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

The Combine kind of suck actually i take that back, the combine are pretty cool. the human combine soldiers start to suck after fighting nothing but them for hours the episodes needed to introduce more synths instead of just the hunter

On the site this image has the description: [IMG]http://chuckejones.com/images/aln_cntrlr_pose2.jpg[/IMG] "HALF LIFE: These are the Flying Vortigaunts Controller. Floated in air. Launched energy bolts from it's head at player" It's possible a greater relation was definitely planned.

I really wish we could see an official return of some of the older xen wildlife and a couple cut ones, like the Panthereye would be amazing.

[IMG]http://th07.deviantart.net/fs26/PRE/f/2008/160/a/1/half_lifes_nihilanth_by_slocik.jpg[/IMG] That makes me think, the Nihilanth has always creeped me out and fascinated me. This model someone made years ago is amazing, shame it never got released anywhere. I wish there was more custom models of him, I can't wait to see the Black Mesa version.

[QUOTE=Dr. Kyuros;48386116]So I was checking out [URL="http://chuckejones.com/valve.html"]Chuck Jone's site[/URL] and I came across this specific piece of artwork. It's description is the most notable thing about it. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/dquMiOF.png?1[/IMG] [URL="http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Vortigaunt#Half-Life"]"Vortigaunt" was indeed coined back during 1's development.[/URL] It's status as "canon" is still very dubious, though.[/QUOTE] I definitely knew the Grunt was just a juiced up Vortigaunt, and the appearance of The Combine really solidified my beliefs.

[QUOTE=Briggsman;48386767][IMG]http://th07.deviantart.net/fs26/PRE/f/2008/160/a/1/half_lifes_nihilanth_by_slocik.jpg[/IMG] That makes me think, the Nihilanth has always creeped me out and fascinated me. This model someone made years ago is amazing, shame it never got released anywhere. I wish there was more custom models of him, I can't wait to see the Black Mesa version.[/QUOTE] Here's the model textured, by the way [img]http://pictures.mastermarf.com/blog/2009/090911-nihilanth.jpg[/img] Shout out to [URL="http://slocik.deviantart.com/"]slocik[/URL] for the original model, this guy's art is really cool. He also made [URL="http://slocik.deviantart.com/art/xen-plant-123843609"]whatever the fuck this is.[/URL] Bonus: concept art Nihilanth [URL="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lloydnone/"]by this dude.[/URL] [t]https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3111/3118839549_8ee06bf236_o.png[/t][t]http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/half-life/images/e/ef/Nihilanth_concept.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100112115907&path-prefix=en[/t]

[QUOTE=Cows Rule;48386238]"HALF LIFE: These are the Flying Vortigaunts Controller. Floated in air. Launched energy bolts from it's head at player" It's possible a greater relation was definitely planned.[/QUOTE]Or that's its description. It [I]is[/I] a Vortigaunt controller. Just like the "Concept for Land Squid character."

[QUOTE=DONOTWANT;48387712]Or that's its description. It [I]is[/I] a Vortigaunt controller. Just like the "Concept for Land Squid character."[/QUOTE] Sadly the description I think lets it go either way. It's not clear if it's "Flying Vortigaunts" or "Vortigaunts Controller". Perhaps we could shoot an email or two.

They must've use Vortigaunt as a catch-all for intelligent life forms on Xen

-nah nvm-

So has anyone ever thought about how odd the Cafeteria in Office Complex is? It's just a big room with some tables, but no vending machines and the like. And then you have a long ass hallway with some coffee machines and a big walk in freezer at the end.

[QUOTE=FlamingBlizza;48392652]So has anyone ever thought about how odd the Cafeteria in Office Complex is? It's just a big room with some tables, but no vending machines and the like. And then you have a long ass hallway with some coffee machines and a big walk in freezer at the end.[/QUOTE] The office complex maps are probably so old they didn't bat an eye on that. You can tell that by seeing the rare 3d brush ladder in hidden vents, which you can find next to where barney spawns. [editline]6th August 2015[/editline] And in unforseen consequences at the end where you have to cross the nonexistent bridge, there's a small map right after that which features another rare 3d brush ladder too(where the platforming part comes) [editline]6th August 2015[/editline] Videogame archeology is sure fun.

[QUOTE=Cows Rule;48390101]Sadly the description I think lets it go either way. It's not clear if it's "Flying Vortigaunts" or "Vortigaunts Controller". Perhaps we could shoot an email or two.[/QUOTE] I think it can be interpreted as both if looked closely enough. "Vortigaunts Controller" obviously means something akin to a slave owner, which perfectly describes their placement and behavior around Vortigaunts in 1 and how they're presumably treated as a higher caste. The Nihilanth probably needed to modify an existing species to fit it's own image and agenda since the entirety of it's kin were killed off by the Combine, and the Vorts were the closest it could find to fit such an ambitious goal.

Remember my previous post about how I thought the unused cover/fire animations for the Citizen/Combine could be re-implemented, and how they were originally implemented through actbusy? Well, I've been looking through the animations and this just doesn't make sense. There are currently three existing parts of each cover animation in the retail animations: the 'getting into cover' sequence, the 'idle in cover' sequence, and the 'getting out of cover' sequence; there is no 'firing' animation where the NPC fires while out of cover, but we can assume this exists but was removed from the animations (there is, however, a similar 'shooting' animation for the Citizen/Metropolice set of Standoff animations.) However, the Alyx cover-shooting actbusy animations are structured differently: there are animations for getting in and out of cover, but the 'peeking out' and 'shooting' animation are a single animation, and the actbusy loops that animation repeatedly for a set amount of time before forcing the NPC out of the actbusy. With this type of implementation the NPC doesn't actually shoot at enemies, it's just animated to shoot in the general area of where enemies are supposed to be. Due to the scope and scale of the old HL2 concepts and the leak, I believe that Valve would never have implemented the cover system this way; it would get painfully obvious very fast that the NPCs were just pre-animated to shoot in a certain direction. Thus, this is probably not the way the cover animations were used. Which brings me to an alternative way these animations could have been implemented and could be re-implemented, one that I think is far easier and far better in terms of both usage and believability. I was looking through the npc_citizen animations again and I noticed that the "Standoff" set of animations were extremely similar in terms of setup to those of the unused cover animations. Both have animations for going into and out of cover, hiding in cover, and presumably momentarily exiting cover to fire off a few shots. It was similar enough to the point where the shooting animation for both were pretty similar in terms of stance. That got me to thinking: what if the unused cover animations were once used as part of a Standoff sequence for cover nodes? It could specify which direction the NPC should be facing, and the NPC would play the cover animations while popping out and firing at enemies. This makes sense for a few reasons. For one, this would make it so that the NPC would have the ability to actually aim and fire at enemies, instead of being forced through an animation to shoot at a certain area. Another thing would be that this would allow the NPC to stay in cover and fire from cover indefinitely, unlike the actbusy which forces NPCs out after the sequence is finished. This also fits in with the way the Barney 'Streetwar' cover shooting sequence was animated, where Barney pops out and takes precise shots. While this would look stupid if used by NPCs who would fire in such a pattern regardless of where the enemies are (which is the case with actbusys), this would fit in with the NPC's ability to freely aim in a custom shooting animation with Standoffs, and most likely the unused cover shooting animations as well. This is my idea; what if we modified the Standoff feature and the info_hint_node entity to support the unused cover animations (for left, left crouch, right, right crouch), where they'd use the Standoff SMG firing animation for actual shooting? Unlike my previous idea I think this is a far better way of implementing the cover system for both Combine Soldiers and Rebels, and I feel like this turn out to be much better.

The infamous playtester if you choose to believe him: [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3g5mmn/the_mind_of_a_playtester_halflife_2/ctvd56d[/url]

[QUOTE=hogofwar;48404375]The infamous playtester if you choose to believe him: [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3g5mmn/the_mind_of_a_playtester_halflife_2/ctvd56d[/url][/QUOTE] The chosen one has shown himself

[QUOTE=hogofwar;48404375]The infamous playtester if you choose to believe him: [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3g5mmn/the_mind_of_a_playtester_halflife_2/ctvd56d[/url][/QUOTE] Aw, I thought it was the guy who got sick with the airboat.

I think that guy was a programmer who worked at Valve. I'll have to check RTB again though.

[url]https://soundcloud.com/mf_pickle_o/half-life-3-theme-leaked[/url]

I don't like rap, but this was pretty cool use of the track. On the other hand, I feel bad that even though I don't believe "leaks" anymore, I have to look anyway to see what's been done this time.

[QUOTE=hogofwar;48404375]The infamous playtester if you choose to believe him: [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3g5mmn/the_mind_of_a_playtester_halflife_2/ctvd56d[/url][/QUOTE] You would have thought he would have gone the other direction after about 5 minutes.

I like Valve's design because it makes me feel smart for grasping the concept, even if it's spoonfed. Then you go on to reapply the concept elsewhere. Like when you realize you can throw explosive stuff with the gravity gun.

I feel like a lot of the issues with Valve Playtesters comes from Portal 2 being less of an abstract puzzel game and more of a "Find the white space" and "If you cant find the whitespace heres a sign pointing towards the whitespace" puzzel game. Im generalizing here, but a lot of Portal 2 does feel restricive because of confused playtesters; the gel is the only freeing element of the game considering the realitive lack of freedom with the Portal Gun compaired to Portal 1.

[QUOTE=Xubs;48406544]People like to joke a lot about "those silly Valve playtesters" and especially that guy but this is EXACTLY why they playtest in the first place. [B]If it was confusing for one person, it's going to be confusing for a lot more people[/B] and if you're a game designer, especially a game designer making a game to appeal to a mass audience, those are the kinds of things you're looking out for and are working to fix. Valve just happens to be very very intelligent with how to blend level design with teaching the player how to do something, and I can easily see why they would get upset that someone would go circles around a small portion around a level for an extended period of time. It's a funny story to tell and laugh at, but if it happened once and to such an extreme, it's obvious there was a problem in the original map that they had to fix because it wasn't communicating to the player where to go quite like they wanted it to. It was his stupidity that saved us from bad level design, basically. We laugh, but we laugh in the context of what Half-Life 2's level design is NOW, not then, when things were a lot rougher. If this didn't happen, and if Valve was much more brazen and ignored playtesting data, many more of us could've repeated the same mistake. When stuff happens just like that in the maps you're making, you don't laugh at them and call them an idiot and disregard the important information they've just communicated to you, you work to figure out why it happened and fix the problem. This is coming from someone who has dabbled a little bit into map design and uses Valve's work as reference, their commentary tracks are absolutely amazing reference points to understand some fundamentals of map design, especially in the context of first person shooters. The reason I say this is because I have seen cynics in this thread go "god damn Valve playtesters ruined Valve's games!" which I feel is an [I][U]incredibly[/U][/I] ignorant viewpoint to hold in every sense of the word, disregarding the whole reason Valve's gameplay and level design is so revered by game players and developers alike.[/QUOTE] That's kinda the opposite of how sampling works. If it's confusing for a moderate size(but diverse) sample, then there's a statistically good chance that it's going to be confusing to the greater playerbase. In my opinion, there's a couple of bad playertester inspired changes to the game that should have been left in for better gameplay; this is one of them.

[QUOTE=Xubs;48406544] The reason I say this is because I have seen cynics in this thread go "god damn Valve playtesters ruined Valve's games!" which I feel is an [I][U]incredibly[/U][/I] ignorant viewpoint to hold in every sense of the word, disregarding the whole reason Valve's gameplay and level design is so revered by game players and developers alike.[/QUOTE] I'm just gonna say this now, there were a few parts of the game where it was incredibly obvious what to do before and they couldn't figure it out, and some of the mechanics they complained about probably wouldn't affect many people. [editline]8th August 2015[/editline] and I mean ones like "i got motion sickness from this"

[QUOTE=artDecor;48406023][url]https://soundcloud.com/mf_pickle_o/half-life-3-theme-leaked[/url][/QUOTE] Er, what is the rap from? And also what is the Half-Life track called?

Does anyone know if valve used a sound library for the door sounds in HL1, and if so, which? I want to hear those big metal doors in glorious HD surround sound

[QUOTE=Killjoy;48410354]Er, what is the rap from? And also what is the Half-Life track called?[/QUOTE] "Gas Pedal" by Sage the Gemini "Triage at Dawn" by Kelly the Bailey.

[QUOTE=ColossalSoft;48411350]"Triage at Dawn" by Kelly the Bailey.[/QUOTE]The remix used in this song is [url=https://soundcloud.com/dj-dain/triage-at-dawn-dj-dains-that-long-train-ride-mix]That Long Train Ride by DJ Dain[/url].

[QUOTE=Marphy Black;48411416]The remix used in this song is [url=https://soundcloud.com/dj-dain/triage-at-dawn-dj-dains-that-long-train-ride-mix]That Long Train Ride by DJ Dain[/url].[/QUOTE] Yep, found it. Not sure why I asked which track it was, because that was easy to find. Mainly wanted to know about the rap. Thanks.