[Grug]

There is Half-Life: Source.

Halo levels loaded fast because they were optimised and compiled in a state ready to be loaded directly into RAM.

I'm waiting for someone to license the D3 engine and make a decent game with it. Killing zombies and watching the rust grow on the military style corridors gets tiresome after a while. Basically after I finished Doom1.

Half-Life2 made me so angry the first time I played through. For the simple fact that by the end of the game, you still have no bloody clue on whats going on. >(

After a few months I played through again, and found it more enjoyable, if you don't try and think about the storyline at all.

Battlefield 1 ran like crap on my computer, which ran HL2 fairly well. Twas just another game that added to my disgust at EA.

[Ransom]

Originally posted by Grug
I'm waiting for someone to license the D3 engine and make a decent game with it.

Prey.

[vyper]

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

Dear God - valve should have done as good a job as this when making HL:S.

[redmenace]

oops I had no idea.

Before they go around releasing new content they ought to fuix the crashes with AMD processors and SP2 as well as the fact that I HL2 for some reason is missing resources and crashing from that as well.

****ing Steam and its Auto Update.

[vyper]

Holy **** I just watched the dynamic range lighting video... I have never seen something come that close to reality "in-game". I want a new card, a new processor and THAT BUILD OF SOURCE!

Btw red, I've got an AMD and SP2 and I've never had problems like that with HL2.

[Ghostavo]

Originally posted by Grug
Battlefield 1 ran like crap on my computer, which ran HL2 fairly well.

The funny thing is that it was the other way around with me.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by vyper
Holy **** I just watched the dynamic range lighting video... I have never seen something come that close to reality "in-game". I want a new card, a new processor and THAT BUILD OF SOURCE!

Btw red, I've got an AMD and SP2 and I've never had problems like that with HL2.

I think I had the odd CTD with HL2.  Not sure if it was the AMD crash or the nVidia crash, or the sound bug, or something else, but twas a pain in the arse.

Of course, I tried updating Steam... now it's not only started running at startup by default (despite me explictly telling it not to when I installed it), but also attemtping to update and continuously freezing.

****ing Steam.

[Fineus]

Grug, what settings were you using with BF1? Almost everyone found that the audio was the main problem with the game, dropping it to medium quality with only 32 channels generally showed a massive improvement in performance... the graphics should all be kept at top notch for any machine that can run HL2 OK.

Also, I agree with your analysis that HL2s rather foggy story rather spoils things. HL places you perfectly in Gordons shoes, showing you who you are. Stepping into the reality of the game is very simple indeed.

HL2 on the other hand chucks you into a totally unknown situation where reality as we know it is changed, with Nazi like states controlled by Breen and an unknown alien over him... the Combine being the dirty boys. You have to make a lot of assumptions and (I think) miss key points when you first play through the game because you're to busy trying to work out what the heck is going on. It's very poor story telling.

[aldo_14]

I can't help but wonder if the HL2 storyline was vague because they were a bit stuck for ideas...... I mean, on the base level of what you see, it's bog-standard (cliche-ed) totalitarian government+resulting rebellion set in a post-apocalyptic future.

Arguably, the best settings do leave more questions than answers; but IMO there's a certain level of information you need to put a setting in context and enjoy playing in it.  I think HL2s ambiguity - deliberate or not - means that you never get into it, you're never allowed to know enough to want to win.

For example... I loved Highway 17; really atmospheric.  But at the same time, it begin to grate and become shallow.  It was more or less the same trick - a deserted house with some debris inside - repeated over and over again.  Without a storyline to add some form of emotion to it, it just became more and more like a bog-standard game; your imagination can only take you so far before your brain kicks in and asks inevitable questions.

It's not as if it would be unrealistic to have some answers, either.  Fair enough is the point that it wouldn't be massively realistic to have every character you meet provide a running history of the last ## years (especially as 'you' are expected to have experienced them as well).  But at the same time there's a tonne of detrius around that can be used to provide said context; think of all the newspapers lying around in H17 for example; brilliant opportunity to add information, and more so to do at a good point in the game.

[Fineus]

To be fair I think the newspapers would be something that could be put to good use, but not for providing the real history (before I go further, I know you're only using it as an example). Why? They'd have to have been printed some time during the occupation of the Combine (lets face it, few places have really old newspapers just blowing about). That being the case, they'd be laced with disinformation by the Combine / Breen. However with the right disinformation you could point the player in the direction of what's really going on. Same for other aspects of the game (sure, not all the charachters you meet in game would provide a back history, but a couple of them could hold quite a conversation with you while you're doing something else). As an example, we pick up a lot about Ravenholm from the dialogue the priest gives us. Why not provide something similar frm Alyx when you reach the scientists teleportation chamber at the early stage of the game?

A lot of wasted oppertunities I feel. Hopefully Valve haven't been seduced by the idea that stories can be told through expansion packs. HL managed to avoid that totally - the addons only deepening the already well explained experience.

[Flipside]

Problem is, I used to play text adventures, and they had really hard puzzles in them that could take you ages to solve and took severe brain power on occasions. As graphics have improved, games are becoming more focussed on 'oooh look at the pretty alien' than actual problem solving. Even RPG's have to base their puzzles around the fact that the game-playing audience does not have the patience to solve those really complex puzzles you used to find in Zork or even The Hobbit.

It's a pity really, there was a real sense of achievement in getting past those, and games used to last for months. But I find even myself getting bored with games very quickly these days, because rather than create hard puzzles, they just add more stuff to shoot when the game needs to be harder. You end up with Homeworld 2 syndrome, where the game simply throws an ever increasing amount of enemies at you, depending on how well you are doing.

[redmenace]

they said the unhandled exceptions were related to SP2.

As per the other problems, I am not sure why al the sudden things have gotten messed up.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
To be fair I think the newspapers would be something that could be put to good use, but not for providing the real history (before I go further, I know you're only using it as an example). Why? They'd have to have been printed some time during the occupation of the Combine (lets face it, few places have really old newspapers just blowing about). That being the case, they'd be laced with disinformation by the Combine / Breen. However with the right disinformation you could point the player in the direction of what's really going on. Same for other aspects of the game (sure, not all the charachters you meet in game would provide a back history, but a couple of them could hold quite a conversation with you while you're doing something else). As an example, we pick up a lot about Ravenholm from the dialogue the priest gives us. Why not provide something similar frm Alyx when you reach the scientists teleportation chamber at the early stage of the game?

A lot of wasted oppertunities I feel. Hopefully Valve haven't been seduced by the idea that stories can be told through expansion packs. HL managed to avoid that totally - the addons only deepening the already well explained experience.

Well, with the newspapers I was thinking more of the pre-occupation period; what happened up to the 7 hour war, like with all the clippings seen on Dr. thingies lab.

Albeit... I don't really remember Ravenholm being too well explained, in terms of who lived there originally and why or what happened when it was headcrab-shelled.

I think one of the strengths of HL2 should have been that you learned the story and background at the same rate as the character you play... the problem is that as a player you have a lot less resources to use for that than you would under real circumstances; the game assumes your reactions and robs you of any ability to actively question, for example.

[Grug]

I agree with near all the points presented. I thought I was one among few who dislike HL2's story.

For example, I was highly appauled at Gamespy's(?) Half-Life2 vs Halo2 when they rated HL2's story better than Halo2. I was screaming in my head "What goddamn story!?".

Valve seem to be concentrating on character development. Usually however there is a plot as well as character development, a fact they seem to have missed.

There is still no evidence to what the hell the GMan is about. With assumptions, the most I concluded was that he's running some type of interdimensional mercenary business. One would of thought the Gman would of been explained after HL1. But instead they provided many more questions and a handful of answers.

As for puzzles. I don't mind the odd simple puzzle. But I kind of disliked the old hard ones. They were more frustrating than entertaining IMO. Maybe I'm just stupid though. I do believe its possible to re-integrate them back into todays games. But care needs to be taken to avoid frustration from exceedingly difficult puzzles. There are some tricky puzzles in KOTR2 that perplexed me for a while. Here I am at 2am sitting on my bed with a calculator, trying to work out some damned maths puzzle.

I think more dynamic and inventive puzzles would be more successfull, rather than the old school 'learn quantum physics 101'. Though I do agree, they have a place in games. Maybe with optional sidequests and the like which unlock extra goodies or something.

But yeah. When math quizzes pop up for someone who hasn't touched a calculator in years, curses are bound to slip the toungue.

[redmenace]

They through us a bone...
http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/740/740555/vids_1.html

[Blaise Russel]

Huh?

I liked HL2's story and I liked the ambiguity. It was fun, working out what had happened since I'd been away, picking up on the clues and fitting it all in with the original Half-life. I'd listen to Breen's management-speak speeches and the mutterings of the civilians and build up a picture of the Administrator's collaborating totalitarian society. I'd prod the Vortigaunts continuously and figure out the role of G-Man and the Nihilanth in this widening conflict. I'd see Ravenholm and its wandering nasties and hear the priest's ramblings and I'd draw up my own history of the district and its transformation into the Old Quarter (homes of dam workers -> Resistance occupies BME -> "we don't go to Ravenholm any more" Resistance/Ravenholm contact? discovery? -> punishment killing? example made of Ravenholm by Combine?).

For me, HL2 managed to strike a balance between "no story" and "story laid out for you." Just enough to provoke question and thought, not enough to stifle it. The story was sketched out, using highlighting and shading to mark its presence, rather than being a straightforward, unsubtle line drawing.

Besides, the story of HL2 is laid out fairly obviously. You are a hero, you kill the bad guys. Technically, its the backstory that has to be filled in.

[Fineus]

As much as "you're the hero, kill the bad guys" seems simple enough, I just didn't get on with the way it was implemented in HL2. I found myself spending an awful lot of the game thinking "alright, I killed these guys. Fine. But why...".

I think I really would have gotten along with it better if there was some kind of filling in that was done at the beginning of the game. Just to let me know that:

"You are Gordon Freeman, these guys have moved in from another dimension and pretty much enslaved humanity. Breen is their human contact."

But being dumped into the situation with no information at all made things more confusing than they did "an interesting enigma to be solved". At least in the original HL you knew why you were doing what you were doing. You caused the disaster and were trying to get out / stop what was happening.


Perhaps it boils down to a matter of taste. I just didn't get on with it.

[CP5670]

Looks like a resurrected thread...

For example, I was highly appauled at Gamespy's(?) Half-Life2 vs Halo2 when they rated HL2's story better than Halo2. I was screaming in my head "What goddamn story!?".

My thoughts exactly when I finished the game.

The lack of any details and vague connection to the missions is what really messed up the story here, since the general backdrop and setting had a lot of potential. The little details are what really make a game story come alive (best example of this was Deus Ex, which had an incredible amount of reading material and lots of minor side plots thrown in) and HL2 was almost devoid of them.

You could figure out what was going on later in the game, but the problem was that it didn't seem to matter, since the story had little effect on what you were doing anyway until the last couple of missions. For large parts of the game, you had no real goals in sight and were basically just running through random places that all looked similar. The fact that your character never uttered a word in the entire game didn't help either. It almost seemed like Valve first made the maps and then tacked a story on afterwards, rather than the other way around.

It is possible to make a detailed story that gets players involved but still makes them think about stuff (FS2 is probably the best example), but I didn't think HL2's plot was anything like that.

Math puzzles in games? Now that's something I have not seen before, although I wouldn't mind it at all...

[Ransom]

I liked HL2's backstory, with the whole 'work it out for yourself' thing going on. What I didn't like was the way the actual plot was near nonexistant.

[Fineus]

I think that's where everyone falls into two camps. Those who like the "work it out for yourself" approach, and those who don't.

Personally though, I don't think HL was ever about mysteries as such. So having to sit there trying to piece together things and coming to conclusions that turned out to be wrong was no fun for me. I prefer knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing - and as fun as the game is to play - why I'm spending my time playing through it.