6 Years For Half-Life 2 Yeah right

[alan00000]

do you really think it took almost 6 years to make this game i doubt it what do you guys think .

 

[jimbones]

If you write an engine from near scratch.

 

[MultiVaC]

Yeah, I think they spent most of their time building a nose-picking machine.

 

[Chris D]

Of course it did.

They built a new game engine from scratch. That kinda thing takes a while. Then they started building the game for DirectX 7 hardware, then re-did the content for DirectX 8 then re-did the content for Direct X 9.

In the meantime they supervised Gearbox make Opposing Force, Blue Shift and HL for PS2. They got Gunman Chronicles released. Supported the mod community massively. Updated HL1. Created Steam. Created Powerplay (that failed). Took over Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat.

That sounds more like 10 years of work if you ask me.

omg HL2 is teh rushed!!111

 

[Tork]

Well I can believe it, remember valve is not that big, its not like Microsoft where they have an army of programmers, etc working for them, so i believe it comes down to man power, err i think.

 

[poseyjmac]

Yeah, I think they spent most of their time building a nose-picking machine.

hmm will that be available via steam?

 

[brink's]

What evidence suggests that they didn't work for 6 years on it?

 

[Dr. Freeman]

If you write an engine from near scratch.

that and taking a break from working on games? surely we have read in interviews how draining it has been for Valve.. especially after the whole source code theft.. i would think regardless of the theft that mentally working on a game as popular as HL2 is.. would really weigh on any normal person.

and thats scary considering the game has yet to be released.

 

[Ahnteis]

Most games take quite a few years if they're from the ground up.
You have to also remember that part of their team was working on TFC, the SDK, Steam, CS, DoD, etc etc etc.

 

[TMPer Tantrum]

Yeah, I think they spent most of their time building a nose-picking machine.

hmm will that be available via steam?

And can it be modded to pick... other bits?

 

[TMPer Tantrum]

From my (sketchy) understanding of the engine, isn't it supposed to be upgradable to be able to keep up with and adapt to newer hardware-capabilities as they become available?
This would mean that HL3, ..., HLn would all be ably to be created using basically the same engine adapted to make use of whatever the best hardware at the time is but with a much shorter developement time.

Time well spent I say.

Of course I could be totally wrong. It has been known...

 

[brink's]

From my (sketchy) understanding of the engine, isn't it supposed to be upgradable to be able to keep up with and adapt to newer hardware-capabilities as they become available?
This would mean that HL3, ..., HLn would all be ably to be created using basically the same engine adapted to make use of whatever the best hardware at the time is but with a much shorter developement time.

Time well spent I say.

Of course I could be totally wrong. It has been known...

Yes........ :frog:

 

[Chris D]

From my (sketchy) understanding of the engine, isn't it supposed to be upgradable to be able to keep up with and adapt to newer hardware-capabilities as they become available?
This would mean that HL3, ..., HLn would all be ably to be created using basically the same engine adapted to make use of whatever the best hardware at the time is but with a much shorter developement time.

Time well spent I say.

Of course I could be totally wrong. It has been known...

You're completely correct.

HL3 is planned and will be created on the Source engine, but it will be a much upgraded version of the Source engine. Probably close or better to UE3 graphics.

 

[merc]

yes... the engine mustve been a pain in the rear to make... lol

-merc

 

[billbo]

What is new about the engine? How is it written from the ground up when it's leveraging technologies that have been around for a long time? (hit boxes, there is nothing new about the lighting model just more features, etc etc) And the most anticipated feature was licensed from Havok and doesn't even include every feature of it's capabilities. The closest game that I'm aware of being able to claim that is Doom 3(Unified lighting, per pixel hit system, etc) but even then I'm sure that it's using at least some existing technologies. Seriously, don't you think that the claim of "from scratch" is a real stretch, and sounds like marketing?

Edit: fixed wrong quote

 

[Spugmaster]

Think of it like building a house.

From scratch would be starting with a vacant lot and building the entire house yourself. Long time

Using an exsiting engine would be like having the house built for you, and all you have to do is fill it with furniture and other goodies. Shorter time.

 

[Dr. Freeman]

You're completely correct.

HL3 is planned and will be created on the Source engine, but it will be a much upgraded version of the Source engine. Probably close or better to UE3 graphics.

hmm.. don't u think there will be better technology out when Valve get around to making HL3? i mean i do understand Source being compatible as far as adding new technology and all...but with computer hardware changing as fast as it is...one would think the Source engine would age just as fast.. and perhaps not appeal for the next HL series installment.

 

[blahblahblah]

Think of it like building a house.

From scratch would be starting with a vacant lot and building the entire house yourself. Long time

Using an exsiting engine would be like having the house built for you, and all you have to do is fill it with furniture and other goodies. Shorter time.

Expanding on that analogy.

The existing house is older and will start to have problems with its foundation, the house has termites, the water heater break, etc.

While the house built from scratch will have none of those problems.

If you follow the analogy, writing a whole new engine does have its advantages.

 

[Triggerhappy41]

I wonder... Im sure they will make hl3 on source, but what about beyond that? How much can source be upgraded? Wouldnt there be bottlenecks somewhere? Or is it completely upgradable until the end of time (well almost :thumbs: )

 

[James Isaac]

But, if Valve are making Half Life 3 with an updated version of Source, and releasing it soon, doesn't that mean that everyone making mods will have to redo them from scratch on the new source engine? or will they be easily updatable?

 

[Moto]

Yeah, I think they spent most of their time building a nose-picking machine.

Really? Sweet! I wonder when the release date is... Oh man, I hope it doesn't get delayed. I need one of those. Oh wait...everyone needs one of those.

I'm'a get the collectors edition.

 

[billbo]

Expanding on that analogy.

The existing house is older and will start to have problems with its foundation, the house has termites, the water heater break, etc.

While the house built from scratch will have none of those problems.

If you follow the analogy, writing a whole new engine does have its advantages.

These analogies don't seem to be accurate to me. I don't believe for a second that there is little/nothing brought over from the original game. As I stated in my original post, there is much of the base technology that is the same. Thus, if there was a problem with the "foundation", why would they build one from scratch with the same capabilities/problems? At least I can't buy six years of full-time development. Doom 3 has taken a smaller team 5 years and they are including a completely new rendering technology that HAS to be made from scratch because there is nothing like else like it, it also includes an in-house physics system. Sorry guys, something smells fishy to me with the six years thing. :O

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

There would have been a lot of code re-use, especially early on in development. Gradually, those components would have been replaced/rewritten.

Remember, Source is backwards compatible with HL. Pretty much all the original HL code is still there.

 

[The Monkey]

When you see the videos you know that this has taken a looooong time to make.

 

[Cypher19]

Actually, Doom3's graphics engine is not that impressive*, and is in fact heavily built upon from Q3's engine (a lot of it was overhauled, but there are some parts that remained unchanged). And the physics engine, at least from what I have seen in trailers and the leak is actually CRAP compared to Havok.

I honestly believe the 6 year timeline. A lot of Source had to be redone and created since HL1, including the graphics engine (better lightmaps on the levels, I believe it's got a shader system such that even a modder could create their own pixel or vertex shaders), incorporation of Havok and updating that like crazy, the brand new AI system, and the facial animation system. Add on to that a huge extension to the moddability of HL1, and you've got yourself a TON of work ahead of you. That ton of work can easily equal 6 years, especially when you've got other projects to worry about at the same time.

* I see little more than shadow volumes, per pixel lighting using normal/specular texture maps, and some efficiencies applied to that. Shadow volumes aren't even new (the over year old Star Wars Galaxies has them) and the lighting is just done by some pixel shaders. Whoop-dee-farking-do! And if you want to prove me wrong, by all means send me a private message! Oh, btw, Doom3 ALSO has a self-shadowing bump map pixel shader, which is also a bit cool and advanced to do.

 

[blahblahblah]

These analogies don't seem to be accurate to me. I don't believe for a second that there is little/nothing brought over from the original game. As I stated in my original post, there is much of the base technology that is the same. Thus, if there was a problem with the "foundation", why would they build one from scratch with the same capabilities/problems? At least I can't buy six years of full-time development. Doom 3 has taken a smaller team 5 years and they are including a completely new rendering technology that HAS to be made from scratch because there is nothing like else like it, it also includes an in-house physics system. Sorry guys, something smells fishy to me with the six years thing. :O

This is Valve's first attempt at writing an engine, ID software has been doing it for a long time. Even ID software has publicy stated that they've had one heck of a time creating a Doom 3.

Using the house analogy again.

If the old house had served you well, you can dig up the blueprints and rebuild what you did like, but then you can change and improve things like adding a sunroof or adding an alarm system to the house. So yes, you could reuse certain things, but most likely the blue prints would have to be heavily change to make room for improvements.

In this analogy, the original blueprint would have to be changed to allow for a sunroof. Once the house has been built, technically the original blueprints have been used, but they have been changed dramaticaly.

Also, lets say the new foundation on your house will have a problem because it is nearly identical to the previous blueprints. They can prepare for this by making something backwards compatable. In this case, the blueprints still call for the same foundation, but they pour sand underneath the foundation to protect it. That way the foundation is still true to the original, but has been modified to bring out its strengths while minimizing its weaknesses. You can't do that with a pre-built house since the foundation has already been laid.

 

[billbo]

There would have been a lot of code re-use, especially early on in development. Gradually, those components would have been replaced/rewritten.

Remember, Source is backwards compatible with HL. Pretty much all the original HL code is still there.

What you describe isn't "from scratch". What you describe is starting with the old one and modifying it. I can accept starting with half-life and modifying it untill very little of the original remained, but not "from scratch". I still don't buy 6 years of full-time development. I can buy 6 years of "on the boards", as in has had story/technologies being talked about 6 years ago. If it took them 6 years to develop Half-Life 2 then that is a hideously slow development time and puts it back to when the original was released does it not?

 

[jameth]

i doubt it was 6 years full developement?

as said earlier, they had ALOT to cope with. steam, mods, updating hl1, etc.

 

[billbo]

This is Valve's first attempt at writing an engine, ID software has been doing it for a long time. Even ID software has publicy stated that they've had one heck of a time creating a Doom 3.

Using the house analogy again.

If the old house had served you well, you can dig up the blueprints and rebuild what you did like, but then you can change and improve things like adding a sunroof or adding an alarm system to the house. So yes, you could reuse certain things, but most likely the blue prints would have to be heavily change to make room for improvements.

In this analogy, the original blueprint would have to be changed to allow for a sunroof. Once the house has been built, technically the original blueprints have been used, but they have been changed dramaticaly.

Also, lets say the new foundation on your house will have a problem because it is nearly identical to the previous blueprints. They can prepare for this by making something backwards compatable. In this case, the blueprints still call for the same foundation, but they pour sand underneath the foundation to protect it. That way the foundation is still true to the original, but has been modified to bring out its strengths while minimizing its weaknesses. You can't do that with a pre-built house since the foundation has already been laid.

Great discussion guys. :cheers:

Anyhow, your point of the experience difference between the two teams is duly noted and accepted.

Nice analogy, but I still see the same concern. Allow me to put it in point form to try and clarify.

1) Claim was made of it being developed "from scratch"
2) Analogy indicates modifying blue prints, taking the blue prints that allready exist and modyfying them. That is in fact the claim that I am making about the development.
-----
From dictionary.com:
"Idioms:
from scratch

From the very beginning."
-----
"From the very beginning" contradicts the modifying the blue print analogy.
Thus, the analogy that you describe contradicts the "from scratch" argument.

You actually seem to be supporting me, thanks.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

What I described is "from scratch". You write a new renderer (for example), but in the short-term, you use the old networking, physics and game code while the artists get going. Then you replace the physics layer with Havok, and start a rewrite of the network layer. In the meantime, the game logic is modified and added to.
That makes it pretty much a total rewrite. You're just re-using old code as a placeholder.

 

[ferd]

I think the planning itself must have taken a year on it's own, you can't start working on a game like that without a decent planning.

 

[UltimaGecko]

OMG, HL1 had lights, and HL2 has lights...it's the same engine!!!!!1111


...
I don't really see where you're getting all these similarities from. The HL engine has so many limitations, it's amazing mods like Natural Selection and Day of Defeat have been able to make it look decent.

HL has no level based dynamic lighting (I think there is an option to turn player shadows on in the console, but it slaughters performance); numerous hitbox problems; generally poor AI (but much better than anything back in 1998); mostly sprite based effects. In fact, level making alone is really annoying, since light sources go through entities and there's no way to prevent it (at least, not with compilers I have seen), along with the necessity to place nodes to inform the AI (which I'm not sure, but hope HL2 doesn't have).

HL2 features dynamic lighting (although, it seems lightmaps are still in there some places), highly tuned and modded Havok physics (probably why there's not going to be Havok 2 effects for a while), apparently a highly tuned and effective netcode, highly advanced and intelligent AI than can adapt to situations in a fairly realistic manner, writing code for numerous shaders...there's more, but you can look at other stuff that takes a long time to put out (that every game needs to do, besides making an engine).

Create art for textures and models; model the models (and for highly detailed and scaling models that can take a lot of work; record sounds for weapons, creatures, envrioments and voices; create the levels...then you throw in the not so tangible elements of story design, weapon design, enemy design, level concepts, texture drafts, tons of drafts for the story (the rumored 1000+ page Half-Life 'Bible'), physics implementations (for more recent games), ideas for lighting; in house and player testing, along with tweaking the game.

Then again, most of HL2's advances aren't even in the graphical range. Mostly they're touting their AI and Source's modability (along with the story - but that's not really engine related).

Combined with already mentioned work on DoD, CS, TFC, Steam and other projects - Valve seems to have done their 6 years worth of work. Well...around 6 years anyway.

I'm not really a programmer (at least, not with any game engines), modeller, sound engineer or artist - so I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I missed.

 

[billbo]

Actually, Doom3's graphics engine is not that impressive*, and is in fact heavily built upon from Q3's engine (a lot of it was overhauled, but there are some parts that remained unchanged). And the physics engine, at least from what I have seen in trailers and the leak is actually CRAP compared to Havok.

I honestly believe the 6 year timeline. A lot of Source had to be redone and created since HL1, including the graphics engine (better lightmaps on the levels, I believe it's got a shader system such that even a modder could create their own pixel or vertex shaders), incorporation of Havok and updating that like crazy, the brand new AI system, and the facial animation system. Add on to that a huge extension to the moddability of HL1, and you've got yourself a TON of work ahead of you. That ton of work can easily equal 6 years, especially when you've got other projects to worry about at the same time.

* I see little more than shadow volumes, per pixel lighting using normal/specular texture maps, and some efficiencies applied to that. Shadow volumes aren't even new (the over year old Star Wars Galaxies has them) and the lighting is just done by some pixel shaders. Whoop-dee-farking-do! And if you want to prove me wrong, by all means send me a private message! Oh, btw, Doom3 ALSO has a self-shadowing bump map pixel shader, which is also a bit cool and advanced to do.

You couldn't be more wrong about the Doom 3 graphics engine. It has been completely rewritten to have all surfaces and materials be lit and shadowed at run time. I repeat, ALL shadows and light detail is created in real time. No pre compiled shadow maps or fake shadows painted on to textures. That is the revolution, and many games are trying to simulate it. Half-Life 2 isn't even close to that in the rendering area. Far too many things of that nature are completely faked.

Read this:
"Carmack has always shown incredible foresight, and Doom 3 will be the first mainstream game engine to offer dynamic lighting. In older engines (Quake 3 and before, Unreal, etc.), when a level designer compiles a level, the compiler calculates the lighting of the level based on the position and strength of the light sources placed within it, including a certain amount of reflected light (light that bounces-off surfaces). This information is stored in something called a lightmap that is used, along with the level geometry, to load the level that the player sees. Doom 3, however, does away with such lightmaps once and for all by calculating the effects of all light sources dynamically during the game.

This has several important implications. In the older engines lightmaps imposed limits on the amount of lighting that could be changed in the game - perhaps the main character might have a shadow, as well as the enemies. Later iterations might introduce new tricks to make the light seem more dynamic - light switches, shooting out lights, etc. But the fact is, in Doom 3, all lighting is dynamic. Shoot a ceiling lamp and it will swing, and all the objects in the room will have their shadows recalculated on the fly. One consequence of the move to dynamic lighting is the loss of reflected light calculations, meaning that any area where there is no direct lighting will be rendered black, but this is a small matter for a game designed to invoke fear. These changes bring tremendous possibilities, however, and for the first time we should see lighting techniques inherited from cinema being utilised to create fear, suspense and foreboding."

Source: here
Here is another link: here

I encourage everyone to read up on it, as technology like this is the future of gaming graphics.

 

[jameth]

i don't see what's so revolutionary about fully dynamic lighting

the only thing that's been holding programmers back is the capability of our hardware.

 

[genocide604]

I think its just halflife 1, they just put tape over the year published, and put a 2 sticker by the name... instant millionair!

 

[billbo]

OMG, HL1 had lights, and HL2 has lights...it's the same engine!!!!!1111


...
I don't really see where you're getting all these similarities from. The HL engine has so many limitations, it's amazing mods like Natural Selection and Day of Defeat have been able to make it look decent.

HL has no level based dynamic lighting (I think there is an option to turn player shadows on in the console, but it slaughters performance); numerous hitbox problems; generally poor AI (but much better than anything back in 1998); mostly sprite based effects. In fact, level making alone is really annoying, since light sources go through entities and there's no way to prevent it (at least, not with compilers I have seen), along with the necessity to place nodes to inform the AI (which I'm not sure, but hope HL2 doesn't have).

HL2 features dynamic lighting (although, it seems lightmaps are still in there some places), highly tuned and modded Havok physics (probably why there's not going to be Havok 2 effects for a while), apparently a highly tuned and effective netcode, highly advanced and intelligent AI than can adapt to situations in a fairly realistic manner, writing code for numerous shaders...there's more, but you can look at other stuff that takes a long time to put out (that every game needs to do, besides making an engine).

Create art for textures and models; model the models (and for highly detailed and scaling models that can take a lot of work; record sounds for weapons, creatures, envrioments and voices; create the levels...then you throw in the not so tangible elements of story design, weapon design, enemy design, level concepts, texture drafts, tons of drafts for the story (the rumored 1000+ page Half-Life 'Bible'), physics implementations (for more recent games), ideas for lighting; in house and player testing, along with tweaking the game.

Then again, most of HL2's advances aren't even in the graphical range. Mostly they're touting their AI and Source's modability (along with the story - but that's not really engine related).

Combined with already mentioned work on DoD, CS, TFC, Steam and other projects - Valve seems to have done their 6 years worth of work. Well...around 6 years anyway.

I'm not really a programmer (at least, not with any game engines), modeller, sound engineer or artist - so I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I missed.

Um, did you even read my posts? Hit boxes, yup. Pre-compiled Light maps, yup, etc etc. I never said that they never added advances to them, but NONE of the technology in Half-Life 2 is new. All the stuff you mentioned has all been done before. All of it. Please name me one feature that it has that no other game has(don't tell me what they did better than someone else, only what's new... other games have AI too). My point being, how does it take six years to integrate stuff that allready exists. Other games are actually adding revolutionary technology. Valve took 6 years to beef-up allready existing tech? I don't buy it. If they did, then something is wrong in my opinion. :|

 

[billbo]

I think its just halflife 1, they just put tape over the year published, and put a 2 sticker by the name... instant millionair!

Ha ha, that's the best response I've seen. :cheers:

 

[billbo]

i don't see what's so revolutionary about fully dynamic lighting

the only thing that's been holding programmers back is the capability of our hardware.

From dictionary.com:
revolutionary = Marked by or resulting in radical change

Doom 3 is the first to do it, it is revolutionary. Unless you can find a dictionary that has an exception for "the capability of our hardware"

 

[Wolf]

i don't see what's so revolutionary about fully dynamic lighting

the only thing that's been holding programmers back is the capability of our hardware.

Thank you. It's pretty funny how some people get all hot under the collar and lap up the hype about id's particular brute force unified lighting method as if it was some kind of holy grail of rendering without any limitations or compromises....

Facts:
1 . Brute force unified lighting is difficult, but hardly impossible. Many small projects have implemented it successfully c/f AMP2, Tenebrae, Tenebrae 2, Deus Ex 2, Thief 3. D3 will be more advanced than all of these, but U3.0 will be more advanced again.
2. Unified lighting where it has been implemented hasn’t magically led to good graphics (often shadows look caricatured or ‘hard’ and outdoor lighting is very unrealistic with a lack of specularity) and it also comes with heavy price tag in terms of performance which has many flow on effects for poly budgets for both environment & creatures as well as other design goals. You'd be an idiot to assume that such compromises suit every game. Designing tech around a game is always going to win out over tacking a game on to tech.
3. Valve has implemented dynamic shadowing but Source’s rendering paradigm is still based of lightmaps for both design reasons and for meeting certain hardware scalability targets.
4. When hardware catches up such that unified lighting doesn’t restrict resources as much in terms of design, n-creatures on screen, large outdoor scenes, and artistic scope etc, then you can be sure Source will be updated.

 

[billbo]

Thank you. It's pretty funny how some people get all hot under the collar and lap up the hype about id's particular brute force unified lighting method as if it was some kind of holy grail of rendering without any limitations or compromises....

Facts:
1 . Brute force unified lighting is difficult, but hardly impossible. Many small projects have implemented it successfully c/f AMP2, Tenebrae, Tenebrae 2, Deus Ex 2, Thief 3. D3 will be more advanced than all of these, but U3.0 will be more advanced again.
2. Unified lighting where it has been implemented hasn’t magically led to good graphics (often shadows look caricatured or ‘hard’ and outdoor lighting is very unrealistic with a lack of specularity) and it also comes with heavy price tag in terms of performance which has many flow on effects for poly budgets for both environment & creatures as well as other design goals. You'd be an idiot to assume that such compromises suit every game. Designing tech around a game is always going to win out over tacking a game on to tech.
3. Valve has implemented dynamic shadowing but Source’s rendering paradigm is still based of lightmaps for both design reasons and for meeting certain hardware scalability targets.
4. When hardware catches up such that unified lighting doesn’t restrict resources as much in terms of design, n-creatures on screen, large outdoor scenes, and artistic scope etc, then you can be sure Source will be updated.

Who said there was no limits or compromises? Have any quotes or sources?
Edit: I just re-read your quote, are you calling anyone in particular an idiot? Let's please keep this discussion civil.
There are also limits and compromises in not using it, but you seem like a smart person, so I assume you knew that.