A
ardentious
Guest
When Half-Life was released on the 31st of October, way back in 1998, Valve had the foresight to continue id's implementation of making a game extensible: to wit, give the gaming community the tools and the ability within the game engine to realize their own fanciful ideas in the form of modifications.
While MODs are certainly not id Software's contrivance, they were seen by the world,due to the popularity of Quake and the power of id's QuakeC. MODs such as Capture the Flag and TeamFortress extended the life of Quake to the extreme that, even today, you can still find people playing the original TeamFortress for Quake.
Valve chose to license the Quake 2 engine from id Software for Half-Life. I'm sure several factors were weighed when deciding on an engine to use, but you should have no doubt that the ease of extensibility inherent to the Quake 2 engine was the heftiest of the bunch.
Typically, sales of a game die off after a certain time, and the company that created that game ceases to see any revenue from sales of their work. Valve, unlike anyone before them, embraced and nurtured the MOD community. They hired (still hire) active, brilliant people from that gaming community: Yahn Bernier of BSP fame, Robin Walker and John Cook of the original TeamFortress, Steve Bond, Jess Cliffe, Dhabih Eng, Adrian Finol, John Guthrie, Jakob Jungels, John Morello II, Martin Otten, Dave Riller, David Sawyer, and Kelly Thornton.
Half-Life shipped with multi-player, albeit vanilla-flavored DM/TDM with a dash of new game-play mechanics thrown in. They knew, premeditatedly knew, that the community would provide their game with the variety in game play that would extend the sales-life of Half-Life. Boy, were they right...
Ok, now let us flash forward a few years. Problems plague the gaming industry. Cheating is rampant (one cheater in a gaming community is too many) in nearly all multi-player games, and is rapidly eroding the image and appeal of on-line gaming. Patches for games, single and multi-player, are released to fix/enhance game-play and combat cheaters, yet the average gamer is, through no fault of their own, oblivious to the existence of these patches (care to speculate how many 1.0 installs of Half-Life exist? I know it's more than 3).
Hello Steam. My name is Dave. Glad to meet you, you brilliant little application. You keep all of my games up to date. You allow me to purchase your offerings electronically. You and your buddy there, VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) enable you to disallow accounts from playing a game they attempt to use a (known) cheat in. I love you, Steam.
Now, VAC is not perfect, as there are a lot of intelligent folks out there that LOVE a challenge, but the fact that Valve is actively combating cheating on a perpetual basis, and can use the fear of losing the ability to play as a deterrent; that gives me a little more confidence that 0wnzJuMang's three sequential head-shots are skill, and not Slay0r (Counter-Strike hack).
Could Valve's decision to not include multi-player within Half-Life 2 be so they can ban a Steam ID from playing Counter-Strike: Source and yet retain the ability to play Half-Life 2? Hmmm...
And speaking of Counter-Strike: Source...
Counter-Strike is a MOD that was released for Half-Life. Valve wound up acquiring the game from the original creators. Now, when information about the Source engine started coming out, one of the capabilities Valve extolled was that it would be possible for an existing MOD to be converted over to the Source engine without too much trouble, and to manifest this in the MOD-making community, they converted the hottest property they had, Counter-Strike, over to the Source engine, and are released it as the multi-player component of Half-Life 2.
I mention this to quell all of the posts I've seen relating to Counter-Strike: Source - This is a port of the original Half-Life's Counter-Strike, tweaked and twinked, but nothing more. Those disappointed with the visual quality of the maps/textures/etc must realize that this an older game on a spank-tastic new engine.
If, after the history presented here, knowing that Valve is a Mensa-esque collection of the best talent in and from the gaming community, that they listen to and observe and give to their customers, have incited an industry shift in the distribution and maintenance of games... well, if after all this, you don't believe that Half-Life 2 and TeamFortress 2 and all the MODs to follow will be some of the most satisfying gaming memories of your life, you're not a true gamer!
Knowledge is truly power, and you are sitting in the largest ocean of information that a human has ever had access to. Use it to enrich yourself and others.
David Webber
dwebber68
yahoo
While MODs are certainly not id Software's contrivance, they were seen by the world,due to the popularity of Quake and the power of id's QuakeC. MODs such as Capture the Flag and TeamFortress extended the life of Quake to the extreme that, even today, you can still find people playing the original TeamFortress for Quake.
Valve chose to license the Quake 2 engine from id Software for Half-Life. I'm sure several factors were weighed when deciding on an engine to use, but you should have no doubt that the ease of extensibility inherent to the Quake 2 engine was the heftiest of the bunch.
Typically, sales of a game die off after a certain time, and the company that created that game ceases to see any revenue from sales of their work. Valve, unlike anyone before them, embraced and nurtured the MOD community. They hired (still hire) active, brilliant people from that gaming community: Yahn Bernier of BSP fame, Robin Walker and John Cook of the original TeamFortress, Steve Bond, Jess Cliffe, Dhabih Eng, Adrian Finol, John Guthrie, Jakob Jungels, John Morello II, Martin Otten, Dave Riller, David Sawyer, and Kelly Thornton.
Half-Life shipped with multi-player, albeit vanilla-flavored DM/TDM with a dash of new game-play mechanics thrown in. They knew, premeditatedly knew, that the community would provide their game with the variety in game play that would extend the sales-life of Half-Life. Boy, were they right...
Ok, now let us flash forward a few years. Problems plague the gaming industry. Cheating is rampant (one cheater in a gaming community is too many) in nearly all multi-player games, and is rapidly eroding the image and appeal of on-line gaming. Patches for games, single and multi-player, are released to fix/enhance game-play and combat cheaters, yet the average gamer is, through no fault of their own, oblivious to the existence of these patches (care to speculate how many 1.0 installs of Half-Life exist? I know it's more than 3).
Hello Steam. My name is Dave. Glad to meet you, you brilliant little application. You keep all of my games up to date. You allow me to purchase your offerings electronically. You and your buddy there, VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) enable you to disallow accounts from playing a game they attempt to use a (known) cheat in. I love you, Steam.
Now, VAC is not perfect, as there are a lot of intelligent folks out there that LOVE a challenge, but the fact that Valve is actively combating cheating on a perpetual basis, and can use the fear of losing the ability to play as a deterrent; that gives me a little more confidence that 0wnzJuMang's three sequential head-shots are skill, and not Slay0r (Counter-Strike hack).
Could Valve's decision to not include multi-player within Half-Life 2 be so they can ban a Steam ID from playing Counter-Strike: Source and yet retain the ability to play Half-Life 2? Hmmm...
And speaking of Counter-Strike: Source...
Counter-Strike is a MOD that was released for Half-Life. Valve wound up acquiring the game from the original creators. Now, when information about the Source engine started coming out, one of the capabilities Valve extolled was that it would be possible for an existing MOD to be converted over to the Source engine without too much trouble, and to manifest this in the MOD-making community, they converted the hottest property they had, Counter-Strike, over to the Source engine, and are released it as the multi-player component of Half-Life 2.
I mention this to quell all of the posts I've seen relating to Counter-Strike: Source - This is a port of the original Half-Life's Counter-Strike, tweaked and twinked, but nothing more. Those disappointed with the visual quality of the maps/textures/etc must realize that this an older game on a spank-tastic new engine.
If, after the history presented here, knowing that Valve is a Mensa-esque collection of the best talent in and from the gaming community, that they listen to and observe and give to their customers, have incited an industry shift in the distribution and maintenance of games... well, if after all this, you don't believe that Half-Life 2 and TeamFortress 2 and all the MODs to follow will be some of the most satisfying gaming memories of your life, you're not a true gamer!
Knowledge is truly power, and you are sitting in the largest ocean of information that a human has ever had access to. Use it to enrich yourself and others.
David Webber
dwebber68
yahoo
except 2 things :
