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

[QUOTE=sarevokh;49771817]About "how is Prospekt canon", well it "is"...[/QUOTE] Half-Life: Redemption was also officially endorsed by Valve and later included in copies of HL1 after 2001, but it's still not canon, and neither is this pile of shit.

Oh wow redemption, I never finished that one and that was some 10 years ago

[QUOTE=chipsnapper2;49771945]Older versions of HL2 pre Mac-update had this. There was shine on Gordon's arms, too. It's in build 4044...[/QUOTE] Pre-Orangebox Half-Life 2 had some weird reflections. [t]http://puu.sh/ndRH4/895e7ea9d6.png[/t] [T]http://puu.sh/ndRLM/3466dbf73d.png[/T]< Pre-Orangebox - Post-Orangebox >[T]http://puu.sh/ndS75/dcda428170.jpg[/T] Sorry about the dark environment, it was the best way to show them off.

[QUOTE=CryoDragon;49772994]Pre-Orangebox Half-Life 2 had some weird reflections. [t]http://puu.sh/ndRH4/895e7ea9d6.png[/t] [T]http://puu.sh/ndRLM/3466dbf73d.png[/T]< Pre-Orangebox - Post-Orangebox >[T]http://puu.sh/ndS75/dcda428170.jpg[/T] Sorry about the dark environment, it was the best way to show them off.[/QUOTE] If i'm remembering my stuff right, this was phong or something like that, wasn't it? I can't remember if Orange Box introduced phong to the engine or it was always there.

[QUOTE=Xubs;49773151]Those are envmaps, which in Source are used to simulate mirror-like specular reflections. Phong in Source is used to describe the specular highlights objects receive from indirect sources, a very rough simulation of global illumination. Phong was introduced in Episode One.[/QUOTE] Dammit, envmaps had come to mind as well but I thinking, "Wait, do they work that way?"

I think you guys are hating on prospekt just to hate on it. I'm never going to play it but it does look like he put genuine effort into it and for a first attempt at something it's not bad for what is. Hopefully he learns from what he did here and can make something better next time. Sure it doesn't look like a good game but it does look like he made a solid attempt in some areas and and had a good learning experience. Don't be so critical. He did a lot more than a good number of mod attempts and actually made a finished product so that alone is a great accomplishment.

It's also the fact that the media has made such a big damn deal of it. They hyped it up far more than it deserved and the overall experience suffered because of it.

[QUOTE=redBadger;49773883]I think you guys are hating on prospekt just to hate on it. I'm never going to play it but it does look like he put genuine effort into it and for a first attempt at something it's not bad for what is. Hopefully he learns from what he did here and can make something better next time. Sure it doesn't look like a good game but it does look like he made a solid attempt in some areas and and had a good learning experience. Don't be so critical. He did a lot more than a good number of mod attempts and actually made a finished product so that alone is a great accomplishment.[/QUOTE] For god's sake... I will post the review of a modder, that I found on RTSL (ex-planetphillip) : [quote]he only people who could enjoy Prospekt have probably never played any other Half-Life mods. [b]There are a lot of problems with Prospekt, but it fundamentally comes down to one basic fact. If you’re going to charge $10 for something that I and many other mappers offer for free, you better bring your A-game. You are the one putting your product up on a pedestal and crowing, “My work is worth more than those guys!”[/b] Prospekt fails in almost every way you could conceive, and then in ways you couldn’t. There are Ville entries that run circles around its design, of lack thereof. The amount of poor design decisions on display is staggering for any work, let alone one that’s asking $10. I don’t know anything about this author. At the risk of sounding Breen-esque, I am fairly convinced he has never released a map, let alone a mod, in his whole Source career despite claiming to have been dealing with it since 2008. I can’t shake the feeling that this author hasn’t played any other mods either. Prospekt feels like something designed in a vacuum, sheltered from criticism and feedback, ignorant to what else is out there. So he is, in essence, selling his first work. And he’s finding out the hard way that this was probably a bad idea. I have no doubt that if any one of Prospekt’s levels were released for free, or if the author had published a separate map altogether, we could have given him loads of feedback. I didn’t recognize any of the testers. I have a gut feeling none of them were mappers themselves. Either that or, if they were, perhaps he rejected their advice. I don’t know. But let’s start at the beginning. Prospekt puts you in the boots of Adrian Shephard from Opposing Force. Not that it makes a lick of difference. You never do get to do anything Freeman couldn’t in vanilla Half-Life 2. And story? What story? The intro sequence has you staring at a wall for five minutes while a garish particle effect plays and an unseen Vortigaunt lectures you about the G-Man. Interspersed throughout Prospekt’s levels, the screen will burn your eyes with a seering white flash to indicate a flashback. Another uninspired voice over from Shephard’s foul-mouthed, aggressively homophobic comrades in cringeworthy dialog that doesn’t fit the Half-Life universe at all. And yes, sometimes these continue right into combat. The combat. Oh my gosh, the combat. Across 2 hours, 95% of it is against Combine Soldiers. One frustrating scene with infinite Antlions. One or two Zombies. Absolutely no boss monsters. Just Combine Soldiers. With buffed health and non-existent tactics that have them beeline directly at you, guns blazing, until someone dies. He even removed the Shotgunner’s skin so you can’t tell them apart from anyone else. The entire mod is a battle of attrition. The author knows this. That’s why he has these giant, inelegant health and armor dumps in between battles. But it’s not unusual to find yourself in an unwinnable battle because you used up what meager pickups were in the arena itself. In fact, I’d say most players will have to God mode the absurd final battle. And cover is a four-letter word in this mod. You never have it, and neither do the enemies because they aren’t scripted to use it, so it all comes down to doorplay. Exploiting the clunky doors, letting the Combine single file into your line of fire. And they will, because that’s how he scripted them to behave. Because the enemies are buffed to the point that an SMG Grenade or double Shotgun won’t even make them flinch (yes, read that again to let it sink in), your only recourse in most battles is the AR2. Which, fortunately, has a much larger maximum ammo than it did before. Not that you’ll ever fill it, because ammo is scarce despite how many enemies use it against you. SMG Combine seem to do way more damage to you than vice versa. There is no level design here. Just room-corridor-room stitched together, often copy-pasted. It’s a straightforward trek with no incentive to explore. Every now and then you come across a room that looks halfway decent. But you groan, knowing that it will inevitably turn into a battle arena the moment you press that glowing button. Halfway through the game, we have an inane platforming section involving instant-death lasers that move in various patterns. One chamber after another, the configuration changing only slightly. This is bottom-of-the-barrel design, folks. A horrible final battle, lame puzzles, screwed up texturing, and a really sad trip to Xen. I could go on, but I won’t. A person on Reddit asked, could you forgive Prospekt if it were free? In some cases, yes. I feel if it were released here on RTSL for free, it would probably get Play it Laters or Play it Nows simply because of its size and the current state of HL2 modding. But objectively speaking, it’s not that great. And when you have the audacity to charge $10, it actually becomes a little insulting to people like me. Not that I feel ripped off. Not at all. I didn’t expect great things from Prospekt and I got exactly what I expected. But the comedy of errors? The hilarity of seeing just how bad it would get? In a twisted way, it was actually $10 of entertainment for me.[/quote]

Has anyone else played Cry of Fear recently? There's weird shit going on there, like enemies phasing through walls, and guns sounding different than I remember.

[QUOTE=brenz;49774498]Has anyone else played Cry of Fear recently? There's weird shit going on there, like enemies phasing through walls, and guns sounding different than I remember.[/QUOTE] Ronnberg tried to fix AI being stuck and in turn made them just phase through everything, he was like "all done never updating the game again" so that sucked

[QUOTE=Dr.Cola;49774559]Ronnberg tried to fix AI being stuck and in turn made them just phase through everything, he was like "all done never updating the game again" so that sucked[/QUOTE] That explains why one of the white hammerdudes ran through a wall and donked me on the face with a hammer. Fucking scared me, because it was so unexpected.

At least it adds to the scare factor :v:

Sounds like you should call someone. Someone who is good at busting things that move through walls.

[QUOTE=sarevokh;49774428][quote]Halfway through the game, we have an inane platforming section involving instant-death lasers that move in various patterns. One chamber after another, the configuration changing only slightly. This is bottom-of-the-barrel design, folks.[/quote][/QUOTE] I actually quite liked this segment, it brought me back to memories of the really good parts of the EP1 Citadel. It would've been so much better with a gravity gun or new mechanic though, instead of just jumping puzzles. [editline]19th February 2016[/editline] Maybe that's just because I ace'd it the first time around though. [editline]19th February 2016[/editline] I also thought the game was hard, but not godmode impossible. Maybe that's just because I'm very good at catching combine grenades mid air and throwing them back though.

Made this old submix in 2009 only recently found it in my old backups lemme know what you think. [video=youtube;JAkJ5t2actc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAkJ5t2actc[/video] It's a remix or continuation of the song "Triage at Dawn" original composed by kelly bailey.

Prospekt dev' has actually answered on the topic "you can refund the game" on the game's steam forum : [quote]Rich a écrit : Firsty I don't feel ♥♥♥♥ at all, I worked my ♥♥♥ off to get to this point and in just under 2 years from points 0 to Steam release I actually finished a product and completed all tasks asked of me to get the game onto Steam. From nothing to Steam in under 24 months. Not only that i've basically not had massive technical issues so for me personally im extremely proud. The fact I was allowed to use Half Life on a professional level and knowing how Die Hard the fan base is to even please 50% of you I feel is a massive massive achievement for me. I mean common this is my first game ive ever made and so far I've made HALF of all the people that like HALF LIFE happy. For me personally that is an incredible achievement and the fact that i've even done all the extra tasks including legal, money, qa, localisation, etc issues. I think after sleeping on this im really happy with the results. Ok some of you might not like it but you know what. I just by my self made a whole game and distributed it on Steam without a total game meltdown. And for that alone im extremely proud. I take on board all the advice and crits you all have and ill remember it for game 2 so thank you all very much.[/quote] Dumbass... and arrogant : [url]http://steamcommunity.com/app/399120/discussions/0/412447613566921638/[/url] [quote]Rich [developer] 21 minutes ago Thanks Unity, Prospekt is an extremely complicated game and ive tried to make everything in the HL univerise fun but to try and make a Half-Life game with a team of 1 is a huge challange so I just did my best. Im really glad you mentioned some other games where you basically just walk around listen to voice over and the game is finished. Not to say thats a bad thing as everyone loves Stanley.[/quote] and the game has already sold about 10.000 copies : [url]https://steamdb.info/app/399120/graphs/[/url] so the guy will got probably around 100k for his mod. If we talk only in commercial terms, "not bad"...

How is he being arrogant? From where I'm sitting he's coming across as pretty humble, understanding of the fact that half the people who play it don't like what he's done, is happy to express that he's still new to game development. He goes on a little much about how much work he put into it, but given he doesn't have the usual PR employee to filter this stuff (and given his lack of experience dealing with this sort of exposure) I'd say he's doing a pretty swell job

Unfortunately it seems other sites also think Prospekt is semi-official, RPS has put that in their article as well. The description for the game is really misleading.

Crossposting from Videos & Flash Movies: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRAw9q2F4II[/media]

I don't know about you guys, but I think Tyler is getting better at his whole VNN thing.

[QUOTE=MacD11;49782639]Crossposting from Videos & Flash Movies: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRAw9q2F4II[/media][/QUOTE] How did he get all of the gameplay footage in the video ?

OMG the creator of azzure sheep & point of view is back, check his website [url]http://davlevels.com/[/url] so Azure stand is coming or not but this still good signal

[quote]It has been around 8 years since I stopped editing, no plans to go back to that. [/quote] Well, it seems he won't return to modding.

I wish opposing force 2 had gotten the attention prospekt did. The mod had a lot of potential and would've probably had a more satisfying vision of what happened to Shepard after his abduction.

[QUOTE=SonicHitman;49783863]I wish opposing force 2 had gotten the attention prospekt did. The mod had a lot of potential and would've probably made a more satisfying vision of what happened to Shepard after his abduction.[/QUOTE] An OF2 set during the weeks Gordon Freeman was stuck in delayed teleport could work really well. The Rebels got pretty far during that time, and it's easy to see that maybe they had a little "extra" help from a certain someone. It also gives plenty of new gameplay opportunities and objectives.

But it's probably the "plot" of Prospekt : you destroy that orbital combine station during the uprising, just after Gordon Freeman disappear for one week due to the teleport of Nova Prospekt. Maybe this station served greatly in the Combine opression. We saw numerous advisors pod's at one point... But still, this is all "left to your imagination", since virtually nothing is explained about it.

[QUOTE=MacD11;49782639]Crossposting from Videos & Flash Movies: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRAw9q2F4II[/media][/QUOTE] Can't wait for the next video, could it be F-Stop that he hinted at, at the end of the video?

More than likely, since that was supposed to be the original Portal 2. He might also talk about the other prototypes which were written about in the Final Hours of Portal 2, including Kim Swift's, which as far as I understand basically turned into Quantum Conundrum (haven't played this game)?

[QUOTE=redBadger;49773883]I think you guys are hating on prospekt just to hate on it. I'm never going to play it but it does look like he put genuine effort into it and for a first attempt at something it's not bad for what is. Hopefully he learns from what he did here and can make something better next time. Sure it doesn't look like a good game but it does look like he made a solid attempt in some areas and and had a good learning experience. Don't be so critical. He did a lot more than a good number of mod attempts and actually made a finished product so that alone is a great accomplishment.[/QUOTE] It's still not worth $10. [editline]21st February 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=MacD11;49782639]Crossposting from Videos & Flash Movies: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRAw9q2F4II[/media][/QUOTE] That super early portal particle looks really cool.

[QUOTE=MacD11;49782639]Crossposting from Videos & Flash Movies: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRAw9q2F4II[/media][/QUOTE] Huh, what's that Still Alive cover toward the end?