Info received from Valve ONLY - NO questions/discussion

[P4boy]

Just got this reply from Brian Jacobson clearing up the issue of 128mb vs 256mb graphics cards:

The game will run fine on a 128 MB card. Most of the benefits of the 256 MB cards you'll see we expect will be more long-term, received via updates over Steam:

1) Something which happens immediately, we're able to store more data on the card instead of in AGP memory, which you might think would be a perf win, but so far, we're not finding ourselves to be AGP bus-bandwidth limited.

2) We expect to release a local-specular solution, perhaps at ship, perhaps over Steam at some point, which is a major texture memory consumer. In addition, we've made it easy for major HW vendors to write new shaders for us to take advantage of the extra memory.

3) A *lot* of memory is consumed by normal maps, since they can't be compressed well. We may ship uncompressed normal maps for the 256 MB cards if it turns out to be a big enough visual improvement. Future updates (not to mention mods) will contain high-end content that use ever-larger amounts of normal maps.

 

[songwriter]

Obvoiusly there are alot of Half Life Fans throughout the world so i was wondering how much did you and your team listen to the fans ideas, thoughts and comments whilst making HL2 (ie do you read forums etc) ?

Gabe: We track on what everybody has to say. We read the forums pretty regularly. Given the enthusiasm of the community, we'd have to actively hide from what they have to say in order not to know what they are thinking.

How are you and your team handling the pressure of producing one of the most anticapated games of all time ?


Gabe: We're going to be worried up until everybody has the game and tells us whether we nailed it or not.

 

[superbo3]

hi valve i so cant wait for hl2 im gonna buy a new pc just for hl2
great work

heres my qustion:
will i be able to like drop a gun on like barney and he uses it , lets say i give him a better gun then the one he has like he has a hand gun and i give him a mashine gun will he use it or ignor me droping the gun on him?

(when i say on i mean drop the gun and it hits him so it would pick it up)


p.s so hope you will answer
p.p.s i cant wait for the trailer on stream tonight

-Bo

Yes, you can give an NPC a weapon.

The problem we have is that in play-testing, people will sometimes give an NPC the wrong weapon, and want it back, and then shoot the NPC to get it back, which is, well, not really what we had in mind. So we're still tinkering with this. NPCs also give you weapons. NPCs will pick up weapons they find.

 

[[ICR]]

-----Original Message-----
From: [ICR] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:41 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 Question - Yawn


Aren't you sick of people asking if your sick of people asking questions, but asking them anyway?
Anyway, here is a question Seriously though dood, you have to go down with Scott Adams as two of the most dedicated people to their fans
Anyway, the question at last:
I personaly thought that alot of the expresions used in the E3 demo's looked a little over exagerated. Were they toned up to show off the new system, or are they like that in game?
Oh, and are you building a list of people who send you annoying e-mails like this one so when all the publicity is over you can hunt us down and shoot us annoying bastards? I just wanted to know, cos now I've just joined them...scary thought.

Replay from Gabe:
Well, I'm just turning my list of people over to Dogbert. I'm sure he'll take care of all of you annoying weirdos.

You're the first person who has commented on the exagerated nature of the animations. When we were testing the demo with people, (we think because they were only seeing them for a short period of time and were used to thinking of game characters as very wooden), the more we broadened the expressions, the better people thought the character system was. "Turn it up to 11!" Anyhow, it embarassed our animators but it worked in the demo. The game itself is naturalistic.

 

[Shin`Ali]

<Shin`Ali> Erik: Got any faxes with the subject "Valve Guys"?
<ErikJ> Shin`Ali: That was you? A first around here.

:cheese:

 

[h00dlum]

1) You will be able to select the language. Any resources you don't have
will automatically be installed via Steam.

2) Yes, there will be a DVD version.

3) Yes, Source supports more than one person on a vehicle.

4) We're looking at a variety of pricing approaches - basically a three
tiered retail strategy as well as a subscription option for people who'd
rather go that way. We always have tried to give gamers more value for
their dollar than other game companies.

-----Original Message-----
From: Marcus Swede [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 4:30 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 question (surprised?)



<1>
I reckon HL2 will support multi languages. I live in Sweden, they dont
translate every game here, but if they should translate HL2 will there be an

option to have english language? Becouse swedish sound so corny "Hjälp en
strider, och vi som trodde Black Mesa var så tufft som det kunde bli?"

<2>
I guess HL2 will have more than one CD, will there be a DVD version of the
game?

<3> Dunno if you can answer this one but can u travel more than one person
in a vehicle?

<4>Will HL2 be more expencive than regular games? Becouse by buying HL2 you
buy 100000 games in one(mods)

btw you guys @ Valve are doing a great job, the thing i love about you is
that you listen to the fans\consumers!

 

[d8cam]

2 quick questions.



1. I have the following: 1.7ghz Pentium 4, 1GB of PC2700 DDR Ram, plenty of hard drive space, and plan on getting one of the higher-end Geforce FX 5200's or 5600's, and I have the SB Audigy 2. Will this run ok?

2. Secondly, in the Half-life 2 development process, what was the first thing (back in 1998 or 1999) that you all finished part of and really got excited about? In other words, when did you all think in your heads that this is going to be something amazing?



Thanks.

1. I'd suggest an ATI 9800 for your setup, not NVIDIA.

2. Ken's first demo of the new character technology.

-Gabe

 

[CptTrips]

I have a 2 questions.

In-game, how will momentum effect the player? Example, if you were to jump forward about 5 feet and land on a very narrow beam in real-life, your momentum would cause you to overshoot your intended landing space, causing you to fall off the other side . Will this happen in HL2 as well? Or will you just stop, ala HL1?

The player is physically simulated. I'd have to check with Jay to find out how quickly you can accelerate/decelerate. Half-Life 1's player movement was done in a totally different way.

This question is similar: Can you trip? If you were to run across a jumbled pile of boxes, would you miraculously keep your balance and make it across, or could you possibly trip, delaying your movement for a second or two?

You can't trip or fall down - not because we can't simulate it, but because making locomotion control that complex isn't a very good idea with current input devices. Boats and cars and pogo sticks and being a ball are probably a lot more fun and achievable than trying to model human balance with a mouse and a keyboard.

 

[mattjackson]

Not directly related to half-life but:



Not that far off. However we find that the closer we get to doing realism, the more interesting fantastic and surreal stuff becomes (i.e. with the technical hurdle aside, you end up going in other art directions in a more intentional way). In other words once realism becomes a choice rather than an unattainable goal, it becomes less interesting.

-----Original Message-----
From
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 4:32 AM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: Photo realism
Just like to say good job! Cant wait for the game.

Just a quick one, I know how busy you must be

How far, or how many years do you think we are off from a totally photo realistic game? Or maybe at least to the standard of say the movies, or pixar for example? By Half-life 3, or 4 maybe?

Thanks in advance, keep up the good work

 

[superbo3]

hey ive been thinking will programmers be able to sell their mods over steam and not have them free for download? ,
then they would put more time n money into thier mods and make better quality mods ,
maybe this is part of one of your master plans lol
it would open up for the pros to make mods and not just amatures.

p.s thx alot for answering my last email
-Bo

Yes, MOD makers can use the billing interfaces in Steam to go commercial with their MODs. We're about to turn those on in Steam.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Will HL2 feature a scalable hud/sprites?
Yes

Will HL2's UI be at all similar to the recent reworking that CS just got with the 1.6 beta?
Yes

Also, will the SDK support modifications to the voice comm? So you could do things like have your voice be a 3d sound coming from your position, so you could talk to those around you without cluttering the channel, or have fire teams and only the fireteam leaders could speak with other fireteam leaders.
Yes

Will HL2 feature on the fly lip synching for voice comm the way the first HL did?
Yes although a simpler algorithm than the single-player synching (what happens if you have 20 people around you talking)

 

[PriNcE oF SpAcE]

e-mail correspondence concerning differing demo-playback physics

Hello Gabe hope you don't mind answering this single question:

in the Docks scene I've noticed a slight difference in the rag-doll physics applied to the zombie that gets knocked into the water in the two vids.(the 600MB shaky cam & the direct feed)

this mean we get different rag-doll effects everytime we view a demo playback or what?

can you please explain this ?

Non-critical physics behavior isn't encoded in the demo - it's simulated during demo playback.-Gabe


Yes, we have both server and client side ragdolls. The client side ones re-simulate, the server ones just play back as networked so they would look basically them same on every playback of the demo.-Yahn

just making sure...got this from Gabe :

"
Non-critical physics behavior isn't encoded in the demo - it's simulated during demo playback.
"

as far as I can understand what you just said contradicts this a little...right?

unless with "basically the same on every playback..." you meant that there wouldn't be HUGE difference just small ones....

as far as I can tell it's pretty much the same with demo-playback as with multiplayer... things which physical position doesn't really matter will react slightly different each time you view the demo play-backs right?

No. Gabe is just saying that the bone positions of the ragdolls were considered non-critical physics behavior for these recordded demos, so it was okay that they are totally client side ragdolls and that it looks slightly different each time we play back the demo. In cases where we care about this, we would use a server side ragdoll instead.

Basically the same == very small differences because you are not talking about simulation of the bones with a server side ragdoll, the client is just playing back their positions, so it should be virtually identical modulo any minor sampling issues with interpolation during demo playback

Multiplayer is the same kind of issue as demos (resampling of a networked gamestate data stream), so it would be the same question in multiplayer. But you could use server side ragdolls there if you cared about it being exact between client and server (e.g., a multiplayer game where you needed to "loot" corpses would require some way to know that the corpse is in a specific spot on both the client and server, so you'd probably use a server side ragdoll there).-Yahn

lol that's what I'm saying

or that's what I meant to say...anyways I understand what you're saying(at first it just seemed like you contradicted Gabe a little...just wanted to make absolutely sure I understood you guys right)

thanks for the quick reply guys(say thx to Gabe from me aswell...forgot to thank him in advance in the other mail)

oh yeah...now that I seem to have you on the other end of line ready to answer...could you plz answer another question please?

anyways: just wondering how advanced Fire is simulated in the Source engine(HL2)?

will fire be able to spread on flameable materials and how will it effect suchmaterials? if exposed to fire for a longerperiod of time will flameable objects char and smolder/crumble(e.g. wooden pillars)?

I don't know what the final state of fire will be in the game so I can't give a definitive answer. It has been spreadable, etc. in the past. No promises it'll stay that way though.

I don't think we did anything like smolder/crumble, but a mod could probably do that. The fire systems are all in the game code that mod makers can go wild with.-Yahn

 

[Banana]

Hello Mr. Newell,
How are you and the rest of the Valve team? I like your work so far and I am really looking forward to Half-life 2.
I was wondering if you could answer some questions if you had the time. If not then that is OK.

1) How are things at the offices at the moment? Are people stressed about getting the game out or are things on schedule enough where things are still relatively calm?

People have done this before, so things are relatively calm. It's actually easier to be close to the end than to be in the middle.

2) Do any of you just take a break and play Half-life 2 for fun? Decide not to look for bugs and just play it as a game (whether it be the single or multiplayer portion) or does the fact that you made the game take some fun out of playing it for pure enjoyment?

Not really. It just isn't possible to have been this close to something for this long and play it as a game. I still can't play Half-Life 1 for fun. I keep gritting my teeth and wishing we could have made X better or fixed Y.

3) On a related note, is there any person on the team that still has not played parts of the game?

No.

4) Do any of you still play the original Half-life singleplayer?

We've all played it so many times we can play it in our heads without a computer.

5) Does Dhabih Eng still work for you? How much art does he contribute towards the game? Is there any concept art drawn by him or any of the artists that did not make it into the game in any form and if so can/will that be released to us for drooling purposes?

Yes Dhabih is still here and still doing great stuff. We'll release more of his illustrations as we get closer to shipping.

6) Do you guys listen to music while working and if so what are the popular songs around the office?

We've really fragmented musically. I have been learning to sing khoomei in self defense. Most people have become hyper-eclectic. Eric Smith uses DVDs instead of music for his background audio.

7) Note revealing anything about the story, HL2 seems to be (as far as i can gather) less linear in that there can be more than one way to solve a problem. Will there be multiple endings? More specifically i was wondering if there is an ending if you die. Most games just let you reload but if the player dies do we get information on how things turned out because we
failed?

8) How often (at the moment) do you read forums where people are discussing your game and do you ever feel like joining the discussions?

We'll check on the forums if there is something we need to respond to (like random retailer ship dates), but lately we have had less time to hang out on the forums than we usually do.

9) Metal Gear Solid 2 (and maybe 1 i dont recall) had name tags for dead people and those names were the names of some selected fans. Have you ever thought of doing something like this (incorporating fan names) into the game somehow? If so, can i be Dead Scientist # 42 ?

There will be some surprises in the games. There's at least one Easter egg in the videos that no one has noticed yet.

10) After the game is released, if i send you (Valve) my game box (Limited Edition Hopefully) will you sign it?

Sure. We'd be happy to.

11) Lastly, a more technical question: Do you support gaming on laptops? My laptop is fairly high end as far as laptops go (2.0Ghz, 512 Ram) but it has a Mobility Radeon 9000 64MB vid card. Now this (in my opinion is a great video card especially for a laptop. Will the game run nicely on the system or will i have to suffer because i have a laptop? Some gaming companies dont
like to support laptops .

A bunch of us have laptops we play on when we travel (or when we need to demo), so HL-2 will be laptop friendly.

 

[Northwood83]

Will Half-Life 2 support texture sizes up to 1024x1024 or even larger?

Yes

Will Half-Life 2 be able to render large outdoor area's as seen in Battlefield 1942?

Yes


Is the max map size still the same as in Half-Life 1?

No

 

[Spiffae]

Mr. Newell,
Thanks for taking the time to answer all of the pounds of e-mails you must recieve. It really makes the fans feel like there's a dedicated team behind Half Life 2 that won't forget about the game once it's out (not that Valve ever did that anyway.)

Anyway, like everyone else, I have a couple questions:
1. What is the official spelling? Half Life 2, or Half-Life 2? How is the game refered to in the office? I run a fan page, http://hl2hc.halflife.org and as an editor, these are minor things that interest me.

Half-Life 2

2. I know everyone likes video, what with sound, motion, and all that, but is there any chance that you will be releasing screenshots to the public anytime soon? Maybe I'm just old and nostalgic, but I love seeing a batch of screenshots.

Yes

3. Is there an official name for the little flying saw-guys?

Man hacks

4. I know you've been e-mailing back and forth with other people about the fact that DX9 has problems with antialiasing. Are these issues that could be resolved with a driver or a patch, or are they fundamental deficiencies in the current generation of hardware?

ATI's current hardware does it right, but it's not exposed properly in DX9. It may get fixed.

5. (Optional Bonus) How do you feel about fans extracting unreleased movies from the steam cache?

sneaky bastards

sorry for being long winded, and keep up the good work.
Spiffae

 

[NiteStalker]

Ok, this is not an e-mail, it's a part of an interview. It's the answer to some peoples question about surround:

"We support Dolby 5.1 sound for the ultimate home theater sound and whatever comes beyond that. We know that Creative has talked about their 6.1 system. We'll migrate to that and support whatever state-of-the-art audio system is available to consumers to make the experience that much more compelling and richer."

This and more can be found at http://www.gamespy.com/interviews/july03/halflife2/

 

[d8cam]

As most of you know by now if you read this post, I sent Gabe this e-mail:

2 quick questions.

1. I have the following: 1.7ghz Pentium 4, 1GB of PC2700 DDR Ram, plenty of hard drive space, and plan on getting one of the higher-end Geforce FX 5200's or 5600's, and I have the SB Audigy 2. Will this run ok?

2. Secondly, in the Half-life 2 development process, what was the first thing (back in 1998 or 1999) that you all finished part of and really got excited about? In other words, when did you all think in your heads that this is going to be something amazing?

Thanks.


Gabe said:

I'd suggest an ATI 9800 for your setup, not NVIDIA.

Ken's first demo of the new character technology.


Well, I then e-mailed Gabe with this:

Which one do you suggest? The 9800 128MB sdram, the 9800 128mb ddr ram, or the 9800 pro 256mb?


Gabe said:

9800 128 DDR is what I have at home.


Very interesting. It looks like that will be the card I am getting. AND NO I am not an ATI fanboy...I just want the best recommended card!

 

[_-_-SELAS-_-_]

Movie #4

Heres a quit chat with ErikJ on steam. Erhm.. word for word 8)

SELAS says:
Hey any plan on when movie nr. 4 will be coming?
SELAS says:
If all the swervers dont crash etc.
SELAS says:
-w
SELAS says:
sry its 01:44 am over here
Erik Johnson says:
Likley on Monday.
SELAS says:
thx

 

[Joneleth]

We work with all the graphics card manufacturers. ATI and NVIDIA have made the biggest investments in time and engineering to make sure Half-Life 2 and their hardware work well together. We are not trying to give an advantage to one company over another, as the people who play our games certainly wouldn't want us to do that.

With that said, Half-Life 2 appears to be the first game to really be pushing the capabilities of DX9-level hardware. At E3, we ran on ATI hardware because ATI's hardware did the best job. Since then both ATI and NVIDIA have worked diligently to improve performance and quality, not just because they think Half-Life 2 will be a title that will help sell DX9 hardware, but also because it is a good test case that will aid them in understanding the behavior of their hardware for future games.

As we get closer to shipping we will release Source based benchmarking tools that will let people analyze this themselves.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 4:27 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 Graphics Card Reccomendations


Hey Gabe,

We've all been hearing that Valve has been promoting the ATI Radeon 9800 card over Nvidia cards. I was curious if there was a reason behind this, like maybe ATI cards have some sort of advantage over Nvidia cards? Will HL2 even support Nvidia cards? If so, will Nvidia cards run slower with HL2 because the game is more optimized for ATI cards? We're all kind of wondering what these comments mean and what graphics cards will run the game effectively.

Thanks.

 

[FAWN]

Will I be able to run Half-Life 2 in a windowed mode?

Originally posted by Gabe Newell
Yes.

I've got two real quick level design questions. First, will it be possible to make individual polygons in the new Hammer opposed to whole brushes, without having an error? And second, will the "cutting" issue (two touching brushes intersect each other to create more polygons) of Half-Life level design still be around? Thanks.

Originally posted by Chris Bokitch
#1 - The concept of the convex brush is still central to level design. Displacement surfaces (our "deformable mesh terrain") is somewhat different -- you can create concave shapes out of one displacement surface, but it's still based around a convex object.

#2 - This is just how the BSP-based engine works, as far as I know. It's something that, as a designer, you can minimize with efficient brush placement.

 

[A.I.]

-----Original Message-----

From: Me

Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 1:20 AM
To: [email protected]

Subject: A question about singing

Greetings!

I've got one short question. Can models with the face expressions in Half-Life 2 sing?

Thanks,
Martin Bozic

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 22:10:18 -0700, Gabe Newell <[email protected]>
wrote:

Thank you, Joe, for being part of the problem. Martin, by accident I copied Joe KENnebec, an itinerant drug abuser we use for doing the occasional motion capture sessions of activities disallowed by the SAG standard contract, rather than KEN Birdwell, a genuinely nice fellow who developed the facial animation system.

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Kennebec [mailto:************]
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 9:34 PM
To: Gabe Newell; 'Volja'
Cc: h-Joe Kennebec
Subject: RE: A question about singing


To follow up on this issue, they can also dance, but will look off until you add more controls to their butts (I assume you are talking about dancing really well, like Ricky Martin or an opera singer, and not like John Guthrie trying to get a squirrel out of his pants).

_____

From: Gabe Newell
Sent: Mon 7/21/03 8:34 PM
To: 'Volja'
Cc: h-Joe Kennebec
Subject: RE: A question about singing


They could, but it would look off until you added more controls to their throats (I assume you are talking about singing really loudly, like a rock star or opera singer, not like a mom singing to a baby).

 

[d8cam]

In case anyone was wondering why Gordon didn't talk in Half-life and won't in Half-life 2, here is the explanation from Marc Laidlaw from 1998:

If we didn't get exactly the right voice for Gordon, it would continually jar the player out of the game-that slightly wrong voice would just grate on you, the way Duke's voice grates on some people and eventually drives them out of the game. Gordon is not really the kind of guy who'd quip and wisecrack every time he killed something, so I'm not sure exactly what interest there would be in hearing him speak.

 

[chemicalagent]

-----Original Message-----
From: Sam [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 2:21 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: The HL2 Console


Hey, I am wondering if players will be provided with an in-game console such as the one in Half-life. Being both a Half-life and Quake 3 player, tweaking things just the way I like them is very important to me. Will I be able to change client side variables via the console Easily? And if not, Will there be player configs I can edit?

And also, will I still be able to script via the console, (I'm talking simple things here, like a dodge-jump button or something, not complex macros)

-Thanks, Sam




Yes. And there are a lot more of them now.

 

[method04]

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Upchurch [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 11:07 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Half-Life Questions


Gabe,

Question about HL2.

The most interesting part, to me at least, about the e3 demo video was the input/output camera demonstration. How hard is it to specify a plane to be the screen and an object to be the camera? I’m guessing that this gives good possibilities for mappers to create a “waiting room” sort for spectators in which they could just sit back and view the match from a few different angles at once?

Thanks,
Adam


Hi Adam,

It's surprisingly easy to setup a camera and monitor in this fashion. At the moment, there is a restriction that there may not be two cameras in the same area, but you could certainly have multiple cameras covering different areas. I could see the "waiting area" of such a mod resembling a sports bar with big-screen TVs. Now there's an idea...

Chris.

 

[GrahamTheGreen]

AI Stuff

-----Original Message-----
From: Graham Hunt [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 5:59 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 Questions


Hi it's me again with more questions. I don't want to waste your time so
let's get right to it.

1. Will the enemy hear sounds and then go to investigate them in
single-player?

[Gabe Newell] Yes. However it isn't a stealth game a la Thief.

2. Say you put a table or something in front of a door or you climb
over a wall of some sort, will a pursuing enemy follow you in the
single-player game?

[Gabe Newell] Yes.

3. Will the enemy ever go on the offensive in a group and use flanking
tactics and such in single-player?

[Gabe Newell] Yes.

4. Say you use the manipulator to throw something. Will the enemy
investigate the noise if they hear it and if they see it will they try to
find the origin of where the object was thrown in single-player?

[Gabe Newell] Yes. See 1.


5. Will you be able to knock over enemies or are you able to be knocked
over yourself? If so, what weapons can achieve this desired effect?

[Gabe Newell] Not yourself. We tried it for a while but ended up not liking
it.

6. Will you be able to shoot out vehicle's tires in single or
multiplayer?

[Gabe Newell] There's nothing in the physical simulation that would preclude
this, but we don't do this. You could also fail springs or shock absorbers
trivially, but we don't do this. Exploring more complex vehicle dynamics is
the sort of thing the MOD community will do well.

7. Will the final game have any sort of bone-breakage system or at
least sounds for when a bone should be broken? I think it'd be pretty sweet
if I clip an enemy's head with a radiator and get a satisfying snapping
sound.

[Gabe Newell] There is plenty of satisfying visual and sonic feedback in the
game. Kelly is quite good at this.

Thanks for your time ,and, as always, keep up the excellent work.

 

[sir h]

Quite useless for the most of you, but here it is


Will there be a console-command to set mouse-acceleration ingame (like m_yaw and m_pitch in HL1)?


yes

 

[Flyingdebris]

-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Iglesias [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 11:56 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Half-Life 2 mech modding question
Gabe,
I am a member in a forum dedicated to people who enjoy
making Battletech mods out of existing games. I am
not sure if you are familiar with battletech, but
pretty much its about 4 story tall robots being
piloted by people to shoot each other up.
After seeing the strider in the e3 video the thought
popped into my head that it may be possible to code in
giant robots and giant robot physics into the game.
My question is, "Would it be possible in a mod to take
a bipedal type robot about as tall as the strider and
make it pilotable while still having it respond
realistically to physics?"
The modders at the forum really need to know and would
be quite happy if i could relay them an answer.
Thank you for your time,
-Alex Iglesias

(Gabe Newell)Yes. We made the Strider a vehicle for our own amusement.

 

[theHATRED]

It will be in the distributed file system and it will MP3. Most of the time
it will load off of your hard drive.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jesper Brännström [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 6:35 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Half-Life2 question


Hi gabe,

I've read that Half-Life2 will have music, just like the first game. The
first game loaded the music from the disc, correct? Well, my question is,
will the music be copied to the hard disc during the installation and then
be loaded from there, or will it be loaded from the game disc?

Thanks in advance//Jesper

 

[Manual_daniel]

Hi there,

I'm previously of the Unreal Ed community and decided to give Valve Hammer a go. I found it similar but a little tougher to get into, but didn't want to venture too far into it in case you guys changed your level making tools. I doubt you would in terms of practicality, but I have to ask -

Will you use Valve Hammer or at least an identical input for HL2 level editing?

Yes. Hammer has been refined and updated to work very well with Source. It is our primary map building tool.

If yes, will I be able to migrate old files across?

Yes, you will be able to load Half-Life maps (.MAP or .RMF) into the new version of Hammer. This can be done only for the purpose of converting them to a Half-Life 2 map - it cannot be resaved as a Half-Life 1 map.

Will the work process change for building levels and if so, how?

Not significantly. Rather than change, there will be new capabilities. The process will still be very familiar to people with previous experience building Half-Life maps.

If I can migrate old files across, will I have to reconfigure areas - as I remember you mentioning that if I choose a wood material, the physics, particles and so on are also assigned - therefore I'd have to set all my wood objects to this preset. Basically what will I have to prepare for when it comes to migrating things across?

When you migrate a map from Half-Life 1 to Half-Life 2, you're going to want to redo all of the entities (and texturing). While some familiar entities remain (and some familiar entity properties as well), the entity system as a whole has gone through a major upgrade, giving you far more flexibility and a cleaner method of controlling events in your map.

Will those with no scripting/programming experience, but strong Art/Design background be able to make custom MODs for Half Life2? If not, what do they need to learn additionally?

The process for creating mods has not changed significantly from Half-Life. The SDK code is still written in C++ and still requires a knowledge of C++ coding to modify and extend.

Will you have reflective surfaces in the game?

Yes, the shader system has allowed for a number of material effects. In the E3 video, you will notice that the dock area features reflective (and refractive) water.

Will I be able to input a high amount of breakable objects and movers in the game (the Unreal engine sucks ass for this)?

It depends what you mean by a "high amount". You can definitely pack a lot of stuff into a map.

Hope that helps!

Chris.

 

[Manual_daniel]

More from Chris at Valve

In regards to putting in a 'high amount' of breakable objects and movers in a level, I mean will I be able to insert, let's say 20 movers (includes moving doors, lifts, platforms, crushers etc...) in one level and have it remain stable?

I remember only being able to insert 4 at a time in a UT2k3 level before the editor crashed/corrupted my designs and I eventually gave up on the levels I was working on


Oh, cripes, 4?? Hehe... Ya, I think 20 shouldn't be a problem. Even in Half-Life 1, you could have plenty of doors and lifts and whatnot.


Also if you have any information regarding the dev tools which are rumoured
to cost $1000 (!?!), then I'd love to hear more.


Chris: The $1000 dollars can be made payable to me... Er, where'd you hear
such a rumor!? Our plans are to freely release the tools, including Hammer,
for map design, and a version of Softimage XSI for use with modeling.

 

[kelisis]

Yes.


-----Original Message-----
From: Kelisis
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 3:27 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Headset communication?


Hi, I just have one quick question for you. Will Halflife 2 support headset
communication like in H1? Thanks for taking the time to read this. -Kelisis

 

[Logic]

From: [email protected] :

Hmm, that sounds like a good idea...

-----Original Message-----
From: Edward Harrison [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 10:17 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HL1 in source


Very quick question, I know you guys are busy : Will the original HL ever be completely revamped in the source engine? Will we ever get the opportunity to play the original HL games with the new technology and features source offers?

Thanks for your time,
Edward Harrison

My guess is that it's being worked on, but that's only speculation

 

[urseus]

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 5:07 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: A HL2 Question.


Hello Sir.

Great job on the community suport, alot of mods are moving from BF1942 to
HL2 because of how well you guys are working with the comunity.

One small question. Is it possible to attach death animations to models like

you used to, but still have ragdoll. For example sometimes in day of defeat
you would get a cool animation like a dying man reaching out in agony. Is it

possible to incorporate random death animations into the hl2 engine, or is
it purly ragdoll from now on?



Gabe: Doing this would be easy. Blending some level of physics into the death animation would be trickier.

 

[Sparky the Fox]

i asked if half-life 2 would use front-to-back rendering, so polygon occlusion/HyperZ III on radeon cards would work to their fullest, as opposed to engines like morrowind which draw back-to-front, so there are oodles of overdraw. half-life 2 will be front-to-back, thankfully.

 

[Urbanleg]

Yes, yo could.

-----Original Message-----
From: Urbanleg [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:07 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: An Model Apperance Question.(halflife2)


Hello gabe.
Is it possible to model a weapon's magazine in hl2 in a transpernt way?
and that way you can see the bullets Running off in real time? (not only from the First person view of the player, But to other players who stands near him?)

Thanks allot .

 

[timm]

Timm: Many people (me included) who've tried the HL version on STEAM are turned off by way the singleplayer levels are downloaded on the fly. Levels rarely load as quickly as they do with the original CD version, since STEAM doesn't always appear to cache the upcoming level before you reach it, resulting in waiting times up to many minutes

Will it be possible with in the future (specifically with HL2) to download content even when not playing, so that one will never have to wait for a level to download while playing the game?

Gabe Newell: Yes. That's correct.

 

[timm]

Timm: Will mod developers have the possibility to modify or add to the STEAM interface in any way? Say I'd like to make an in-game web browser (for example by using the IE-engine), would something like that be do-able by someone other than Valve? How about skin support (atleast in Windows)?

Erik: John Cook and I were actually talking about this today. Very soon we'll be making it easier to skin all of the UI in Steam and make in selectable. You'll be able to distribute your skins and users will be able to select them from a list when they are installed.

We're going to take the same kind of approach for people that want to write code and build plugins for the UI.

Timm If not, are you planning on adding any of these features? When playing in 1920x1200 (laptop) or 2048x1536 (main rig), stuff like a web browser would be very nice and also REALLY add a whole new level of "completeness"
and usability to the STEAM system when waiting out a 4 minute camping round in CS.

Unanswered.

Timm: Widescreen support in the current STEAM version crops the top and bottom so that you're actually seeing less of the game. Since STEAM doesn't support modifying the FOV, it's not possible to increase the FOV to "get back" the top/bottom of the image and also increase the "viewing width" like you can in most Quake3 engine based games. Will this be fixed in future versions? Will Half-Life 2 have the same "problem"?

Erik: The Source engine has a better solution for this, which we'll be getting into the Steam beta soon.

Timm: The STEAM Monitor reports the download rate as kilobits/sec, which is pretty confusing for many (seeing as pretty much every internet based application today displays transfer rates in kilobytes). Will this be fixed in future versions?

Erik:This was a bad call on our part, we wanted to map it to the terminology people associated with their DSL/Cable connections. We're likely going to change this back.

Timm: Will STEAM/HL2 allow for "video" changes to be applied without having leave the server/end the game?

Erik: There are too many things that need to happen during a video mode change to pull it off without exiting.

Timm: Will STEAM/HL2 allow for setting a refreshrate in the video menu like many games to today?

Erik: We'll look into that.

 

[Chris D]

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Deeming [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 6:37 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Congrats

I heard about your wife going into labor on Friday and thought I'd just give

you my best wishes for yourself, your wife and your new born baby, and I
hope mother and child are doing really well.

What have you named the baby in the end?

Chris_D

Thanks!

Baby's name is Kailee, my wife just wasn't going to go with 'Lil Gabey

 

[Barbarian]

Hi, I spent a lot of my neophyte gaming days playing games like Tribes, where the user interface was extremely customizable due to client side scripting being possible. I've heard that Half-Life 2 will not use any scripting like this, and like Half-Life everything will be written in C++. I recall that for Half-Life someone wrote a client-side IRC plugin, and I've seen modules such as the messenger module in the Steam beta, which can be brought up in-game. I'm wondering, will it be possible for people to write small modules like that in Half-Life 2 themselves (i.e. Email and IRC apps etc.), also will it be possible to get game information like scores, pings, etc.? I know the line has to be drawn somewhere to prevent cheating (i.e. the current state in Tribes 2 is pretty bad this way).

From: Chris Bokitch

Yep, these kinds of plugins will be possible.

Chris.

 

[SoSorry]

From:

To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]


Hi, guys, sorry to bother you but I have a couple of important questions regarding Half-Life2:

With the increase in time it takes to create quality maps and mods, will there be a way the Half-Life2 editor will let people protect their work (textures and models,music,code) from being exported and used without their permission. (ie:You can include and compile everything into one map that cannot be altered or edited or exported; Or a password protection system.


Chris: The use of Steam's Digital Rights Management (DRM) properties will allow third party developers to protect their intellectual property.


In order to use the LOD system of the Source engince, do we need to build a high poly model and a low poly model, or does the Source engine know how to magically reduce polycounts of a model on the fly?

Chris: The developer will build several versions of a model - they are not dynamically generated.

When Half-Life2 ships will the box include photos of what Half-Life2 looks like with a high-end card. Most casual gamers probably believe that the graphics they get with their low end card is what the game will look like for everyone and therefore may not have incentive to upgrade

Chris: Probably not, but I'm sure screenshots will be available all over the net showing all manner of machines running the game.

Hope that helps!

Chris.