The next step forward in gaming...

[Black Mesa corp]

I was thinking up ways valve could make a revolution in their next game... HL3? Well, I got a few clues from sources where interviews were made with Gabe Newell etc and articles where members of valve describe what they could have done instead of making a physics engine. Tell me other ways valve could make a big step forward in their next game. As for now I've made a poll out of it to see what you would like to see be developed. Heres a more detailed version of the poll answers:

1. Better interaction with characters/environments. Be able to hit an enemy and see your handheld weapon dig into its flesh. You could then rip its flesh out or tug at it and swing the enemy around with your weapon still held in its body etc!
2. Voice communication. Using a microphone you can talk to the characters in-game. Tell them to climb onto something, shoot anything, or even tell them to fight with know weapons!
3.Multiple paths. Have a variety of paths that journey through the game including sub paths. The decisions you make determine where you go and what you do.
4.A full scale physics system. This means many more ways to outcome a situation. Everything has an individual physics code that makes everything more realistic. You might be able to brake down walls, doors or make ways through fallen down buildings by blasting it away with dynamite. As for the ragdoll engine, this means a character can be made up of hundreds of 'pieces' so ears and nose and arms can come off. This also means characters react individualy to what part of them has been hit.

Oh and tell me more ideas if you have them. I should imagine there are many!

 

[Alieni²]

Heh... all those summed together... aaaah... itd be lovely ^^

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

1, 2 and 3 are possible. 4 isn't.

 

[Kristafon]

1.Ewwwwww
2.Yeh some games have attempted this (Rainbow 6 3) but it would be cool if it was properly implimented (you, you, and you out falnk while I distract them)
3.Again some games have done this to an extent. It would be cool though if you could have say city 17 and you choose paths and the story and order of events depended on what happend.
4.Would be a bit stupid in say, myst (im to thick to solve this puzzle so im blasting the door down with dinamite!) What really needs to happen is the experts of the world to come together to make a super-engine with photorelaistic graphics and where evrything respons exactly as it should and then make it free for all developers to use. Then if and when that engine looks out of date making a new one. Once as engine can be made to replecate the real world exactly what else is needed?

I think like you everything in the world should be useable, so you could do things in ways that even the developerd hadnt intended.

 

[Bobcat]

#4 seems more possible than #3, as the latter would make you able to miss some of the story, despite the fact that whoever probably wouldn't be able to comprehend it anyway...

 

[wilka91]

I wanna talk to Alyx and tell here that I love her LOL

>>> Voice communication please :E

 

[TigerRei]

I think there is a console game that's played by simply telling your character what to do. It's very frustrating because they'd mix up commands. Tell her to "shoot enemy" and she inadvertently sits down. Tell her to sit down, and she wastes ammo on everything around her. It's something that'll have to wait for the future.

Personally the only thing I can think of that HL needs to get better is a longer and more involving story.

 

[we11er]

talking to people is just too difficult to do at the moment. You'd end up getting pissed off with generic "I'm sorry, I don't understand you" reponses etc.

 

[Spartan]

1. Better interaction with characters/environments. Be able to hit an enemy and see your handheld weapon dig into its flesh. You could then rip its flesh out or tug at it and swing the enemy around with your weapon still held in its body etc!

That's hardly what I'd call enviroment/character interaction. This stuff probably shouldn't be implemented into a Half-Life game, but:

- An inventory system, like in System Shock 2. Limited carrying capacity, item slots, movement speed affected by weight etc.
- Branching dialog with characters. Maybe the ability to trade items and such.
- The ability to modify weapons by adding silencers, lasersights, scopes and such.

Hmmm..

 

[we11er]

That's hardly what I'd call enviroment/character interaction. This stuff probably shouldn't be implemented into a Half-Life game, but:

- An inventory system, like in System Shock 2. Limited carrying capacity, item slots, movement speed affected by weight etc.
- Branching dialog with characters. Maybe the ability to trade items and such.
- The ability to modify weapons by adding silencers, lasersights, scopes and such.

Hmmm..

Unfortunately this sounds all too much like an RPG. And Valve did test out a limited inventory, as we saw in the binks - they obviously found it was better to have unlimited carrying capacity.

 

[Spartan]

Unfortunately this sounds all too much like an RPG. And Valve did test out a limited inventory, as we saw in the binks - they obviously found it was better to have unlimited carrying capacity.

Or an adventure game. They've got inventories and branching dialogs. But that doesn't matter. I'm starting to get really bored of FPS games because they are still the same old shit. Mixing different genres and ideas together is the only way to make better FPS games. Either that, or we keep playing Doom clones.

 

[Tyrsenus]

1. This is definately going to happen in games.

2. That won't be around for a while. At least, a something like what you described thats actually good.

3. That could confuse/ruin Half-Life's storyline.

4. That would require a huge amount of processing to be on the same level with reality. If you can keep breaking down objects into smaller and smaller bits, the number of objects approaches infinity. And if each one of those objects has parameters like mass, material, and density, that's a lot of data that has to be stored and processed. Quantum computing, anyone?

 

[ScRaTcH-A-HoLiC]

1, 2 and 3 are possible. 4 isn't.

Not impossible!!! Only not on our current rigs...
But a few years down the line im sure we will be surprised what we see..


I like the idea of multiple paths and more interaction...

 

[Mountain Man]

Multiple paths would be great. I would love to see Half-Life 3 take a more RPG approach along the lines of Deus Ex.

 

[Varsity]

Better interaction was already half-done in HL2 before it was cut. I think we might even see it in implemented in HL2 as time goes on.

 

[Ultimape]

4.A full scale physics system. This means many more ways to outcome a situation. Everything has an individual physics code that makes everything more realistic. You might be able to brake down walls, doors or make ways through fallen down buildings by blasting it away with dynamite. As for the ragdoll engine, this means a character can be made up of hundreds of 'pieces' so ears and nose and arms can come off. This also means characters react individualy to what part of them has been hit.

well, technically, the game engine is already capable of having everything be destructable... but hl2 had only certain thigns destructable because it would ruin the story/game if you could do whatever you wanted.

 

[Shakermaker]

I agree with Spartan. While Half-life 2 was a treat, FPS's in general are getting pretty boring. My advice to the gaming industry: take a more open-ended approach. Gimme a big sandbox I can play in and don't tell me what to do. And don't be affraid to make a game that can't easily be put in a genre. San Andreas isn't a RPG by far, but it does include RPG-elements. The first Deus Ex was a big succes, coz it dared to blur the boundries between FPS's and RPG's. BF1942 was a huge hit coz you could't only shoot other people, you could also kill the by using all kinds of vehicles. Gamers aren't as dogmatic as most developers think.

 

[Cukel]

1 as you said it sounds boring. But with interaction I would think something like, if you throw someone with a bottle, he wont talk to you or at least not act like it never happened. Would be nice.

2 sounds... not so interesting. I just dont think it would work in a way that it would be fun to use and in the same time work as better the old way.

3 would be nice. Those routes in Anticitizen One were pretty stupid at one point. I would like to roam in City 17 abit more freely, thank you. But ofcourse, you would always have to go into some crucial points, to meet characters, or to do something.

4 could be amazing too, but put level desing would be really hard and just think of the strain to the cpu with that

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Pretty much the only key issue is AI. Keep adding more and more to it, until it's as crazy-lifelike as possible.