[gemeaux333]

Marc Laidlaw said it (Opposing Force and Blue Shift are non-canon) in many occasions, and he is the official writer of the series (prior to HL:A) so there is no reason to doubt it !

[DisgustedGrunt]

gemeaux333, on 25 May 2020 - 09:38 AM, said:

Marc Laidlaw said it (Opposing Force and Blue Shift are non-canon) in many occasions, and he is the official writer of the series (prior to HL:A) so there is no reason to doubt it !

https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Canon

"The canon of the Half-Life and Portal series has never been officially defined by Valve. Series writer Marc Laidlaw stated that the issue of canon is "something the fans came up with" and that they do not have an official stance on it."

http://web.archive.o...478&postcount=1

"Adrian Shepard is a bit like Schrodinger's cat he's neither canon nor non-canon, depending on whether or not the G-Man may or may not have a use for him."

"Race X was purely a Gearbox creation that doesn't figure at all in my thinking about the world. Understand, they wanted to come up with a set of creatures that would create gameplay they knew how to make. They could have been making an original title or an add-on for some other franchise, and plugged racex into that--the reason being that they had gameplay they wanted to explore and needed the freedom of their own race of critters to conduct those experiments with. If Gearbox had kept making HL games, I suppose we might have seen these threads develop. Since blackops are not a Gearbox creation per se, but an opportunistic use of existing real-life elements, I don't see how the idea of canon applies to them."

He did said that Race X was non canon, but that doesn't make Opfor non canon. Barney Calhoun is canon, even if Blue Shift may be not.

[Marphy Black]

gemeaux333, on 25 May 2020 - 09:38 AM, said:

Marc Laidlaw said it (Opposing Force and Blue Shift are non-canon) in many occasions, and he is the official writer of the series (prior to HL:A) so there is no reason to doubt it !

Do you have a single Marc Laidlaw quote to back that up?

Because I have quotes from Marc. Several!

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=28753478&postcount=1

Marc Laidlaw said:

The whole issue of canon is something the fans came up with.

Marc Laidlaw said:

We can't speak about story ideas outside of the games themselves--it's meaningless. The games must stand on their own, contradictions and all.

http://crowbarerror42.com/2009/09/canonicity-of-games-in-the-half-life-series

Marc Laidlaw said:

We [Valve] don’t get involved in issues of canonicity. You might say that canon itself is non-canon. So, no official stance, there’s just the games.

[gemeaux333]

Anyway, this is just to say that the canon dimension of these is highly questionnable... even the Crowbar Collective recognize it

Honestly, I struggle to find out why we still discuss the issue, I mean, I though it was settled a long time ago in a galaxy far far away

[gemeaux333]

But I just realized that in present days Valve the non canon consideration of these expansions may very well be retconed, after all they already retconed the ending of HL2:EP2 at the end of HL:A in order to solve a plot-hole created 13 years ago... and besides Mike Shapiro, the voice of Barney Calhoun and the Gman, sort of leaked clues of another Half-Life VR game based on Barney Calhoun...

[Fauch]

I played Duke Nukem and Half Life back then but only played Doom, Quake and Unreal recently (though I had heard of them and had a bit of exposure to some them before). I guess we aren't the only ones a bit late to discover some classics.

I still find Duke Nukem and Half Life better, (and I replayed them very recently too, so not sure it's just nostalgia), but maybe it's because I know them and I'm better at them.

[HulkNukem]

Footage of the cancelled Arkane Half-Life 2 standalone game "Ravenholm"

https://youtu.be/h4kdqwdbZZ8?t=2227

I like the leaf blower 'rocket jump' mechanic and the nail gun electricity mechanic.
Don't really like the generic headcrab-less zombies, though.
Would've loved to seen Arkane's level design for Half-Life. I picture a less linear setup which would've made it more replayable.

[DisgustedGrunt]

HulkNukem, on 26 May 2020 - 12:06 PM, said:

Footage of the cancelled Arkane Half-Life 2 standalone game "Ravenholm"

https://youtu.be/h4kdqwdbZZ8?t=2227

I like the leaf blower 'rocket jump' mechanic and the nail gun electricity mechanic.
Don't really like the generic headcrab-less zombies, though.
Would've loved to seen Arkane's level design for Half-Life. I picture a less linear setup which would've made it more replayable.

The electric nailgun thing looks somewhat like the mini-game in Alyx, having to complete the circuit to solve the puzzle.
But, it doesn't really screams Half-Life to me. Don't get me wrong, it looks fun, but i can see why it was cancelled, even though i can't put it into words.

[Fauch]

It's hard to say, like Pete said, Half Life 2 kept introducing new elements of gameplay. And I'm not sure Half Life 2 screamed Half Life at first, with the urban environment, the combine, until you meet the first zombis / headcrabs...

[gemeaux333]

Actually, the real reason Return to Ravenholm was cancelled, as Tyler McVicker said : "Valve lost interest in Half-Life back then"

[Player Lin]

I haven't watched the new videos about HL2EP4...


Years ago, I watched a video :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRwyJnTM9oQ

That was the first time I know about HL2EP4 aka RtR.
(Also knows other game also using Source engine from the same channel -- The Crossing...sad they both canceled)

Since Valve was canceled whole Episodic HL2 project so Arkane's one also had to canceled too. Too bad.

Should be final EDIT: I were did something wrong about post and changed now it should be fine...I guess.

[DisgustedGrunt]

I knew hl npcs cannot die during scripted sequences, i knew the the canister the engineers carry in opfor explode if shot, but never before had i put the two together.

https://imgur.com/0NWNehY

[Player Lin]

Lazy Dog, on 28 June 2020 - 09:25 PM, said:

I knew hl npcs cannot die during scripted sequences, i knew the the canister the engineers carry in opfor explode if shot, but never before had i put the two together.

https://imgur.com/0NWNehY

He was already dead, just wait the (scripting) god say so and then he dies.

[Player Lin]

Yeah, it already months later but still, watching game devs found out their game has been insanely broken by speedrunner is too funny. lol

[DisgustedGrunt]

Player Lin, on 06 July 2020 - 11:08 AM, said:

Yeah, it already months later but still, watching game devs found out their game has been insanely broken by speedrunner is too funny. lol

"No one thought the airboat section was too long"

[Jim]

didn't see this get posted here:

https://www.moddb.co...ds/the-infected

[MusicallyInspired]

I am now the (co-)owner of an Oculus Quest (64GB model). Someone in my local area sold it as he had not been using it. He only acquired it in March and used it to play HL Alyx and then basically never used it anymore. He was selling it and the extras he bought for it for a fantastic price so I split it with my dad and bought a bunch of VR games on the Steam Summer sale (Skyrim, and the Croteam VR bundle for an amazing price) just before it ended and I've been having a great time with it. Haven't tried everything yet. So far the most impressive games I've played are the Super Hot demo and Minecraft (via Vivecraft mod for Java Minecraft). I tried The Talos Principle VR but the quality wasn't the greatest. I'm assuming this is due to me having a lowly GTX 970 and/or not a proper USB3 cable for full quality. Unfortunately, I do not have HL Alyx yet. But in time...I'm excited that I can at least have the capability to play it, even if I don't yet own the game. I tried the two demo areas from HL Alyx you can wander around in in Steam VR and they look amazing, albeit with lots of texture popping. The realism nevertheless was absolutely astounding.

[gemeaux333]

And there will be more about Half-Life (VR or non Vr) :

[Player Lin]

gemeaux333, on 13 July 2020 - 06:06 AM, said:

And there will be more about Half-Life (VR or non Vr) :
<video of VNN talking shit>

I don't want spoil about HL:A even most of guys here didn't care or something so I put it in spoiler.

Spoiler

HL:A filled a lot of story gaps between HL <-> HL2 <-> HL2 episodes, but still, always feel weird to me about Combine been captured G-Man...but that may be intended(for let G-Man can used this rescue to "hire" Alyx, if it's true, then man, G-Man still really nasty as usual). Too bad still no explains about Wallace Breen's fate or more about his past(I don't really buy he was dead in HL2, and they were intended let Breen appeared on HL:A but still cut him later).

[gemeaux333]

There is an entire scene cut from HL.A about Breen signing armistice with the combine (its an attempt to recreate) :

[Fantinaikos]

Merciless nitpicking or raw objectivity?

[Hank]

^ No patience to watch it, after one minute the dude lost me.
Based on the captions, I say: You have your right to your opinion, and I to ignore it. In this case, it is time to play Half Life again, later on this evening. Thanks for that.

[Marphy Black]

The Half-Life video is very obviously being played in Half-Life: Source. Since that is effectively the equivalent of judging Duke 3D based solely on the Tectoy version, you have neglected the third and most accurate possibility: he's a hack of unparalleled fraudery.

[Player Lin]

gemeaux333, on 14 July 2020 - 06:00 AM, said:

There is an entire scene cut from HL.A about Breen signing armistice with the combine (its an attempt to recreate) :
<recreation of video>

Well, I'm glad they just cut that scene. lol

[gemeaux333]

It would have been hard to place the video in HL:A for sure, although its a rather instructive video...

[gemeaux333]

[gemeaux333]

[William Beavis]

I like Half-Life as a meme almost as much as I like Half-Life as a game.

[gemeaux333]

A team of modder, Project 17 https://project17vr.com/, is actively working on making the first chapter of Half-Life 2 (Source) available on Half-Lyfe: Alyx (Source 2), they have no plans yet for porting the rest of Half-Life 2 because of the lack of necessary modding tools at that point, but the result for the first chapter "Point Insertion" is already promising :

[William Beavis]

gemeaux333, on 09 October 2020 - 08:11 AM, said:

A team of modder, Project 17 https://project17vr.com/, is actively working on making the first chapter of Half-Life 2 (Source) available on Half-Lyfe: Alyx (Source 2), they have no plans yet for porting the rest of Half-Life 2 because of the lack of necessary modding tools at that point, but the result for the first chapter "Point Insertion" is already promising :

Awesome!