Emails from Valve

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i sent him an email, and he edited it to insert the answers, so ill just post that.

"Hello. Honestly, im just really bored right now, and
with 94 days left until HL2... im just way to
pumped up to just sit here lol. I had a few questions
for you, you dont have to answer any of them i guess,
but it would be cool :)



1. How many emails per day do you think you get from people like me?

a lot

2. The source engine is scalable.. is that dynamic,
like if its starting to run sluggish it lowers the
polys, or is it set when you start the game or
something.

yes it is dynamic

3. When is the SDK coming out :)

it will be staged; some people have it already

4. Is it possible to convert any of the maps or models
from the HL1 engine to HL2?

we've made this as painless as we could

5. Are there any... um.. ambient(?) creatures other
than birds that we will see? i will probably never
stop laughing if i see a couple chipmunks running away
from a strider...

heh

6. The crowbar. is it just like.. damage straight
ahead, or does it sort of swing, like a bat, and it
depends at what angle you hit something?

it's physically simulated - it's a bar swinging through air

7. Inverse kinemetics or whatever. i just like sayign
that outloud. no this isnt really a question.

deformation mesh is also fun to say

8. can i have HL2 early :)

depends. what can I have in trade


thanks!
-- your devoted fan (how many times have you seen
that?)"



he sent me this response in about TEN MINUTES from when i sent him the email. then i replied with another question..

"lol... deformation mesh....

i didnt expect you to respond so quickly! wow!

one more quick question.. in the e3 demo, it says you
can essentially build the guys out of water by
applying the right shader or whatever. well, if you
make the guy out of water.. when you shoot him, does
he still bleed? or will it splash? it would be cool to
see them sort of melt or whatever when they die, but
thats not gonna happen. could that sort of 'splashing'
thing be easily programmed in? (probably, its jus the
sprite and sound right..)"

his response:
"Yes, they would splash, at least that would be the easy thing to do
given
the material. Splashes aren't sprites actually."
 
Good job man, you shoulda said you would trade hl2 for a thankyou. That woulda worked!
 
i took pleasure an emailing him too here is what i got

Q: I was just wondering if there would be a visual difference between a dx6 card and above type of cards when visual goodies are turned up full? Also I heard that Source would the lod lower automatically if the game was playing at a below playable frame rate...is that true? One more thing, in terms of sound, will the engine take full advantage of an audio card such as audigy2 and will there be music played during singleplayer campaigns and possibly multiplayer?

A: Yes, there will be a big visual difference between DX6 hardware and DX9 hardware. Yes the LOD changes dynamically. I'm not sure what it means to "take full advantage of an audio card such as audigy2" but we do have a very sophisticated sound engine. Yes there is music for singleplayer. We haven't said anything about multiplayer.

Q: ok, thnx for replying! well I myself have a radeon 9700, so lets say somewhere outside during half life 2 my fps goes like to 15....will the engine change the LOD so it will boost my fps? Could you give me an example of a big visual difference between DX6 hardware and DX9 hardware? One last thing, I heard some talk about releasing a direct feed of the e3 demo shown at this years e3(like a video of the demo). Would you mind spilling some light on this or is it just speculation?

A: Yes, we dynamically change LODs.

Pretty much everything looks better on DX9 across the board.

Yes, we will be releasing the videos over steam in the next few days. :cheese:



Sent him another reply but no reply yet...guess he must have gone home for da day... ;(
 
Nice work man, woo direct feeds in the next few days, that goes along wit apos' prediction of new information in july.
 
i guess that why there is an hl2_media icon in the steam folder already...
 
Was the gun shadow issue resolved already? If so, i'll take it out of my e-mail.
 
If you mean the gun models having an overall brightness as opposed to having shadows mapped, I think I've spotted a point where the guns have the dynamic shadows mapped on them. It's in the beginning of the "Dumpster Trap" video part, when he walks towards the barrel to manipulate it, the building's shadow moves smoothly across the manipulator. I suppose that level must have been using newer tech, since most other parts just have the "On-Off" brightness thing.
 
I just watched that part, for about the hundredth time, and there are a bunch of other times where the dynamic shadowing on the Manipulator occurs.
 
Originally posted by stigmata
If you mean the gun models having an overall brightness as opposed to having shadows mapped, I think I've spotted a point where the guns have the dynamic shadows mapped on them. It's in the beginning of the "Dumpster Trap" video part, when he walks towards the barrel to manipulate it, the building's shadow moves smoothly across the manipulator. I suppose that level must have been using newer tech, since most other parts just have the "On-Off" brightness thing.
Click to expand...

You're right! I've been searching far and wide to find some proof of dynamic shadows and here it is. Good job.:cheers:
 
Well, I just sent my e-mail off with extra ass kissing. Lol, I can't thank the guy enough for even listening to our e-mails, where as other companies probably have e-mails deleted if they don't have a certain subject line.
 
I asked for the number, lol. Even though I prob won't ever use it, I might call Sept 30th when I'm in EB and say, "Thank you!!".

BTW, should I get us some recognition and link this post to Planet Half-Life? I mean, we have some information that no website has. This post will only grow full of more Q & A's from us to Gabe.

Edit: Then again, more recog means more people will e-mail him and then he'll get annoyed and stop answering! Then he'll get pissed and not releas HL2, then he'll get killed by an angry fan! Oh the chain of events, all from 1 suggestion. Eek!
 
Originally posted by LoneDeranger
You're right! I've been searching far and wide to find some proof of dynamic shadows and here it is. Good job.:cheers:
Click to expand...
Thanks, you don't know how much this means to me *sniff*...
 
Originally posted by jhero
i guess that why there is an hl2_media icon in the steam folder already...
Click to expand...

Where is the steam folder? How do I get to it?
 
I installed it .. but where do you see the folder? All I got is a green screen with Games, Friends, etc.

(sorry, I'm new to this Steam thing)
 
go to C:\Program Files\Steam\resource\games. Find icon_hl2_media. Soon we'll get some HL2 media!
 
how does steam work? itll just appear in our folder? or we have to do something :( im a steam noob what do i dooooo
 
I used it once, didnt really like it. I think its basicly like a server where you can play games and download stuff. I only ever tried cs 1.6 on it, but i dont think i had to download anything. But i think you have to download other files, like videos or whatever, so i dont think it will just appear.
Edit: Haha that sounded dumb with all the "I think"
 
Well when the videos are releaesed, I'm guessing it'll appear in your games list as Half-Life 2 Media or HL2 Media (because of the icon in resources\games saying icon_hl2_media), simpy because there is no longer a subscriptions button, or it will show up as a pop up when it comes out, saying something like, "do you wish to download the ?mb Half-Life 2 footage" And if you select no I doubt your choice is lost forever. You can always pull it up again.

Whatever they do, I guarantee you it will be very visual and you can't miss it. Just open Steam every day for the next few days, if you dont have it running on startup, and at like each hour or so, shut down steam and restart it incase the update appears (it isn't live where it'll pop up while steam is running, or at least that's how all the other downloads(patches) on steam work.
 
I still don't think they have dynamic shadows. They might have something on the gun models, but the rest of that vid doesn't seem to show dynamic shadows. The shadows we've seen so far look more to be just really good stencil shadows: you can see how they "overlap" and "blend" in some of the videos, which wouldn't happen if lighting was being calced dynamically. Certainly it isn't the sort of thing Doom3 or Deus Ex2 is doing.

Frame by frame, it's odd though: sometimes light moves smoothly in a distinct line down the manipulator mode, but other times it just pops into a new brightness level. Dunno what to make of it. Still looks great though: the specularity is awesome. Check out Alyx's neck and clavicals in the "character" vid: they shadow VERY realistically.
 
You'd be surprised with steam! i just played a part of Half-Life last night from downloading it at blazing speeds!
 
Originally posted by Apos
I still don't think they have dynamic shadows. They might have something on the gun models, but the rest of that vid doesn't seem to show dynamic shadows. The shadows we've seen so far look more to be just really good stencil shadows: you can see how they "overlap" and "blend" in some of the videos, which wouldn't happen if lighting was being calced dynamically. Certainly it isn't the sort of thing Doom3 or Deus Ex2 is doing.

Frame by frame, it's odd though: sometimes light moves smoothly in a distinct line down the manipulator mode, but other times it just pops into a new brightness level. Dunno what to make of it. Still looks great though: the specularity is awesome. Check out Alyx's neck and clavicals in the "character" vid: they shadow VERY realistically.
Click to expand...

this is because the game isnt finished! all these levels are still in the playtesting stage before they refine the graphics. and they ran the demo on a old build anyway.. so everything you see can or will be changed.
 
this is because the game isnt finished! all these levels are still in the playtesting stage before they refine the graphics.
Click to expand...

No. Dynamic shadows is a MAJOR engine feature. They stopped development last September, and these vids are from after that. If its' in, it's in, if not, no big deal. Whatever they have looks really good, and truly dynamic shadows are incredibly intensive: you'd have to give up a lot of other things to get them to work.
 
maby it is a playback issue like the fact that the wood brakes before you hit it.. you dont know squat! i think HL² will definatly have some serious suprises for us.
 
yeah... just like the origanal... I have a feeling that Valve have been tweaking the Source engine for ages despite reports that they stopped work in Sept 2002.... I have a feeling that this is going to be one hell of a game :)
 
Just don't think it's likely, both given what we've seen and given that it's such a intense feature.

Remember, D3 has it, and it's a game in tight, enclosed spaces where there aren't that many lightsources to account for. And yet, even so, it apparently takes incredible power: I mean the benchmarks I've seen suggest that anything under a 9800 Pro can't consistently maintain a solid 30fps.

On the other hand, HL2 has HUGE open spaces with lots of lightsources, reflections, and bright skybox. Shadows falling on everything, tons of objects. And tons more effects and enemies to calc and deal with. And yet it's supposed to be playable even with a low-end system.

Lighting wouldn't be a playback issue: the playback issue is simply the sampled position of objects, not how they are rendered by the engine.
 
Half-Life 2 does not have doom3-ish lighting or shadows. However it does have some fairly nice simulated shadows and good lighting.
 
And you know this from experience of are just speculating with the rest of us? We can't read anything you say, snipes, without reading deep into it these days....
 
Originally posted by Apos
On the other hand, HL2 has HUGE open spaces with lots of lightsources, reflections, and bright skybox. Shadows falling on everything, tons of objects. And tons more effects and enemies to calc and deal with. And yet it's supposed to be playable even with a low-end system.
Click to expand...
Well, remember that the Source engine is fully scalable and dynamically scales the LOD as well. Gabe could very well have run the E3 demo on Medium detail settings, maybe he turned off dynamic shadows. Who knows? Plus, the engine build was from September 2002, and just because they started working on level design doesn't mean they automatically stopped working on the engine itself, they will likely continue adding and tweaking engine features and systems until release. Hopefully this includes dynamic shadowing and lighting.

Also, the shadow resolution in Doom3 is extremely high, whereas HL2's dynamic shadow resolution would likely be much lower (but not so low as to make the shadows look bad). This is what makes Doom3 run so slowly on even mid-range graphics chips, if the shadows are a lower rez in HL2 they will require much less processing power.
 
Personally I wouldn't mind at all if HL2 didn't have dynamic shadows. But if it does (as it seems) that would absolutely kick ass.
 
Originally posted by Lemures

6. The crowbar. is it just like.. damage straight
ahead, or does it sort of swing, like a bat, and it
depends at what angle you hit something?

it's physically simulated - it's a bar swinging through air
Click to expand...

O M F G
Do you guys realize this is gonna be huge?
 
the engine build was from September 2002, and just because they started working on level design doesn't mean they automatically stopped working on the engine itself,
Click to expand...

Nope. They officially put the version of Source to be used in HL2 into beta mode: no new major featutes, just bug fixes and tweaks. Gabe even talks about some features they wanted to put in, but didn't make the Sept. deadline.

You can't go half-way on dynamic lighting: it's an entirely different way of lighting areas: completely different from the ground up. I don't even think levels will be compatible, because pre-dynamic lighting you have to run some variation of QRAD to precalc the lights, whereas with dynamic lighting you don't have any of that information pre-done.
 
let me ask him about this okey.. if that makes you shut up.
 
already asked him ..His reply was shut up you sad twat and get a life.. ;(
 
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