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I gave up hope on this project years ago. Nice to see it's ongoing.
Half-Life corner
#633 Posted 22 January 2020 - 10:24 PM
Nice to know that Marc Laidlaw was heavily consulted for Half-Life: Alyx, as it certainly wouldn't be the same without his involvement. Also Valve are pretty confident on their March 2020 release date.
This post has been edited by Malgon: 22 January 2020 - 10:28 PM
#634 Posted 23 January 2020 - 10:31 PM
In other news, Xen has been in the Steam release of Black Mesa for about a month now. Still technically early access, but it is essentially complete at this point. Xen only needs achievements and some fine tuning.
I just finished playing though it this week (28 hours, full game on hard,), so here are my thoughts:
I just finished playing though it this week (28 hours, full game on hard,), so here are my thoughts:
- They weren't kidding when they said Xen would be longer and different.
- The Xen scenery is very nice looking
- Newish enemies, but not too off canon.
- Gonarch was a pain in the ass, but can apparently can be easier if you pay attention earlier on.
- The Garg chase was quite amusing once I figured out what was going on.
- Interloper is substantially different, mostly for the better, but TBH, the plug puzzles got a bit tiresome and overdone, also the lack of enemy variety was a bit disappointing.
- Nihilanth was surprisingly easier than Gonarch, fairly fun too.
This post has been edited by Rellik: 23 January 2020 - 10:47 PM
- Banned
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#635 Posted 25 January 2020 - 01:35 AM
I'm having a tough, love and hate kind of relationship with Xen sadly: on the one hand I appreciate a lot of what Crowbar Collective managed to achieve but on the other it just doesn't really work for me. That's partially true for the whole of Black Mesa though.
I love how Xen looks like, it still retains some of the original design but it's also a lot more fleshed out with the devs taking certain liberties that fit. Some people hate the sections that look like the forest / jungle from Avatar but that stuff does make Xen more believable. I love the human research station and the expanded vortigaunt stuff is really-really cool too.
But then comes the gameplay and that's where Xen just fails for me. Most of it is walking around while admiring the atmosphere and solving very uninspired and repetitive puzzles, I'd say that it's around 80% of these things with the remaining 20% being shooting at stuff. And that 20% shooting is just not fun because you're just fighting different types of houndeyes or fighting vorts and controllers. Interloper sucks in the original game, here it sucks even more because it's a different kind of bad while also being very-very long. The Gonarch battle is pure jank with both you and the monster having the ability to just randomly get stuck in the environment and on hard difficulty both instances of that end in you dying instantly. The Nihilanth battle is fun and it's quite a spectacle so that manages to lift your spirits by the end but it's too little, too late.
And what truly frustrates me is that the dev team was pretty arrogant towards community feedback throughout development yet all of these issues could have been avoided by simply listening to what people had to say about the original Xen. If you go and ask around basically these are the problems people have with Xen:
- Lame level design with frustrating platforming and gimmicky sections like Interloper ---> CC only fixed the platforming from these.
- Boring combat compared to the variety of fighting humans soldiers and aliens in the Earth sections ---> CC didn't fix any of this, in fact they only made it worse by making Xen longer. A new enemy type that changes up the combat mechanics was absolutely necessary, instead they came up with 2 extra types of houndeyes... and you have to fight them the same way as you did with the original type.
- No sense of a continous journey, no sense of real world building ---> CC fixed this.
So at the end they did half of the job they should have, made some new mistakes on top of it = Xen still sucks, it feels just as rushed and half assed as what the original game had. And that's really bad because "rushed" is really not a word you can use when talking about Black Mesa.
That's kind of the overall problem with BM: it just took so long that by the time it came out the whole thing just feels archaic and outdated. They started working on it when the realistic shooter was the hot thing, something that the first Half-Life never had anything to do with so the remake just feels weird as a result. The whole thing got slower even though they expanded the levels so compared to the original game BM has a tendency to be boring here and there and it can just drag on, that great pacing is just not there anymore. The weapon feel and animations feel lacking too because BM never really wanted to be better than HL2 in that regard and these days the animations of HL2 are just not enough for any kind of FPS project.
It's a good game and it's kind of unbelivable that it even got finished as it was this never ending, huge modding project but you just have to wonder: was it really worth it with HL1 still being the significantly better game? To me it really wasn't because I find myself just replaying Half-Life instead of Black Mesa when I get the itch to play as Gordon Freeman.
I love how Xen looks like, it still retains some of the original design but it's also a lot more fleshed out with the devs taking certain liberties that fit. Some people hate the sections that look like the forest / jungle from Avatar but that stuff does make Xen more believable. I love the human research station and the expanded vortigaunt stuff is really-really cool too.
But then comes the gameplay and that's where Xen just fails for me. Most of it is walking around while admiring the atmosphere and solving very uninspired and repetitive puzzles, I'd say that it's around 80% of these things with the remaining 20% being shooting at stuff. And that 20% shooting is just not fun because you're just fighting different types of houndeyes or fighting vorts and controllers. Interloper sucks in the original game, here it sucks even more because it's a different kind of bad while also being very-very long. The Gonarch battle is pure jank with both you and the monster having the ability to just randomly get stuck in the environment and on hard difficulty both instances of that end in you dying instantly. The Nihilanth battle is fun and it's quite a spectacle so that manages to lift your spirits by the end but it's too little, too late.
And what truly frustrates me is that the dev team was pretty arrogant towards community feedback throughout development yet all of these issues could have been avoided by simply listening to what people had to say about the original Xen. If you go and ask around basically these are the problems people have with Xen:
- Lame level design with frustrating platforming and gimmicky sections like Interloper ---> CC only fixed the platforming from these.
- Boring combat compared to the variety of fighting humans soldiers and aliens in the Earth sections ---> CC didn't fix any of this, in fact they only made it worse by making Xen longer. A new enemy type that changes up the combat mechanics was absolutely necessary, instead they came up with 2 extra types of houndeyes... and you have to fight them the same way as you did with the original type.
- No sense of a continous journey, no sense of real world building ---> CC fixed this.
So at the end they did half of the job they should have, made some new mistakes on top of it = Xen still sucks, it feels just as rushed and half assed as what the original game had. And that's really bad because "rushed" is really not a word you can use when talking about Black Mesa.
That's kind of the overall problem with BM: it just took so long that by the time it came out the whole thing just feels archaic and outdated. They started working on it when the realistic shooter was the hot thing, something that the first Half-Life never had anything to do with so the remake just feels weird as a result. The whole thing got slower even though they expanded the levels so compared to the original game BM has a tendency to be boring here and there and it can just drag on, that great pacing is just not there anymore. The weapon feel and animations feel lacking too because BM never really wanted to be better than HL2 in that regard and these days the animations of HL2 are just not enough for any kind of FPS project.
It's a good game and it's kind of unbelivable that it even got finished as it was this never ending, huge modding project but you just have to wonder: was it really worth it with HL1 still being the significantly better game? To me it really wasn't because I find myself just replaying Half-Life instead of Black Mesa when I get the itch to play as Gordon Freeman.
This post has been edited by Zaxx: 25 January 2020 - 01:38 AM
- King of SOVL
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#636 Posted 25 January 2020 - 10:12 AM
Was this mentioned anywhere? Valve is giving out Half-Life 1 and 2 for free up until the release of Alyx so that folks can get up to speed with the series. This is very convenient for me considering this finally gives me motivation to complete Half-Life.
https://store.steamp...com/news/57848/
https://store.steamp...com/news/57848/
This post has been edited by Radar 100 Watts: 25 January 2020 - 10:14 AM
- The Truth is in here
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#637 Posted 25 January 2020 - 10:24 AM
It's certainly a nice advertising idea for the new game, even though for people like me who played HL 1+2 countless times already, this offer isn't interesting.
They should do a new Portal game for VR next. You'd need a big bucket next to you when playing that one.
They should do a new Portal game for VR next. You'd need a big bucket next to you when playing that one.
This post has been edited by NightFright: 25 January 2020 - 10:26 AM
#638 Posted 25 January 2020 - 07:14 PM
NightFright, on 25 January 2020 - 10:24 AM, said:
It's certainly a nice advertising idea for the new game, even though for people like me who played HL 1+2 countless times already, this offer isn't interesting.
They should do a new Portal game for VR next. You'd need a big bucket next to you when playing that one.
They should do a new Portal game for VR next. You'd need a big bucket next to you when playing that one.
Maybe i'll give HL Source a try and see if it's the bugfest people claim.
Team Fortress Classic is also in the play for free until HL Alyx comes out, maybe Valve is recycling the HL Hostile Takeover idea
UPDATE: I actually tried Source, started from Unforeseen Consequences, first guard i come across is constantly making pain sounds. Things are off to a great start
This post has been edited by Lazy Dog: 25 January 2020 - 07:50 PM
#639 Posted 26 January 2020 - 03:21 AM
Zaxx, on 25 January 2020 - 01:35 AM, said:
It's a good game and it's kind of unbelivable that it even got finished as it was this never ending, huge modding project but you just have to wonder: was it really worth it with HL1 still being the significantly better game? To me it really wasn't because I find myself just replaying Half-Life instead of Black Mesa when I get the itch to play as Gordon Freeman.
I know you think BM('s engine) is outdated(I'm not sure it's good word, since I feel it sounds like try to blame CC for doing this remake that not worth or something "negative") and I know a lot of people loves the new Xen because the original Xen just not enough to them.
Maybe you don't really care but at least CC finished and delivered it to those HL fans, hardcore ones or not, and I know many of them appreciate their works(even though CC was fucked up at first beta release of Xen by making the levels so hard to near impossible).
Well, everyone has their own taste.
Lazy Dog, on 25 January 2020 - 07:14 PM, said:
Maybe i'll give HL Source a try and see if it's the bugfest people claim.
...
UPDATE: I actually tried Source, started from Unforeseen Consequences, first guard i come across is constantly making pain sounds. Things are off to a great start
...
UPDATE: I actually tried Source, started from Unforeseen Consequences, first guard i come across is constantly making pain sounds. Things are off to a great start
It's always bugfest, and never changes.
HL:Source just Valve's lazy port of HL1 to Source engine, so it's buggy as hell for sure. And Valve said HL:Source just a thing for demonstrating how to porting exists GoldSrc engine assets/games to the Source engine, they don't even bother to fix any of bugs in it...
This post has been edited by Player Lin: 26 January 2020 - 03:24 AM
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#640 Posted 26 January 2020 - 06:38 AM
Player Lin, on 26 January 2020 - 03:21 AM, said:
I know you think BM('s engine) is outdated
NO!
I mean sure, Source is outdated as hell now but I never thought that was a huge issue in the case of BM. What is a huge issue (and that's why I tend to ask "what's the point?") is that BM doesn't really use the defining features of Source. I love the Source engine because it's a powerhouse at creating some very dynamic gameplay thanks to all the physics stuff.BM mostly throws that out the window, instead it focuses on recreating the maps of Half-Life in a higher graphical fidelity and compared to HL2 the result is a very static game. On the surface you have features like the ability to pick things up and throw them but a lot less is affected by physics so it's just weird after HL2. For example in HL2 if you threw a grenade into a room and it blew up you could see how much impact it had: stuff moved around or got destroyed as the result of the detonation. BM? Sometimes you can see a bit of that but it's mostly just wooden boxes and barrels that can be affected. I'm not saying that they should have added the gravity gun to BM but they should have focused more on steering the gameplay towards the "fun with physics" aspect of HL2.
And then there's all the stuff that was removed or changed compared to the original game (like BM's slower movement lifted straight from HL2, HECU marines being stupid aimbots, BM's frankly terrible weapon animations and sounds etc.) so at the end BM is like a version of HL2 that just offers significantly less than the actual HL2. That's not what the original Half-Life is supposed to be so I really don't like the idea of people experiencing Half-Life 1 through Black Mesa for the first time, that's just a disservice to the original game.
This post has been edited by Zaxx: 26 January 2020 - 06:40 AM
#641 Posted 26 January 2020 - 10:24 AM
Quote
HECU marines being stupid aimbots
Is that STILL a thing? really?, i only played the mod version and the marines where just not fun to play against, and they haven't changed that?
#642 Posted 26 January 2020 - 08:37 PM
https://steamcommuni...362418744405955
Quote
The biggest change we have made is a complete overhaul of the HECU AI. Soldiers will now lay down suppressing fire, flank your position, communicate more, throw grenades more effectively, use their MP5 grenade launchers, and more.
We have also evaluated and changed a number of the combat spaces to better utilize the AI and to reflect what we have learned since we first built Earthbound. It has been a lot of fun redesigning areas of the game to work better, and to use “creativity through constraint” to make the most of our levels without completely rebuilding them.
The team watched a number of playthroughs and identified sections in the game where the pace came to a grinding halt. We redesigned or fixed these sections so that players can keep up their momentum.
We have also evaluated and changed a number of the combat spaces to better utilize the AI and to reflect what we have learned since we first built Earthbound. It has been a lot of fun redesigning areas of the game to work better, and to use “creativity through constraint” to make the most of our levels without completely rebuilding them.
The team watched a number of playthroughs and identified sections in the game where the pace came to a grinding halt. We redesigned or fixed these sections so that players can keep up their momentum.
#643 Posted 26 January 2020 - 10:15 PM
#644 Posted 26 January 2020 - 11:50 PM
Zaxx, I get your points and I'm not really disagree them, and want to say something but decided not...I just feel I can't explain my shit in my brain better so be it.
Only thing I would say is... physic isn't the part I love the Source engine, yeah, integrated the physic into gameplay to make fun with physic would be good idea but I don't care that much...at least make it still feels like original HL is already "awesome enough" to me, everything more than that just bonuses.
I guess the 1.x releases would be fix more deeper/core problems on gameplay parts which existed since the mod version.
Only thing I would say is... physic isn't the part I love the Source engine, yeah, integrated the physic into gameplay to make fun with physic would be good idea but I don't care that much...at least make it still feels like original HL is already "awesome enough" to me, everything more than that just bonuses.
I guess the 1.x releases would be fix more deeper/core problems on gameplay parts which existed since the mod version.
#645 Posted 14 February 2020 - 01:33 AM
Looks like every website is reporting March 23rd for the release date of Half-Life: Alyx but on Steam it says the 24th. Either way, not that long for those that have the required setup for it.
#646 Posted 03 March 2020 - 12:03 PM
Hats confirmed, Team Fortress: Alyx
This post has been edited by Lazy Dog: 03 March 2020 - 12:14 PM
#647 Posted 03 March 2020 - 12:14 PM
This post has been edited by Lazy Dog: 03 March 2020 - 12:28 PM
- The Truth is in here
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#648 Posted 03 March 2020 - 10:37 PM
Did she grab into the toilet to get an item from there? Questionable ethics! 😆
This post has been edited by NightFright: 03 March 2020 - 10:37 PM
#649 Posted 04 March 2020 - 10:19 AM
Like in Boneworks you will have to search the most improbable places to find items !
#650 Posted 04 March 2020 - 11:30 AM
NightFright, on 03 March 2020 - 10:37 PM, said:
Did she grab into the toilet to get an item from there? Questionable ethics! ��
It could be a lot worse
This post has been edited by Lazy Dog: 04 March 2020 - 12:11 PM
#651 Posted 06 March 2020 - 10:31 AM
If you have ordered the valve index, you can visit 2 environments from HL: Alyx in steam VR
-the underconstruction citadel streets
-the Russel lab
-the underconstruction citadel streets
-the Russel lab
- Pizza Lawyer
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#652 Posted 12 March 2020 - 09:29 PM
I haven't been this excited for a game since GTA V... and DNF before that. HL Alyx is bringing me back into gaming.
- Judge Mental
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#653 Posted 13 March 2020 - 12:20 AM
Yatta, on 12 March 2020 - 09:29 PM, said:
I haven't been this excited for a game since GTA V... and DNF before that. HL Alyx is bringing me back into gaming.
And hopefully to back around these parts again more often?
- The Sarien Encounter
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#654 Posted 13 March 2020 - 03:31 AM
I wish I had a VR set. Any VR set. Just want to play this. :'( I have a Google Cardboard but I've had mixed results with TrinusVR. Probably won't be near good enough for Alyx. But whenever I get to play it I'll be super pumped!
This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 13 March 2020 - 03:43 AM
#655 Posted 19 March 2020 - 05:29 PM
Player Lin, on 26 January 2020 - 03:21 AM, said:
It's always bugfest, and never changes.
HL:Source just Valve's lazy port of HL1 to Source engine, so it's buggy as hell for sure. And Valve said HL:Source just a thing for demonstrating how to porting exists GoldSrc engine assets/games to the Source engine, they don't even bother to fix any of bugs in it...
HL:Source just Valve's lazy port of HL1 to Source engine, so it's buggy as hell for sure. And Valve said HL:Source just a thing for demonstrating how to porting exists GoldSrc engine assets/games to the Source engine, they don't even bother to fix any of bugs in it...
Should have known that when I got it last year. I have more experience of the original Half Life on PS2 than on PC, but still didn't remember the PC version having some of these problems.
Took advantage of the free month to finally play blue shift, I had heard it was the less good expansion. but I found it fun. I think it has some of the best combat against the soldiers. the Xen part is pretty poor though. Replaying through opposing force now.
I read a potato computer could run the earth part of Black Mesa, but the Xen part will probably melt my computer. Considering I re-beat the original a few months ago, it may feel a bit repetitive?
#656 Posted 20 March 2020 - 01:15 AM
Fauch, on 19 March 2020 - 05:29 PM, said:
I read a potato computer could run the earth part of Black Mesa, but the Xen part will probably melt my computer. Considering I re-beat the original a few months ago, it may feel a bit repetitive?
Not sure how "few months ago" is but...
BM 1.0 has been already changed a lot of thing since their mod and Early Access versions, including many BMRF levels with minor/major changes so it still good idea to play the whole game again.
Unless you already played those changed BMRF levels, but I remembered that was happened since 1.0 beta versions...
- The Truth is in here
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#659 Posted 23 March 2020 - 01:57 PM
I really hope I won't need to experience Alyx as a Let's Play video. However, I doubt they'll ever make a non-VR patch for this, also because gameplay is completely VR-based. System requirements for VR are high and so are prices for VR gear. It's a nice showcase game for the technology alright, but I'm afraid for me there isn't this urgency to switch to something I don't know as it was back then with HL2 and Steam. I want to play my games sitting on a chair, with my mouse and keyboard, and without physical effort.
