Half-life 2 runs already on Xbox

[poseyjmac]

Pretty sure that the resolution of a TV is 640x480. Atleast that's what it was when I've captured a VHS tape to digital format.

it differs like a monitor, although not as flexible. my sony tv can do 1024x768

 

[Axyon]

Polykarbon, I'd bet if you had a PC counterpart of Riddick running, you'd eat those words without hesitation. If the game was ported correctly to the PC, it would look so much better and run stable. The biggest problem I see with Riddick (and of course, any other Xbox game), are the low-resolution, blurry textures. The game's tried to hide this factor with heavy bump mapping, but you can still see them. There's no way that 512x512 or 1024x1024 textures in the Half-Life 2 universe will be ported over exactly, not a chance. The game's still going to look nice on the Xbox, yes, but nothing like the PC.

 

[Varsity]

it differs like a monitor, although not as flexible. my sony tv can do 1024x768

You have HDTV (I think that's the ancronym). There's just that and regular, no different resolutions on different screens.

 

[Warbie]

Sometimes 'low-resolution, blurry textures' are fine

Take Halo, GTA, PoP (to name a few) all look better when played on a TV - more solid and believable, as opposed to tiny and angular.

It's the gameplay of HL2 that matters, the gfx are way down in the list of priorities. If HL2 on the Xbox has co-op (which is quite probable imo) then I'm certainly getting it. No amount of fancy gfx/high resolutions the pc can offer could compare (of course i'll be getting it on the pc too )

 

[Axyon]

Sometimes 'low-resolution, blurry textures' are fine

Take Halo, GTA, PoP (to name a few) all look better when played on a TV - more solid and believable, as opposed to tiny and angular.

Yeah, not for a revolutionary, pinnacle-of-graphics-technology game like this. GTA didn't need the graphics because it had tons of gameplay. Half-Life 2 has both, and I want both running at the best they can.

 

[Rupertvdb]

Gta3 was a game designed for consoles, console games aren't trying to reach new levels of graphics, console games as a rule aren't the revolutionary bit, it's the systems that play them. PC's grab the revolutionary game bit and it's up to all the technology to handle it.

Plus Halflife was designed for PC with controls that are highly intuitive and perfect for the keyboard mouse setup, Consoles just don't touch on that. Even stuff like GTA3 was easier to play on PC so what can you do?

 

[Warbie]

^mmmmmmmm pc games may be revolutionary in terms of physics engines and gfx, but if we're talking gameplay and new ideas - then consoles win hands down.

 

[el Chi]

I am buying the pc version. thats it...............in your face Bill

Just out of interest - are you running Windows?

And Warbie - No. Just...well, just no.

 

[SMT]

^mmmmmmmm pc games may be revolutionary in terms of physics engines and gfx, but if we're talking gameplay and new ideas - then consoles win hands down.

Careful, kids... this is turning into a vs. thread, and you know what Chris_D said about vs. threads.

 

[Raziaar]

^mmmmmmmm pc games may be revolutionary in terms of physics engines and gfx, but if we're talking gameplay and new ideas - then consoles win hands down.

Wait a minute, are you saying there's some sort of NEW game among the hundreds of thousands of shooters/RPG's/racing games?

 

[Kyorisu]

^mmmmmmmm pc games may be revolutionary in terms of physics engines and gfx, but if we're talking gameplay and new ideas - then consoles win hands down.

Nothing against you or anything but PC's came first and have hundreds more Games then all the console combined. I don't understand your argument here.

 

[Lobster]

Nothing against you or anything but PC's came first and have hundreds more Games then all the console combined. I don't understand your argument here.

I hate to say it but im pretty sure the first home games were console based lol.

but i think the PC can have a greater ammount of control, for gametypes such as RTS games.

 

[MonkeyClaw]

pc's do have an much greater amount of control, they are well alot more superior to consols. Mouse look instead of thumbsticks, alot more keys you can assign for different tasks, and well freedom of custmozation. U can choose your controls instead of having them pre assigned like in a consol. And well pc are just superior. Alot better quality of graphics and physics which can make or break gameplay. As in knowing from doom 3 for example, there is one part where the ragdoll physics are important ot the gameplay. Now those might be implemented into the xbox version of the game, but it wont be as good as a pc cause an xbox just cant handle the amount of stress that this game produces on a system. Same in Half Life 2. It wont be as good.

 

[Naveed]

Now I am really worried, hoping Valve hasn't dumbed down Half-Life 2 for the sake for SuXBox. I hate SuXbox beacuse it has already killed many great PC Games.

 

[MonkeyClaw]

indeed it has, myst 3 exile, and HALO!!! it would have been a good game, if it was developed with pc in mind not xbox after microsoft took over...

 

[X-Bond 007]

Hmm... buy XBOX version... MS wins... Buy Windows version... MS wins... Whats the point here? :thumbs:

 

[MonkeyClaw]

good point (pun intended, lol)

 

[ComradeBadger]

Now I am really worried, hoping Valve hasn't dumbed down Half-Life 2 for the sake for SuXBox. I hate SuXbox beacuse it has already killed many great PC Games.

Name 3 .

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

Now I am really worried, hoping Valve hasn't dumbed down Half-Life 2 for the sake for SuXBox. I hate SuXbox beacuse it has already killed many great PC Games.

Uh they care about the PC version more, I bet they got bored during the e3 week, the people left @ valve and decided to play around with it on Xbox.

 

[Tadashi]

Hmm... buy XBOX version... MS wins... Buy Windows version... MS wins... Whats the point here? :thumbs:

waiting for WineX support(and spend time to the extras in the collectors edition till then )... The player wins

 

[jonnyapps]

i thought gabe had said work on xbox version wasn't gonna commence until they'd all had a long vacation? :flame:

 

[Lobster]

i thought gabe had said work on xbox version wasn't gonna commence until they'd all had a long vacation? :flame:

If its just a case of porting it, then it really wouldnt take them long to do, and if there really in the testing stage they claim to be, they should have alot of people sitting around doing nothing!

 

[JimmehH]

You have HDTV (I think that's the ancronym). There's just that and regular, no different resolutions on different screens.

I don't have HDTV, but my TV can do 1024x768. I think it depends whether it has S-Video in or not. It doesn't look that hot in 1024x768 though - too blurry.

 

[ComradeBadger]

If its just a case of porting it, then it really wouldnt take them long to do, and if there really in the testing stage they claim to be, they should have alot of people sitting around doing nothing!

XNA makes all this a lot easier. I imagine that HL2 may well be using it.

 

[Epsi]

Which begs the question, what exactly is XNA? It's some kind of initiative to make simultaneous development of games for the PC and the XBOX easier, but what the heck is it comprised of and how will it help?

It reminds me of how Microsoft was releasing almost everything with ".net" attatched a while ago, .net messenger service, .net passport, etc. It's pretty hard to tell that what it's really about is the next generation programming platform.

Anyways, I doubt HL2 would need much of a conversion job, an XBOX and a PC are more or less the same thing, so the engine wouldn't need any serious work to get going. The remaining changes would be to make it more controller-friendly.

 

[Naveed]

Name 3 .

Aside from killing Halo, SuXbox played huge part in demise of Deus Ex, and Thief franchise, not to mention Broken Sword, and Links series, I can understand why all good PC Games are ported on SuXBox because otherwise there would be almost no good games for it

 

[Naveed]

Which begs the question, what exactly is XNA? It's some kind of initiative to make simultaneous development of games for the PC and the XBOX easier, but what the heck is it comprised of and how will it help?

It reminds me of how Microsoft was releasing almost everything with ".net" attatched a while ago, .net messenger service, .net passport, etc. It's pretty hard to tell that what it's really about is the next generation programming platform.

Anyways, I doubt HL2 would need much of a conversion job, an XBOX and a PC are more or less the same thing, so the engine wouldn't need any serious work to get going. The remaining changes would be to make it more controller-friendly.

Who cares about the compromises in terms of graphics etc. What you need to remember is the attitude of PC gamers, and dumb Console gamers, who like everything simple and easy, unfortunately when developers develop games for both PC and SuXbox they have to compromise on design, make it more "streamline (dumb)" so that console players can play it :|

 

[joule]

I guess no one's gonna answer my question if they know.

 

[poseyjmac]

You have HDTV (I think that's the ancronym). There's just that and regular, no different resolutions on different screens.

no, actually its just a sony trinitron TV (34 inch). but i plug in my laptop to it and i can use 3 resolutions, 640, 800, and 1024.

 

[Grimresfa]

guys.... who the hell cares? -_-. Does this mean hl2 is done atleast in the xbox version. That is all thats important

 

[kaf11]

i just think its possible now. they dont have a finished version. theyre still getting rid of bugs to get ready for release.

 

[TheWart]

Name 3 .

Deus Ex II - Horrible textures for requirements...more constrained levels than first deus ex

Thief 3 - Smaller levels due to lower ram on Xbox...lower res textures

Halo - Horrible performance on even high end systems

 

[kaf11]

Thief 3 - Smaller levels due to lower ram on Xbox...lower res textures

this pissed me off. ill still buy the game, but those large levels from Thief 2 were really fun.

 

[nvrmor]

Which begs the question, what exactly is XNA? It's some kind of initiative to make simultaneous development of games for the PC and the XBOX easier, but what the heck is it comprised of and how will it help?

It reminds me of how Microsoft was releasing almost everything with ".net" attatched a while ago, .net messenger service, .net passport, etc. It's pretty hard to tell that what it's really about is the next generation programming platform.

Anyways, I doubt HL2 would need much of a conversion job, an XBOX and a PC are more or less the same thing, so the engine wouldn't need any serious work to get going. The remaining changes would be to make it more controller-friendly.

the main goal of xna is to make game developtment easier, and cheaper. what it does is makes all of the tools used by devs to make games, interoperable. same thing with game engines. all the different parts of a game, the physics, sound, lighting, ai, networking etc can be used interchangeably. this will cut down the amount of time devs need to get a game up and running. so instead of taking 18 months to get everything working, it can take 6. this gives devs a better idea, sooner of how the game is coming together and if it is a feasible project. that leaves more time for art instead of plumbing. with the advanced graphics that are comming this is very important. the ease of portability to xbox, and mobile devices is just a side benefit. check here for a more in depth idea of what xna is.



now for all those bashing an xbox port of hl2, you do realize the xbox version will look better then 50% of the pc's running the game? look at the steam hardware study. see alot of crap pc's on there. there are a lot more crap pc's out there in the wild as well. nowhere has valve said or have we seen from gameplay that the pc version is dumbed down for the xbox, or the xbox port has added to the delay, so why bitch about it? all the xbox port does is raise more awarness for the hl brand. if anything the xbox port will bring in more funds for valve to use for future projects, you should be glad about it.

now before you call me an xbox fanboy, realize i will be playing hl2 on my pc, with my 43" hdtv as my monitor in all of its hirez widescreen glory, and 5.1. :cheers:

 

[kaf11]

^good post. and i envy your rig. ive got a 19" monitor, and ill be upgrading to 5.1 (hopefully), so i should be content.

 

[Epsi]

Ah, but the thing about XNA, is at the moment, it's pretty nebulous. It's nothing but a press release and some videos.

There's nothing concrete for developers to use. And if there is something concrete, Microsoft aren't showing it to the general public, and quite frankly, Microsoft show pretty much everything to the general public - you can already get at the Longhorn SDK, for example.

For example, this "framework" they're describing, making renderers and physics engines swappable plugins, these kind of things need technical specifications, interfaces to program against, and they simply don't exist.

Ah, I'll be less skeptical if Microsoft comes up with some goods. But at the moment, talking about something using XNA is meaningless, it doesn't exist yet.

 

[Frank]

I don't feel like reading 8 pages of posts, so I'll just ask:
Will it be released for X-Box before PC!? I HOPE NOT!

 

[Polykarbon]

sigh...you will see what I am talking about when the top tier games come out.

Don't expect DooM 3 X-Box to be one of them--now that riddick has drawn the line.

And no--Riddick would not run well on anything other then a med/high range system with a great graphics card and a pretty high processor. There isn't enough porting in the world to do it. It's just a freakishly made game by a great set of people to take advantage of the X-Box. A Geforce 4 TI would be the min requirement...but of course wouldn't be enough.

The same will be said for Halo 2. It uses too many effects/shaders/poly counts to be ported without changing and scaling things...unless you expect to play it on a very high end machine.

 

[JimmehH]

I don't feel like reading 8 pages of posts, so I'll just ask:
Will it be released for X-Box before PC!? I HOPE NOT!

No. PC version then the XBox version.

 

[Warbie]

And who'd want to play Halo 2 on a pc anyway?