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

[QUOTE=ColossalSoft;47496426]Portal 2 developer commentary and The Final Hours of Portal 2. Valve was actually planning to have multiple secret easter egg endings all over the game, each one having its own GLaDOS song. I imagine another reason the idea was scrapped was the amount of work needed to do it.[/QUOTE] I also think they talked about it in the GDC talk Chet and Eric did.

[QUOTE=ColossalSoft;47496426]Portal 2 developer commentary and The Final Hours of Portal 2. Valve was actually planning to have multiple secret easter egg endings all over the game, each one having its own GLaDOS song. I imagine another reason the idea was scrapped was the amount of work needed to do it.[/QUOTE] I can think of a couple places where this is still sorta in the game. Once when you're running away and Glados opens a door in a test room that is full of plants and green lighting, but kills you if you go in. Another is when Wheatley is telling you to jump of the platform during the Part where he kills you.

[QUOTE=Stents*;47496380]when Valve realized the end they had with Chell speaking was dumb.[/QUOTE] They cut the Chell speaking part because the playtesters were too stupid and they couldn't figure out who was talking. [video=youtube;vboI7UUziHk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vboI7UUziHk[/video]

[QUOTE=tempunary;47498019]They cut the Chell speaking part because the playtesters were too stupid and they couldn't figure out who was talking.[/QUOTE] Quite glad honestly, it would feel weird to have Chell all of sudden talking while she stayed quiet the whole game.

[QUOTE=tempunary;47498019]They cut the Chell speaking part because the playtesters were too stupid and they couldn't figure out who was talking.[/QUOTE] Even when it said "Press Space to say 'Yes'" Where do Valve find these idiots?

[QUOTE=Durrsly;47498053]Even when it said "Press Space to say 'Yes'" Where do Valve find these idiots?[/QUOTE] Have to understand play testers are needed at both ends of the spectrum, sadly one end is the bottom of the barrel.

[QUOTE=Durrsly;47498053]Even when it said "Press Space to say 'Yes'" Where do Valve find these idiots?[/QUOTE] Iirc they use friends and family members, who often are not familiar with videogames. It's the reason the final battle of EP2 was stripped down so much that literally only you, the car, and the objective remained. Because having gunships and dropships and combine soldiers running around made the playtesters confused and they'd ignore the objectives to fight those instead. I still salty about that, and I will remain salty about it.

I just gave the Combine Soldier the RPG animations from the citizen model, and apparently they forego the reload animation and are content with firing the RPG in full auto mode, wiping out large clusters of enemies out with a few well placed shots.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2nwCX5F-P4[/media] It looked so good

that jalopy is hella cool

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;47498890][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2nwCX5F-P4[/media] It looked so good[/QUOTE] I like how at the end of the video he has godmode enabled.

[QUOTE=MissingNoGuy;47490793]i've been thinking about this, and i've been also thinking that hl3 will revolve around time travel to stop hl1 from happening in the first place. the ability of time travel upsets the gman and makes him a villain, as cheesy as that sounds[/QUOTE] If this happens, I hope they make it a choice ending instead of one single ending. Something like "the resonance cascade doesn't happen but Gordon never meets Alyx as a woman closer to his age" or "become a time god and forget about everyone you know" [QUOTE=MissingNoGuy;47492418]exactly what i was getting at it's known aperture had a lot of achievements with teleportation that even black mesa couldn't keep up with, and no info was given on the borealis which would label it as classified, or it simply vanished in a time travel mishap but appeared only recently. aperture could have been trying to experiment with time travel before the black mesa incident time travel would also require breaking through the space-time barrier theoretically, this would go hand-in-hand with eli's worry about "uncontrollable power", and why the combine wants it. they could rule anything with a time machine, and they don't want the rebels to have it all just speculation, but it's interesting to think about[/QUOTE] Personally I like this theory a lot because it makes much sense and fits as an answer to a lot of questions about the powers of the gman and the nature of the borealis.

[QUOTE=jonoPorter;47498957]I like how at the end of the video he has godmode enabled.[/QUOTE] That's not really uncommon in demos though, it's not a good demo if you just show the player character dying and reloading from a checkpoint, and god forbid it happens more than once.

Has anyone ever tried to re-make that Jalopy model?

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;47498890][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2nwCX5F-P4[/media] It looked so good[/QUOTE] I am suddenly really happy I wasn't "video game aware" until well after this was released. That looks like a waaay more climactic fight than what's there now.

[QUOTE=Cows Rule;47499571]I am suddenly really happy I wasn't "video game aware" until well after this was released. That looks like a waaay more climactic fight than what's there now.[/QUOTE] however climactic, it would've been a terrible spike in the difficulty and fucked the pacing you want to feel some sense that you can actually win the fight instead of having to enable cheats / switch to easy mode

I was looking for Kelly Baileys music on the Google Play Music app, he's listed on there as an artist but sadly none of his work is there. What is interesting though is that reading his about page taken from Wikipedia it states that he left Valve in 2011 to pursue a personal project but had retuned to work for them in February 2014. I wonderrrr

[QUOTE=NixNax123;47499638]however climactic, it would've been a terrible spike in the difficulty and fucked the pacing you want to feel some sense that you can actually win the fight instead of having to enable cheats / switch to easy mode[/QUOTE] You could make it work, it'd just require a bit of effort. Have Rebels to counter-act the Soldiers, have the Gunship do passes over the map shooting at off-screen npc_bullseye's, maybe have Helicopters do the same, have Gordon's priority in general be much lower than normal which would make NPC's focus more on each other, and when you want him to engage Soldiers have them escorting a Strider instead of the usual Hunters (maybe make them Elites so they stand out, while normal Soldiers just focus on Rebels). You could also slow down the pace at which Striders spawn slightly to give more breathing room. But in the end, Valve took the easy way out, which is really unfortunate. The climactic final battle of EP2 was even less exciting than the battle at the Citadel wall in HL2. I don't really blame them, they have a schedule to keep, and the testers couldn't focus on the one task they were given long enough to complete it, so the easiest answer is to remove everything but the given task.

I just realized that the DOD D-Day maps are just edits of the Nova Prospekt beach.

[QUOTE=NixNax123;47499638]however climactic, it would've been a terrible spike in the difficulty and fucked the pacing you want to feel some sense that you can actually win the fight instead of having to enable cheats / switch to easy mode[/QUOTE] imo (haven't played ep 2 in a while) it looked very much the same as the final game's end battle, the idiot in the demo just ran around doing nonsense that would normally get you killed in a matter of seconds.

The final boss battle really has to be built up by the rest of the game. If the final level of HL2:Ep2 was going to be balls deep in crazy shooter action, the rest of the game really didn't do anything to prepare you for such a difficult endeavor.

[QUOTE=RenaFox;47499486]Has anyone ever tried to re-make that Jalopy model?[/QUOTE] I think it was on garrysmod.org at one point.

[QUOTE=A B.A. Survivor;47500962]The final boss battle really has to be built up by the rest of the game. If the final level of HL2:Ep2 was going to be balls deep in crazy shooter action, the rest of the game really didn't do anything to prepare you for such a difficult endeavor.[/QUOTE] I assumed the build-up was the Combine assault in the lower level. The rest of the forces were shown off when you have a clear view of a large bridge with hundreds of Soldiers and dozens of Striders, APC's, Helicopters, Gunships, Dropships. Then we get there and face roughly a dozen Striders with some escorted by Hunters.

Even if not more enemies, though I think having soldiers would've been nice, I think just making there seem to be a battle going on would be nice, have dropships and gunships fly overhead, and sounds of distant gunfire. Because really for an "assault" it's just some striders and hunters. I guess canonically the Combine may not have been expecting the Magnusson devices or a solid resistance fight. Then in order to actually meet their goals the advisors had to directly intervene to kill Eli.

Has anybody ever made a tweaked version of that map to have a large battle like that? Actually, has anybody ever made good custom HL2 maps with large battles like that?

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;47499164]That's not really uncommon in demos though, it's not a good demo if you just show the player character dying and reloading from a checkpoint, and god forbid it happens more than once.[/QUOTE] Maybe get people to play then that are not as bad as the guy playing that demo.

[QUOTE=Catscratch;47454916]I'm playing through HL2:Update and I have to say: The commmunity Commentary mode, which was the main aspect of it for me, is [I]really[/I] underwhelming and disappointing. I thought it was going to be a [I]lot[/I] more people with a lot more commentary, but it mainly feels like it's just Rick Scott and a few voice actors / animators and other people I don't even know reading stuff off of the Combine Wiki and just saying 'hey I like this part of the game'. even ignoring my cynicism, there are so many parts they just leave devoid of commentary that are good points to talk about or give ... well comment on.[/QUOTE] Update: Finished it, and tbh it's.. I mean if you want to play through HL2 again for whatever reason, then go ahead and play HL2Update with the commentary, but as for it's own playthrough, it's not really worth it. Commentary seriously fizzles out after the first like 3 chapters and then it's just.. yeah it could have (and should have) had a lot more people with a lot more commentary.

[QUOTE=Catscratch;47502111]Update: Finished it, and tbh it's.. I mean if you want to play through HL2 again for whatever reason, then go ahead and play HL2Update with the commentary, but as for it's own playthrough, it's not really worth it. Commentary seriously fizzles out after the first like 3 chapters and then it's just.. yeah it could have (and should have) had a lot more people with a lot more commentary.[/QUOTE] i'm pretty sure you are the only person who plays soley for the commentary

For the record, only the first chapter in Half-Life 2: Update, Point Insertion, has commentary nodes written by a large community involvement. The rest of the game's commentary nodes were written by one guy.

[QUOTE=Marphy Black;47502175]For the record, only the first chapter in Half-Life 2: Update, Point Insertion, has commentary nodes written by a large community involvement. The rest of the game's commentary nodes were written by one guy.[/QUOTE] Most of them are straight quotes from Raising the Bar anyway.