FiringSquad HL2 commentary

Originally posted by Hammer
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/e3_2003_half-life2/

Sorry if I missed this already being posted...

It engages HL2 within the industry, rather than offering up the same stuff that is in all the other previews.
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Damn whoever wrote that bullshit is a hater. Why he throwin all that baggage on HL2. Of course most things there were not scripted, and the wood breaks where it was shot. Why the hell would Valve make such a big deal about it in the Demo if thats not how it really would be in the real game. That would just be plain stupid for them to explain all that was non-scripted and materials come with textures and break realtime with advanced physics acting on them etc. Making such a big deal out of somethings thats not true? cmon now...
 
Did we read the same preview / commentary?

If not, I read the Firing Squad article where they said HL2, if even half as good as the demo will be a game that reshapes the industry for the better.

(It's always smart to take anything you're not running on your own hardware as suspect: think of Duke Fornever or Sin as examples of why...)

The author states:

"Technically, Valve could have scripted every single event in the demo and we’d be none the wiser. However, we’re going to proceed on the assumption that much of what we saw was a collection of recorded demo events in the fashion of Quake demos, not a line-by-line script. In this case we expect that of course the events shown were set up but representative of actual gameplay. "

They go on to award HL2 "Best of Show".

That's about as positive as they could be...
 
"Is Half-Life 2 going to be as interactive and cool as it was in the demo? Absolutely not. AI is simply not on that level. It can’t even fake a self-preservation instinct, never mind recognize the value and importance of a monitor. Will Half-Life 2 be half as good? Maybe – and that just might be enough."

Man, who the **** does this guy think he is. How would he know any of this? Making strong statements like 'ABSOLUTELY NOT!' What a fruit. Someone should tell him to shut the **** up and stop gossipping like a teenage girl for christ sake. I mean sure he does point out interesting things but if you think about it, it's stupid. Of course HL2 will be as good as in the demo, infact probably better. You think valve spend 5 YEARS, to release a NORMAL GAME? cmon now... Everything we saw will be in the real game, or else why would it take 5 years to make.
 
This thread is becoming funny. Can we get a post-modernist in to dissect our divergent discourses, please?

For the rest of you - I'd encourage you to hit the article and see what you think.
 
This was just one dudes opinion. If he reckons that the E3 videos were "less-than-real", then let him. The end result (HL2) will still be the same.

Other than that, it was a good read.
 
Yikes, I hate threads like these. You people come in here and yell your hearts off at anyone whose opinion SLIGHTLY differs from your own.

Of course HL2 will be as good as in the demo, infact probably better.
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This man could come right back at you, using the same logic, and say, “Man, who the **** does this guy think he is. How would he know any of this?” THINK before you post.

It is the man’s opinion, by no means should you take OFFENSE because he says, “Half-Life 2 will own, but not as much as Valve has shown it too…”. Then at the end, he even gives the game an award. Be happy! Another award and fan of Half-Life 2! Then all of you come in here and yell at him for pointing out the obvious. Of COURSE parts were scripted, the scientist responding to the computer falling HAD to be scripted. Why? Because the computer simply CANNOT respond to everything in the world through voices. They simply cannot have enough voice recordings prepared for that.

Anywho, that was quite a good read. Feel free to start yelling at me, then I can throw some more of your logic around. Thanks for the link, Hammer!
 
Well either way. I'd like to see the face on that foo when HL2 comes out ON TIME , and be JUST AS GOOD as he said it WOULDNT BE. Then he would feel like an ass, releasing just HIS opinion as a ****ing article on some hardcore geek site.
 
Originally posted by CyrusIV
Yikes, I hate threads like these. You people come in here and yell your hearts off at anyone whose opinion SLIGHTLY differs from your own.



This man could come right back at you, using the same logic, and say, “Man, who the **** does this guy think he is. How would he know any of this?” THINK before you post.

It is the man’s opinion, by no means should you take OFFENSE because he says, “Half-Life 2 will own, but not as much as Valve has shown it too…”. Then at the end, he even gives the game an award. Be happy! Another award and fan of Half-Life 2! Then all of you come in here and yell at him for pointing out the obvious. Of COURSE parts were scripted, the scientist responding to the computer falling HAD to be scripted. Why? Because the computer simply CANNOT respond to everything in the world through voices. They simply cannot have enough voice recordings prepared for that.

Anywho, that was quite a good read. Feel free to start yelling at me, then I can throw some more of your logic around. Thanks for the link, Hammer!
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Alright I'll try a more logical approach. Why would Valve stress all these incredible features like non-scripted sequences and advanced AI and the phyisics if that's not how it would really be in the game? That would be just flat out hyping up a lie. Seems quite stupid. And if all those features wouldn't be in the game then why they spend 5 years on a game that if didnt have those features would take only 1 yr.
 
Originally posted by THUGENSTEIN
Well either way. I'd like to see the face on that foo when HL2 comes out ON TIME , and be JUST AS GOOD as he said it WOULDNT BE. Then he would feel like an ass, releasing just HIS opinion as a ****ing article on some hardcore geek site.
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Woah dude, cool it!! :) :)

Hopefully you are right, and HL will be as good as expected, but even so, I hope that dude doesn't feel like an ass. He wrote his conclusions from the HL2 videos after probably analysing them alot more than most of us. He rasied some valid points, too. :E

Not to mention, you may be the one feeling like an ass, if HL2 comes out and it's better than what they showed at E3. ;)
 
Are you Valve? Good, then don’t speak ‘facts’. Speak ‘opinion’, and put ‘think’ into your post. The ‘fact’ is Valve COULD be telling the truth, and deliver the best game sense Half-Life. OR! Let’s not forget the OR, Valve could be flat-out lying like other game companies in order to sell a game. If I recall, Half-Life sounded better on paper, did it not? Every game does. You simply cannot draw out a 100% sure conclusion, so make sure your post sounds like an opinion.

If it sounds like a fact, like the article writer’s does, then people will blame you, and yell at you, when it turns out you were in fact wrong.

(/me eats his cookie with the up most enthusiasm. Yummy!)
 
People need to be more clear about what they mean by "scripted sequences." Just because something is scripted, doesn't mean that it's bad. In the case of the scientist, I have no doubt that it is programmed to respond to major player-caused events: if you had knocked over something else, it would have said the same thing: so it's not scripted just to that monitor. This is good, not bad.

In Half-life, the scripted sequences always happened exactly the same way: everything animated exactly the same. In HL2, scripted sequences are broken up into tiny parts that influence each other, but the whole course of events is not determined. You didn't have to knock THAT monitor off the desk in exactly THAT way (i.e. it doesn't have to be animated as falling off the desk in a certain way). You just have to do something that bothers the scientist. Is that "bad" because it's a "scripted" event? No way: that's fantastic.

Valve never claimed that nothing is pre-programmed: that if you spraypaint "FU!" on the wall, that a scientist will read it, think about it, and respond to it. What they claimed is that scripted sequences are no longer little plays that you can't interact with (other than interrupting them), and that turn out the same every time. Instead, they've said that elements of scripted events are broken down and put into different character AI, so that characters play off each other based on what happens, rather than just an entire script running from start to finish. And it looks like they've done just that.
 
Originally posted by EVIL
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/authors/author_profile.asp?author_id=2 <<-- mr author

do I need to say more? :D
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Yes say more, because frankly, I didn’t get what the heck you meant by that post.

Also, people on these forums hype HL2 too much for themselves and making up facts about the game, that don’t even exist. I seen some people screaming “HL2 won’t have any scripted events”. That is not true at all, HL2 WILL have scripted events, but player will have choice between activating them or not.
 
I dont see any problem with this article. The guy has every right to question what was shown in that demo. If you think any company, let alone a game company, wouldn't pretty things up a bit to increase demand for their product then you obviously aren't from the planet Earth. Take Matrix Reloaded for instance. That movie was hyped to be the best movie ever and by the looks of the final trailer, it seemed pretty likely that it would be. Now I dont knwo about you, but after seeing it, I was a little dissapointed. I still liked the movie, but I wasnt completely blown away like I thought I would be. You have to remember that above all, these companies are out to make money, nothing more nothing less. Its obvious that many of those events were scripted, but what the guy was saying that if the AI, physics, and materials system turn out to be even half as good as it was shown in that video, its gonna be the biggest game ever. And I agree with him.
 
Originally posted by Shrike
I dont see any problem with this article. The guy has every right to question what was shown in that demo. If you think any company, let alone a game company, wouldn't pretty things up a bit to increase demand for their product then you obviously aren't from the planet Earth. Take Matrix Reloaded for instance. That movie was hyped to be the best movie ever and by the looks of the final trailer, it seemed pretty likely that it would be. Now I dont knwo about you, but after seeing it, I was a little dissapointed. I still liked the movie, but I wasnt completely blown away like I thought I would be. You have to remember that above all, these companies are out to make money, nothing more nothing less. Its obvious that many of those events were scripted, but what the guy was saying that if the AI, physics, and materials system turn out to be even half as good as it was shown in that video, its gonna be the biggest game ever. And I agree with him.
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Agree, plus guy has every right to think like that, because gamers already were ****ed over many times, the latest example is Unreal 2.
 
from reading that fireing squad report i got the feeling the guy had no solid conclusions, at one point he says that it will be awesome and other games won't be able to compeate and says that it could be as good if not better than the demo (the middle section of his report) but in the first section and end he 'slags' off half-life 2 with his opinion that he has no solid base or evidence to back up, saying that it won't be half as good as the demo and that the demo is most likely scripted and not AI or the new physics.
after reading it i felt like saying "make up you're mind" is it going to be the best thing yet or a dispointment? which is it? as this report says its both of those things...
there are some good points in that article that makes you think, but as has been earlier mentioned elsewhere in these forums the E3 demo that was screened according to someone was already one year old, this explains some of the bugs in the AI which we asume are fixed by now, and as was said before in this thread, valve haven't just sat about doing nothing for the past 5 years then suddenly script a demo for E3 and do a september release date, if they weren't ready then they wouldn't set a release date or take a demo to E3, if valve has done nothing and it isn't half the quality as the E3 preview then they will look stupid and be the laughing stock of the games industry which obviously they won't want.
in my opinion this guy doesn't have a clue and the only bit that says it's going to be good is the middle section which just says what has been said elsewhere
 
See, but thats exactly the point he was making. You can't take away any definite conclusions from 23 minute rolling demo, featuring chopped up portions of the game, that was designed specifically by the developers to show off the game engine in order to generate hype for the game. Half-Life 2 WILL BE GOOD, make no mistake about that. But until we hear about or see some reports or demo's from some independent 3rd partys, we can't say that everything shown in that demo is exactly how its gonna play out in the game itself. All the guy was saying was to be on guard, and not set yourself up to be let down because the finished product may not satisfy your unreasonably high expectations.

And another thing, this is about the only decent thread I've seen on this board. All the rest is just mindless speculations and discussions about unimportant crap.
 
I thought his arguments about development cycles and team sizes were interesting, and they were the substance of his response to HL2: "holy cow, how's the industry going to react to this one?"

The idea that this one game could force competitors to raise the grade of their titles and lengthen design / dev times is, I think, interesting and promising. I'll take half as many games done twice as well, thanks! - and yes, I will pay for them -

I agree about the fuzziness of the article, though; he was soft on conclusions about exactly what the game will be like because he's just clever enough to realize that anything specific any of us say right now about the game is just speculation.
 
in any case the canadian has a right to talk about his opinions how ever unlikely they may be to occur
 
Originally posted in the Article
Half-Life 2 might just simply kill off interest in most other games.
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HL2 is a little over 4 months away and I already feel that way. I have lost intrest in many other games that I was playing and was looking forward to.
 
The idea that this one game could force competitors to raise the grade of their titles and lengthen design / dev times is, I think, interesting and promising. I'll take half as many games done twice as well, thanks! - and yes, I will pay for them -
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Personally I think this is old news. Blizzard Entertainment has already shown us that more time spent on less games is the way to go. Granted, most developers have yet to take that lesson to heart. Perhaps Half-Life 2 will be somewhat of a wake up call.
 
what a dull and boring article.... didn't make me think that HL2 might be shittier that in the demo...it can't be...he just made assumptions...boooring :)
 
Its not the developers that push a game out to early, and the developers never needed a lesson on releasing quality over quantity. The people that need the lesson are the Marketing and management departments of both the development company and the publisher.

If the developers of games had their way, then all games would take as long as most of Blizzards and Valves games, and the quality would show through. Unfortunatly alot of companies have found it easier to make money releasing lots of crap games instead of a few really good ones.
 
In my opinion this guy is an asshat, In my opinion i think he is wrong.
 
A well written article that i cant say i agreed with because i am the biggest HL fanboy ever, but it did make me think and he did have many valid points. But there were some things like the AI he talked about, why would Valve lie about something that big? And the computer thing could very well have been scripted, when did they say during the demo that that was the AI at work and not a scripted sequence that was triggered, they didnt. So some good points and some bad ones.
 
Originally posted by THUGENSTEIN
Alright I'll try a more logical approach. Why would Valve stress all these incredible features like non-scripted sequences and advanced AI and the phyisics if that's not how it would really be in the game? That would be just flat out hyping up a lie.
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I'm sorry have you been alive for more than a few days??

You can't imagine why any company would hype or exaggerate their product prior to release?

DO you realize how TOTALLY ridiculous such a question is?
Haven't you even gotten psyched by a movie preview and then thought the movie sucked?

It happens all the time every day.
 
RoyalEF, you have good points and i see where you are coming from and i dont deny that they would want to hype up the game but stop comparing a game preview to a movie preview. They have nothing in common. A movie preview doesn't say "we have 20 action scenes in it and all of them will have at least 15 people die in it, expect the coolest computer graphics ever with bullet time 3d limbs flying off goodness". What i am trying to say is that a tech demo like a E3 was for Vavle to show off the game, talk about the cool AI which they demonstrated and other such graphical features. A movie preview is just a series of clips from the movie to give you an idea of what the movie is about, not about the content of the movie. Now i am not saying that Valve said "there will be 20 action scenes and blah blah" i am just saying that movie previews are vague, nothing in common with a tech preview of a game. But i can see what you are coming at with the hype thing.
 
There is no way of knowing wether or not the game is in beta. They arent going to send out a handful of copies of the game to reveiwers until just before release because they want to keep the game tight lipped. They are most likely going to have an in house beta which has probably already been going on for some time now. So just becuase you havent heard anything about a beta from game sites doesnt mean they dont have one or arent past taht stage.
 
Originally posted by nietzsche


The game is in the works for several years now and about 4 months from its release date. If the game isn't already in beta i'm smelling trouble. The beta state means that they could have let a few selected people from gaming sites playtest the game. If these people were still excited i could put my doubts to rest.
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I don’t agree with you at all. They can have home testers, the same once they had for beta testing of HL1. If you send beta to different people in the magazines, 100% game will be leaked next day.
 
Alright. I'm a pessimistic. Hand me a cup labeled "Half-Life 2" with water filled half-way and I'll say it's half-empty.

So I'm going to not accuse this guy for writing a "less positive review" than most people and even considering things most of us would only dare.

In fact, I might even whine a abit about its flaws (like combine not taking cover when reloading), even though it will probably be fixed by the time it comes out retail.

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to form a cult about meandering on HL2's imperfection (j/k). Then be pleasantly surprised when I play the finalized product.
 
The simplest definition is that it's the final state before going gold, where all game features are fixed and won't be changed anymore, where the developers are about to go into crunch-mode, where all remaining bugs are going to be resolved and the game is polished.
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Woah buddy, i think you are mixing up betas and versions, there is always time to add new content, just look at CS and DOD they were in the beta stages for like 2 years constantly adding new content AND bug fixing with the release of a new beta. Take Star Wars Galaxies BETA test, they are constantly releasing new betas with new content. And why do you keep saying that if they dont have it in beta form in 4 months, they are in trouble? Do you know that they dont have it in beta form? Where did you get this info from?
 
When a version goes beta it will not have anything added to it after that. The focus is fixing what is there and not working. With each introduction of new features you may create new bugs, or break items that were working. If you keep adding features to a beta run, then it isn't beta, but actually an alpha version. Peopel call anything they want beta. It just means they don't understand the terms they are using.

Betas of the next version typically won't exist until the current version goes gold. You want the code stable, then add new code.

The biggest mistake undisciplined programmers make is to not establish clear development stages. You have to decide what features you are going to have and code with that in mind. Feature creep (dribbling in features later on) causes exaggerated development times(*cough* 5 years *cough*). At some point you must feel that you've established all the code you set out to do and then code must be frozen and moved to Q&A. Beta testing starts.

Depending upon the amount of code and scenarios that need testing, Q&A can take months due to regression testing. During that time, programmers will be dedicated to bug fixes, which can be slow going.
 
Did you just post or did you read anything i said. So those "people" who are not really going by the development stages are 2 of the most succesfull games ever and pretty much all of SOE, given that they release new betas for games like SWG and the now released Planetside, or waht about the BF1942 beta where they added new content for the testers? All those companies werent following the development stages? I guess we have a difference of opinion and i am the only one supporting my opinion of what a beta is with some examples. Your not convincing me currently.
 
Since both CS and DoD were public mods, and therefore freebies, it was acceptable for both of these mods to go through a long public beta cycle before being secure enough to declare the mods "release" quality. CS and DoD were not retail products from day one, and they had more than their share of problems, as anyone who played them knows. They were privately-developed hobby products that did not follow the development cycle of the industry.

Apples and oranges: we're talking about games developed by studios, and you're talking about mods. A mod is a MODification of an existing, released game.

Alpha: working technology / art concepts / placeholders, etc.
Beta: all the pieces in place, trying to make them play together well. This may or may not be released into the public domain.
Gold / release: what you or I would pay for.

(Some games, like Sin, never get past Alpha but get sold anyway.)

About play-testing: although several review sites have seen gameplay behind closed doors, running in real time, they have not "play-tested" it in a conventional sense, or they can't talk about it if they have.


Re: hyping a lie: only someone who has never heard of BitBoys even joke about the computer industry hype being any less misleading than Hollywood. Hell, the lies Hollywood tells only cost me a few bucks a pop. How many suckers pre-ordered a $400 GF FX 5800 Ultra and didn't know they were getting a dustbuster?
 
and pretty much all of SOE, given that they release new betas for games like SWG and the now released Planetside, or waht about the BF1942 beta where they added new content for the testers?
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Read buddy read!!
 
Dr. Sbaitso -

From my previous post:

"Beta: all the pieces in place, trying to make them play together well. This may or may not be released into the public domain."

Companies have betas, usually for testers, possibly the entire public, but they are not release quality. These are done to add and test new content, or to gauge public reaction to a change. For example, SoF2 had a public mutiplayer test that was not precisely a "demo" - it was a beta, with an email address supplied for reporting problems.

Beta - not finished yet, still testing things. You yourself use the phrase "testers" to refer to beta participants (beta testers).

Alpha - working tech
Beta - testing final features
Gold - release quality.

It's really simple.
 
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