Half-Life 2 Previews [May 08, 2003, 6:54 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
The NDA referenced earlier has expired, and the first web-based Half-Life 2
previews have begun appearing. There are now previews of Half-Life 2 in
(alphabetically): Computer
and Video Games, GameSpot,
GameSpy, PC.IGN.Com,
and Shacknews, .
Each article is based on seeing a some proof of concept demonstrations, offering
their individual impressions and a shared pool of screenshots, which are also posted
here locally. There are also plentiful developer quotes scattered
throughout, offering the first details about gameplay in the shooter sequel.
Here's a bit from the GameSpot article, as we're impressed by how the NDA seems
to have been crafted to fit the big dog's daily publishing schedule. They refute
some rumors and shed light on the game's true target platform:
In case you were wondering, the game is also being built, first and foremost, for the PC. Leading up to the official announcement from Valve that Half-Life 2 would be publicly displayed for the first time at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May 2003, rumors spread far and wide about what the game would and wouldn't be. One of the more popular rumors was that, much like how Bungie Software moved development of its outstanding first-person shooter, Halo, from the PC to the Xbox, so would Valve switch to focusing on console development. Newell laughed this off--no, Half-Life 2 will be a PC game. At first. Newell did confirm that an Xbox version, at least, will follow suit, though there's no hard release date for it yet. At any rate, Newell emphasized that the success of the original Half-Life can be attributed in no small part to the game's huge, worldwide following of PC owners. Valve would have to be downright foolish to abandon its huge installed base when making Half-Life 2.
Anyway I'm not looking forward to "They Hunger" nearly as much as some of the other Single Player mods that will come out for HL 2. There are a lot of excellent (many better than "They Hunger") single player mods out for HL right now, and I can't wait to see what these authors do with the Source engine...
Don't forget that it was Neil Manke who kicked it all off with real SP mods (everything else released up to then by the community has merely been map packs) and that it was almost 4 years ago! At that time I'm pretty much sure noone would have had the creativity to create something equally outstanding as "They Hunger".
Anyhow, speaking of HL2 SP mods you should be relieved to hear that I'm currently and seriously considering to produce anything new in the Poke646 universe on the new Valve engine... it looks very, very promising so far.
The only thing that disappoints me from a developers point of view is how they still didn't seem to have included dynamic and "on the fly" lighting into their editor. I can only guess how much time I wasted with wrong or unsatisfying light compiles during development, but it's definitely far more than 50% of the overall production time
[edit]
Sorry, just read about built-in lighting previews in the Gamespy preview...
[/edit]
This comment was edited on May 9, 02:41.
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