Half-Life and Portal series, general discussion (v6) - Games

uhh [img_thumb]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/18/17231/27_spymap_ep3_4840014.jpg[/img_thumb] [editline]1st October 2015[/editline] episode 3 spoilers i guess

[QUOTE=Chrille;48803021]uhh [img_thumb]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/18/17231/27_spymap_ep3_4840014.jpg[/img_thumb] [editline]1st October 2015[/editline] episode 3 spoilers i guess[/QUOTE] It looked like a gmod sexpose at first

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[QUOTE=megafat;48801980]Half-Life 3 probably won't be announce until Source 2 fully ships, will probably be a couple more months to a year at least.[/QUOTE] Although you are probably right just on the virtue of HL3 not getting announced, I doubt it's anything to do with Source 2. That's not how game development works - you don't spit out an engine then build a game on it in that linear fashion. It's a lot more organic, and the games/engines are built alongside each other to fit the others capabilities.

[QUOTE=Tommyx50;48803599]Although you are probably right just on the virtue of HL3 not getting announced, I doubt it's anything to do with Source 2. That's not how game development works - you don't spit out an engine then build a game on it in that linear fashion. It's a lot more organic, and the games/engines are built alongside each other to fit the others capabilities.[/QUOTE] That being said, what new gameplay ideas demanded a new engine? Seeing whole L4D campaigns in a single map would be cool, strip out the linearity and you have a small open world thing going on.

[QUOTE=Cows Rule;48804006]That being said, what new gameplay ideas demanded a new engine? Seeing whole L4D campaigns in a single map would be cool, strip out the linearity and you have a small open world thing going on.[/QUOTE] It's not always about gameplay mechanics. I think it's primarily about development speed - and Gaben said the focus of the new engine has to increase artist productivity. Hammer was an absolutely trash development tool for what is ultimately a series of games which relies HEAVILY on assets such as maps. A WYSIWYG editor would be pretty useful. Hopefully map sizes should be silly big. There's no practical reason with today's RAM that anything less than 32 bits should be used for entity positions, and once you use the full 32 bits then map size can be practically as big as you'd ever need (the map limits of Source 1 which use 16 bit position is 1¼km², while with 32 bits the theoretical max limit would be almost 82,000km² - enough to loop around the world twice). Really at that point, floating point accuracy becomes a concern, so I wouldn't be surprised if Source 2 used double-precision (64-bit) floats or if Source 2 had an arbritary map size limit.

Still amazed how other engines that came out before 2004 had real time rendering on the map editor and quite large map sizes. Like the Halo engine.

[QUOTE=ghost901;48805924]Still amazed how other engines that came out before 2004 had real time rendering on the map editor and quite large map sizes. Like the Halo engine.[/QUOTE] Halo's Sapien isn't really a map editor; it's more like a mix of Gmod and hammer's entity placement. You can't do any real level making stuff in it, all of the levels are made in 3ds/maya. But I digress, even engines that don't have level editors (Such as GG's engine, Bungie's Engine) instead opting for everything done in Maya, have a way to visualize most aspects (Such as GG's engine, which is [URL="https://s.gvid.me/s/2015/10/02/Media2.webm"]fucking[/URL] [URL="https://s.gvid.me/s/2015/09/25/Media1_1.webm"]amazing[/URL].) of the final state.

Hammer's inability to render what the map would look like is because it was built for fucking Quake 1 and Valve never bothered to really renovate it besides adding what they needed for GoldSrc and Source. Seriously, several problems with Source can be traced back old Quake 1 legacy shit they never bothered to redo, like the awful content pipeline Source has.

[QUOTE=glitchvid;48807205]Halo's Sapien isn't really a map editor; it's more like a mix of Gmod and hammer's entity placement. You can't do any real level making stuff in it, all of the levels are made in 3ds/maya. But I digress, even engines that don't have level editors (Such as GG's engine, Bungie's Engine) instead opting for everything done in Maya, have a way to visualize most aspects (Such as GG's engine, which is [URL="https://s.gvid.me/s/2015/10/02/Media2.webm"]fucking[/URL] [URL="https://s.gvid.me/s/2015/09/25/Media1_1.webm"]amazing[/URL].) of the final state.[/QUOTE] The way I see is they didn't see the need in having a all in one tool is due to not licencing out their engine. The only thing that kept me from mapping in source is having to use brushes instead of modeling my BSP in max like I did before. After using the dota 2 tools, I felt like I was right at home. Hopefully valve sheds some more light on their plans for the modding community.

[QUOTE=Ziron;48807812]Hammer's inability to render what the map would look like is because it was built for fucking Quake 1 and Valve never bothered to really renovate it besides adding what they needed for GoldSrc and Source. Seriously, several problems with Source can be traced back old Quake 1 legacy shit they never bothered to redo, like the awful content pipeline Source has.[/QUOTE] Well, the content pipeline is completely visible, which means anyone with basic programming/shell scripting skills could automate it and be flexible for any environment. Nothing stops valve from releasing a gui program to handle this, and nothing stops the community to build their own versions of said tools. Don't take it as an attack, but if all your problem is always writing .vmf and .qc files then why not ask someone from programmers WAYWO to make a bare gui or blender script to export shit easily? And for wysiwyg map editing the engine must be integrated into the editor, or the editor be made as a mod. Source is a monolythic engine made in an age where shitty computers were common, it's not surprising everything is tightly coupled into a spaghetti of files and whatnot.

[QUOTE=ghost901;48807858]The way I see is [U]they[/U] didn't see the need in having a all in one tool is due to not licencing out their engine.[/QUOTE] Valve? But they did license out their engine, [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_(game_engine)#Games_by_other_developers"]plenty[/URL] [URL="https://web.archive.org/web/20110223203658/http://source.valvesoftware.com/sourcesdk/sourceu.php"]of[/URL] [URL="https://web.archive.org/web/20110221081304/http://source.valvesoftware.com/licensing.php"]times[/URL]. I think it stems from the history, Source has always been heavily based on Quake, and it was easier to rapidly iterate new technology on already existing tools (such as hammer) than to make tools and add features simultaneously. Then they just never got around to really improving the tools. Even now I feel S2's Hammer is a bit limited, it obviously doesn't share the rendering code with the main game it's in, which is an exception for game engines now.

Do keep in mind people have gotten HL1 into Quake… [video=youtube;YA9km4aHjzI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA9km4aHjzI[/video]

[QUOTE=chipsnapper2;48808548]Do keep in mind people have gotten HL1 into Quake… [video=youtube;YA9km4aHjzI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA9km4aHjzI[/video][/QUOTE] this video helps point out some of the stuff that valve implemented into GoldSrc for HL1 like Texture Transparency.

[QUOTE=glitchvid;48808243]Valve? But they did license out their engine, [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_(game_engine)#Games_by_other_developers"]plenty[/URL] [URL="https://web.archive.org/web/20110223203658/http://source.valvesoftware.com/sourcesdk/sourceu.php"]of[/URL] [URL="https://web.archive.org/web/20110221081304/http://source.valvesoftware.com/licensing.php"]times[/URL]. I think it stems from the history, Source has always been heavily based on Quake, and it was easier to rapidly iterate new technology on already existing tools (such as hammer) than to make tools and add features simultaneously. Then they just never got around to really improving the tools. Even now I feel S2's Hammer is a bit limited, it obviously doesn't share the rendering code with the main game it's in, which is an exception for game engines now.[/QUOTE] I was referring to Bungie's engine. Most of the time you still had to create assets in 3rd party programs but, nothing as complicated as being beginer with max/Maya with the task of building a map.

[QUOTE=Ziron;48807812]Hammer's inability to render what the map would look like is because it was built for fucking Quake 1 and Valve never bothered to really renovate it besides adding what they needed for GoldSrc and Source. Seriously, several problems with Source can be traced back old Quake 1 legacy shit they never bothered to redo, like the awful content pipeline Source has.[/QUOTE] Yeah, but you can't really criticize Quake for that. I mean, it was an 8 yr old game at the time of HL2s release! To be fair, real-time lighting was still really pretty computationally expensive at the time of HL2's release, too.

You know despite Human Error's shortcomings I really love the Alien Controller redesign. [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/10/9420/he-controlsketch.jpg[/t] Gives off the Vort/Nihilanth hybrid vibe pretty well especially with the skin texture and petal like scalp attachments. Too bad the textures they chosen for the model though look a bit like ass. [IMG]http://hlssmod.net/images/Controller.png[/IMG]

A burnt-to-a-crisp Alien Controller.

[QUOTE=Dr. Kyuros;48813482]You know despite Human Error's shortcomings I really love the Alien Controller redesign. [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/10/9420/he-controlsketch.jpg[/t] Gives off the Vort/Nihilanth hybrid vibe pretty well especially with the skin texture and petal like scalp attachments. Too bad the textures they chosen for the model though look a bit like ass. [IMG]http://hlssmod.net/images/Controller.png[/IMG][/QUOTE] It looks like something out of Serious Sam :v:

Whipped this up as a proof of concept for the HL2 shotgun (after my annoyance at the shotgun being one-handed in first person) [t]https://i.gyazo.com/1258e4a6047634db1988f95ab37d2102.png[/t] Good? Bad? :v:

[QUOTE=Mech Bgum;48815640]What does it prove again?[/QUOTE] The gun looking like this [t]https://i.gyazo.com/147cad55a23f5deec51bc3c4278f85c6.png[/t] Just boredom and excuse to work, I suppose - I know it seems pointless because you never see the back of the shotgun but I'm a sucker for doing useless things :v:

Isnt the HL shotgun modeled after the SPAS 12 ? [t]http://i.imgur.com/XJyoBVH.jpg[/t]

[QUOTE=NoaJM;48815671]The gun looking like this [t]https://i.gyazo.com/147cad55a23f5deec51bc3c4278f85c6.png[/t] Just boredom and excuse to work, I suppose - I know it seems pointless because you never see the back of the shotgun but I'm a sucker for doing useless things :v:[/QUOTE] i guess your model would be cool if you had animation where you could push away an enemy with the shotgun

[QUOTE=taz0;48815776]i guess your model would be cool if you had animation where you could push away an enemy with the shotgun[/QUOTE] And people who play with high FOVs like me

[QUOTE=NoaJM;48815540]Whipped this up as a proof of concept for the HL2 shotgun (after my annoyance at the shotgun being one-handed in first person) [t]https://i.gyazo.com/1258e4a6047634db1988f95ab37d2102.png[/t] Good? Bad? :v:[/QUOTE] I had this thing I was going to do. I was going to model the unmeshed parts of weapons and make half life 2 use the c model system, so we can have detailed view models and world models. Maybe you can do the same.

[QUOTE=Medevila;48816458]... and it's been less than two years since the consensus on Facepunch was "omg no it's still going to be Episode 3 not Half-Life 3" [editline]3rd October 2015[/editline] has this thread talked about/cared about Microsoft buying Havok yet[/QUOTE] Source 2 doesn't even use Havok, so I don't think it's really anything to be concerned about? I think source 1 is using a 10 year old version of havok anyway.

[QUOTE=hogofwar;48816662]Source 2 doesn't even use Havok, so I don't think it's really anything to be concerned about?[/QUOTE] They'll still license the physics engine, not much will change for conventional setups. Though it does mark the entrance of "Physics as a service" for games.

[QUOTE=glitchvid;48818962]They'll still license the physics engine, not much will change for conventional setups. Though it does mark the entrance of "Physics as a service" for games.[/QUOTE] I doubt it. I bet they'll just integrate Havok into DirectX or even just keep it as a separate product. There's no way they'll force it into the cloud, because it's simply not reliable or effective enough.

[QUOTE=Tommyx50;48819051]I doubt it. I bet they'll just integrate Havok into DirectX or even just keep it as a separate product. There's no way they'll force it into the cloud, because it's simply not reliable or effective enough.[/QUOTE] Havok physics as it existed will stay the same. But they've already moved into the cloud, case in point: [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWANLy9TjRc"]Crackdown 3[/URL]

[QUOTE=glitchvid;48819121]Havok physics as it existed will stay the same. But they've already moved into the cloud, case in point: [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWANLy9TjRc"]Crackdown 3[/URL][/QUOTE] Yes, but the cloud computation is to add a visual flair. There's no way fundamental latency-sensitive gameplay elements would be on the cloud. They'll use the cloud to add more fancy particles perhaps, but I doubt it's used to perform the actual stress calculations and the such. EDIT: Or perhaps I'm wrong... but surely that would force the game into being online-only? I just don't forsee cloud computation as being too justifiable most of the time. The latency to send the data back and forth seems like it'd be a lot more than just performing it on the local machine directly.