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Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

half-life.com

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Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#211

Post by [deleted] »

nirui wrote: post #170
endoblast wrote: post #52

My claim to fame on the 20th anniversary (84 views thus far) is to have completed Ravenholm without inflicting any deaths or receiving any injury: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_XN_RwjnqM

8:54 Holy shit I don't even know one could do something like that, jumping back to the room and hide in complete safety, very smart. Also, at 0:30, turning off that living place hazard is very kind of you. And you also saved Bob and Jim from being cut in half by doing that. Father Grigori might not like it, but he's crazy too.

[deleted]

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#212

Post by endoblast »

nirui wrote: post #170
endoblast wrote: post #52

My claim to fame on the 20th anniversary (84 views thus far) is to have completed Ravenholm without inflicting any deaths or receiving any injury: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_XN_RwjnqM

8:54 Holy shit I don't even know one could do something like that, jumping back to the room and hide in complete safety, very smart. Also, at 0:30, turning off that living place hazard is very kind of you. And you also saved Bob and Jim from being cut in half by doing that. Father Grigori might not like it, but he's crazy too.

I think I went off to make a cup of coffee IRL which is why I stayed in that room longer than needed ('Now brother step into the cart!')

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#213

Post by dagmx »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #208
mrpippy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still 32-bit

Shouldn't be a problem. Windows 11 and Wine can run most 32 bit Windows apps just fine. I managed to get Winamp 2.6 working on Windows 11.

The reason I asked is that macOS no longer runs 32-bit apps natively. So If they haven’t taken the time to make these 64 bit, there’s no real hope for a Mac native port again.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#214

Post by happytoexplain »

satvikpendem wrote: post #172
happytoexplain wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>their image has been largely rehabilitated among many young devs Whoa, what? I only hear people complain more about Windows over time.

Lots of people praise VSCode and have neutral to positive opinions about GitHub. I haven't heard any more complaints about Windows than I've been hearing over the past 20 years or so anyway.

VSCode is a good example, since you're talking specifically about devs. But I'm not sure how much that makes up for other crappy MS software (Windows, Teams, specific UX issues with OneDrive and the whole Office suite).

I haven't heard love or hate for post-acquisition GitHub changes.

As for Windows, I could be in a bubble. But I use Windows, and I hate the UX more every release. Ads, "suggestions", automatically reenabling features, UI complexity, hard to read text, unintuitive UI, performance issues, audio device issues, useless background processes, new layers on top of configuration UI rather than replacing/updating old layers. I think those have all gotten worse since Win7, some since XP. And I thought I saw that opinion corroborated generally. Maybe there's not literally more complaining, but that doesn't necessarily mean people don't agree it's getting worse. What are they going to do, type the complaint in increasingly larger font each year?

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#215

Post by KronisLV »

chii wrote: post #173
mepian wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on this in the first year, on the gameplay code. Glad it’s finally bearing some fruit.

Good stuff. I have seen a lot of "complaints" from various people that they shouldn't have chosen UE, as it will have made the game much slower to develop since everything needed to be done from scratch. But the graphics looked much nicer in UE and not to mention the tooling is nicer than what one could use with mods. Surely, the upfront cost of porting aspects of HL2 over to UE is not investment lost.

Hasn't Unreal Engine 5 gotten a bunch of criticism about a lot of the games made with it having high system requirements, and often playing like a stuttery mess? Though it's hard to tell where the technical decisions end and developers not caring much about optimization (or expecting people to use upscaling even for 1080p) starts.

Recently, it was revealed that even the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 benchmarks used upscaling and the problems with visually stunning but horribly performing games like The Forever Winter were also pretty obvious.

I did very much appreciate what Black Mesa did, though. Maybe Project Borealis will also be a success story in due time.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#216

Post by theandrewbailey »

derbOac wrote: post #97
endoblast wrote: post #52

My claim to fame on the 20th anniversary (84 views thus far) is to have completed Ravenholm without inflicting any deaths or receiving any injury: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_XN_RwjnqM

I've played through HL2 and its expansions so many times as a kind of meditative relaxation thing I couldn't tell you how many times. I could never get used to Ravenholm though. Thinking about it even now years later stresses me out a tad.

I played HL2 after playing STALKER. I've had to go into abandoned underground lab to get paper so many times that Ravenholm didn't phase me.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#217

Post by dawnerd »

justaj wrote: post #205
jsheard wrote: post #3

It doesn't seem to be mentioned here, but HL2 (which now includes the sequel episodes) is completely free to claim on Steam until the 18th, if you're new to the series. https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/ Also try clicking on the gravity gun at the end of the anniversary page.

So if I already own HL2, that means I'd automatically be able to access those sequels / episodes?

Yep they’re actually all just one game now. They’ve bundled them and kinda archived them old standalone.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#218

Post by brnt »

satvikpendem wrote: post #143
Zamiel_Snawley wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running native or emulated doesn’t really matter if the performance is good enough. Better translation layers are what made the Steam Deck possible.

Good enough doesn't mean optimal, though. Every layer adds a performance penalty and that's how we end up in situations where we have layers and layers of abstraction eventually making all programs slow even on ever increasing hardware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill's_law

In fact, Windows gamers are using DXVK to reduce overhead.

One needs to realise graphics APIs have historically not been terribly efficient.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#219

Post by nathanasmith »

When Half-Life 2 came out it caused me to break a video game addiction I'd had since being a teenager. I was so awestruck by the quality and enjoyment I derived from the game that after playing through it any other game I tried later paled in comparison to the memory. It got to the point that I couldn't make it more than 30 minutes into a new game without losing interest and eventually I just stopped buying games altogether and that was it. I'm still not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#220

Post by archon810 »

tikhonj wrote: post #37
eknkc wrote: post #6

20-25 years ago a handful of companies had a weird hold on me. I’d jump on anything Google made back then. Blizzard could sell me any game they came up with. If it was from Blizzard, it was gonna be great. Lost all of it obviously. Not a single company has my loyalty anymore. Except if valve were to release a mystery black box with faint lambda symbol on it. I’d pay whatever they asked for it.

That's pretty much exactly the logic that got me to buy a Valve Index + Half Life Alyx and it was totally worth it . VR turned out to be cooler than I expected and both the game and the Index were just so satisfyingly well-executed. It's nice to have products which clearly had far more attention to detail and quality than was economically necessary. It's clearly the result of a different philosophy than I've seen at…

I also own a Deck OLED and I have to disagree on the polish. When I first got it, there were so many little issues with compatibility, crashes, and straight up freezes, I even considered returning it. It got better since, but if you try to use anything but Steam games, it's death by 1000 papercuts.
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