i dont like em too much ;) they're ok for calling ppl from anywhere where u are. but these damn sounds they make, e.g. famous pop sounds as ringing tones.
stalker might be ncie and i sure will buy it, but what counts for me is whether how good it's moddable and how good the community support is gonna be. that's what most ppl love valve for.
btw: an online "single" player mode like introduced in stalker is nothing new, system shock2 already had...
only code was stolen, no models, maps or anything else. what you mean is 1/3 of the whole game, including these things. but were are talking about plain source code and 500mb of text/ source code sounds way too much compared to other games...
the coders of the havoc physic engine might sue them. the havoc engine is the best and biggest physics engine out on the market. (at least it was, and i hope it will be in a few months, too). they (valve), l were supposed to keep the code of the havoc engine, which they licensed for use in hl2...
your solutions depend on what kinda pop ups these pop ups are ;). the first one is the best, i think, since it directly shuts down the service which makes the pop ups possible.
what's the problem of setting up hammer with steam? it's all the same. same fgd, same compiler, same wads (unless you deleted the wads from the old hl, cs, dod version) and the hl1 wad is in one of the cache files, for sure.
i doubt they used something like c# as language for hl2. maybe theyve used .net 7.0 as developer environment. i doubt they want everyone to install .net for being able to play hl2, even if it's part of the hl2 installer. also, steam doesnt use .net does it?
i converted one of my old 3.1 maps to 1.0 ..by simply compilign it again with the 1.0 fgd. but it won't load at all. it freezes at the status bar and i have to restart dod. any ideas?
today halo is outdated. it might have looked good on the xbox and the outer spaces still do look nice. but the rooms inside of buildings already look old and box-like. anyway..who want's to play a game with a few different vehicles, when there are better games with many vehicles and better mp modes?
deus ex..definetly, maybe B&W, the Sims and NFS: Unleashed/Porsche. the last one was bf1942. but now bf sucks somewhat. gta 1 - vc : gta simply rocks. even gta 1 still does.
<edit> i forgot MP </edit>
usually such large compiling times are caused by outdoor levels, with a huuuuuuge r_Speeds count. i made a map once, where it took like 8 hours to compile it. after inserting 2(!) vis blockers the compiling time dropped to 20 minutes... it also depends on the hardware you are using. i myself...