The "I EMAILED SOMEBODY AT VALVE!" thread, post your questions and replies here - Games

[QUOTE=Noi;32148861]Congrats, collision :D[/QUOTE] I don't get it?

[QUOTE=roneyripper;32156916]I don't get it?[/QUOTE] That is my nickname.

My trip to Washington has come to fruition. Tomorrow, I will be touring Valve. The polite woman on the phone told me Gabe Newell WILL be part of the tour. I am crying tears of happiness.

[QUOTE=HerSilverHammer;32166843]My trip to Washington has come to fruition. Tomorrow, I will be touring Valve. The polite woman on the phone told me Gabe Newell WILL be part of the tour. I am crying tears of happiness.[/QUOTE] I am crying tears of living in the UK.

Welp, back. It was a nice little tour. Not so much about the games or that sort of stuff, but about Valve itself as a place. The tour was given by a woman named Christina, one of the nicest people I've had the pleasure of meeting. It was just me, so she showed me around. The walls were riddled with concept art, huge paintings, interesting stuff. Valve offers their employees so much. Food, parties for their families and friends, a workout room, weekly 15-minute massages. No kidding, they have two masseuses and every employee is entitled to a free 15-minute massage every week. They have an in-house laundry service, as well, coined by Gabe Newell himself. Back when Valve was just a fifteen man operation in Kirkland, the team decided to basically lock themselves in a room and work nonstop. After a week of nothing but hard work, junk food, and no showers, Gabe walks on in like the boss that he is with his diamond-studded top hat and diamond-studded cane and tells everyone to go home, shower, and come back with their dirty laundry. When they returned, Gabe had set up the laundry service and it has been a thing for them ever since. It's really refreshing to think about. People complain a lot, forgetting that Valve does so much for the community. Especially Gabe. Knowing how much he believes in Valve, how deep the investments that he has made for the company... Really reminded me of why I don't pirate games, and why I tend to buy Valve games on both Steam and on consoles. Gabe wasn't around for the tour, despite that I was told on the phone that he would be, but it's totally okay I think. It would have been amazing to meet the guy, shake his hand and get a picture with him and what-not, but the experience was a good reminder of why I love Valve so much. I also brought a small pile of hats I was hoping to get signed. Didn't really get to talk to anyone except Christina, though.

I think for his birthday, we should pitch in and get him an edible arrangement, and have the card say "Happy birthday Gaben! From all of your friends at Facepunch"

I vote for a gold-lined plate with the cake from Portal.

Did you guys know that Valve commissioned custom desks for all of their employees? Valve devs work in teams, and are always bouncing and moving from room to room. They have special desks, with wheels and the PCs built in to the desk itself. There are just three short wires, and they can wheel their whole work place from one room to another in a matter of minutes. Valve is fucking efficient, despite Valve time.

[QUOTE=HerSilverHammer;32207332]Did you guys know that Valve commissioned custom desks for all of their employees? Valve devs work in teams, and are always bouncing and moving from room to room. They have special desks, with wheels and the PCs built in to the desk itself. There are just three short wires, and they can wheel their whole work place from one room to another in a matter of minutes. Valve is fucking efficient, despite Valve time.[/QUOTE] Awesome. I want one.

[QUOTE=usaokay;32209326]Do they have desk races where they push their desks down a wide hall and whoever gets to the end will decide when it's the best time to develop the next installment to the Half Life series?[/QUOTE] I'll e-mail gabe and ask. Expect a reply in 2 weeks, to never.

Except for Robin, they had a special hat constructed that holds his PC.

whenever I email someone at valve it's always under an hour to respond or not at all

While not a Valve Employee, I got a reply from Jonathan Coulton's Assistant, Scarface. I emailed JoCo just showing him what I have as album art for all the "Other Experiments" Songs. [QUOTE=Scarface Drew Westphal, Henchman]Thanks! I'll show it to Joco.[/QUOTE] So that gave me a good laugh. (The name is a reference to his song, Skullcrusher Mountain)

[quote=Bronwen Grimes]I couldn't find the cleaned-up template I used to take screenshots for the presentation so I had to re-do it. (Many flowmaps have their own tweaks to the networks, so there's some messiness I didn't want to burden you with.) The result is a file that is really similar to the one in the presentation but not exactly the same. The file was created in Houdini 11, so make sure you have at least that version. There's some VOP stuff that won't work in an earlier version. You can treat this file like licensed game code -- noncommercial mod use is fine. Alex mentioned you might write up a tutorial. If you do and you decide to include this file, credit the file to Valve and restate that it is for noncommercial use only. When you open the file you won't see a whole lot because it'll be looking for the level and water geometry. You need to change the inputs. Go up to the "obj" network root and enter the Obstacles network. At the top, in Read_Obstacles, make sure you're referencing your own geometry file. Likewise in the water network in Read_Water. You'll also have to change the render output. Go up to the "out" network root and choose the Render node. Change the Output Picture in the Properties tab. Have fun with Houdini! It's an amazing package. -B[/quote] I fucking LOVE Valve, I asked and she sent me the houdini template file which Valve use to make flowmaps for Portal 2.

[QUOTE=Legend286;32276812]-stuff about stuff-[/QUOTE] I have no idea what that means :v:

[QUOTE=Chaotic Lord;32280003]I have no idea what that means :v:[/QUOTE] I'll post pics tomorrow.

I emailed Jonathan Coulthon months ago. Got answer today, will get his autograph woop

How do you guys contact them?Via their site or just via normal email?

[quote]The famous Animal King from Portal 2 has gained quite a cult following, and I'm wondering, besides the Lithograph of him, will we see anything else of the Animal King come to the Valve Store? I'd love to see more of him in any way, whether it be by plushie, poster, or anything else! Thank you for taking the time to read this. I love Valve :) Colton[/quote] Sent it to Gabe, got this back in like 20 minutes, not even kidding. [quote]Hello Colton, Yes – definitely! Best, Arsenio[/quote] [editline]14th September 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=w0lfeh;32286254]How do you guys contact them?Via their site or just via normal email?[/QUOTE] I sent mine via their site. [editline]14th September 2011[/editline] [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/43/animalpicture.jpg/][IMG]http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/6818/animalpicture.jpg[/IMG][/URL] The picture, for anyone who cares.

[QUOTE=HerSilverHammer;32207332]Did you guys know that Valve commissioned custom desks for all of their employees? Valve devs work in teams, and are always bouncing and moving from room to room. They have special desks, with wheels and the PCs built in to the desk itself. There are just three short wires, and they can wheel their whole work place from one room to another in a matter of minutes. Valve is fucking efficient, despite Valve time.[/QUOTE] Glad there might be an animal king plush. And christina was the one that finally said gabe would sign my poster. She sent it out a few days later and it arrived.

I thought this was brilliant ant relevant to the thread. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdeY1v6jC7Q[/media]

I sent a heartfilled message to Gabe. I expect a response in 1 to never weeks.

1042 guests reading.

[QUOTE=Symwck;32372570]1042 guests reading.[/QUOTE] I posted my picture of gabe eating a sandwich at subway on reddit :v:

[QUOTE=anton;32372605]I posted my picture of gabe eating a sandwich at subway on reddit :v:[/QUOTE] Ah yes. I did wonder where I saw that before.

[QUOTE=Front Desk]Just sent this out USPS. You should be receiving something shortly. :smile:[/QUOTE] :dance:

So i emailed gabe and he forwarded my email to the front desk :D whom told me to send my address with a zip. I replied, and now i'm waiting :D finally :D:D:D

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29402563/woooo.PNG[/img] don't know where to go from here

[IMG]http://fastcache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/09/haiku_.jpg[/IMG] [URL="http://kotaku.com/5842754/gabe-newell-knows-when-the-next-half+life-is-coming-he-just-cant-say-it-via-haiku"]http://kotaku.com/5842754/gabe-newell-knows-when-the-next-half+life-is-coming-he-just-cant-say-it-via-haiku [/URL]Aren't haikus 5-7-5, not 6?

Got the page back from Valve. Will post pictures later. I also got a letter from them. [quote=VALVe]Dear Trevor, We're happy to present you with the capstone to your Valve pyramid (enclosed). Might we suggest, However, that you instead use this letter as the capstone, and throw away the signatures. Because of the size of the piece of paper you sent us, only half of Valve got to sign it. The other half was tasked with writing this letter. It took us three months, but we think you'll agree it reads pretty smooth. Man, this is a good letter. You should send us another piece of paper and just ask the people who wrote this letter to sign it, because after everybody reads it we're going to be pretty famous. See you at the Letter Oscars, Half of Valve[/quote] [editline]27th September 2011[/editline] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/uIoyc.jpg[/IMG] Saxton Hale! [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/GTDSt.jpg[/IMG] Half of Valve's Signatures! [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/bL0HZ.jpg[/IMG] The back of the letter!