Cool, but do I really feel like buying this game yet again? Still holding out for HL 3. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Half Life 3 is out, dude. It's titled "Alyx".
Technically it's called Half Life 3-D
Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
231–240 of 277 posts
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like a perfect environment to make games. No budget or schedule pressure, virtually limitless resources so the staff can strive to make art with love and without the corruption of chasing a bottom line. The entire media industry on almost every format is chasing nostalgia because they refuse to recreate the environment that made endearing stories and experiences in the first place.
That's only the case if you are so blinded by advertising that you don't see the innovations happening in the low(er) budget media.
Not at all. Where are the low and mid budget movies? Where are the games publishers on low budget games? Art as a business has transitioned to investor gambling rather than having any thought for the quality of the product. That's what I take issue with.
Sure single person self-funded passion projects exist. They always have and they always will. And sure what one person can do is more than they ever could in the past. It's still not the same as something that's forged by a team of visionaries each with unique backgrounds and skillsets.
Frost makes the point more well spoken and stylish than me often.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!')
Wait, this was all one take? Not spliced together? Some of those falls looked like you had a mm to spare before you would have taken falling damage.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#234My 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 too was wondering how to survive the standoff on top of the building when you get the shotgun. Was a brilliant solution.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#235I can never understand why they haven't made a HL3. Given that they could literally make approximately 3.88 bajillion dollars from it in 24 hours. I suppose this is the very definition of developer integrity.
Gabe Newell speaks about it in the documentary. Here's an article about it: https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/16/24298091/gabe-newell-hal...
Basically, they wanted more than just simply finishing the story, they wanted to make some cool new features, similarly to what HL2 was compared to HL1.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#236If you want a fun way to revisit the game but don't want to replay, the 50min "Developers React to 50 Minute Speedrun" is a ton of fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK_PdwL5Y8g It highlights some of the architectural decisions (and how players exploit them), and has gems such as one of the commentators having their entire section skipped by the speedrunner.
That was hilarious, thank you
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only the case if you are so blinded by advertising that you don't see the innovations happening in the low(er) budget media.
Not at all. Where are the low and mid budget movies? Where are the games publishers on low budget games? Art as a business has transitioned to investor gambling rather than having any thought for the quality of the product. That's what I take issue with. Sure single person self-funded passion projects exist. They always have and they always will. And sure what one person can do is more than they ever could in the pas…
> Where are the low and mid budget movies?
At Cannes and your local 'art' cinema ? To be fair, I don't watch movies much, but I do still go to these sometimes.
> Where are the games publishers on low budget games?
Who said anything about publishers ? (And Valve dumped theirs as soon as they could.)
> Sure single person self-funded passion projects exist. They always have and they always will. And sure what one person can do is more than they ever could in the past. It's still not the same as something that's forged by a team of visionaries each with unique backgrounds and skillsets.
Ok, I have no idea what you're talking about, are you "no-true-scotsmanning" here ?
We have a great recent example : "Factorio (: Space Age)", which started as a one-person idea, took form as a 3-person company, got after release a 20k€ Indiegogo funding, then blazed a trail of success over the next 12 years, now with something like 5 million sales for the base game and a 30 person company.
How is that not "a team of visionaries each with unique backgrounds and skillset" ?!
Or the amateurs at Spring-Recoil / Zero-K / BAR, which show how you can do that even better than the professional, commercial RTS.
Or indeed one person projects like Shadow Empire (with some publisher support), which show how you can make a brilliant 4X/Wargame on what I assume is a tiny budget...
And there are probably many other examples here...
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!')
Wait, this was all one take? Not spliced together? Some of those falls looked like you had a mm to spare before you would have taken falling damage.
Yes, all one take :-) However there were many trials to get there with less than 20% chance of overall success I would estimate.
e.g. the bit where I hide behind behind a headstone in the graveyard is by no means reliable (maybe 80%?)
Thanks to HN the view count on YouTube has increased dramatically! If it gets past 1000 I'm going to have to record and upload the final section with the combine troops.
EDIT: assuming that is still possible: Valve have made some changes for the twentieth birthday which I noticed today.
e.g. there's more grass and bizarrely the lift button has switched to the other side of the elevator
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. Where are the low and mid budget movies? Where are the games publishers on low budget games? Art as a business has transitioned to investor gambling rather than having any thought for the quality of the product. That's what I take issue with. Sure single person self-funded passion projects exist. They always have and they always will. And sure what one person can do is more than they ever could in the pas…
> Where are the low and mid budget movies? At Cannes and your local 'art' cinema ? To be fair, I don't watch movies much, but I do still go to these sometimes . > Where are the games publishers on low budget games? Who said anything about publishers ? (And Valve dumped theirs as soon as they could.) > Sure single person self-funded passion projects exist. They always have and they always will. And sure what one perso…
Your examples account for less than 1% of the industry. Why are you cherry picking examples when discussing media industry trends? Are you saying "it isn't happening because of these few examples"?
I get that you're trying to discredit the argument by claiming fallacies, but these aren't just my views. Industry insiders (Frost in games and RedLetterMedia in movies) have been talking about this for nearly a decade.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Where are the low and mid budget movies? At Cannes and your local 'art' cinema ? To be fair, I don't watch movies much, but I do still go to these sometimes . > Where are the games publishers on low budget games? Who said anything about publishers ? (And Valve dumped theirs as soon as they could.) > Sure single person self-funded passion projects exist. They always have and they always will. And sure what one perso…
Your examples account for less than 1% of the industry. Why are you cherry picking examples when discussing media industry trends? Are you saying "it isn't happening because of these few examples"? I get that you're trying to discredit the argument by claiming fallacies, but these aren't just my views. Industry insiders (Frost in games and RedLetterMedia in movies) have been talking about this for nearly a decade.
Because "cherry picking" is what everyone does when what they are interested in is great media, and the more time-limited they are, the more this matters.
"Industry" insiders' opinions are irrelevant, they are just too bogged in the day to day details, they tend to forget that 99% of everything is crap and that's fine (and they do that because they have to make a living there, their incentives are different).
And you cannot predict greatness (you are the one that talked about 'visionaries', remember ?) - specifically of new teams you've never heard about before (of course once they did something great it's another thing, even with reversion to the mean they can have a lot of other successes).