Eurogamer: "Devs Owe You Nothing"

Certainly, that's presumably one of the things they may be addressing, though it's inaccurate to talk about a brand new engine since they're still going to build on the work already done with Source. It's just a question of a more far-reaching architectural change, I imagine.
 
Schru said:
Certainly, that's presumably one of the things they may be addressing, though it's inaccurate to talk about a brand new engine since they're still going to build on the work already done with Source. It's just a question of a more far-reaching architectural change, I imagine.
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1) dude get an avatar, you look naked compared to everyone else around here without one.

2) No when I say new engine, I mean new engine. The base problem with the current source engine with regard to map extents is inherent to its DNA. They can't replace it with a modular update. If they could of they'd, of done so during the episodes so they could of made things a bit more open world, and we'd have seem that reflected in L4D and Portal 2 . The present engine has served them well, and they've done some impressive things with it, but they need something with a bit more horse power, especially with a new console generation looming on the horizon. Certainly I'm expecting there will be some degree of compatibility with the existing Source engine, however it's going to be a different beast.

If there's any reason why we haven't heard jack on HL it's more than likely because the next step will be a full game with a new engine and they'll want to give it as much fanfare and media exposure as possible and that's best done at a trade show like E3. However saying that a simple confirmation that they are still working on the next installment of the storyline wouldn't go amiss for sure.
 
Samon Fish said:
I'm in a rush so I could only read the first few paragraphs. My view: it's accurate, and the 'Call for Communication' group likewise falls into the category of 'naivety and self-absorption' inherent in the Facebook/X-Factor generation. It may claim otherwise and feign to be nothing more than a 'friendly get-together of HL fans', but if you believe that, you're simply wilfully ignorant of the heart of the matter.
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... he decrees, as he searches the hearts of men and rewardeth each according to his deeds.

Meh, everyone's a critic.
 
Kadayi, thank you for being sensible.
 
You know what pissed me off? E3 last year, Valve announces "There's going to be a surprise at E3." Sure enough, two months later in the middle of Sony whacking off about how awesome they are, GLaDOS announces "Deploying surprise in 3...2...1." And out walks Gabe Newell's fat ass, and you know what the surprise was?

Valve is actually supporting the PS3 properly.














****ING WHAT?! TWO MONTHS OF WAITING FOR YOUR "BIG SURPRISE" AND IT'S A FEATURE YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE IN 2008?!

Up until that point, I had been patiently waiting for news regarding HL3. I was content to say "they're working on it." Then they go and get my hopes up for two months and I'm super-pumped expecting the only thing Valve could possibly consider to be a reasonable "big surprise" was Half-Life 3. Needless to say, that announcement was when I gave up giving a shit about Ep3 or HL3 until I see in-game footage. It's like a magical unicorn: I never expect to see it, but if I do I will be delighted.
 
I definitely think that falls into the whole 'stringing people along' thing they've been doing for a while now.
 
Kadayi said:
1) dude get an avatar, you look naked compared to everyone else around here without one.

2) No when I say new engine, I mean new engine. The base problem with the current source engine with regard to map extents is inherent to its DNA. They can't replace it with a modular update. If they could of they'd, of done so during the episodes so they could of made things a bit more open world, and we'd have seem that reflected in L4D and Portal 2 . The present engine has served them well, and they've done some impressive things with it, but they need something with a bit more horse power, especially with a new console generation looming on the horizon. Certainly I'm expecting there will be some degree of compatibility with the existing Source engine, however it's going to be a different beast.

If there's any reason why we haven't heard jack on HL it's more than likely because the next step will be a full game with a new engine and they'll want to give it as much fanfare and media exposure as possible and that's best done at a trade show like E3. However saying that a simple confirmation that they are still working on the next installment of the storyline wouldn't go amiss for sure.
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I know little about the technical side of it but what I had in mind was a more extensive structural change akin to transformation from GoldSrc, and yet the fact that most of other aspects of Source are still top-notch and don't justify abandoning or reinventing them. Like facial animations, particle effects, lighting, dynamic lights and shadows rendering, multi-core CPU's implementation, physics etc. Hence my question of whether such a change would actually necessitate pronouncement of a new engine.

As for the question of whether they're still working on Half-Life, I don't think there should be a doubt about it. They said that they had nothing more or new to say before they stopped talking about it, and they didn't take that back, did they? I think they had simply taken some emphasis off the project in the last few years, but never stopped working on it.

Yeah, I'll think of an avatar.
 
Chris_D said:
Regardless of your personal opinion, the article is very well written. You can read the full article here.
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A very good article. And I have to say I'm in complete agreemement. I mean the letter written to Valve begging for information was absolutely pathetic!

"The lack of communication between Valve and the Half-Life community has been a frustrating experience," it reads. "Fans of the Half-Life series have waited years for a word on when the franchise will return. [...] Waiting patiently for over four years is a daunting task [...] fans should at least be acknowledged in some way, regardless of developmental plans for the next Half-Life project."

Waiting for the next instalment of HL is a daunting task?! I love HL as much as anyone. But who are these people?! Do they ever go outside? Do they ever even look out of the window?! Christ, people. It's just a game. We all can't wait to play it & even here more .... something about it. But let's not let it rule our lives for God's sake. Going at it like Valve owe us something! They owe us nothing. They make the games, we buy them. Nobody is bending our arms to do so.
 
Kadayi said:
2) No when I say new engine, I mean new engine. The base problem with the current source engine with regard to map extents is inherent to its DNA. They can't replace it with a modular update. If they could of they'd, of done so during the episodes so they could of made things a bit more open world, and we'd have seem that reflected in L4D and Portal 2 . The present engine has served them well, and they've done some impressive things with it, but they need something with a bit more horse power, especially with a new console generation looming on the horizon. Certainly I'm expecting there will be some degree of compatibility with the existing Source engine, however it's going to be a different beast.
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After having spoken with a Source engine licensee, the issue with map extents could be solved "in half a day" - it's not a hard limit, it's a limit that Valve imposed because it suited their needs at the time. In much the same way that Portal 2's version of Source was significantly enhanced over the previous version (l4d2?) whatever game they come out with next will also be enhanced, but only so far as it suits the game Valve are making. If they have no need for maps over 16384x, then why have the ability? Source licensing isn't a primary revenue stream for Valve, so adding buzzword features isn't really their thing.
 
Kadayi said:
Also as a general aside I'd say it's very easy for some people who haven't had to reach into their pockets and buy a game in a very long time to get terribly boorish about what Valve do or don't need to do, as well as pass comment on the worth regarding the activities of the CFC group, but quite frankly I'd say they have less right to an opinion on the matter than those of us who are genuine paying customers at the end of the day. But please do feel to argue the toss, I'm behind on my :dozey: quota for this month, and could do with some 'amusement' :dozey:
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That is a cheap and fallacious shot, Kadayi.
 
Jesus Christ I am sick of people constantly demanding new engines. Then they wonder why it takes so long for games to come out. You know what I would love right now? If Eidos decided to make a full sequel to Human Revolution without changing a single thing to the engine or updating the graphics in the least. The game works really ****ing well and most of the problems are due to lack of polish and stuff being rushed a bit. If they just sat down and pumped out a new game with a new story with the same gameplay that polished off all the issues in Human Revolution without a single update to the engine or graphics I would be ****ing delighted. But this would be seen as lazy because if you don't waste your time reinventing the wheel every three years in the games industry you get branded as a lazy by the hardcore crowd.

I'm not saying games developers should take up the Activision way of pumping out the same stuff every year with a shorter and shorter SP campaign and charging more for it (and introducing a subscription service on top of that) but seriously if Eidos went out and made another game just like Human Revolution with a new story, the same basic setup and made it a more polished and better experience I would gladly pay full price for it.

The only issue I have with the Source engine is frequent loading. If they could stream the levels in the SP games and make it a bit more seamless that would be great. Otherwise I just want to play some games and I don't want to see Valve waste their time starting over from scratch again. If they really needed to update their stuff (as far as I'm concerned Half-Life 2 still looks much better than most new games for character models, even if the textures look a bit low-res now) so desperately I'd almost wish that Valve would just licence Cryengine or something rather than make a new one from scratch again.
 
Pi Mu Rho said:
After having spoken with a Source engine licensee, the issue with map extents could be solved "in half a day" - it's not a hard limit, it's a limit that Valve imposed because it suited their needs at the time.
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If it was that easy to 'solve' they wouldn't of made all of the outdoor maps for EP2 zig zag backwards and forth all over the place, and fold in themselves like they did. Similarly we wouldn't encounter the loathsome 'loading' every 10 minutes. I'm not sure why you're defending the present engine tbh Pi given you'd acknowledged before that it leaves a lot to be desired Vs others in the market place. Whether they are fussy about licensing or not is moot Vs staying competitive with other developers in terms graphical fidelity.

Samon Fish said:
That is a cheap and fallacious shot, Kadayi.
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Is that the sound I hear of a troll crawling back under his bridge? I think it is :dozey:

If the argument does that the only thing that counts is that of a financial relationship between developer and gamer, then by rights all other investments (time, energy, idling on these boards etc) are moot. The people behind CFC can at least claim they are paying customers so they have a relationship of sorts with Valve ,where as given you've not paid for a thing over the years can't. Or are you suddenly claiming that there is something beyond a strictly financial relationship between developer and gamer? Doing so would surely undermine the original assertion. If you're going to apply a judgement, it has to be universal and equal to all no? Or is it simply a case of you're special?

*Chortles*
 
I'm not defending the Source engine. It's horrible to use. I'm just pointing out that the map size limitation is not a hard limit. If Valve wanted to exceed it, they could do so quite easily. Therefore, it's a matter of choice and not necessity.
Historically, Valve have always catered for the middle of the market, spec-wise. It took them ages to drop DX8 support, simply because the Steam hardware survey shows where they're best aiming at. Quite simply, Source does whatever Valve needs it to do for their games, and nothing more. There's little benefit to Valve in busting out with HL3 with a brand-new, Crysis-shaming engine when the majority of their potential buyers wouldn't be able to run it adequately.
 
Kadayi said:
Is that the sound I hear of a troll crawling back under his bridge? I think it is :dozey:

If the argument does that the only thing that counts is that of a financial relationship between developer and gamer, then by rights all other investments (time, energy, idling on these boards etc) are moot. The people behind CFC can at least claim they are paying customers so they have a relationship of sorts with Valve ,where as given you've not paid for a thing over the years can't. Or are you suddenly claiming that there is something beyond a strictly financial relationship between developer and gamer? Doing so would surely undermine the original assertion. If you're going to apply a judgement, it has to be universal and equal to all no? Or is it simply a case of you're special?

*Chortles*
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I don't think Samon has ever meant that this relationship is exclusively financial in nature, but rather that the attitudes he criticizes show gross misunderstanding of Valve's obligations and motives. A suspicion of bad will where there is none, a tendency to overplay this situation as though Valve were wantonly or cynically betraying the community's trust.
 
Pi Mu Rho said:
There's little benefit to Valve in busting out with HL3 with a brand-new, Crysis-shaming engine when the majority of their potential buyers wouldn't be able to run it adequately.
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It depends on whether you think their loyalties are going to still be principally PC in the long run. I think Multi-format is increasingly going to the way development is going to go simply from a financial perspective, an arena that they've struggled in Vs other developers tbh (Portal 2 hardly did Skyrim or BF3 business). I'd not expecting them to necessarily make an engine that's going to send us all upgrading, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them bring an engine out that's a match to Frostbyte 2 for example. The expectation with the next console generation is it's likely to be less of a step up from present technology, but more conciliatory for the industry.
 
I genuinely liked this common sense article and generally agree with most of the points attached to the human condition. However using this HL Steam group as a real world illustration does not work so well since they push the line very close to the reasonable in their goals, whereas his broad brush painted a fairly negative picture that, combined with wit, will be absorbed easily even by the audience he berates. After all, that same human condition insures more than enough hypocrisy to go around right? I believe it was just an easy example for the author to grab since it had some mainstream news coverage lately, or his noticing it was the catalyst to rant on a topic he had been thinking about for some time.

The one part of the article I wholeheartedly DISAGREE with is the comment that it is naive to assume the collective desires of an IPs fan base has no impact, especially in context to an IP from Valve. I submit that it is in fact quite naïve to assume it WOULDN’T have an impact if you look at Valve’s track record. The L4D2 boycott and results didn’t happen so long ago if you may recall, and those guys WERE brats. There are other examples as well. The fans seem to at least intrinsically identify with this and it probably helped spur this movement. You could argue that Valve is feeding the fire, but my response is they seem to love the fire since they can extrapolate data from it. They know what they’re doing, and what they've been doing is responding to the community's actions for a long, long, long time.

What's my point? I'm not certain I have just one, but I believe if you asked Valve their point of view in regards to their community's thoughts and actions, no matter how far on either end of the spectrum, the response would actually be quite different than that of Eurogamer's.
 
Pi Mu Rho said:
I'm not defending the Source engine. It's horrible to use. I'm just pointing out that the map size limitation is not a hard limit. If Valve wanted to exceed it, they could do so quite easily. Therefore, it's a matter of choice and not necessity. Historically, Valve have always catered for the middle of the market, spec-wise. It took them ages to drop DX8 support, simply because the Steam hardware survey shows where they're best aiming at. Quite simply, Source does whatever Valve needs it to do for their games, and nothing more. There's little benefit to Valve in busting out with HL3 with a brand-new, Crysis-shaming engine when the majority of their potential buyers wouldn't be able to run it adequately.
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And besides all that Portal 2 looks friggin amazing! I was blown away by the visuals in that game. It's more down to design I guess than raw graphics engine power. But I thought it was a far better looking game than Crysis ..... or pretty much anything else I've seen for that matter. There's life in the old dog yet. And that's coming from someone who previously thought the Source engine was long in the tooth. It keeps prooving me wrong. Anyone seen 'Dear Etsher'? Christ that game looks stunning!!
 
The more times I read that article the more I wonder if it were a question being posed to EA or Ubisoft rather than Valve, whether people would be so adamant that Devs owe us (the potential consumer) nothing. Of Course EA and Ubisoft don't tend to tease, troll and stonewall their customers for years on end about their products, but instead tend to be fairly upfront about what's going on and where they stand in terms of development, even if just to confirm nothing is happening at that point in time. Still it does point to an interesting if slightly dysfunctional relationship at play between Valve and their public.
 
I disagree with the article personally, I bought into HL2 for the promise of a complete story that would be epic, something I could look back on fondly years later as I do Deus Ex or HL1. Valve did not deliver part of that promise, and shipping something years later does not count. Part of HL2's awesomeness has been tarnished by their seemingly uncaring attitude to their most loyal fans, whom I no longer count myself amongst.

Oh I'll play the next HL game, and may well love it as much as the original back in '98. It will be a brand new game though. HL2 will always bring back a tinge of disappointment as I think of the naive fanboy I used to be...
 
Spot on, Eurogamer. Not that I'm surprised.
 
Pi Mu Rho said:
I'm not defending the Source engine. It's horrible to use. I'm just pointing out that the map size limitation is not a hard limit. If Valve wanted to exceed it, they could do so quite easily. Therefore, it's a matter of choice and not necessity.
Historically, Valve have always catered for the middle of the market, spec-wise. It took them ages to drop DX8 support, simply because the Steam hardware survey shows where they're best aiming at. Quite simply, Source does whatever Valve needs it to do for their games, and nothing more. There's little benefit to Valve in busting out with HL3 with a brand-new, Crysis-shaming engine when the majority of their potential buyers wouldn't be able to run it adequately.
Click to expand...

There's new consoles coming out on the horizon, and according to Steam user surveys... the majority don't use DX9 setups with Windows XP. Infact, within the year... Microsoft will stop support for Windows XP and DX9. So for those, its time to upgrade (whether a new PC or wait for the consoles)

When Source first came out in 2004, it featured the best graphics on the market, and Valve didn't care about how well high settings would run on low end machines.
 
Pi Mu Rho said:
There's little benefit to Valve in busting out with HL3 with a brand-new, Crysis-shaming engine when the majority of their potential buyers wouldn't be able to run it adequately.
Click to expand...

But if you take a look at the hardware survey, 42% of the population has a DX10 capable machine & 30% are DX11, and the trend is only getting bigger. 43% are quad core, and 48% are dual core, etc. And you could also consider the fact that the new consoles are on the horizon.

If you look back to HL2, the reason the game took so long was not because of design processes, but because the game was technically aggressive. The programmers on the game have gone on record stating this.


With that said, it's now (almost?) been a longer gap from Ep2 to HL2 than HL to HL2. Is it because they're doing something technically aggressive again? I think so.
 
Is 48% already quad-core? Holy shit am I ****ing far behind.
 
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