from the Steam website on how to enter offline mode:

"Bring the computer that will be playing offline to an available internet connection at a friend's house, school or perhaps business. Log into the account and do all the updates, make sure it all works."

funny how they're encouraging people to connect steam at places where in all likelyhood, have policies that prohibit non-school-related or non-business-related activities on their networks.

too bad for Valve, guess I won't be buying the game then.

At some point, you just gotta draw a line at the what you're willing to allow companies to get away with.

I refuse to participate in the melodrama that is Valve/VU and steam. Yes, I want to play HL2, but not if it means I have to install a bunch of crap I don't want, or need.

I realize i'm in the minority, but I frankly don't care, Hype may work on a lot of people, but it isn't enough to get me to buy this ball of wax.

Don't get me wrong, digital content delivery has its place in the future, but I don't appreciate the strongarm tactics they are using to force people to use it.

I simply don't need steam, I don't do multiplayer gaming often enough to justify it, and I can patch games myself thankyouverymuch,

Sorry Valve/VU I like HL, but in the final analysis, it IS just a game. And I'm not going to participate in your marketing experiment just so I can do that.

Valve's probably waiting for the mod community to release a graphics pack

I agree, this does seem the likely course. Personally I can't wait to redo the train ride myself, just for shits and giggles

(What? I'm a nerd, says who?!)

No. Blue Shift isn't even available in its original form, due to neither Gearbox nor Valve wanting to take the time out to make it Steam-compatible (and it's not a simple matter of replacing WON with Steam.) HL:S is simply HL1 running in the Source engine. This means you get nice physics and water, but the graphics are 100% the same. Valve's probably waiting for the mod community to release a graphics pack. No OpFor: Source has been announced, but if they do, it'll be just like HL: Source--old textures, new water.

Maybe they'll finally fix that elevator bug, with the new engine...



www.muse.mu

got Broadband, still don't(and never will) want steam.

Hate to break it to you, but even if you buy the retail version of HL2, you're still going to have to install and connect to Steam in order to play the game. Steam functions as both a delivery service and a WON successor--and yes, to play the single player game, you must have Steam open. Having an internet connection is listed in HL2's minimum requirements.

anyone know if HL1: source comes with all the opfor and blueshift expansions as well?

No. Blue Shift isn't even available in its original form, due to neither Gearbox nor Valve wanting to take the time out to make it Steam-compatible (and it's not a simple matter of replacing WON with Steam.) HL:S is simply HL1 running in the Source engine. This means you get nice physics and water, but the graphics are 100% the same. Valve's probably waiting for the mod community to release a graphics pack. No OpFor: Source has been announced, but if they do, it'll be just like HL: Source--old textures, new water.

got Broadband, still don't(and never will) want steam. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with retail boxes cuz i'm not a fanboi who "MUST HAVE IT NOW"

However, I'm seriously thinking about getting the collectors box, for a change, there is some really worthwhile shit in that box instead of stupid shit like cloth maps and idiotic pins

anyone know if HL1: source comes with all the opfor and blueshift expansions as well?

This comment was edited on Oct 15, 12:44.

This just means the gold announcement is slightly more credible. Please, please, let EBGames and Gamestop's 11/1 release listings be true...

It would be nice, and 11/1 is a Monday (the usual shipping day). If it doesn't go gold today I would hope sometime next week. Wonder if they could get it boxed and shipped in 15 days.

No, this is a gaming site, go push your political views on any of the thousands of politically based websites and leave the gaming sites games.

"Shouldn't you guys be concerned with more important things, oh, say like oh, I dont know, the NOVEMBER ELECTIONS. "

... or at least 99.9% of it. The final preload will be made available with final release of HL2 and will only contain the updated binaries to make the engine work with HL2 or not only with CSS.

Or at least I concluded so because we got now 4.22 HL2/CSS stuff on our harddisk which equals exactly 6 CDs, which again is the number of CDs on which HL2 will ship to retail stores.


This comment was edited on Oct 15, 09:55.

So, we've got models, textures, sounds & music, and maps. Sounds like there's just one more load left--the engine.

No... Engine is already there. CS:Source is working as an HL2 mod, its using the hl2.exe base directory. But eventually there may be some updates (bug fixes) to the engine before the release...

I know this is just an idle comment, but after laoding the preload it no longer says a locked copy is stored on your machine, but "when game is released you will be able to paly immediately". To me that kind of pushes the "gold tomorrow" BS hype.(indented/italic)

The play immediately message was already there when I finished preloading the game sometime earlier this week. But now it's only 83% done after this new preload today. So it's already been saying that message before, I bought it last weekend, so it doesn't mean anything new.

This is funny, speculation over a pre-load of a game that has probably been "close-enough" to being finished for over a year. [not that I won't buy it]

Shouldn't you guys be concerned with more important things, oh, say like oh, I dont know, the NOVEMBER ELECTIONS.

Re-Defeat Bush.

What have they preloaded so far? Maps, models, textures and all these graphical things? Is the sound preloaded too?

And what's left to preload?

The way I read it, RC5 had the three showstoppers. My mistake.

This just means the gold announcement is slightly more credible. Please, please, let EBGames and Gamestop's 11/1 release listings be true...

Sorry you are correct in saying AFTER RC4 they had 3 showstoppers, that site has that press release as well, and its the same source that verified RC5 was sent that we now know is true, now that source say's gold is close, so you have to take that into account.

However, a few days have passed since that statement about the bugs, so its very possible they are done now.

This comment was edited on Oct 15, 02:04.

The magazines reviewing HL2 got the same RC that Valve sent to Vivendi way back when. It is not a final copy. Lombardi says they're on their fifth RC, and the unofficial word is they've got three showstopper bugs left to kill.

HL2 is not ready. It is very, very, very close to being ready, but this is not the same as being finished.

Meanwhile, I've paid out for HL2 Silver, I've completed this preload, and I'm enjoying CS:S immensely when my university network doesn't suck and result in packet loss. Bring on HL2--when it's done.

To me that kind of pushes the "gold tomorrow" BS hype.

IMO, a more likely reason is that they were getting a flood of emails from new Steam users asking how to unlock their preload. Though I do think the rumor of a Friday gold announcement is somewhat plausible...
This comment was edited on Oct 15, 01:52.

I know this is just an idle comment, but after laoding the preload it no longer says a locked copy is stored on your machine, but "when game is released you will be able to paly immediately". To me that kind of pushes the "gold tomorrow" BS hype.

All this "gold tomorrow" stuff is getting old. Now the people saying are saying "if not tomorrow, then soon". Well, I haven't heard that before. I really want hl2 and it's pretty irritating when the only news are a bunch of rumors about it.

Things I want for Christmas:

-HL2 (fine, no snarks. I'll still love ye)
-TFC2 (Multiplayer that remains underrated. Just remove the ability of demo men to spam their grenades like no other)
-Vampire: Bloodlines (Thanks to HL2 delays these guys have had a ton of time to polish the game. This thing should shine more than UT2004)

-Red Orchestra (completely off topic, but this game kicks so much ass it deserves a larger following)

Thus ends my drunken posting for the night. I shall sleep easy, knowing that one day I will play Half Life 2.


_________________________
Gameplay before graphics.

C'mon now, with an attitude like that...

You've never seen me though. If you saw me, you would understand why I say that. I'm downright hideous.