Everything you wanted to know...

[lefty]

Oh shit, it was you what wrote this article darkside D:

I think when you changed from the empire insignia avatar it threw me off.

 

[Dr.Freeman]

Darkside, your thread now is back to live.
:cheers:

 

[jet_porkins]

It was sticked, and didn't need "revival". Now you're just trying to raise your post count.

EDIT: Don't reply to this, it's only contributing to the problem.

EDIT(2): Not trying to be a dick or anything, just trying to fight for a cleaner HL2.net forum space, one post at a time.

 

[Reginald]

... but his thread now is back to live? What could be better than that?

 

[Ben]

Welldone dude, not much but anyway

 

[coheedswicked]

Darkside you may need to edit the headcrab article since...well you know the expansions arent cannon unless explicitly said otherwise within a context of a valve created game... so that whole gonome part... sorry

RaceX was purely a Gearbox creation that doesn't figure at all in my thinking about the world. -Marc Laidlaw

 

[Darkside55]

They're selective canon. It works like this: everything in the expansions is true, UNLESS something in Half-Life 2, its expansions, or any other games in the HL universe (such as Portal) overwrite them.

So as long as Marc Laidlaw doesn't say, "Gonomes don't exist," they exist. Race X exists, but they don't feature into Half-Life beyond Opposing Force. They will likely never be seen in games again.

But they did exist...

 

[coheedswicked]

oh ya sorry you're right i misread that part in his email

 

[Darkside55]

No worries. Long as he doesn't completely overwrite Race-X.

But that whole "G-man arms the bomb" sequence in Opposing Force, Laidlaw wrote that, so that's definitely in. Which kinda means that all the events leading up to that happened.

 

[coheedswicked]

yes yes mostly because setting HL2 in black mesa would be "creative death" as he put it. btw. i read your headcrab article... very impressive. Your knowledge of protein production is right on and the whole retro-virus thing is a very good explanation for the zombification. Im still skeptical about the adaptive radiation of headcrabs considering that their proposed life cycle is lengthy and asexual thereby making evolution very slow due to the lack of genetic diversity, and the idea that a headcrab ate something poisonous which then created poison headcrabs is a very lamarkian idea. Traits aqquired during an organisms lifetime cannot be passed down to the offspring. Its the classic situation with the blacksmith. He swings a hammer all day and builds large powerful muscles, however when he has offspring they are no more muscular than those of any other individual.

 

[Darkside55]

Yeah, that's the big problem with poison crabs. I really just tried to think of how to make Laidlaw's explanation work--which was an explanation I never really liked in the first place.

And thanks for the comments.

 

[gnerspree]

hm

oh oh nice nice

 

[Emelyn]

I always thought the poison headcrabs always existed on xen, but werent shown in the first games. (Similar to the antlions, they werent shown). I think thats a better explanation for them, rather than "they ate something poisonous and become poisonous themselves". But cant argue with canon, I still think its a bit of a grey area though.

 

[EmrenTheGeneral]

Hmm.I know I'm late but excellent job mates!

 

[Mindshifter]

Canon or not, my own truth is that poison headcrabs and fast headcrabs were created by the Combine from normal headcrabs for warfare purposes (obviously).

 

[Maestro]

Canon or not? You can't just ignore the words of the very makers of a game.

 

[Mindshifter]

Canon or not? You can't just ignore the words of the very makers of a game.

If these inconsistencies come up (as with the headcrabs) the player gets forced to make his own canon.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

Yeah, but if the CREATOR says that it's X (with X being the fact) then I'm pretty sure they can say whatever they want and it'll be fact...

 

[jeepis]

Agreed. If Valve would say that G-Man is indeed a time-travelling Gordon Freeman, then everyone here would have to swallow their pride and admit that so many idiotic posts have been entirely right.

 

[RoyDGF]

The Lamarckian mindset is actually a pretty fresh idea for an alien species' evolutionary strides, imo. Sure it was controverted to a great degree of success by Darwin, but it's not impossible, and it has at least occured once, recently, in some caterpillars iirc. It sounds kinda pedestrian on a creative level, but all things considered here, it's pretty cool. The real world connotations give it a nice edge, so too, its nearly complete overshadowing. One could even argue the time for an actual evolutionary step is a bit premature, not to mention their longevity (takes a long, damn time for a headcrab to reach gonarch proportions iirc) in relation to this type of development makes it even more awkward. They're alien, though, so their evo-devo and physiology could be completely different.

 

[orzhovslodier]

I'm getting a bunch of gibberish when I open it.

o-(ÚüT¨öÌnžï`ŒÎaH¯ÝdÕM¬ÃÜqŠHûÌ“ÉXÜ?DŸ“Óº³QÏ
¿cË!c­_•°ãsY'óy^÷ûFZHíK}:€–Âë?\·‹qçr/ GÀý ¢zå¦d²1Ÿ±];ÊjaŠviQíÖGnT…ÜQŠ^jmUB.¢žÈYÃ<{戲{K ñ,*ù2‹
M7u´C©í;˜ÌíÇ4~èfÀ+ÓâÜãÞté,‡7™¹Í­C÷áᡦdD%í»‚ú¾X’Ÿ§yÿ]7!{ÜôÐlú{${øÃÿüþDäÀ÷ûŸ~ÿæ—ÿü}Š•ÿó~ÿ¿§ß¦ÿ;¼6‡9ý#ýñÔw=<âŸðŸæ

The whole thing is like this,

 

[C4mC0m]

Darkside!

Where are the new files! I just discovered this thread, and the head crab thing was awesome! Please don't let this thread die!http://www.halflife2.net/forums/images/smilies/worry.gif

 

[Darkside55]

Thread can't die; it's stickied.

But yeah, I've been sitting on those files for awhile. I still want to complete them. I'll eventually release them; I corrected some very minor changes to the headcrab document too so I need to upload that as well.

 

[Acepilotf14]

I like how he uploaded a gif to the site.

And yeah, loved the headcrab stuff way back when I read it.

 

[Tyro76]

You DO know they have that information on blackmesasource.com dont you? Wait, on second thought its nowhere near as good as this. Respect.

 

[ríomhaire]

I took it upon myself to improve our wiki ages and ages ago. I got an Antlion section half-finished before real life interrupted.

 

[Tyro76]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA*cough*

 

[armoredrobot]

I think that when a headcrab mutates its host, what it's doing is assimilating the host's biology to its own. This eventually results in a Gonarch. It doesn't matter what the host is, because it's all turning into headcrab anyway.

EDIT: Great guide, by the way. Exactly what people like me need. A definitive guide that covers everything with no questions asked.