Info received from Valve ONLY - NO questions/discussion

Here is a short chat with Erik Johnson over Steam. Some info about reflections:


Saturn says:

In hl2 , will Gordon have a reflection (either through water or mirrors)?
Erik Johnson says:

Are you asking if you'll be able to see him in-game?

Saturn says:

yes , his reflection . not as see him like in a cienamtic scene

Erik Johnson says:

Not likley.

Saturn says:

So if there's a mirror we won't see Gordon? for example : your talking to an NPC and there is a mirror and you can see the npc and all the oblects reflect in the mirror but not Gordon himself?

Erik Johnson says:

Ahh, I see. Technically, that would be possible to pull off.

Saturn says:

yes , but if he will have a reflection and the players can see Gordon , it will hurt all the " the player IS gordon , you are the hero " approach

Erik Johnson says:

You're correct.

Saturn says:

So the chances are that there will be no reflection?

Erik Johnson says:

Yeah.

Saturn says:

and a follow-up question if you will : If I stand in front water area will I be able to see what goes on behind me trough the reflection (assuming i'm in the right angel)?

Erik Johnson says:

Sure.

Saturn says:

that's cool. even if there are fights behind me , Will I see the firefights?

Erik Johnson says:

Yes, it is reflective.


That's it. Sorry that it isn't edited better, oh just to mention I didn't ask the question straight away, I greeted him and asked him if he had time to answer my question , so don't you think I popped the question out of no-where :D
 
-----Original Message-----

Hey how you doing?
Im just emailing because I have a question to ask about Half Life 2 will
weapons have secondary fire?
Also, will will there be some sort of inventory system?
Thanks for your time oh great ones :)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of the HL2 weapons have secondary fire, in fact in the E3 video you
can see the zoom on one of the weapons when the player zooms in on the
soldier in the tower.

There's no inventory system like an RPG has if that's what you mean.

Rick
Valve
 
Hey Rick, How you doing

Will you be able to damage enemies with broken glass, what I mean is
that if lets say there's an enemy standing behind a window, and you
shoot it, will the glass damage the enemy? If not is this modable?
Also, will there be lots of parts in HL2 where you can trigger things,
like you trigger the little swinging thing in the Traptown video? Will
there be levels where you dont even have to use your weapons and can
just use the enviornement?

Thanks for your time Rick,
Cheers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You could have broken glass damage an enemy in a number of ways. The
most obvious I think would be to set the radius and damage done when the
glass object breaks.

The number of triggers you can have is up to your imagination. There's
no reason why a level couldn't be played with just the items in the
level, including using barrels, etc as weaponry.

Rick
Valve
 
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 4:25 PM
To: Yahn Bernier
Subject: Another quick question, thanks!

Wow, my sincere thanks for answering my last question...I don't know how you do it, but I love it :)

I was reading a blog of this person whose 9 computers were confiscated by the FBI since they thought he had something to do with the HL2 source crime (http://squeedlyspooch.com/blog/archives/000072.html)and people are throwing this URL around that claims to have the names of the true people who stole it.

I don't know if you guys have seen it? http://gtwy.net/hl2/

People claim you didn't.

Well thanks Yahn! I truly appreciate you taking the time to answer my [annoying] email(s) :)
Click to expand...
Yes, we've seen the gtwy urls
Click to expand...

Hah, I knew these guys weren't retards. Take that you critics!
 
The release of the benchmark has been postponed. We will announce a new release date for it soon.

Rick
Valve



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 9:37 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: Re: what's going on?


There's been a lot of talk about the Half-Life 2 Mod SDK, and that's fantastic. I'm as anxious as anybody to get my hands on those tools, but what about the Half-Life 2 Benchmark? In early September 2003, it seemed that the Benchmark was around the corner. Now, I'm guessing it's been cancelled, or something... is it still a possibility?
 
Please see my answers to your questions below.

Thanks,
Rick
Valve


1 - Will bump maps on models and world brushes react to dynamic lights such as the flashlight and muzzle flashes or are they only effected by static lighting?

*** Yes they will react to dynamic lights.

2 - Will each model have to have a collision model made for it manualy or are collisions in hl2 per-poly? if you do have to manualy create collission models how will this be done?

*** Physics hulls or bounding boxes are used for collisions. Physics hulls are more accurate but require more cpu time to compute. They are also created with the model by a modeler.

5 - Is it possible to have 3d models rendered in source's vgui menu system?

*** in a vgui panel yes.

7 - How will HDRR (High dynamic range rendering) work work in hl2? will it be definable/adjustable per map or will it just be a part of source's lighting system?

*** It will likely be part of Source's general lighting solution.

8 - Will fluid be simulated in 3d as it was in hl1 or will it just be flat with shaders to simulate the visuals? if it is not simulated in 3d how dificult would it be to impliment 3d fluid simulation into the source engine?

*** If you are referring to having current's that move things, yes Source currently does this. If you are referring to fluid dynamics, then no Source does not have this.

9 - How complex is the terrain material painting tool in the hl2 build of hammer? will we be able to paint many different materials onto each terrain brush?

*** Yes and you can use alpha blends as well for blending different materials such as mud and rock.

10 - Will character model shadows react to lighting realisticly or will they just be projected in one direction the whole time?

*** They are projected in the direction based upon the level's shadow direction entity.
 
I had a great idea, so I emailed Valve about it and got a response the next day.
Valve's Rick Ellis responces in BOLD.

Subject: RE: An innovative idea I have for HL2.
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:52:50 -0800
From: "Rick Ellis"
To: *********@yahoo.com

Hi Adam,

See my comments below.

Rick
Valve



-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Sierra [mailto:********@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 5:35 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: An innovative idea I have for HL2.

Hello Gabe,
After rewatching the HDR technology .bink video, I had an idea hit me
that has me very excited. There is a section of the video where 2
spheres are projected onto the users screen and they spin around
showing
off various rendering technologys. I was wondering how feasible would
it
be to create a mod whose interactive interface was built entirely out
of
3d polygonal meshes? If it is technicaly possible to create an
interactive interface out of dynamic models that display on screen like
a standard VGUI2 interface, the mod comunity would be able to create
some very innovative and high tech looking GUI's.

*** You can certainly do this, although it wouldn't be thru VGUI2. It
would simply be adding code to the client to draw these objects (or
models) including animations in the player's view.

As a simple case example, I can imagine a 3d cube which the user could
spin/rotate, which had interactive menus displayed on each side of the
cube where each side coresponded to different option menus. (Game
Options, Weapon Selection, Server Votes, Admin Options, etc)

*** The menus themselves could be vgui2 panels on the surface of your
model or more likely if you're doing a 3d interface like this you'd
draw
other 3d elements instead of reverting back to a 2d interface. Adding
animations for rotatining or exploding whatever, could be done as well.

As a more complex example, I could imagine multiple 3d objects in the
shape of puzzle peices, each peice would represent a weapon
modification
the user may want to add to their gun, or represent server/map settings
each, and the peices could be combined and added to the main puzzle
peice which would activate anything connected to itself.

*** Same as above, just a more complex set of animations and models.
You'd of course also have to write the code for the weapon powerups as
well as tracking the state of the UI but that shouldn't be hard to do.

If using dynamic 3d meshes inplace of standard 2d graphical interfaces
is doable in the Source engine, the possibilitys for mod authors like
myself would be endless...

By the way, do those objects projected in the .bink HDR video possess
the ability to become physicaly simulated as well? Collision detection
used in intuitive and fun new ways within a user interface gives
tingles
down my spine!

*** The spheres? No, they are drawn on the screen and aren't actual
entities in the world, which they'd have to be in order to be
physically
simulated.

I hope this helps!
Rick


From Adam Sierra
Programmer / Level Designer
 
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Subject: RE: A couple of (I hope) interesting questions.
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 23:32:22 -0800
Message-ID: <EF68D1D3E8EDD34A8151C0809FA0ECFE8E7CF7@exchange.valvesoftware.com>
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Thread-Topic: A couple of (I hope) interesting questions.
Thread-Index: AcPjulIH7MudHSbBRWKeVfPfRocRvQAI1NwQ
From: "Gabe Newell" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>



-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2004 7:09 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: A couple of (I hope) interesting questions.

Hi. First I think you are great. Second I am not sure if I am alowed to
write to you... If I am I would be very happy if you could answer to
couple of my questions:
1. What do you think about DOOM ]I[ engine?

John always picks interesting problems to solve and then solves them
very thoroughly. The engine does what they need it to do, and I'm
really looking forward to the game.

2. Have you ever measured you IQ? :) seriously

Yes.

3. I am from Croatia and I'm very proud that one Croatian game(Serious
Sam) has become popular in the world. Can you comment on Serious engine?
Croteam(team that made Serious Sam) are proud of it becouse "it can
render huge open and closed spaces on average machines without loading
every 2 mins"

They have a lot to be proud of. It's tough to be independent. It's
tough to create an engine from scratch. It's tough to create your own
worlds/characters/IP.

4.Could you please comment on one my idea? It is the dynamic
clothes(tm):) That characters actualy ware clothes, and that isn't of
part of them.
Eg: clothes movement when people running would be cool(especialy for
skirts), I presume that npc then would be able to take their clothes
off(not all:)).
I think that it would be cool.

I am worried that it would be slow.

5.What is the bug that was the hardest to fix(how long did you "fight"
with it)?

Bugs are easy. Fun is hard.

6. We still have new games based on q3 engine. Can you see Source to
last until 2007?

Hope so if it takes us this long to do a new engine from scratch.

I know that this is a lot of questions. I hope that they are enough
interesting.
If you don't want answer to them all please answer to one or two. I
would be extremly happy.
 
A single trace per frame is not the killer, thousands of such are.. You could probably do something like this.

Yahn




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Petkofsky [xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 11:05 AM
To: Yahn Bernier
Subject: hl2 question


Hey,

Just had a quick question for you. Because the weapon model in a players hand is a simulated objects, is it possible to do soemthing like check the distance from the object in the player's hand to something else, say directly below him? And if so, would it be very cpu intensive to be running a constant check for that?

Thanks,
David Petkofsky
 
Hi,

Most likely, though nothing final to announce right now.

Cheers

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Deeming [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 4:17 PM
To: Gabe Newell; Erik Johnson; Doug Lombardi
Subject: e3 04

Will Valve be making a presentation at E3 again this year?

Chris_D
 
asked some questions and got some answers. :)

See my answers below.

Rick
Valve

From: David Basoco [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thu 1/29/2004 2:40 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: animations blend with physics?

hiya
you guys are great and i support you and your work
very much. if you could answer a few question i would
be very grateful.

is it possible to blend animations with physics? or is
it possible if someone was falling ot a certain death,
that they would begin a falling animation?

You can do either. You can turn the corpse into a ragdoll for it to physically get simulated as it falls or you can animate a death sequence to have a specific type of death occur.

also theres been some talk on the hl2.net forums if it
is possible to have a player hit and thrown in a
ragdoll, still alive and get back up if he wasnt
killed? mostly for theird person view, i guess
pretaining to multiplayer(eek).

We don't do this in HL2 but I would think with some effort you could make this work however you probably wouldn't want to ragdoll a live player as it wouldn't look right (ragdolls look and act like lifeless bodies, which a live player would not be). I would think playing some "scrambling" animation would be more appropriate.

and well, if u read this and choose not to reply, i
really wish u the best of luck wiht hl2 and any future
projects. you've done yourselves well and showed the
some people how a game is supposed to be made.

Thank you.

friendly fan,
kP
Click to expand...
 
A got a response from Jess Cliffe to some questions I sent for a forthcoming article. Most of them were confirmations on particular issues but this was interesting to note:-

Q:

SWG has an emotes system for player characters to express themselves with, does source contain anything similar, for multiplayer? If the answer is no, do you think it would be feasible to create such a system. I'm principally thinking from the viewpoint of facial expressions rather than the all singing all dancing emotes that SWG has.

A:

We currently don't have emotes like those found in the popular MMORPGs however, it would be fairly simple to create a set and place them in the game as animations. Code would then be added that would notify all of the clients when a player started an emote (the animations themselves would be local to each player, the command would simply be sent to the server and re-broadcast to the other clients causing them to play their associated animations.)

Regards,
Jess Cliffe
VALVe
 
Hopefully the ending will be happy this time as well...



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 4:14 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: Funny, how history repeats itself.


Dear Mr. Newell,

I was just reading some old Gamespot stuff, and I did a little re-wording, and it might as well be written yesterday. This is an article from 1999.

It wasn't to be. By July of 2003, Valve recognized that finishing the game by September would mean making major compromises on the product. "We realized that to make September 30th, we would have to give up a bunch of stuff we wanted to do," explains Newell. "We had to make a decision about what way we wanted to go, and it was a scary decision. We're a self-funded company, so when we pay people's salaries, I write a check out of my personal checking account."

Money wasn't the only concern. The relationship with Vivendi Universal was also conceivably at risk. Half-Life 2 was supposed to be its biggest game of the year, but it wasn't going to be ready. The massive wheels of promotion and PR had already started to turn, and now the company had to put the brakes on. It seemed like a disaster.

Actually, it was the best thing that could have happened. With the pressure off, Valve could spend time evaluating its progress, painfully reviewing every aspect of the game. In essence, the work on Half-Life 2 was weighed in the balance. And it was found wanting. Near the end 2003, privately and behind closed doors, Valve decided that most of its work - including the work on levels and AI - would be completely scrapped. It just wasn't working.

"Last year, we had a lot of great technology," explains Ken Birdwell, "and it would have been a really competent game, but it wouldn't have gone over the edge anywhere. In the middle of last year, we got some inklings of what we really could do with the game, and by late last year, we had seen what the game should be - we just had to do it."

Not surprisingly, this "voyage of discovery" (as Harrington describes it) caused massive turmoil on the project. "The net result is that we threw out just about everything," admits Birdwell. "All the AI was gone, and we gutted the levels. In reality, Half-Life 2 got delayed because of Half-Life 2." In Birdwell's estimation, what players will be playing on their PCs, "is really Half-Life 3. It's an incredible game."

Funny, huh?

Hope it's all going well. If you need to re-work Half-Life 2, then thank you for taking the time to make a good product.

Cheers!
 
more stuff for us :]

From: David Petkofsky [mailto:yourmom]
Sent: Sun 2/1/2004 9:51 AM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: HL2 Terrain Editor

Hey,
I know you must be busy (crunch time maybe? ;) ), but if you have the time,
I'd be grateful if you answered this question. It has been mentioned that
there will be a "terrain editor." It was usally mentioned in the context of
loading a displacement map. My question is a) is it seperate from Hammer?
and b) will it have a WYSIWYG function ala Elder Scrolls Construction Set
where you and "grab" points on the landscape and drag them up or down to
shape the terrain that way?

Thanks!
-David Petkofsky

a) no, it's part of Hammer (built in)
b) Yes it's wysiwyg, you can do exactly what you suggest pulling or pushing parts of the surface to make interesting terrain.

Rick
Valve
 
An old email:



-----Original Message-----
From: Gabe Newell
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 3:34 PM
To: John Guthrie
Subject: FW: thoughts





-----Original Message-----
From: Yahn Bernier
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 2:32 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: FW: thoughts



-----Original Message-----
From: Dile [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 1:34 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: thoughts


Would it be possible to make a "dynamic general light" (or something like that, i havent thought of the name) on a map, that determines an overall lightning in the map, which has the color of the average of the pixels on the sky that are visible at the moment, taking the brightness (strength) of the color into consideration?



The other one is simple: Assigning normal maps to textures, so they can be assigned to a surface in hammer with bump mapping applied. I mean the textures wouldn't be only image files, but image files with normal maps, which cant be divided from each other.



Hi Gábor,



#1 is Image-Based Lighting (you can google for that). We'll probably do that in the future, especially with HDR.



For the second question, we already do this. A material can consist of both a base texture and a normal map that can be applied to world geometry.
 
Got this an hour ago:



From: Oláh Gábor [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 4:15 AM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: a quick and simple


Hi there!

Question: Do the materials in HL2 have friction? I'd really love to see ragdoll bodies roll down a hill, not slide!

Thanks,

Dile
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

yes
 
Doug Lombardi states: "currently targeting this summer for the completion of Half-Life 2".
 
From: mailto:********@alltel.net]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Halflife2 on unreal II XMP engine?


I highly doubt the below is true, however it was posted on hl2.net forums. Could you please respond to this. Thanks.

first of all:
I have heard this from internal sources, and i cannot tell any names.
It is up to you to believe it or not
If you have no clue of 3D business and marketing then you probably won't understand it.

The latest business rumor spreads word that Halflife2 will now be based on a slightly extended Unreal II XMP engine. Main reasons are the dramatic leak of the source code and the general instability of the HL2 engine. The engine was many months away from beeing finished. The source leak also extended the development time by maybe 5-6 months. So the HL2 engine would probably not be finished before end of 2005. At this time it will most likely be outdated. As a rescue sanction, the publisher Vivendi forced the project to reach gold status within 2004 to minimize the finiancial deficit resulting from the massive delays.

this info is not official confirmed of course
bogus


As expected, a totally bogus thread about unreal II engine.
 
You will be able to copy the Steam cache file over to the other machine
and run without the long downloads.

Rick
Valve

-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Cave
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 9:28 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: HL2 Question

Dear Rick Ellis,

Will I be able to download HL2 on one computer and then transfer it to another
to be played on only the second computer?

I am asking because I only have a 56k dialup internet connection at
home, but do have DSL available at work. It would obviously benefit me
to be able to download HL2 with my work system and be able to transfer
it to my home system to activate with my CD key and play.

Thank you very much for considering my question.

Erik Cave
 
Ladders

From: Oliver Ryan
Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2004 11:39 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: Ladders in HL2


Hello!

Quick question about how HL2 deals with ladders, are they going to act just like the ones in HL (human elevator)? Or are they going to actually climb the ladders?

Thanks,

Oliver

The player or NPCs climb ladders in HL2.

Rick
Valve
 
Subject: RE: Leaning in HL2?
From: "Rick Ellis" <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 09:30:14 -0800
To: "Shuzer" <[email protected]>

HL1 style, no leaning.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: Shuzer [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 11:27 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: Leaning in HL2?

Will there be a lean function in HL2 (ala Call of Duty), or will the
game be "HL1 style," with leaning omitted?

Keep up the good work,
Shuzer
 
At the moment STEAM does not allow for you to change accounts or the email of the account at all. Do you know when \ if they do this?

We're working on that right now - it will be in the next few weeks hopefully. It's not too important right now though - Steam doesn't use your email for anything.

Taylor
 
I asked Rick a little more about the latter stuff.
I was mainly conserned that if they were going to have an animation for clibming that they might have made you climb slower, this is what he wrote back...

======================================================



Subject: RE: HL2 Ladders (another question about)
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 08:49:13 -0800
From: "Rick Ellis" <[email protected]> Add to Address Book
To: "Nathan Lane" <>




The climb speed is the same as HL1. In single player, you don't see your body so there's no climb animation.
 
Will enemys dive behind cover ,and duck if things are thrown at them with the manipulator?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Gabe:Yes, on both
 
In response to a question on the authenticity of this HL2.net forum member post

"Now, please don't take my words as gold here. A guy that I am pretty good friends with has a friend/contact who is a contractor working on the HL2 project for Valve. From what my friend has told me, the graphics engine is going through an ENTIRE re-design (from his friend) and my friend thinks that based on that, the game will not be released until 2005. I'm really hoping he's wrong about 2005, although it wouldn't surprise me if they are really rebuilding the entire thing."
===========================================================


Gabe: It's complete gibberish
 
They are making things up.

He didn't really answer my question if this was a real strategy guide that you could buy.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 8:26 AM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: Half-Life 2 : Prima's Official Strategy Guide

Sorry to bother you but I'm concerned about this:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0761543627/ref=wlhu_mrai-r
ecs/103-7251253-7510258?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Is this the real thing? I really don't want the Half-Life 2 story to be
ruined for me before the game even comes out! A person who rated it
said some things but the only thing I caught was "Gordon is an ALIEN".
I really hope that this person is just making that up because I really
want to enjoy the Half-Life 2 story while playing the game, and not
before hand because someone has the strategy guide a year early.

Thank you,

Michael Dougherty
 
As the thread title says, please only official info in this thread: emails from Gabe or other confirmed Valve sources about the game and engine. And please check to make sure there are no duplicates. The point of this thread is to have easy readable access to confirmed answers on HL2 questions about the engine and game mechanics NOT the game's story, NOT what Gabe had for breakfast this morning (even if Gabe emailed you about it), and NO spoilers.

Remember: if you want to discuss them, use OTHER threads that raise a specific topic, or start your own thread. Don't clutter up this one.

Also, PLEASE try to put only the Valve answers in bold if you know how. And if you're copying someone else's posted email, remember to credit them so they don't get mad.

Message from Munro, halflife2.net admin:

No one here is guaranteed to get answers from Gabe. If he isn't answering you, he isn't necessarily going to answer because several people spam him the question for you.

Again: this isn't a thread for begging people to ask questions: it's a thread people can go through and read the ANSWERS to.

Again: DON'T post questions that you've sent to Gabe that he hasn't answered yet. That's NOT the point of this thread.

Any off topic posts will be deleted and the user banned if repeated.

-

So to recap. NO DISCUSSION!

-post the same thing again Filipe and your gone for a week-
 
Imrahil said:
They are making things up.

He didn't really answer my question if this was a real strategy guide that you could buy.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 8:26 AM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: Half-Life 2 : Prima's Official Strategy Guide

Sorry to bother you but I'm concerned about this:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0761543627/ref=wlhu_mrai-r
ecs/103-7251253-7510258?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Is this the real thing? I really don't want the Half-Life 2 story to be
ruined for me before the game even comes out! A person who rated it
said some things but the only thing I caught was "Gordon is an ALIEN".
I really hope that this person is just making that up because I really
want to enjoy the Half-Life 2 story while playing the game, and not
before hand because someone has the strategy guide a year early.

Thank you,

Michael Dougherty
Click to expand...
lol i emailed him the same question he answered my question thou....sort of here we are....

No, there isn't.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Pauly [mailto:*********]
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 5:44 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: halflife2 Prima strat guide?


Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0761543627/ref=wlhu_mrai-r/002-4095366-7793609 says that you can order this and get it immediately? umm how is this? Im kinda confused here. The games not coming out until summer or September still. Is there really a strat guide out??? People reviews say this is true. I would buy it if its true(which I doubt it) just so I can see some level screens?but I highly doubt this is true. What do you say about this?

Thanks!

-Matt S.
 

I still can't play Half-Life 1 as a game - it's a collection of things
we didn't get a chance to fix. I'm sure that will be true of Half-Life
2 as well. However, I do get to enjoy things like Day of Defeat purely
as a game (well most of the time), which is nice.

-----Original Message-----
From: Wolfgang Muller [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 2:09 PM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: HL 1 Gameplay Question

I played HL many times - and after a while I stopped
worrying about the story or the enemies - I started
concentrating on the lightning, the scripting, the
textures... and so on...

I make some custom levels and when I play them - I
just worry about how it all looks. Yet when other
people play it - they just care about the storyline.

Is it the same for you? When you boot up HL do you
play it for fun? Or are you constantly bothered by "I
should have changed that - or that doesn't look right"
Will you feel the same way after HL2 comes out?

Thanks, Wolf.
 
Yup, we've used cabals for HL2.

Yahn



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: A. Dunfee [mailto:*******@shaw.ca]
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 8:03 PM
To: Yahn Bernier
Subject: Yahn Rocks!


Hello Mr. Yahn Bernier,

The other day, just for the hell of it, I decided to fire up
the original Half-Life, and play it through for old time's sake.
Well I would just like to say that you guys did one hell of a job! It is by far the BEST game I have ever played. Period. I was also reading about the "Cabals" you guys used to have (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991210/birdwell_pfv.htm)
and I was wondering if you guys are having them for HL2?...we all are eagerly waiting...
anyways, keep up the GREAT work and dont rush!

Thank You!

- Alex "SixThree" Dunfee
 
Thanks for the kind words Ben.

We're going to run another survey via Steam like we did over a year ago with the 1.1.1.0. update. The results of that one are here:

http://valve.speakeasy.net

It will help us make some decisions for Half-Life 2 if we have a clearer sense of the kind of hardware out there.

Erik

-----Original Message-----
From: [deleted]
To: Erik Johnson <[email protected]>
Sent: Wed Feb 25 22:20:04 2004
Subject: New Steam Updates

Hi Mr. Johnson,
First off, i just wanted to say thank you for steam. As a gamer who legitimately buys all of his games, I'm so happy to see a system that seems to really work when it comes to preventing piracy. I can't wait for the day HL2 comes out and all the warez groups have to post a message that says "Well, sorry folks, looks like you're gonna have to buy this one"

Kudos to you and your phenomenal team on a product that gets better every day.

I was wondering though, in the latest newspost you put up... What on earth is the Half-Life 2 Hardware Survey?

Take care, and keep up the good work,

[deleted]
 
Hammer

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 2:09 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: hammer + steam


hey, i was just wondering how HL2 Hammer Editor (and the other tools) are integrated into Steam, and HL2 itself?

thanks for your time
Alex
--------------

Hammer will be distributed via Steam when it's released.

Rick
Valve

--------------
not exactly what i asked, but at least its something!
original sent 17/02/04 reply arrived 03/03/04
 
Yes, you can use overlays for this. I'm not sure what you mean when you
refer to the "rigidness of the suspension".

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxx
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 6:39 AM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: Tank tracks

Hi Rick,

A quick question if you have the time for it:
Is there a way with Source to more or less simulate tank tracks
correctly?
And I mean in the way that they will 'bend' around terrain and certain
small obstacles and also accordingly to the rigidness of the suspension.
Is this perhaps possible with the same technology that does the 'rope
swinging'?

Well, thanks for your time, keep up the great work with the game!


--------------

With the rigidness of the suspension I meant the wheels of the tank themselves reacting to the ground based on how tight their suspension is and the tracks curving around the wheels.
 
It will flop around like a body would on the hill, continuing to roll
until the friction of moving overpowered the tendency to roll.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: ******
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 3:48 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: Friction on ragdolls

Hi, I've been really interested in the physics of HL2 and I was
wondering: If I shot, say, a Combine soldier at the top of a hill would
his body roll down the slope, or would it just slide like the ragdolls
in some other games? Thanks for your time and keep up the good work!
 
Hi Andrew,

We aren't delaying audio at all because in our playtesting, people
perceive it to be a "bug". It's trivial to do it but in implementation,
we found that people didn't like it.

Rick
Valve

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Stewart [mailto:**********@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 8:25 AM
To: Gabe Newell; Rick Ellis
Subject: speed of light VS speed of sound

Hi both,

I was just admiring the new S.T.A.L.K.E.R weapons video when the thought
occurred to me... will the Source audio engine support sound delays, ie
a noise is generated far enough away for the sound effect to be affected
by distance?

TIA,

Andy Stewart
 
-----Original Message-----
From: ***********[mailto:***************]
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 12:23 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: Hello there! Question regarding HL2 vehicles...and some others
:)

Hello there.

I have few questions for you in regards to your upcoming title HL2 and
would greatly appreciate it if you could answer them.

1. Are the vehicles destructable or would they be indestructible and be
required by the player to progress through the level?

*** Some of the vehicles can be destroyed/disabled yes.

2. When I first saw the high resolution Bink trailers of HL2, the
segments featuring the huge monolithic tower surrounded by decaying
architecture and the menacing Metrocops immediately reminded me of the
Ministry buildings and the feared Thought Police depicted in the George
Orwell novel '1984'.

Would you cite '1984' as an influential piece during the design process
for the HL2 aesthetic and also were there any other films,literature,
etc. that proved influential during the design process?

*** No. Most of our art inspiration comes from real cities and photo
references.

3. Will Valve be following in the footsteps of id, in the sense that you
will continue to produce titles that are exclusively 1st person games,
or will you branch out into other genres, such as strategy or role
playing. Or perhaps produce generic hybrids based around the FPS genre
such as System Shock 2, an FPS, RPG adventure hybrid (though of course I
think the majority of us if not all would like you to continue to make
more first person games).

*** Not determined yet. We're finishing Half-Life 2 first then we'll
figure out what's next.

I appreciate you are very busy, though it would be great if you could
answer my questions if at all possible.

Good luck with the development of HL2 and to your future projects,
particularly TF2 and cheers for taking the time out to read my e-mail.
Can't wait to play HL2!

Cheers,

**********

BTW my brother wrote this e-mail, I robbed it from him and took the credit. :LOL:
 
There's an option for corpse fade, so yes you can turn the fade on or off.

Rick


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: XXX[mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 5:20 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: Hey


Hello, I was wondering, in HL2, will the corpses stay the whole time you are in the map? Will there be an option to turn this on and off? Thanks, and good luck with the game.
 
See answers below.

Thanks,
Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: *******
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 11:28 AM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: A couple of questions, if time permits of course =)

Hello!
I understand your probably pretty busy, and this email probably won't
get a reply (like the others hehe) But it doesn't hurt to try eh?

First off, my question/s:

1. I was watching the E3 video, trying to come up with some ideas as to
how sourse works... Then something pop in to mind. Lets say you are
using the dynamic LOD system, in conjunction with the camera system.
The player is in a room looking at a monitor, the camera is very far
away in another room pointing to an enemy. Will the player be viewing
the low LOD of the enemy since the enemy is so far away? Or will souce
detect that the player is looking up close? (and can this be
adjusted)

*** it's based on the view point and since you are using a camera that
will be close to the model, you will see a high lod, not a low lod
because of the distance from the player.


2. Are there terrain tools ala' Unreal engine inside source? Or is
terrain built mainly using heightmaps/displacement maps?

*** Yes absolutely. The tools allow you to form the terrain, smooth it,
paint it with materials, blend between two materials etc.

3. This is more of a request (you might even call it a cry for help
lol) but have a look:

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=19773&page=1

Could we maybe get a new screenshot to drool over for a while? If you
look at what we are left discussing you will understand why I ask
:)
(once again, doesn't hurt to try eh?)

Thanks for your time! Good luck to all you guys!
Logan

(i'm finally part of the club heh..)
 
You can use decals for things like blood.

As for a rocket going through smoke, no we aren't simulating smoke, but
there's no reason you couldn't do this in a mod if you wanted.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael [mailto:****************]
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 9:17 AM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: hl2 gib question

hi rick

i've been talking with a couple ppl at some forums i visit and was
wondering if this would be possible.
could you attach blood and gibs to a model without swapping the model
out? for example you blow apart a antlion it's blood and guts spray all
over you.
could you have blood on your gun and if you looked in a mirror on other
parts of your body with out swapping models?

also in source if i shot a rocket through some smoke would the smoke
swirl?

thank you for your time
michael
 
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