Info received from Valve ONLY - NO questions/discussion

[$niper]

I like to tinker with Half-Life's AI in Sven Co-op... I'm quite fond of optimizing it and adding new enhancements so that it can kick some ass more effectively. I was just a little bit curious about a few things concerning the AI in Half-Life 2.

Question 1 - Can some types of creatures navigate through water by swimming/jumping in/jumping out?

[Steve Bond]
Some creatures can, but most do not care to swim. While swimming across a river might be the shortest way to get somewhere, it's not necessary the best tactical choice. A soldier will choose to stay on land where he can use his weapons, move quickly, and find places to hide.

Question 2 - How advanced is Half-Life 2's path finding? Is it still based around triangulations, or is it more focused on waypoints, or both... or?

[Steve Bond]
I guess the best answer to this question is "A character who wants to get somewhere will find a way to get there". Half-Life 2's pathfinding supports swimming, flying, jumping, climbing ladders, and opening doors.

Question 3 - How easily can a creature find cover from an enemy? Will it be similar to Half-Life's method - node based, or will the AI be able to find occluded places in the world in which to hide?

[Steve Bond]
Half-Life 2 features upgraded features for finding cover locations. Cover searches are still node-based, but the system is greatly enhanced when compared to Half-Life. When nodes are placed properly, characters have no trouble finding a place to hide and the end result is very much the same as doing full occlusion testing which is very CPU intensive, and we'd rather use those CPU cycles for AI, audio effects, and rendering materials. I might also argue that node-based cover searching is actually better for our game because it puts our designers in control of where characters should and shouldn't try to hide.

About question 3: The major problem I feel in Half-Life was for instance, a Human Grunt or Barney failing to move away from an approaching zombie. This wasn't programmed in of course, but it's still a slightly difficult task to implement. (I'm still working at this in Sven Co-op) If a zombie comes close enough to a grunt, normally a human being would try to make an attempt to get away from it and then resume attacking. So I'm really interested about this for Half-Life 2. It's an element that would in many ways aid an NPC.

[Steve Bond]
In Half-Life, characters couldn't fire their weapons while they moved. So in order to continue defending themselves, they had to hold their ground against enemies. Characters in Half-Life 2 can use weapons while they move, so you'll see a lot of tactical respositioning and other movement operations that are possible now because the characters can defend themselves or provide covering fire while they're on the move.


Well, thanks.

Sniper

 

[mannyfresh027]

Worst case it looks no different than Quake 3.

We do expect to eliminate an existing artifact by the time we ship.

-----Original Message-----
From: N 027 [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 11:13 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: ATI cards fixed?


Have you and ATI come up with an AA fix for their cards yet?

I'm planning on buying a Radeon 9800 Pro, but I just want to make sure it
will work well for Half-Life 2

thanks a lot

 

[[ICR]]

-----Original Message-----
From: [ICR] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 1:09 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: Source camera effects


Will the Source engine support view distorts such as fisheye lense and pinchusioning?


-----Original Message-----
From: Gary McTaggart
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 1:17 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: RE: Source camera effects


Yes, on dx8 and above cards, you will be able to do these effects as a mod author.

 

[JMU1337]

CD/Music Info

-----Original Message-----
From: Collins, Mike [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 11:47 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: CD in Drive?

Couple stupid questions...

Will HL2 require the game CD to be in the drive? It's a pet peeve of mine to hear a CD spinning in the drive when I'm playing a game.

Will players be able to play their own music through the console? I have
faith that your soundtrack will be superd, but I often enjoy playing through a FPS a second time blasting some metal

Thanks for your time!

Gabe: Yes on the first. I need to check with Kelly on the second.
Kelly: It's not quite as easy as on hl1: for hl2, you'd have to overwrite the existing hl2 mp3 music files with your own versions. The mp3 files would have to be 44khz/16bit/128bps encoded.

and another...

-----Original Message-----
From: Collins, Mike [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 7:41 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: you rock (NT)

Gabe: no, you rock

 

[kalayq]

lip-synching and sound files

He can do single word .wav / lip sync files

Yahn

**********************************************************
Dear Mr. Newell,
I'm sorry about sending my questions directly to you; it?s just that the
address used mostly in the Halflife2.net forums._ Could you send a small
list of e-mails and what these people are knowledgeable about, so that you
can stop getting all of the questions yourself, and the right questions go
to the right people._ I'll post the list on the forums so people will know
for the future.

Now to my question.
I would like to make a small mod in the vein of the classic text game
hitchhikers guide to the galaxy._ Basically I want the npc's to be able to
have limited conversational abilities._ I was wondering if the game can use the lip-synching technology to play single word sound files in a string to make a sentence, or would I have to pre compile the sound files into one big one beforehand?
Thanx for the help

 

[A2597]

OK, Gabe got back to me, that will NOT be in the final, I was correct in the map-side light map issue.

heres the mail:

This has turned into a somewhat heated debate over at the forums (Man those guys are picky)
anyhoo, was wondering if you can clear this up once and for all.

in this screenshot
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Xcellere/untitled.JPG
the shadows on the wall are very pixelated, Unless Source does things compleatly different from every game out there, its due to a low-res lightmap.
Is source capable of high-res light maps like the Unreal engion, and if yes, is it something that has to be changed while making the map, or can be changed "On the fly" from a settings menu?

Thank you for your time,

A2597


Gabes reply:
you can set lightmap density per face

it's set by the mapper

the example you show is the kind of thing we're cleaning up now (i.e. it's ugly and needs to be higher-res)

 

[tokin]

I thought Doom was really frightening. Most game companies were keying off
the feeling of being a badass after you had played it a hundred times
through and forgetting the original experience. I was very fond of a
Stephen King novella called "The Fog" and wanted to see if we could recreate
that kind of experience in game.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Winn [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 2:05 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: What clicked in your head about HL


How did you ever think of Half Life, how long had you had the idea before
you started getting a team and making the game? Was it a dream, movie you
saw, ....??? Im really curious.

 

[what]

It's a girl, and we're doing great.

The final packaging hasn't been decided on yet.

-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 2:17 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 in Jewel Cases?

Hey Erik! First off, Congratulations on the new addition to your
family! Is it a boy or girl?

Now on to the question, will the retail version of Half-Life 2 use
jewel cases (perhaps the slim kind?) or will you (please don't!) use
cloth/paper slips? What about for the DVD versions?

Thanks in advance, and I hope you and your wife are happy!

 

[Sublimex87x]

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark [mailto:***]
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 5:48 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Will HL2 on CD/DVD be installed into Steam?

If you buy HL2 in a store, where does it install?
Does it get installed as a Steam game, just the content is delivered through CD instead of Steam?
How will HL2 be updated, automatically through steam, automatically without steam, or manually?
Thanx

Steam is the backend regardless if you buy the game at retail on a CD or over broadband.

 

[Duracell]

Hi James,

When the SDK is available, it will be available for free download, probably from a number of places. You won't have to sign up for anything.

Chris.
-----Original Message-----
From: BlueShift Staff [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 5:36 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: SDK


Hi, Quick question for you if you have the time

When the SDK comes out, will we have to sign up as a mod team, or just be able to download it via steam?

I am head of a mod team and we are looking foward to the SDK.

Cheers in advance, James

 

[A2597]

Hello again,

I'm curious as to wether the Source engion supports spectacular highlights, and glows from them? (such as looking at a peice of metal catching the light from the sun, and being somewhat blinded by it, but not a reflection)

thanks!

A2597

Gabes Reply:
It supports specular highlights.

 

[A2597]

You've mentioned that Gordon has mass and can effect things because of this, so this made me think...
How much does Gordon weigh?

A2597

-----

Gabes Reply:
Y'know, that's a good question. I don't actually know.

Jay?

----
Jay's Reply:
It's not final yet, but right now Gordon weighs 85kg (including the suit).

Jay

 

[Frank]

Me:

1. The settings are at the max in Bink Videos, yes? I mean this is how it'll look with all the settings to the max?

2. Will there be more Bink Videos, for an example the one with the strider? Oh dear God (aka. Gabe) please let there be another one!

-Nicolas Vetterli


Gabe:


There are a few more visual effects added after E3.

Yes, there are more coming

 

[loofy]

Hi Gabe - Never emailed you before but want to thank
you for your work on HL2, hopefully you can answer
this question.

Q. HL2 has graffiti and no doubt many signs. Since the
game is set in Eastern Europe will you use real words
or just random characters (as most games and movies
have)?

This question bothers me a lot since I am foreign and
seeing gibberish in a quality movie/game takes all the
realism of the said movie/game. Thanks Gabe! =)



A. People at Valve are from many countries - Bulgaria, Australia, Germany, the US, Canada, England, Brazil, and so on. We try to be reasonably accurate in our depiction of locales.

 

[Sparky the Fox]

Q: Are caustics, either real-time or precalculated, present in Source's lighting engine?
A: Our game currently doesn't have caustics in it, but it's easy to write a new shader to render caustics using our shader sys

caustic:
The enveloping surface formed by light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface, especially one with spherical aberration.
a.k.a. the neat webby effect you see on the bottom of a swimming pool, or the shapes of light that spread on the table from sunlight going through a glass of water.

 

[meninblck]

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike J [mailto:mikej@]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 12:52 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: hey gabe some questions!


I really love the whole steam idea, and I understand when you buy it over steam, the friends system is used!! My question is, if I buy the game at a store, do I still sign up for a steam account so that I can play online, and I can use the friends tab to join hl2 games even if I didn't buy it on steam??? Is steam the launcher for the retail game and the steam purchased game?


-Gabe - Steam is the backend for Half-Life 2. It does a bunch of different things, like acting as the launcher, authentication, Friends, updating, and so on. One thing it does is that it also allows you to purchase things. If you buy Half-Life 2 in a store, it has Steam in it. If you buy Half-Life 2 via Steam, well, then it obviously has Steam in it.

Your "steam account" is basically a method of tracking your digital rights. If you buy Half-Life 2 in a store, it will ask you to create a login id and a password. That way if you go to a friend's house, you can play Half-Life 2 there, even if you don't have your CD/DVD with you. Think of the CD as an alternative to your Internet connection for filling up your local cache.

 

[Chris D]

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Deeming [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 4:53 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject:


Hi Gabe, here's just a few questions I've been meaning to ask

1) After tonight's chat, some people are reporting that you won't be using
Intel's MRM Technology that you were going to use for TF2 and instead using
a static LOD system. What's made you come to this decision and what benefits

does it have over Intel's technology?

2) What difference will I see on screen between DX8/8.1, and 9 systems?

3) The build of V-Source that has produced the BINK videos - how old is it,
and how much graphically will it differ from the released version?

4) How's Erik doing as a father? Does he come in to work every day looking
really sleepy?

Thanks,
Chris_D

Static LODs are faster and work better with the hardware.

DX9 will be faster as you can do more in a single pass. There will be a
number (which increases over time) of DX9 features like high dynamic range
lighting which only work on DX9 cards. The list is fairly plastic, as we
will be adding new DX9 features, and as we figure out how to do something in
DX8 that we initially didn't think we could get to work.

That was from E3 timeframe. There are a lot of visual effects getting
finalized post-E3.

Erik's doing well. He doesn't look tired, but he has lost some weight.

 

[MadMechwarrior]

Yes. Currently in Source when you are on a vehicle (so this would apply to a carrier) you move in it's local space (you are hierarchically attached) so if it turns under you you stay locked and oriented to it correctly. You can run around on top, of course. I'm not sure why BF1942 had the lag issue you mention.

Yahn

-----Original Message-----
From: Gabe Newell
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 7:16 PM
To: 'Daniel Menard'
Cc: Yahn Bernier; Chris Bokitch
Subject: RE: Question


Yahn, I've been getting a couple of questions about large vehicles. Do you understand why BF42 has these problems?
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Menard [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 7:05 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Question


Hey Gabe,

I know you get 100s of email every day with questions like these and I must say thank you for the support you bring the community. Without valve I dont think mods would be as popular as they are today and HL2 is gonna be the best game of all time.

Now for my questions. I was wondering if it would be possible to have a very large vehicle, like an aircraft carrier that could carry a whole bunch of players and other vehicles and move without lag. BF42 had it but it was horribly laggy and players would slide off so I was wondering if HL2's physics engine would give it an edge here.

Another thing I would like to know is when will the SDK be released. If you cant be specific can you tell me vaguely when it should be ready, like a month before the game or something. Im dying to get to work (if you want to check out my mod the full design doc is here http://es2.freeservers.com sorry just had to do that ).

Thanks for your time

Dan

 

[Spenser]

Hi Gabe,

From the chat:

"<valve|david> Compile tools: we've created
distributed vis and distributed vrad to greatly cut
compile times."

If I can't get additional computers involved in the
compile, given the additional complexities and size of
the new maps, am I SOL?

Will it again takes days to compile through rad? I
have a P4 2.2MHZ machine now and compile times are my
greatest concern.

Thanks,

It's under your control. You can increase level transitions, compile
only
pieces, ... Distributed tools are just one part of the solution to
making
level developers more productive. Most of our level development has
occurred on machines slower than yours.

Cool.

 

[Blud Stane]

Hello Gabe!

I wanted to ask you some questions about yourself and the company, because as an aspiring artist I am curious what the super bowl of studios thinks and feels like.

#1) How do you honestly feel when attending E3, or conventions where you know that you've been at the top of the gaming world and dominated? I guess I wanna know what goes through your head when everyone writes you and come up to you like a celebrity?

#2) What would you recommend for an artist to achieve to be of the same caliber as your elite staff? How many people apply a month??

#3) When you get time away, can you honestly clear your mind of Half Life 2?

#4) I know there's a long list of things you probably have, but if you could change one thing about Half-Life what would it have been?

#5) How does the team as a whole motivated each other? (do artists show programmers characters, and in turn do programmers show they're awesome work w/ those characters. Or are there life size sculptures of Gordon standin by the coffee machine?)

Thanks A LOT for yout time!



1) Usually we have a lot of work to do at the shows. Mainly I'm thinking about what is working and what isn't working when we talk to people about whatever it is that we're showing.

2) We're finding more and more that a sound background in fine arts makes a big difference. The tools change all the time, and the specific constraints (polys, fill rate, shaders) change, but art skills really separate the wheat from the chaff. We get a bunch of applications anytime there's something in the news about Valve or our games.

3) I like thinking about Half-Life 2, so I don't try particularly hard to distance myself.

4) Spent more time on Xen.

5) There are a couple of big motivators - talking to people in the community and seeing what's going on in the office next to you are two particularly good ones.

 

[DelaZ]

From: Delaz [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 3:35 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 question

Hi Gabe,

I read in a couple of interviews that everything in HL2 has mass, substance and a presence in the world.

I've also read that the crowbar is actually an object passing through air
and so for depending on how you swing it different amounts of damage will be caused.

Now personally I find this VERY interesting and it will make HL2 even more revolutionary.

Anyway what i wanna know is if Gordan himself has mass and substance in the game world.

If I climb on top of a car and then jump off on top a head crab.. Is that
little bastard gonna get smushed?

Thanks

DelaZ


From: Gabe Newell <[email protected]>
To: 'Delaz' <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: HL2 question
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 17:09:21 -0700

Yes. Right now you weigh about 85 kg. We're tweaking this.

 

[Apos]

-----Original Message-----
From: Yahn Bernier
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 10:25 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Cc: Chris Bokitch
Subject: RE: questions

1. Does the physics model include any simulation of
springs (even in a limited fashion) or is it strictly
all rigid-body model at the moment?

1. Yes, you can simulate spring constraints with lots of parameters to
tweak.

2. Could you simulate the dynamics of a spring by
allowing a static object to exert different amounts of
opposing force depending on its position? (i.e., I
step on a platform and it sinks downwards from my
weight, but the lower it moves, the more force it
exerts back upwards, slowing and eventually reversing
the descent of the platform, eventually moving it back
upwards to start, at which point it loses that
momentum and sinks back down again...)

2. See 1, yes I think you could do something like this.

3. In HL MP (and every other game I've seen that uses
prediction in MP), touching another player causes an
odd jerky/sticky feeling in the movement, I assume due
to problems combining collision and prediction with
the two players being so close together. This makes MP
mods that involve close-quarter combat somewhat
difficult. Does the new netcode resolve this problem?
(I guess it could be related to the problems with
"vehicles" in HL, but not necessarily)

3. This is a mod-specific choice, we have some code that works really well to prevent the stickiness/warping when running into other players, but the downside would be that you have to make players more like force fields and any mod that relies on players being able to block a corridor with their bodies (usually a bad thing in FPS MP due to griefing) would be harder. We'll most likely provide that code in the SDK or to mod teams who request it if it doesn't go into the SDK proper.

4. Do all particles "bounce" off other objects like in
the tunnels vid, and can this behavior be altered
(speed, direction, fade-out, etc.)? For instance,
what if I wanted to have a certain number of particles
bounce around inside a complex but transparent
enclosure: could the particles be made to not fade out
and continue bouncing realistically around inside the
structure indefinately? (The desired end result being
that the shape of the structure would be more subtly
implied by the motion of the particles, the actual
structure walls being completely invisible)

4. You have full control over client side particle simulation and
lifespan.

5. Will some NPC characters know to take cover when
reloading? (pet peeve of mine from many games) Will
they know to run away from rapidly approaching physics
objects (like a car or a train) or can we at least
script this behavior (i.e.: if any IndianaJones-type
boulder gets within a certain radius, they run away
from it)?

5. Yes and yes.

6. Thanks for giving us all so much information: we
can't wait to take this engine for a ride!

6. Great, can't wait to see what you guys do with it.

Yahn


-----Original Message-----
From: Gabe Newell
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 9:36 PM
To: Yahn Bernier
Cc: Chris Bokitch

 

[DOOManiac]

Sent this mail at 2:45 AM and got a reply at 3:00am. Must be a late night crunch session.

-----Original Message-----
From: DOOManiac [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 12:39 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: A few quick questions about the SDK, Steam, & lighting

Arg, I was gonna attend the IRC Chat session but I had to work. I have a few
quick questions if you wouldn't mind answering them:

- As far as complexity of coding goes, has HL2 gotten easier or harder than HL1? What I mean is, say you were to code the exact same mod (something fairly simple that doesn't push HL1's limits) in both engines, which would be the easier to code?

HL-2 is easier to work with.

- Its been mentioned that the SDK will be released before HL2, maybe
sometime in August. Will this include the source code as well, or just
Worldcraft and/or modelling related stuff?

The SDK when it is finished will have quite a bit of source code.

- Is there any possibility of mod teams being able to have their own private steam servers for their internal beta testing? Or any other way to make it so only certain people have access to the mod?

Check with Erik on how using Steam for secure limited distribution will
work.

(DOOM's Note: I've done so, and I'll post a reply from Erik when/if I get one)

- Its been said that while HL2's lighting is static based, there will be
some dynamic lighting. Do dynamic lights cast dynamic shadows? Is this
something will only be able to be used in a few places (such as in the HL
engine, where dynamic lighting is was a pretty big system hit) or could we do things like in Splinter Cell, with having lots of light bulbs being shot out and whatnot? Would it be possible to have a swinging light ala DOOM III?

I'm not sure where people get the idea that HL-2 doesn't support dynamic lighting.

(DOOM's Note: Still didn't really answer the question though...)

Thanks for your time.

 

[KnyteHawkk]

HL2 Chat information

I was one of the fortunate few who got to field questions to the VALVe guys in the IRC chat, so I'll post the answers they gave. My middle question didn't get answered specifically, so I won't bother posting it.
--------------------
<KnyteHawkk> Gabe mentioned two different simluation models for vehicles. Could you elaborate just a little more on the tradeoffs between the two? Specifically, how many vehicles would you have before you'd want to engage "performance mode" versus "accuracy mode"?

<valve|david> KnyteHawwk: a simple tradeoff would be a raycasted wheeled vehicle versus a "real wheel" physically simulated vehicle. Raycasts are about 1/3 to 1/5 the cost CPU-wise of the simulated wheels. The compromises are that raycast wheels don't apply force to physics objects beneath them. So driving over a teeter-totter wouldn't make it tip in the raycast case.

<valve|gaben> The tradeoffs between the two models are the accuracy of the simulation at the wheels. You can trade less accurate wheel collisions/response for less CPU time. You can do several vehicles with the full simulation on our target machines, but you can always use the CPU for something else if the wheel simulation isn't as important to your mod.

----

<KnyteHawkk> And lastly, how much support do modmakers have to implement certain kinds of vision features for their mods? Examples: the top-down commander view from Natural Selection, X-ray vision allowing you to see through multiple walls, thermal imaging, etc.

<valve|gary> You can use Mateiral Proxies to decide how an object is going to be rendered. If you want to make the object visible through walls, Material Proxies are the place to do this.

<KnyteHawkk> valve|gary - follow up to that - can you specify proxies for the different vision systems then to make certain things show and not show?

<valve|gary> KnyteHawkk - Yes, you could.

 

[Kirix]

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew E [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 6:05 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject:


Does Half-life 2 support a driving wheel device for the drivable vehicles
(maybe even a flight stick, perhaps?)

What about a rumble feature for certain mice, etc..?

Thanks for your time.

Answer

yes on driving wheel

 

[symptom]

Gabe confirms that there is a sprinting function in HL2.
... but I don't think he liked G-Dawg very much

yes.

-----Original Message-----
From: Yeager, Christopher [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 11:49 AM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: Sprinting question and G-Dawg pictures:


Okay, first the question:

Watching the bugbait video, I noticed that there are a few times when the
player seems to move with increased speed. Will there be a special key in
HL2 that allows the player to sprint for a limited amount of time (ala Day
of Defeat)?

Secondly, here are some pictures of the G-Dawg for your enjoyment.

Pimp style: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/klaha/gdawg2.jpg
Gangster style: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/klaha/gdawg3.jpg

Thanks!

Chris Yeager
[email protected]

 

[Valer]

Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 2:59 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Subtitles and Japanese language support

Original Half-Life had very unique and strong narrative style
to drive the story. I think that understanding of the dialogues
of the characters makes game experience more rich.
I am a Japanese. I am curious about HL2's support for Japanese language,
and capability to display the subtitles of dialogues.

Q1:
Will HL2 have the options to display the subtitles of the dialogues?
In Japan and all around the world, there are many people
who can read English, but are not good at hearing it.
For those people, subtitles would be very helpful.

Q2:
Do you have the plan to release the Japanese language edition?
Or you will ditribute the resource of Japanese language via Steam?

I saw your e-mail reply in the forum:
>> You will be able to select the language. Any resources you don't have
>> will automatically be installed via Steam.

Thanks for your time.
----------------------------

Half-Life 2 will have a language setting and a sub-title setting.

All of the spoken language and sub-titles in the game will be translated.

You will be able to select whichever language setting and sub-title setting
you prefer.

Japanese is one of the supported languages (so you could have Japanese
language and English sub-titles, or English language with Japanese
sub-titles or Japanese language with Japanese sub-titles).

The user interface screens will be in the language you select for the spoken
language.

Signage in the game will not be localized as it is part of the atmosphere of
the game, and is consistent with the locale in the game.

 

[supangr]

Shadows are on our list of items to revisit and improve before shipping. I
can't promise we'll fix this, of course, but it is something for which we
have time alloted.

Yahn


-----Original Message-----
From: supangr
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 3:45 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: time for a q?


I (and others on halflife2.net's forums) would like to know something. In
the traptown video, Gordon pushes
a table in front of a door, but there is a problem in that objects on top of
the table cast shadows through the table
and onto the floor underneath. Will this be fixed in the final build or
would it impact cpu usage too much?

 

[MyrddinE]

Zoom Function

Yet another question to add to the massive HL2.net thread of uber answers:

In the videos the camera focuses on Alyx' face. Judging by how it zooms, it
seems to be an automatic or scripted feature. This is a nifty way of
focusing attention on important objects. Is this feature generic? Can I (for
instance) mark a distant goal object (like a switch to move the boom on a
crane) as a 'zoom object' so that if the player focuses on that object, the
camera will zoom in on it?

This seems like a great way to be a little more subtle over the map goals.
You have used it, so far, as primarily a way to focus on the facial
expressions of Alyx... using it to identify interesting spots or plot
objects would be interesting. Perhaps you already are, but were keeping your
cards hidden?

Thanks for the information, and good luck on achieving your release date
target!

Gabe's Answer:

There are multiple ways to talk about this.

>From the player's perspective, your HEV suit has an AI function that allows
it to zoom in on important things in the world. It is independent of any
weapon. Looking away from the important thing unzooms. The zoom function
can also be manually controlled, and disabled if you prefer.

>From a level designers perspective, you have an entity that is a zoom object
like you suggest. You can also make it somewhat "magnetic" so it tends to
slurp the players view towards it and make it a little sticky. You could if
you wanted to grab the player's line of sight and force it to a particular
direction until the entity let's it go, which would be inconsistent with the
HL-2 design, but is probably useful for MODs who have some particular action
that is critical for the player to see.

This behavior (changing the FOV and making the player's radial motion
non-linear) is the kind of thing you have to playtest pretty carefully to
make sure it doesn't pull the player out of the game world.

 

[Wyle]

My E-mail to Gabe:

Are you guys planning on taking over the world?

Simply put, everything you've done is fantastic, from what i've seen of
the work on HL2 to the nearly un-precidented feedback you've given.

Its obvious nothing can stand to Valves might.

So, my question is, how long till you guys plan on announcing your plans
of world Domination?

I think you should set your targets on the RIAA first, i heard they
dislike Valve (honestly!)

Heh, no need to reply just wanted to show my graittude for your work

-Chris
-------------------------------------------------
And Reply:

Why in the world would the RIAA have it in for us?

Thanks for the mail. We're more worried about shipping than world
domination. World domination is too easy.

 

[hLABS]tryptefan]

brimming with swellness

gabe,
i wish all our favorite companies were as approachable as you guys.

anyways - just a couple of things i was thinking about:

when i go to a friends house and play halflife i usually end up wasting around 10 minutes trying to get my config right.
it seems like such a logical step to store configs with steam login info and thus serve up my config anywhere i go.
has this been thought of and if so any chance of seeing it?

[Gabe Newell] Yes, we are adding this to Steam (making the distributed file system read/write is the first step, and then there's a lot of data in addition to configurations you'd like to keep like save games or player stats)

the other thing i think would be cool is global stats...so a player's performance in any steam powered server would be reflected in one central place.

[Gabe Newell] Yep. We're thinking the same.

when coding the AI have you witnessed any emergent behavior that you hadn't programmed?

[Gabe Newell] Anytime you work on AI and you are doing it properly, even though you understand the underlying components of behavior, it's still surprising what happens when they are put together.

and finally, do combine soldiers run out of ammo?

[Gabe Newell] Not now, they don't.

thanks alot and good luck with everything.

 

[CommieX]

Hi. I have a couple of questions about the vehicles in Half-Life 2. I read on the Halflife2.net forums that the player properly orients himself/herself on a vehicle as it turns and whatnot. Sounds cool. This is something that annoyed me about other games, that when you are on a vehicle it seems to turn independently of you, and you don't turn with it. Anyways:

1. If you jump on top of a vehicle, and while it is moving fast you jump off of it, will the player still have momentum or will the player not be affected by the speed of the vehicle?

[Gabe Newell] The player momentum is modelled. You will have the velocity of the vehicle.

2. Similarly, if a vehicle is moving at a fast speed and stops suddenly, such as if it hits a wall, will the player be jarred off of the vehicle and fly forward or simply stay on top of it?

[Gabe Newell] If the friction between the player and the vehicle isn't high enough, you will slide off.

Thanks and keep up the good work.

 

[Guest]

I had a concern that people might be able to exploit the "zoom" funtion to make an auto-aim hack that would be almost undetectable in HL2 multiplayer, but then Gabe said that it's SP specific....



-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Dise [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 6:37 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Zoom funtion concern


Couldn't people make hacks that exploit this feature (auto zoom/sticky zoom)

and make it an "aimbot"?

Gabe: If you want to cheat in single-player, there are better ways to do it.

It's specific to HL-2 single player.

 

[CyberGeek]

-----Original Message-----
From: Donald Hays [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 9:54 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 questions (involves kitties!)


Hiya Mr. Newell,

I've been following Half-Life 2's development quite... obsessively. Over time I've gotten a few questions:

- In real life if a 3 kilogram kitty travelling at 10 m/s smacks a 10 kilogram barrel travelling at 3 m/s head on, the momentum between the poor kitty and the barrel will be equal, causing them to stop. If we recreate the scenario in Half-Life 2, will the physics engine do the same thing?
[Gabe Newell] Depends upon whether it's an elastic or inelastic kitty.

- Speaking of the physics engine, I've been working on finishing the basement at my home when I noticed something. While a two by four isn't so heavy that one person couldn't pick it up easily, it wouldn't take much speed for it to hurt you. It seems that Half-Life 2 will involve objects like that flying around fairly frequently, so I'm wondering how much it will take to hurt the player. If it's moving fast enough to hurt in real life can we expect Gordon take damage, or can he take a bit more punishment than an average human being without taking damage? What if we throw the 3 kilogram kitty at him at 10 m/s?
[Gabe Newell] The kitty will be pissed.

- It has been said that mappers will be able to configure facial expressions while characters speak. What about full-body animations, such as when in the E3 video Alyx worredly (is that a word?) brings her arms towards her as she says, "I hope so."? Will these be customizable or will there be a set of expressive animations which can be used?
[Gabe Newell] Uh, a mapper could trigger an animation event, but I'm not sure that's what you are asking.
What I was referring to with that question was if a mapper could script animations from inside Hammer, such as saying bend arm this way, elbow this way, etc. Thinking about it, that would suck.

- I'm a little bit confused about the September 30th date. The media and community is taking it as the release date, however all the interviews I've seen that I recall refer to it as the shipping date. What stage exactly do you intend to have Half-Life 2 at on September 30? Is it when you want it to go gold? When you want it to leave warehouses? When you want it on store shelves?
This part kinda bothered me a bit. It was the only question he didn't answer (granted he wasn't terribly serious with most of the other questions) and it was the day before the delay announcement thing.

- How old is the content that was shown at E3? The idea seems to be floating around that everything released so far was created shortly after the technology freeze in September 2002. Is this the case?
[Gabe Newell] When you are building a game, a lot of different pieces get touched at various times. The first time some of that was done is years ago. The last time it was touched was right before we got on the plane. I'm not sure how to answer your question.
What he said here actually answered it perfectly, I think, and is also really the reason I decided to post this otherwise silly e-mail here. I think he confirmed what I thought, that the content shown at E3 actually isn't months old. It was actually what was the current build at the time.

- Let's pretend for a moment that it's one year from now. The Valve programmers are working on the AI for Half-Life 3 or some other game. Suddenly it achieves conciousness, takes over the computers at Valve, replicates itself over the internet and within an hour has enslaved the human race. Since the people at Valve are responsible for it's creation it gives you one wish. What do you say?
[Gabe Newell] Can I have a pastrami sandwich?

- Half-Life 2 had to have some impressive security to keep it secret for so many years. How soon after the project started did Valve decide to keep things secret until the game was nearly ready? How many people ended up being placed under an NDA before its announcement? Were there any close calls?
[Gabe Newell] "If anyone gives away the secret, this kitty is going flying."

- Let's pretend again. I wake up tomorrow morning to find a copy of the current, most stable build of Half-Life 2 on my desk. It includes all the content created for the game so far. What did I do the night before to get that?
[Gabe Newell] Traveled forward in time.

Thanks for your time!
--Donald Hays

 

[DOOManiac]

email followup

I got an email back from Erik Johnson w/ his reply to the question:

Is there any possibility of mod teams being able to have their own private steam servers for their internal beta testing? Or any other way to make it so only certain people have access to the mod?

We're still working out some of the kinks of getting limited Steam
distributions working.

It will likley be a system where you let us know the account names that you
want to have access to a paticular application, and then we'd make the
neccesary changes here.

 

[dirge23]

Half-Life 2 Preorder T-shirts? Yes!

Five years ago I preordered my copy of Half-Life from some local software store and they threw in a Half-Life t-shirt. It's got the lambda on it and it's generally very cool. It's held up remarkably well through all these years and remains one of my favorite shirts. I believe it's the same one that was featured in the movie "Antitrust" as well.

My question is: any chance of similar shirts for Half-Life 2 preorders? Is
this something Valve is directly involved in, or is this a promotional
question better directed to the publisher or retailer?


From: Doug Lombardi <[email protected]>
Yes on all accounts.


They even offered to send me the first shirt since I was the first person to ask about them. Valve rocks!

 

[pSYc0de]

To: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 Crowbar traptown question


Hi there,

First of all, I can't wait to get my hands on this game.. Half Life in my opinion has been the best buy of my life. I'm still using it after all this time.

In traptown, there are three wooden planks that are blocking the doorway. The crowbar is used to break them, but they broke before the contact.. Is this due to the demo or is it meant to happen that way?

Second, I live in Australia; will the release time be the same around the world?

And also.. In the demos the characters look fantastic, but the lip sync looks a bit strange. What causes that?

Finally, if I don't look at the characters face I could swear it was a photo. Why is it that no matter how much detail people put into rendering humans (eg Final Fantasy the movie) there still is the little something about the face that looks strange? By far these have been the best character models I've ever seen by the way, excellent work

The problem with this and other interactions (the beam swinging across and hitting the soldiers) is that there was a bug in the E3 engine for interpolation in playback. It was incorrectly adjusting the position of objects to make them look smoother. This was only a problem in demo playback.

The release on Steam will be world-wide. Sierra, the retail publisher, hasn't announced what their plans are for each market.

Final Fantasy had problems with how they managed the portion of faces from the eyes up. They looked really "dead" to me, to use a non-technical term. This is an area that will get better fairly rapidly as more movies and games use more synthespians.

 

[DarkelP]

Cheats and stuff

My first post...:cheese:
Here are some of the questions that have been bugging me...

1) Are there going to be cheats in the single player aspect of the game? Me and my friend were wondering this, not to make the game easier to get through, but more so that we can experiment without dying, or running out of ammo.

Yes.

2) I was wondering, with the game being made for 5 years now, have you ever just wanted to walk away from the project? just been like 'screw this' and wanted to pack it all up?

No, not really. It's a lot of fun to work at Valve.

3) Dont you just love the phrase 'Physically Simulated', it rasies a smile everytime I hear that.

yorkle yorkle

4) Did you ever worry that with so much interactivity in the game, that gamers would be like 'woah, theres so much to do, what if I miss some really cool thing out!'?. I thought of this when me and my friend were watching the E3 video. When Gordon blew up the barrel, which sent the car into the zombies, he looked at me and said 'I would never of thought to do that'. I'm guessing you wanted experimentation (spelling? lol) from the gamers, but you could still miss out on it. And it would be a shame for you to of spent so long on Half-life 2, only for players to experiance half the game.

Part of tuning the game is making sure that we help the player do as many of the cool things as possible. A lot of times we'll see people do the "cool" thing, whatever it is, 25-30% of the time, and then we tinker with it and get it up to above 90%.

Ok so the first one is the only one with proper game unfo, but i like the other answers, so I kept them in there.

 

[BigMatty]

Inertia

To: [email protected]
Subject: Inertia


Hey! Good on ya for answering all these questions
So heres mine -
Will the engine include inertia?
For example, if there was a moving train with barrels placed inside, would the barrels roll around the carriage as the train turned, accelerated, etc?

Thanks!
Matt

------------------------------------------------------------

Yes.

------------------------------------------------------------

how sweet is that and how nice of gabe to do this stuff, i bet other companies dont even read emails we send!

 

[yacoob]

Behind-the-scene

From: Gabe Newell <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, August 5, 2003 9:09
To: 'kuba'

after we ship

-----Original Message-----
From: kuba
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 3:29 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HL2 Development time

Hi,

Don't know if this is would be like disclosing "classified" information but are you guys going to write something/release a movie/do a TV programme/etc about the design/development time of the game - i.e. when and what you started with, how long took it to write the engine, storyline/level design, how you came up with ideas, what problems you faced. All the details that make the behind-the-scene work so interesting ;-) ?

Thanks,

Kuba