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Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

half-life.com

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Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#71

Post by rPlayer6554 »

ta1243 wrote: post #58
haunter wrote: post #9

It's also free until Monday (as in free to get, not just limited free play) https://store.steampowered.com/app/70/HalfLife/

Interesting. I do have a steam account, haven't used it for a long time, it doesn't seem to be in my password manager So I went to reset my password, but got thwarted by the captcha. To email me a password reset link. I think Ill just torrent it.

Why not make a new account? Valve is giving this out for free, partially to get people to use their program more. Why not support them in that small way at least?

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#72

Post by anotherhue »

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…

:) https://www.amazon.com/USB-C-HDMI-Cable-10-feet/dp/B088T8D5C...

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#73

Post by miramba »

Seek. Medical. Attention. God I still love this game. The welcome speech of the Mark IV. How the scientist talk to each other, and how different the talk is when they speak with guards. How they first hope for a government rescue which decides to kill any and all in black mesa. How fearsome those black assassins are. That you can tickle that insect-bomb thing. In my opinion, HL2 felt much more scripted and less lively. No mention of a recompile for Intel 64bit Macs though.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#75

Post by OkayPhysicist »

bjord wrote: post #5

Aside from just generating tons of goodwill, does anyone have any insight into why Valve would do this? Obviously, I think it's great regardless of the motivation, but are there rumblings of Half Life 3 that I've missed or something?

Besides second order stuff like that it might help some Steam Deck sales (mostly by demonstrating their commitment to the platform and attract other companies to develop for it, moreso than anybody rushing out to buy a Steam Deck specifically to play Half-Life), the fact that Valve does stuff like this that's not directly "make all the money right this second"-driven is in no small part why Valve has such goodwill with the PC gaming community.

In theory, it's not that hard to compete with Steam. Valve's cut of game sales is massive, and a competitor could easily slash into that to undercut them. Which is what Epic Games is trying to do. Yet, Valve maintains an extremely dominant market condition largely predicated on that goodwill.

And, of course, exactly because of that dominant market condition, they've got all the money they could possibly want to burn on random vanity projects.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#76

Post by hotnfresh »

tshaddox wrote: post #12
dom96 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half Life 3 already happened and it was called Half Life: Alyx.

And was played (and playable) by almost no one, sadly.

I’m waiting for an update that lets me play it without VR. I’m probably never going to have a VR rig that’ll play it. My wife has a couple for work (not capable of playing that game, though) and we’re both free to use them for whatever we like, but never bother. Certainly not gonna pay for a headset just for one game. I have enough barely-used electronic crap around as it is.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#77

Post by maccard »

bjord wrote: post #5

Aside from just generating tons of goodwill, does anyone have any insight into why Valve would do this? Obviously, I think it's great regardless of the motivation, but are there rumblings of Half Life 3 that I've missed or something?

Entirely marketing for steam. It coincides with the Oled Steam Decks, for example.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#78

Post by fullshark »

cogman10 wrote: post #26
ender341341 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

def no insider info on my side but from what I've heard/read they pretty regularly have a team spun up to explore a half life 3 but at this point they're afraid of a duke nukem forever (not that they'd make a shitty game like that) and that even if it's a great game it'd be seen as underwhelming because the community has hyped itself up so much on it over the nearly 20 years.

Honestly, I think they could do HL3 at this point as the hype around 3 is basically dead. This, though, is why you don't end things with cliff hangers.

They just happened to have the foresight to develop the most lucrative business model in gaming (owning the distribution platform) and Half Life 3 was the opportunity cost. They could have made a ton of money with that cliff hanger if they remained like every other game developer on the planet, instead of a metric buttload of money.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#80

Post by simsla »

solardev wrote: post #33
messe wrote: post #31

I love that they brought back the software renderer (and allowed you to disable texture filtering). There's something about that style I find charming. I'm just waiting on my steam deck to charge so I can curl up on the couch with this for a few hours before bed. EDIT: I tried it out on my laptop while waiting for the deck to charge, and I'm seeing some bugs in the software renderer with missing textures for semi-tra…

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

You can also use the touch pad for aiming. Or turn on gyro only when touch pad is being touched, which is useful for micro adjustments. Pretty customizable, although I mostly just use the sticks.

I played Prey and Tiny Tina's on the Deck, both of which worked pretty well

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