoring the fact that HL2 is 90% off right now ($1) and they're giving away HL1 for free.

No. Valve just does whatever Valve wants. The most valuable thing they're getting out of this is probably goodwill.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#202

Post by crtasm »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #120
ta1243 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the same captcha nonsense.

Is it ok to steal from a liquor store because they require a license shown to buy it and for some reason you can't get yours?

It's not stealing, please stop repeating this nonsensical comparison.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#203

Post by crtasm »

solardev wrote: post #61
entropicdrifter wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure does! Best use of it is on the Zelda games, IMO. Aiming the bow with the stick works fine when out of combat, but if you want to manually aim e.g. while riding a horse, doing the broad strokes with the stick and the fine tuning with the gyro works great.

Neat! I've never played a Zelda but that makes me want to try one the next time I'm at my friend's house

The WiiU, the previous Nintendo console, had it too.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#204

Post by swasheck »

vlovich123 wrote: post #182
swasheck wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the captcha on https://archive.ph is an endless loop of clicking the "I'm not a robot" reCAPTCHA checkbox for me. sometimes i'm lucky enough to get to the "click all boxes that have a bus" and i never know if the one tile that has a fraction of the side mirror counts as being a bus or not. sometimes i guess correctly, and sometimes i find myself in another endless loop of identifying objects. i suspect it's a nanny s…

That’s usually because you’re using Cloudflare’s DNS, either explicitly or implicitly via Apple private relay (long saga you can easily search for)

interesting. i found stuff on WARP and VPN but i’m not using that - just 1.1.1.1 on my router (and you do mention DNS). thanks for the tip.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#205

Post by ascagnel_ »

messe wrote: post #53
solardev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are first person shooters on the Deck? Do you just use the analog stick to aim, or is the gyro actually helpful?

I was never any good at aiming with the analogue stick in FPS games. On the deck I'll usually use the trackpads (configured as a trackball with haptic feedback) to aim approximately and then gyro for fine tuning, and I've found my aim is significantly improved. It's no keyboard+mouse, but it's close enough for me, that unlike with the analogue sticks, I don't find myself needing to reduce difficulty levels or enable…

> I sometimes find myself wishing I had a controller with the same layout as the deck that I could use when I have it docked to my TV.

You can pair basically most first-party controllers for the PS4, PS5, XSX/XSS, and Nintendo Switch (the exception being the original non-Bluetooth Xbox One controller) to the Deck, should you have one laying around.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#206

Post by ascagnel_ »

deelowe wrote: post #200
jorvi wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Valve / Gabe / Steam, but let’s not be false and pretend that they weren’t coasting before the build-up to the Deck release. Steam had gone without significant updates for almost half a decade.

That's not true in the slightest. They too some risks* that didn't pay off but that's what happens when you do whatever you feel like. * - big picture mode - steamlink - vr integration (somewhat successful)

They also did the Steam Controller (while the hardware was a failure, the software developed for it lives on in the Deck) and the Steam Link (the hardware there was more successful, but porting the software to smart TVs and streaming boxes and EoL’ing the hardware was the right move going forward).

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#207

Post by ascagnel_ »

SteveNuts wrote: post #16
ender341341 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alyx was really good (though I'm a wuss and couldn't finish it) but not a continuation of the cliffhanger that we've been sitting on for 16 years since episode 2.

When/if HL3 is announced, I actually believe it might break parts of the internet.

A decade ago, yes. Valve was riding high on the dual successes of Dota 2 and Portal 2, we were only 6 years out from HL2Ep2, and CS:GO was newly released.

Today, not so much. Aside from a prequel, the series had been dormant for as longer than it had been alive (11 years alive 1998-2007, 13 years dormant 2007-2020), and the prequel required a pricey hardware peripheral to run. It’d get attention, but it wouldn’t be that big of a deal at this point.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#208

Post by ascagnel_ »

OliveMate wrote: post #177

As someone who first played a CD copy of Half-Life before picking up the Steam version, it's amazing to see that they brought back features which were neglected from the Steam release – most notably the viewroll when moving left & right and a semi-recreation of the old main menu. Many of the QOL changes are greatly appreciated (especially grenade physics), the changes to technical limitations (and addition of func_ve…

If you still have the serial from that CD copy, you can plug it into Steam and redeem a copy (and also the expansions, depending on which version you bought).

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#209

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

kirso wrote: post #190
ProZsolt wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half Life was one of the games that has native ports an run fine on OSX before Catalina.

One of the worst things that happen to MacOS is cutting support. Apple really is careless about gaming :(

Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility at all. Mac software is OS version dependent, and the OS version is hardware dependent, and if you don't have the approved OS and hardware combo then tough luck.

Say what you will about Windows and Microsoft, but they live and breathe backwards compatibility.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/windows-95-went-the-...

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#210

Post by IntelMiner »

skrrtww wrote: post #111
xcv123 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run Half Life on 64-bit MacOS (including ARM64) using Crossover. It uses Rosetta and Wine. https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/half-lif...

It's unplayable in Rosetta because of the x87 everywhere. Like sub-20 fps unplayable.

x87 everywhere? as in...floating point instructions?

These games aren't designed for an 8086, having an FPU is generally expected

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