/v/ - Video Games

>>121071
>>131691 (ehhh, a long shot)

I never actually played though half-life. Is it fun, or was it just novel for the time?

>>131785
1 is alright, 2 is shit.

Half Life exists only so Sven Coop can happen.

>>131794
sven coop is shit nowadays, people dont play the classics anymore and everything is dogshit

>>131796
To this day, sven coop still has the community that if you type nigger in the chat, instantly someone else will reply with a double nigger.

holy shit guys hl3 trailer

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>>131797
>>131796

I'm playing through Half-Life 2 right now. It's decent, but it doesn't have the same feel that I liked in the original. One of the more jarring things going from HL1 to HL2 is the difficulty decrease. I played on Hard for both, and the difficulty is far lower in HL2. A good rule of thumb I've had for the game is that it takes me only one or two shotgun blasts to kill most enemies, as opposed to 3 or 4 single blasts/1 or 2 double blasts for most enemies in 1, which I'll call this the shotgun standard. By the logic, Half Life 2 is far easier. I won't complain too much, since I did have plenty of frustrating moments in HL1 getting BTFO by muhreen grenades or Xen critters.

The thing I like the most about HL2 is definitely Ravenholm. The horror-drenched atmosphere, the headcrab armies everywhere, and even the headcrab zombies (I like to call the poison headcrab zombies the Eds, because they use the same sound effects from EEnE) are all done in a way which evokes a feeling of helplessness in a true apocalyptic nightmare. From my understanding, this is just a taste of what the original HL2 was going to be before the beta was leaked. A damn shame that we never got to see the fully finished dystopian horrorscape it would've brought.

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>>131797
This. Modding is the sole reason why Half-Life received a sequel.

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>>131796
It is most fun when played with like minded individuals, which is why I enjoyed the game nights.

>>131785
It's fine, kinda boring, takes a while to pick up, and the last chapter is dogshit

>>131785
It's fun but everything goes on for about 1/3rd too long and the gunplay is a bit shit. Also the much talked up AI is mostly scripted and tricks though it'd better than modern third person cover shooters at least. Worth a playthrough as is OpFor which improves both the issues above.

What could have been done better in Black Mesa's Xen chapters? 

Will we ever see a properly realized HL2, the way Morrowind had been fully expanded by fans? What showcasing innovation might the E3 fan mod demonstrate?

>>131776 (OP) 
After playing through Black Mesa again I disagree with people saying Xen was disappointing. It felt very disjointed and unfinished in the original. BM: Xen was paced a lot better and felt properly climactic. I think they did a great job with it considering how much hype and pressure there was for the final release.

>>131887
It was some kind of lame but pretty environments, not very challenging enemies, very repetitive puzzles, decent scripted sequences that I doubt will be as exciting in new runs, and the okay boss fight that was Nihilanth. Obviously better than Valve's rushed release, but overall, so what? It'd be more interesting to remake HL2 so it would meet the pre-leak pressure vision.

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>>131776 (OP) 
>showcasing innovation like previous installments
Eh?

Half-life games have some interesting cut content: >>126754

>>131776 (OP) 
We already have a HL thread: >>121071

>>131776 (OP) 
Anyone use that AI writing software? Have you tried running Laidlaw's E3 through it so it's the length of a script?

I'd be hard pressed to describe the other episodes as "innovative". Though we do have episode 3 files and what they threw around conceptually is interesting.
There's the Weaponizer, a weapon that could absorb liquids, metals or concrete to shoot different things(like water). There's some hints that the "charge gun" seen in the ravenholm episode came from episode 3 as well.though potentially scrapped early on
There was also a flamethrower and an ice gun. There was also a "Teleport Gun". 
Additionally there was a weapon called "proto1", which doesn't seem fit for use considering the name but is unique; it absorbed props to gain ammo, could emit a wave to see enemies through walls and could shoot through thin walls.
In terms of enemies there were the "Margarita Soldiers", enhanced combine that other combine could scavenge their enhancement from and then use it themselves. 
They had three different variants(mid, big and fast) and snarled for some reason, so probably something relevant there. Their enhancements were Shields, Propellers, Miniguns, Saws, RPG, Mortar, Bomb, Dartgun and Brain.
One of those is apparently super speed, flight has also been mentioned but that is obvious. However based on some code, it appears the player was meant to use some like Bomb; there is also a "factory" for these things.
There is also code for a companion to carry these and thats probably how. The advisors you can see in that particular piece on concept art in the OP might be "Roaming Advisors", an edited gunship that could cause avalanches and make shields.
And finally there's Surface/Blob, an entity used to showcase the blobulator system; which has 5 sizes(since they can split and merge) and 4 variants, it'd chase the player wherever(being a blob that could reform and climb)
They had repellers, nests to regenerate. An interesting piece of trivia is that the older version of it tries to call the hydra model; and its later code refers to tentacles.

>>131830
> this is just a taste of what the original HL2 was going to be before the beta was leaked
This is a common piece of misinfo but no, the actual leaked beta is very close to the final in tone; the famous 2001-2002 era was solely leftover files.
Ravenholm is however one of the earliest to hit its final state yes; its tone was set way before anything else.

>>133733
E1 Alyx companion AI (hilariously citizen AI was still death seekingly stupid in the escort mission) and E2 natural setting environmental enhancements were still improvements for the industry at the time. Some things don't make sense, like why the sticky bombs didn't have bolo like attachments which would make closes misses more forgiving, which can literally be fixed with a shoestring budget. But alot of things in HL don't make sense. For Episode 3, they were grasping for straws which made them hesitate releasing until they could include an innovative feature, but imo the pattern shouldn't have mattered. HL Alyx definitely had its own innovative feature, but seems to me a mediocre game.

I don't know what Valve planned. There's so much the dimension jumping could have given, including a return to Xen, or a close glimpse at the Combine home world. Combining the Gravity Gun and Aperture tech could have resulted in new game physics leading to a whole subgenre of gameplay style.

Your post was good. Do you write anywhere or hang out anywhere else?

>>133741
I'd consider those pretty flimsy, its definitely not some big "wow" factor like HL2 itself had. I suppose i recall a lot of talk about those, but really they didn't really act as great selling points.
Honestly though, a dynamic enemy like margaritas or just an insane complex mess of meta balls like the blob sound like they very well should be decent candidates.
By all accounts the second gooutside of proto1, the earlier episode 3 stuff is pretty dry; all we have is an "armored combine" who has armor fall off and a scanner with a gun sounds like it should be more innovative than those.
Additionally there was the option of water physics i suppose, considering the water gun.

There was that Xen concept art I suppose though I have to imagine there probably wasn't much more intended besides it and the "Weather Control" based intro and the Boralis.
Certainly easy to dream big, but those concepts are realistically much larger than what the other episodes went for anyway. Especially looking at leftovers, its moreso that they seemed to suddenly have unreachable standards that they for some reason thought the public suddenly gained.

I suppose in terms of actually scrapping the bottom of the barrel, the HL3 stuff should be brought up. Which was trying to utilize a lot of stealth stuff like placeable ziplines and a teleport grenade.
But the bigger point was in dynamic generation, with quests, a resource system and of course enemy placement. The insane rumor plot aside, what else the original rumor that mentioned is an arm that basically was the Weaponizer but with fire and ice functions built in.
Of course no actual code for such a thing exists, but the rumor apparently had strong backing that ain't public.

I'm not really apart of any communities these days no.

>>133748
I agree, and another of the barrel scraping ideas was to implement sign language, but it seemed forced and not appropriate for non-VR tech. 

To clarify for lurkers, Valve's concern was if the end to the episodes was basically a tech rehash of previous entries, it'd be seen as a decline in standards, especially since it would have been a major release for them, and a sour note to end the arc on. .

>>133741
>HL Alyx definitely had its own innovative feature, but seems to me a mediocre game.
I feel this way about every mainline Half Life game. They are all polished tech demos. The original had the advanced level scripting, two had physics puzzles and facial animation, and Alyx played with VR mechanics. The gunplay in the first two is truly dogshit. I believe Alyx will age as poorly as they did when better VR shooters with more passion put into them are released.

>>133741
>HL Alyx definitely had its own innovative feature, but seems to me a mediocre game.
If you read between the lines on what Valve have said Alyx wasn't so much a game as it was gabe finally realising Valve's 'flat' structure was fucking worthless and they hadn't actually finished a game in close to a decade while shit like the Epic Store made him realise coasting on ((( Steam ))) forever wasn't viable. Hell even before that they were basically just licensing indies/mods or hiring outsiders, so it's been shit productivity since maybe TF2. So the fat fuck got off his arse, looked at what projects were close to completion and forced Alyx through the full process. Probably also a chance to identify who was dead weight after most of the talent got bored and quit due to internal drama and endless project cancelling.

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>>133794
>If you read between the lines on what Valve have said
Post a link.
It's been shit productivity since Steam was first launched.
Those faggots wanted to do "Episodic" games, and look how that turned out.
Gaben has been sitting on his fat ass for decades while the company rotted from all the faggotry. He's even admitted that he got bored of doing the same shit in an interview where he's talking about 3D printing.
They've burned so much money on failed side projects that they could have bought Crytek.
Valve could have secured enough funding from Gaben's autographed knife collection to buy ID while Carmack was still there.

Valve will continue to coast along until Todd falls away from the limelight, then Valve will be the new Todd.

I just want HL3, and maybe some prequel HL with all the cut content.

>>131776 (OP) 
>episode 3 was meant to introduce a showcasing innovation like previous installments
Apparently all Valve games are suppose to do that, which is why portal 3 was never made either. If Half-Life 3 is made it will most likely be VR, maybe a cross-platform title in which the "innovation" is making something that works gameplay wise both regularly and vr. Or maybe just getting crowbars to work in vr, Gabe does refer to implementing features as solving problems after all.

>>133803
The innovation will be a splinter-cell chaos theory co-op with one player using a portal gun and no fall damage, and the other player using guns and the gravity gun.

>>131776 (OP) 
>What went weong, and what could have been done better?
What I don't get is why they didn't combine Xen soldiers, controllers, and vorts in a map that would have put them in a terrain advantage: a floating platform for grunts to charge and knock off Freeman and open angle for controller and vort shots. Too difficult and would overshadow the Nihilanth fight?

>>133803
Considering their statements, i legitimately don't think even something like that would have passed the bar set for 3.

>>133800
>maybe some prequel HL with all the cut content.
They'd still fuck it up, the way they handle half life by 2 is inherently self destructive. 
Even with cool enemy designs2 could literally fill out a whole new games roster with just its cut crap; 1 has less variety in that fashion from what i recall, though i suppose it has the "CIA" enemy concepts and stuff like that 
I'd expect very showcase style structure rather than a strong gameplay experience.

>>133835
While we're at it why'd the AI in HL2 get a downgrade? For a design philosophy embracing the idea the player should be able to select from a variety of potential strategies fitting their personal style, it comes across as hollow when even the AI's best squad tactics ultimately amount to just strawmen. What's the point of multiple possible strategies if the enemy and allies are blunt tools that the player can't truly sharpen themselves on? This kind of AI was done even in HL1, so it's hard for me to understand why the most difficult HL2 setting is lukewarm.

>>133952
Because Valve think you're stupid and bad at playing video games?

>>133952
The combine just do less damage and have terrible arenas, they are upgrades from an AI perspective.
Course Valve never uses any those systems but they sure do exist, just like a lot of other shit like how the gunship lost the ability to do its beam attack normally.
There's actually quite a few examples of sudden enemy gimping.

The reason is >>133953 though obviously, this isn't a hidden fact and has been stated before; HL2 got grinded into paste to cater to general audiences.

>>133954
No they aren't. They don't take real cover and don't bumrush viciously. Valve could have done all you said and still had a high functioning autism crackhead AI difficulty.

>>133985
The combine cover system is reliant on map nodes, unless built in they're going to act braindead.I think this might only be used in Nova Prospekt? Or its unused, thats a common HL2 thing
Their predecessors didn't have any sort of cover system either, they just have areas actually built for them.

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>>133987
once you play through the game enough times you figure out that the AI is actually ultra retarded and you can get through most areas by just bumrushing and shooting anything that moves like a NFL linebacker on crack. i guess that's true for all games really but HL2 definitely sticks out.
they also dumbed it down for the unwashed masses as well, there's a section from the E2 commentary where they mentioned a playtester managed to drown in two feet of water.

>>134091
Yeah thats what i  meant by general audiences; actual retards.
That case is really bad but its not a case of downgrading from what i know, its just an oversight unchecked because they decided to have the widest audience possible; who i really doubt acted as great QA.
By most means the combine are a upgraded HECU, ignoring the damage and them no longer spamming grenades at the slightest twitch.

Its just that Half Life 2 gave them pea shooters in a game that has a "dynamic pickup" system and basically put them in areas they can't really do much in.**try to think of how many times they even put combine in stressful placements, basically all encounters in HL2 give you a shitload of leeway even when your basically in the shootout area.
They've been deliberately made fodder, but not by downgrading the AI; instead they did everything else to fuck it over.

This is a good distinction. I can say that functionally they weakened the AI, formally the AI protocol was improved.

>>133954
>HL2 got grinded into paste to cater to general audiences
>>134096
>Yeah thats what i meant by general audiences; actual retards.
Gaben admitted that they use Valve families as play testers.
The games are meant for bottom of the barrel retards, and that's sad.
That's like taking a good engine like Megatexture, then gimping it for consoles, and porting the gimped version to PC.

>>131776 (OP) 
There's no new innovation Valve could have done for Ep3, aside from adding intense AI, which apparently neither they nor any other AAA company is allowed to do. Look at games since then. There's been no real innovation besides the concept of Portal.

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>>134091
found it

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Imagine waiting for HL3 and waking up to this slap in the face

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>>134624
HL Alyx is alright, the main issue is the reconnected shit ending.

>>134628
I played it, the game is without a doubt beautiful but it's underwhelming gameplay-wise.

>>134624
>legit technical leaps
?

>>134628
>the reconnected shit ending.
But they didn't retcon the ending.
In one of the Half Life 2 games they specifically mentioned that combine teleport technology was based on a multiple universe model of physics, which implied that the Gman exists in multiple realities, which when coupled with his behavior implies that he nudges the outcome of an event to steer a reality towards a specific outcome.
That is further implied when he's freed from containment in Alyx, and when he's captured by the Vorts in Episode 2.
The main content of Half Life Alyx is a different reality than Episode 2. Gman chose a series of events which would end his reliance on Freeman.

Ay yo yo yo

So what you be sayin is

Gabe Newell and his bizness model and sheeit be da real Gman?

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

My stupid ebonics post aside, this thread is much better than that other HL thread. The one with double digit high school dropout yokels talking about their mutt lust for Alyx.

>>133741
>>133748
Lovecraftian irregular physics. Goes past both the Source physics engine, and the genius Portal concept. Builds on both, as well as Xen's navigation puzzles. But like you guys said, the public might be too stupid for it.

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>>134718
>Lovecraftian irregular physics. Goes past both the Source physics engine, and the genius Portal concept. Builds on both, as well as Xen's navigation puzzles. But like you guys said, the public might be too stupid for it.
There is a first person puzzle game that uses (or tries to use) non-Euclidean geometry called Antichamber.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/219890/Antichamber/
Actually, double-checking the name and it turns out there's a bunch more now. Hyperbolica and Superliminal to name a couple. I can only vouch for Antichamber though as it's the only one I played.

>>134724
In the way Valve was originally a bunch of no-name Quake modders, why didn't Valve grab and innovate from small teams like this?

The official and common explanations for Ep3 dying don't add up. Something was going terribly, terribly wrong in the company, and Gabe raking in Steam stacks and little else explains the poor state of Valve more than Ep3 organically losing steam.

>>134712
this is complete speculation and you have no proofs backing it up. it is time travel until proven otherwise because they wrote themselves into a corner and took a bullshit way out.

>>134859
They definitely retconned the ending, for the reasons you said, but frankly within fully lore friendly terms.

>>134884
>but frankly within fully lore friendly terms
stop lying to yourself, it's time-travel paradox-ridden bullshit and you know it

>>134887
Are you bad-autistic? Do you not know what Freeman's fictional PhD thesis is about?

>>134887
>time-travel paradox-ridden bullshit
So explain why Xen is a different dimension, the Vorts operate outside of time, and the the entire combine "came from another universe" plotline in Half Life 2.
Half Life has always been about other dimensions.

>>134887
>>134894
>>134891
Aperture Science's ship likewise is trapped as it is due to unlocking accidental time travel. One has to be really thick headed to not see that HL:Alyx's asspull retcon is still lore friendly.

>look up HL threads on 8ch
i hate cripple niggers so much

>>135934
Hasn't been cripple-chan for years, and it's been dead since 2019. markchan is a twisted parody of it, an insult to injury.

>>135936
yeah some faggots making drama about HL1 being included in a western rec game chart for japs.

>>135939
That entire list they are making hasn't even been curated. I notice a lot of the times anosn will just take the first thing that is said rather than explain WHY it should be included.

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>>134624
>HL2
>Technical leap

>>135939
>>135940
How do you even know this?

>>135934
What's going on in the threads there? The threads here are fine, I think I will make some long posts about the music of the series from the talent Kelly Bailey, which crosses so many genres, and shaped the minds of a generation of nerdy gamers.

>>136029
>8ch has a western games rec chart for japs
>hl is a honorary mention for 1998 while hl2 makes in the best five
>some anon seethes over this
>the op of that thread says hl1 doesn't deserve to be included because it's shit
>more retarded arguing
>finally some anon (if not the same op) makes a thread shitting on it immediately

>>136032
Oh, 8moe. People there said HL didn't have real innovation, but I don't think anyone there actually knows much about game history. Ken Birdwell from Valve is a bona fide genius. He was literally the kind of person to go to college at 13 (Valve had other elites from Harvard and Oxford, the stars really shined on that team). He made the proprietary system for model skeletal animation which made the narrative gameplay and memorable scenes in the well designed set pieces even possible. 

That wasn't as revolutionary as HL2's physics and emotion and lip-sync rigs, but it was still a huge breakthrough for immersive storytelling in games. Other game companys' employees were literally dying inside, going through the motions to get a hasty release over with, and thinking ahead to new projects stacking on HL's developments when they witnessed the then jaw dropping innovations of the original HL.

I'm not posting on 8chans. Too much chaff and moves too fast. Though the post
>Had Laidlaw been allowed to make the dark, gritty world with a poison atmosphere and had the aliens drained the oceans of water like was intended, it would've been kino
is correct. HL2 released twice as fast as it should have, which would also have pressured them to release HL3 with 2010s era graphics and innovation. Having the ocean more fully drained probably would also have shrunk the water levels, as some of the corridor and Xen levels in HL1 should have been. This also would have sharpened focus on the Portal Games, and given them more levels and content from the energy that should have been sapped from the half baked, eternally doomed blunders that were the episodes, which should have never been made in the first place. For me, HL2 was visually bland, a bit like Oblivion, when it should have went with Skyrim's kind of design, keeping close to the original poisonous colors and dark lighting in the concept art, as the original HL was a pretty dark and claustrophilic game. But I guess they had to get as many customers as possible.

Why'd the Combine even drain the Earth of water? Makes no sense considering their other options. If they needed water, they should have used their space habitat to extract hydrogen from a star.

>>136115
>pressured them to release HL3 with 2010s era graphics and innovation.
The HL2 episodes were in Valve's view HL3, but HL3 should have just used 2010s graphics, which hold up well in this decade, which is really great in case they would have released DLCs for HL3 up to today.

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>>136116
>Why'd the Combine even drain the Earth of water? Makes no sense

>>136116
Like most of their actions, the water draining was to make sure that earth was outright uninhabitable so nobody had the bright idea of going far from a city.
It also left their important facilities further from population centers. Also earth wasn't meant to come off as important, just another place to harvest.

It was always kinda flimsy since you had water areas before Ravenholm in most versions and the Borealis was also always in water; the current Coast version of this plotline isn't actually very far from its 2001 ver if you think about it.
Hell they had the rebels had a fucking underwater base as well. The change was literally just to have the Wasteland levels be less dramatic so they had obvious level borders.

>>136121
That I understood, but what'd they do with all the water? Was it going to blow up in their faces like the dopy amounts of bulk ordered explosive barrels? Which obviously only existed to allow creative killings of combine.

So many forced narrative elements.

>>136122
>combine
Combine cops and soldiers I mean.

I think I just answered my own question. Laidlaw described the Combine world and Freeman's reaction to it like trying to light a match and have it fizzle out. Perhaps all the water would have been converted to hydrogen in the Combine habitat, allowing for paths to exploding it. Laidlaw's epistle was probably 50% what Episode 3 would have been.

>>131776 (OP) 
half life 2 sucked

>>136122
Teleported it off world probably. There's no signs of it being a big narrative element, just like how the idea is technically mentioned in the final and nothing comes of it.
Airex wasn't meant to backfire either, both it and Weather Control don't backfire in the slightest beyond "can't stop revolutions once destroyed". Its all there to establish combine bad, its not some karma buildup.

Its there to make most of the levels look distinct otherwise.

>>136123
That sounds like utter nonsense. Why the fuck would you come to this conclusion.

>>136126
>That sounds like utter nonsense. Why the fuck would you come to this conclusion.
Because hydrogen is a highly potent resource for spacefarers. The Combine may have been arrogant enough to have it scattered in ridiculous quantities around their habitat, maybe even Chernobyl or Death Star levels of arrogant stupidity. Laidlaw's ideas would have been modified anyway with team input.

>>133835
This is how they should have upped the difficulty for Xen grunt conveyor belt map, and the Lotus elevator map. For Nihilanth's map, there were silos he would teleport the player to, and he would summon help sometimes, so I think those ideas should have combined so that all the main enemy types, floating platforms, and use of the long jump would have culminated the skills learned and kept the incremental skill learning level design model that Valve used.

>>136128
But I think that would have taken potentially 2 more years for their small team.

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>>136127
It only makes a modicum of sense, it requires huge leaps of logic and pushes a concept that never was a main focus point and forces it to be one of the largest parts of it.
The wasteland idea is set dressing, it doesn't come off as a major plot element in the slightest; somehow i doubt Laidlaw was pinning for "blow up a dyson sphere with hydrogen" as a finale.

Keep in mind your only example was solely for gameplay, the combines deciding they need random explosives everywhere ain't plot related. 
You keep on aggressively pushing the idea that it was a likely idea for some reason, when realistically its probably got as much chance as this beaut affecting anything in the final.

>>136132
Well besides an easter egg, forgot Ickypop did get a reference in the final so whoops.

>>136132
>It only makes a modicum of sense, it requires huge leaps of logic and pushes a concept that never was a main focus point and forces it to be one of the largest parts of it.
I said Laidlaw's idea could be modified. Laidlaw himself left the vision of the Combine habitat as a cliffhanger for HL3.

Lighting a match can blow up a huge complex. While the idea I threw out was sparked by me, and is a bit uninspired, it would neatly tie together the mystery of the water. Perhaps it should only cripple their energy grid, leading to the real finale.

>You keep on aggressively pushing the idea that it was a likely idea for some reason
I'm not sure if you mean I think it's Laidlaw's idea. It's my idea, as I said. Only in the sense that it headcanons into what's Laidlaw-canon in a lore compatible way.

Why'd my hash change again? A bunch of posts above before my blue hash were me too btw.

>>136135
Well you managed to express a very different context. But yes the issue of it being a pretty shit finale also applies.
The concept is workable but would need a lot of expansion work, even beyond leaving it as an instigating event rather than the true end.
Though thats not exactly shocking, thats generally how those types of concepts go.

Also whats with the quick trigger finger, you don't need a new post for every subject.

>>136139
Phone was low battery at that point, I wasn't sure when it would shut off.

>>136116
>Why'd the Combine even drain the Earth of water? Makes no sense considering their other options. If they needed water, they should have used their space habitat to extract hydrogen from a star.
The general idea is they're strip-mining earth which is indeed dumb since asteroids exist. Nothing the Combine do more generally makes sense: why keep humans alive at all? They clearly don't value them as soldiers since breeding has been made impossible and anyway the ones who 'do' get transhumaned are used only to police earth. Might as well have kept up the bombing and just left the dregs to hide in caves.

>>136278
It makes more sense in context of the original HL series metaplot, which had multiple factions vying for control of higher order dimensions, with the Combine only bothering to keep humanity alive because they wanted our better teleporter tech. If it weren't for Breen negotiating "research" and slave soldiers they probably would have just hit the planet with GRBs and called it a day.

>>136281
That's more sensible I guess. Though it seems like there'd still be far more efficient ways to capture scientists/research.

>>136278
I mean the obvious original intent was that the general populace was viewed as a cheap workforce.
Them deleting breeding and this idea not really being there anymore does just make them fucktarded.though they had normal ass humans guard airex in 2001 so they definitely were still pretty dumb
Humans don't really come off as being viewed as another resource when you greatly limit them. 
Additionally the idea always seems that it was pretty much just a citadel, so from the perspective of efficiency, it does make sense to just convert some humans. All it needed was a skeleton crew of some advisors and synth producing facilities.

But yeah 2003ish just retrofits the teleporter concept to give any sort of reason.

>>136298
Tranny schizo retrofitted script. And lo, the ultimate tranny retrofitted game yet, Alyx, was birthed from the ashes of the incoherent mess of HL2.

Half life is valves ONLY game franchise, think about it, every other game they have under their belt is a mod like CS DoD, ASSFAGGOTS TF,etc valve were pioneers in making mods paid and everyone ate that shit up like it was nothing! same thing with tripwire interactive, all their games are mods or sequels to their mods I dont get why people even pay for this shit its absurd!

That's not true. Portal is a work of genius and is its own franchise. You usually only see this kind of infenious full fledged puzzle action from Nintendo.

Speaking of mods, are there lists of the best HL and HL2 mods to this day?

>>136388
> HL and HL2 mods to this day?
Quite clearly: Crack-Life + Crack-Life: Campaign Mode, Half-Mind and Gordon Freakman and Gmod

>>136388
Half Life Echoes

>>136388
For HL1: 
>Azure Sheep
>Point of View
>Poke646
>Sweet Half-Life
>Peaces Like Us
>Someplace Else
>Reissues
>TWHL Tower 1+2
>Echoes

For HL2:
>Mistake of Pythagoras
>Research and Development
>Minerva: Metastasis
>Underhell
>Mission Improbable
>assorted SMOD variants
>Dark Interval and Raising the Bar Redux, whenever they're finished
Note that a lot of pre-2013 mods won't work out of the box and require some patching.

Also Portal is a shit game for redditors.

>>136432
>Mistake of Pythagoras
This has to be the most reddit title I've seen in my entire life. I can just imagine some acne-ridden fedora wearing cunt coming up with that stupid clickbaity title.

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>>136432
Research and Development is my personal favorite sourcemod, very recommend. Minerva suffers from the problem of making all the enemies bullet sponges towards the end. Dumping 2+ magazines into one enemy to kill it, even on normal difficulty. I'd also reccomend Entropy: Zero, you play as a metrocop lone wolf against the ebil rebels. Also suffers from bullet sponge bosses and a fucking impossible puzzle towards the end but it's still fun. I will also recommend The Citizen Returns for when you need a good laugh. Hope you like GOOD voice acting :^)
and who can forget the classic vid related?

>>136443
He sounds like the guy from that one remake with the wooden lift in the prison dimension.

>>136432
How good are Afraid of Monsters and They Hunger?

>>136432
>>136443
>Research and Development is my personal favorite sourcemod, very recommend
If that's the puzzle based one at one point I think you have to fight a helicopter on a tower? then it is indeed great. I've not played it in many years though.

>>136469
yeah that's the one, the last part was a bit tedious with the barnacles that you can't kill if they grab you and those parts where you had to cage the antlions but easily a winner. might stream it too.

>>136443
>>136432
Weren't there a mod called "Combine Destiny" or something where you play as combine soldier? There is also Lambda Wars that turns the game into a RTS. I can't remember whether Half-Life 2: Riot Act was any good.

>>136557
Entropy Zero?
I thought it kind of sucked.

>>137185
some parts where less than stellar but i still had fun with it. also considering it came out less shortly before the coof came in full swing it's a bit scary to play it

>>131776 (OP) 
Can't wait for HL3 to get "leaked" within the next 5 years.

>>136405
lol all that guy did was re-use Playstation port assets and parts of Half life 1 around the mortar tactable section.

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>be me, playing Half Life 2: Episode 2
>get stuck at the part where you have cross the bridge with the car
>I somehow think that what I'm supposed to do is shoot the cars into position so that they make a ramp that you can drive on to cross the broken bridge.
>try this for several minutes before giving up and watching a walkthrough
>I'm supposed to just shoot the damn cars off the bridge and the bridge will right itself in a scripted sequence
Good God, I fucking overthought that one. A-at least I'm not retarded like that one Redditor who got stuck in the Antlion Caves, r-right?

>>137495
Half-Life 2's puzzle designers clearly had a seesaw fetish.

>>137495
Kind of upsets me when devs bitch out on the original vision because most people can't into abstract thinking, turn the journalist filters into alternate paths or something dammit.

>>137513
and that's just one of the documented examples, imagine how many games got dumbed down because the playtesters were literally too dumb to figure out a children's electronic toy

>>137509
because physics was KEWL at the time and nobody had really done anything with it to the extent HL2 did. like how journos praised stacking cinderblocks on a piece of plywood as revolutionary.

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>>137588
I mean technically not :^) even if this is an incomplete mess that had hellish requirements at release.
Pretty sure Gabe even mentioned Trespasser at one point.

But yeah, it makes sense to showcase tech and HL2 was lazy about it; gotta have a bunch of physics puzzles but we can't figure out anything good so a seasaw it is.

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>>137686
Any mods that featured good physics puzzles?

>>137689
I didn't even mean good, i just meant that seasaws are literally the most obvious shit to use physics for.
It comes off as braindead design, which is why i described it as lazy. Its probably also one of the worst "basic physics puzzle" templates.

>>137689
I mentioned Research and Development earlier, the whole playthrough is a puzzle game from start to finish and you only get the gravity gun. highly recommend, I might stream it just to show it off.

Are there any AI enhancing mods for HL2? HL1's gunplay was soso but the HECU AI is still more vicious than most AAA games that followed it.

>>137963
I know MMod does some stuff and has the option to give the combine decent aim. Thats a bit more than an AI enhancement though.
https://gamebanana.com/mods/35611
This is the only case i can find of just combine enhancement. At the end of the day though, HL2s overall game design will still fuck over the combine solider.

Are any of the Portal mods good?

>>138151
there are portal mods?

>>137515
The devs are dumber than those play testers though. If you make a game worse just because some randoms suck, then you're a gullible retard

>>138155
Not true at all. They made millions more than they would have, at the small cost of compromising their creative vision. The game is fun and other puzzle games aren't that much more brilliant. It wasn't totally watered down.

Why dont we just make our own half life 3 like those redditors are doing with project borealis?

>>138154
>being this new

>>138159
>Why dont we
Why don't you?

Why the FUCK are we not playing some half life mods right now? sven coop, synergy or zombie master would be amazing to play for a gamenight

>>138226
http://www.gameprogrammingpatterns.com
Attached PDF related:
https://github.com/SFML/SFML-Game-Development-Book

Some resources on source modding:
(Not sure why you'd do this in current year but you have a working engine at your disposal. At the very least you can read the HL2 Source code and gain some programming knowlege)
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:Programming

And here's the HL1 source code which you can also learn a bit from. Somewhat better organized IMO:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife/tree/c7240b965743a53a29491dd49320c88eecf6257b/dlls

If you're going to use Unity, here's Anton and Coolpecker which IMO shows how to properly work with Unity without writing Reddit-tier code although it is slightly over-architected
https://bitbucket.org/Infinity-Anon/anton-coolpecker/src/master/Assets/AntonCoolpecker/Scripts/

>>138235
It shouldnt be too hard to re-create half life 2s entire game loop, all you ever did was shoot and solve very basic physics puzzles, and I forgot about the airboat/car section that takes up half the game as useless filler

>>136443
>>136557
How do I get this game without Steam?

>>138262
Entropy Zero that is

>>138262
>>138263
Grab the mod from ModDB and get a copy of HL2 then do the thing and you should be able to play the mod, thats how i got SMOD to work on my machine without steam

>>138266
It's only available from Steam. If he's concerned Steam might catch him with a pirated copy of HL2, it won't. Just move the EntropyZero folder to the HL2 folder as usual, then do the rest as normal.

>>138151
I haven't played any but there are some that play around with time travel and form puzzles around that

>>137963
>>137966
And there isn't an AI mod for Black Mesa, which is a shame since the famous lobby skirmish feels so diluted from the difficulty of the original.

>>138507
>lobby fight
>difficult in any version
Unless you really fuck up, all you have to do is sit in the corner and pick them off with the Glock. If anything, BM makes fights like that harder with their massive Glock nerfs.

>>138574
Post a webm with proof of difficulty of your claim or you're a lying nigger

>>138582
I don't have recording software on hand and I'm not going to install it just to win an internet argument, but this is really easy to test yourself.
sv_cheats 1
skill 3
map c2a4e
give item_suit
give weapon_9mmhandgun
give ammo_9mmclip
give ammo_9mmclip
Walk around the corner. Crouch. Shoot the shotgunner in the head until he dies, shoot the second guy in the face when he turns around, then wait for the other two and shoot them in the face too. I'm not even using the nearby barney or making any attempt to take cover, and most of the time I take less than 20 damage.

Why didn't the Combine block the sun like in the original HL2 concept art? Is there a good in story reason for this, or was it just to broaden the appeal of the game to sell copies

>>142227
Half Life 2 as we know it was rushed to shit and pushed by Sierra after the beta leak happened in 2003 by the German madman.
It's amazing how it wasn't complete fucking garbage honestly.

>>142235
Did Sierra have a time machine? Because the majority of the cuts happened way back in 2001 and 2002.

>>142235
Funny how they had most of the game by that point then.
The main issue with 2003 era HL2 was that it was unplaytested really, it had horrific jank like the canister section and the awful car.
Considering the amount of work done and overall timeframe, the idea that it actually got rushed from the leak in a way that actually mattered seems unlikely.

Its easy to point at the leak as the reason for its odd final moments but the logic behind it doesn't really hold up; none of the actions taken in that final stretch were scale backs from what we know.
Rather poor choices, ones that don't seem out of line from what they did pre-leak either.

>>142297
Would Valve have been fucked if they did release the game on the original timeline?

>>142227
>>142235
The Combine at least still drained the seas, but even that's somewhat incoherent plotwise, since as mentioned above, we don't really know what they used it for, and they could have gotten water easier ways.

>>142387
HL2's graphics would have become outdated by 2008~, which means it'd have never been released.

>>142408
>we don't really know what they used it for
They pretty much use everything biological and repurpose it for energy production, soldiers or food.

>>142423
That's less than 1% of the water. Remember, they're draining entire SEAS. They'd only need rivers for what you're mentioning.

There's a lot of plot holes in HL2, and the game would have made more sense with just poison gas terraforming blocking sunlight, like in the original.

>>142424
>They'd only need rivers for what you're mentioning.
Nigger you do know that electricity based on seawater currents exist right?
And that the Combine are much more advanced than Humanity?

>>142439
Nigger, everything we've seen of the Combine could be accomplished with river HE. If you think the Combine need water for other things unseen, point them out here, but note it's already been pointed out all the water they'd ever need could have been extracted from a star.

>>142408
it's entirely incoherent, there is a massive gap between 1 and 2 that the game does an awful job of filling you in now. it never explains who the combine are, where they came from, or what they want, just "ayys are here now and you need to get rid of them".

>>142491
It's not. Some of it makes plenty of sense.

The backstory for what the Combine are and what they want makes sense. Some of the other details that have to be decoded make sense, and turned out to be well planned and executed: Their mechs like striders are technorganic and psychically controlled by advisor grubs, so that their human lackeys can't steal the tech and turn it on them. This prevents their infantry and stalkers from rebelling, even if they sympathize with other humans.

Laidlaw's vision of the Combine homeworld also half made sense. But nothing in the plot or the Epistle really explains what they would do with all the water, which is really an inconvenience to harvest, considering it was canonically drained into a teleporter. But that is wasteful since the industry would be better spent on real production of military and tech. They were having trouble facing troublesome Xen species and rebels after all. Again, star harvesting would be more economical here.

Here's something I didn't get, but I didn't look into it so it probably has a decent explanation, why didn't the Combine bomb white forest? Why go through all the extra steps of sending striders, and why send only a handful, when there were shitloads of striders in the Citadel, many of which conceivably escaped?

>>142408
Terraforming other planets and cucking the Earthlings?

>>142408
It might just be part of a strategy to make the the countryside as inhospitable as possible.

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The real kicker? Gaben is the Gman, having sold out his fandom for soulless corporate gain.

>>143146
Steam is better than any Half Life 3 could ever be.
Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, Half Life 2 and Left4Dead were bad enough.

>>143172
ok gabe

>>143172
Have any post-Episode 2 games on Steam brought real innovation to games (besides Alyx)? It just looks like a hellhole of money making spawn. Some of it's fine, including indie titles.

Someone should make a game about life in a dystopia. Kind of like the city17 gmod rp.

>>143420
>making a game about living in a dystopia
But we already live in a dystopia, just without all the cool gadgets and edgelord trenchcoat wearers

>>143420
Just play Dystopia.

>>143974
At least we can bring back the latter.

>>143974
That's why the fucking game idea makes sense...

Alyx comes close to it but you're forced to play as a forced ethnic character (I'm not racist but she's just not very interesting), who additionally they made uglier and tranny-like.

It is odd no one made a mod that explores the ordinary part of an ordinary citizen's city experience.

I am sad that the other Half Life thread was deleted. I almost never open threads more than 100 posts long because they're usually filled with reddit. I like tight quality short threads, and the discussion in that one about Gordon's gun training was an interesting concern about something that might seem weird plotwise.

Is 3 realistically ever gonna happen? And if it does will it have the same impact as 1 or 2?

>>144027
No you retard. Of course it will never happen.

>>144027
>>144031
The fan made version is coming but Gabe-Man sold out Valve's vision

>>144043
>Gabe-Man sold out Valve's vision
You can't be serious.
All the Valve founders sold out with Steam.
They modeled Valve corporate to "flat" so that they could all sit around and do jack shit on the company's dime.
During that time, Gayben sat on his ever growing fat ass playing DOTA and collecting HSN tier knives.
He was forced to announce shit, and I'm sure he got sick of the bullshit they've been pushing out lately.
I'm sure that this is why Alyx, VR, and the Steamdeck were pushed out.

I'm sure that they've been bleeding too much money on unpopular shit while they've let their IP rot and someone finally took notice when their paycheck didn't give them enough money to acquire the latest anodized titanium-vanadium-damascus linoleum knife.
So the whip was cracked.

>>144045
He's their president. He could have kept his cake and eaten it too, instead he only chose to rake in the billions.

>>144023
>im not racist but
just admit you hate niggers bro

>>144047
I'm not racist as per someone like Alyx, who is just boring.

I am racist against niggers.

So is Half Life 3 Coming out or what?

>>144060
>half life 3
>ever coming out
kek, al the valve employees are paid shills and psychologists that try their best to steal your shekels, half life 3 would only ever come out if they found a way to monetize single player games, maybe if they made you pay IRL money for bullets or something jewish like that

>>144072
But they made half life alyx, surely its just around the corner.
Also not everything is connected with jews.

>>144078
>b-but they made some shitty VR game!
who cares? they aint making half life tripple anytime soon, if they never made opposing force 2 then they'll never make anything related to half life ever again

>>144084
>dude have sex lamo
But having sex would ruin my purity, filthy whores cant touch this *Does the MC hammer dance*

>Last update: 2020

When is Project Bozos going to show signs of life

>>144078
>Also not everything is connected with jews.
Gayben is Jewish.
Every bad thing in this world is no more than one person away from a jew.
Name one fucked up thing in this world.
Then look at the actors involved. If you don't find a jew in them, you'll find a jew right behind them.

>Bad thing: half life 3 is delayed indefinitely
>Gayben doesn't want to lead, so develops "flat management"
>cliques form in company projects go nowhere for no real reasons
>Valve hops on microtransactions
>stops developing half life 3
All because a jew refuses to do his job.

>>144146
He's not Jewish.
You're right about the rest, but that's only because it's true about parasitic elites of every ethnic group.

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>>144151
>gaben
>not jewish

>>144155
You're being stupid and superficial. He might be Jewish but this is hardly enough. Dig up some genealogies.

>>144155
his business practices may be jewish, but he is not.

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>>144170
>nose you can open a beer can on
>not jewish
>rat face
>not jewish

>>144191
post his genealogy or shut the fuck up

>>144191
You and the other sub 90 IQ nazis ITT need to be gassed.

Look up his paper genealogies if they're available, they're probably not tampered with.

Also wtf happened to the other Half Life thread? I bookmarked and was going to read it. Should have merged it here.

>>144191
Poles can have massive noses for example, and rat faces are possible on most races, just more common among jewz

>>144192
>>144196
t. jew

>>144197
Jews parasitize other races to exploit their empathy and avoid getting their express tickets to hell cashed in early. Incidentally Poles were historically one of their most profitable victims. And it's the hook in the nostrils that's the giveaway, the Irish for example also can have big curved noses but they tend to have flatter nostrils when they're not demon-kin.

Opposing force 2 WHEN? why the fuck did they never bring back my mann shepard? he was god tier, only good thing randy bitchford did right

>>144198
t. jew

>>144237
I bet a Jew shagged anon's mom. So bitter and obsessed.

What do these posts have to do with Half Life?

>>144375
I just made a really good thread and bad actors are same fagging to muddle the puddle. So many bad actors for a supposedly "dead" site lol.

>>144376
Yup, its always some convenient boogeyman to blame. Never the anons themselves.

>>144376
No, I made this thread. And I can prove it because I can continue the Freeman firearms training thread (janny deleted) or most other topics in best form, because only me and one other anon I remember here bathysphered Valve lore.

>>144376
Oh. Sub thread? Gaben being a genetic Jew would explain a lot.

>>144208
What are you talking about, there's a fanmade sequel

>>144477
hunt down the freeman and propekt are NOT opposing force 2, prospect doesn't even give you different guns from hl2! and hunt down the freeman is just shit tier

How do you beat the HL2 two alley court on MMod hard mode? Wwhere Alyx hacks a panel and eventually opens a Combine gate. Every Youtuber I've watched for this got filtered too.

The two bugship boss fight in Nova Prospekt was a snap compared to this.

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I'm trying to do a Black Mesa playthrough, but the constant freezes and crashes drive me nuts. Is there any way to prevent them from happening?

>>144983
Stop being poor faggot

are there any forums for half life?

>>146557
are there any forums for car enthusiasts?
What do you think, dumbdumb?