July 30th Release Candidate almost impossible...

[Crusader]

Most of you are making one fatal mistake. You're assuming that this RC is THE final RC. Nobody ever said that was the case, so there is nothing new here. The last RC might be 2 months from now if things went badly wrong... CS:S being beta tested doesn't change a thing.

Except maybe show some people who mistakenly believed the release was imminent the error of their ways.

But then, I was expecting to see a surprise release in early July, so I can't exactly make fun

 

[tkato]

Uhhh....They have been saying that in the Valve thread buddy
I dont think anyone said HL2 will be finished in 3 weeks though, not in this thread or the Valve thread

Gabe said they need to add some Textures and fix some things.
if you guys think they will hold a 6 year project for a mod, you are really stupid :|.
THE GAME IS GONNA COME OUT IN THE DATE THAT VALVE SPECFIED.

 

[Sparta]

Well this is only time so far i've heard Valve ever refer to RC. They also have said that they are very positive they will make the summer release date. And i'm gonna take a guess and say it takes more then a month or so to make another RC if that means they are still updating and developing their work

Oh and tkato, did i ever say that they would delay HL2 because of CS:Source in this thread or any other? Did i?
Also like you said, all they have to do is finish some textures and fix a few things before the end of the month. Meaning this will be the last RC so it will only be a week or two before Vivendi give the word and HL2 has gone gold

 

[tkato]

I think Valve are gonna rush like hell now... now when d3 is out it's gonna be a war.
not between Actvision and ID but with Nvidia and Ati as u know D3 signed with Nvidia and Ati with HL2.
Ati are gonna rush Valve...

 

[Sparta]

I doubt that. If they try they'll have no influence anyway. Because Valve are already rushing enough as it is

 

[Gunner]

Hey it was an extremely optimistic estimate based off the July 30th info Gabe told us.

This was before the July 28th CS:S beta date was announced. So HL2 may still be finished in 3 weeks but CS:S may hold up the release date by quite a bit.

Not at all, look at it this way: they send the CS beta with the RC to VUG. If everything's in order they print the whole shebang and put the game on shelves in august/september or whatever, you go buy the game install HL2 & CS:S beta and when you go to play CS:S online it downloads a shitload of patches just like always and there you go: CS:S v1.0. They can patch the game through Steam that's what I'm trying to say here, for all we know they could even just put a steam install file on the CS:S CD and we'll download everything through Steam.

 

[MaDMaXX]

Yes there are a few things like textures, and as has already been stated, this is NOT the final RC, Even Gabe said they normally have a few RC's.

But, as the information stands at this time, i'd say that the playable version of CS Source (as opposed to the SDK sample) will not be on the HL2 CD, but will be available as a free download to HL2 owners, in the same way people who own HL1 got all the mods free by right of the CD key.

 

[MaDMaXX]

CS Source is an in house mod, for want of a better referral, its not something that would be submitted under the RC conditions.

In fact, based on that, it shouldn't hold it up much at all.

 

[Sparta]

Yes there are a few things like textures, and as has already been stated, this is NOT the final RC, Even Gabe said they normally have a few RC's.

Not necessarily. Gabe stated that an RC is what they believe to be a shippable version of the game, it all lies with Vivendi now.

 

[PvtRyan]

My God.... must you guys overanalyze everything? I suggest to STFU because we don't really know how 1) The gamesbusiness works 2) How the procedure with RC's goes 3) How CS:S influences the releasedate of HL2

We dont know if it's impossible, we can't know if it's impossible. Did you hid under Gabe's desk or something iamatwat?

 

[FISKER_Q]

Well the open beta is obviously for a bigger test audience to bugsquash even quicker.

So what i'm guessing for is that they're trying to take off some beta and release candidate time. To get it released on time.

That said, your explanation is perfectly useable. They already said it would be gold in August, and then released in fall. With that information we can say that the RC process is expected to take less than a month.

Since they're building all official addons, to the Source engine, i would also believe that the RC period for those products either is smaller, or that they were done a long time ago.

However if not smaller, and it does take that month, the game will be ready aproximately the 17th or 20th september, for release the 28th september in the us, and the 1st october for the european audience. And that's still a kinda summer release, but fall as they said.

So the customers won't feel cheated cause it was practically the last day of summer it went gold.

 

[Sparta]

My God.... must you guys overanalyze everything

Uh dude...this is HL2.net.....you're talking to the same people who spent about 20 hours decoding a photo of half a white board from Valve's office.

 

[FISKER_Q]

Uh dude...this is HL2.net.....you're talking to the same people who spent about 20 hours decoding a photo of half a white board from Valve's office.

You're telling me it took you 20 hours to decode rot13?

 

[subtlesnake]

As I see it, the CS:S test is just a fallback measure to ensure that there are no major bugs in the engine. When the final RC is delivered to Vivendi, it's then their job to test it. As this is happenening feedback will be collected from the CS:S trial and hopefuly the game wont have to be delayed significantly.

Notice he didn't use the word gold he said final RC.

 

[Sparta]

You're telling me it took you 20 hours to decode rot13?

No i meant that it took 20 hours in total to figure out every thing to do with the white board. Remember there was that secret web page, then after that fake Google web page with a referance to Charlie Brown, and after that there was something els but i losted track of the thread. Last i remember it stemmed from a thread that was a day old and made a new one that was about trying to solve the other "test". It was probably more like 15 hours though...or maybe 16.

 

[Cyber$nake]

Well you do have to consider that theres no reason why VU couldnt be checking hl2 while the CS Source beta is going on. Valve said that it would only take a couple weeks, and it may take a while (longer than cs:s at least) for VU to test halflife2, so they wmight just send in CS:S when their 1/2 way done w/ checking hl2.

 

[Someone]

I said a similar thing in another thread, so I tend to agree.

Just too much stuff to do and too many things which still need to be worked out and not enough time between them if something should go wrong. What if the RC is rejected a time or two (which gabe said happens most times)? What if CS:Source beta has problems which needs to be fixed? If those problems are Source related, than that means HL2 will have to be fixed as well. Depending on what happens, there could indeed be a month or more just for a gold announcement.

I hope it's not too horrible a time, but I do think late sept, early oct, may start to be more realistic. Two week beta (from July 28th), say another two weeks to fix and finalize everything, another week (or more) for the RC testing, goes gold, another two weeks until it hits store. I think at best that would be a mid to late september ..at best.

 

[Someone]

Well you do have to consider that theres no reason why VU couldnt be checking hl2 while the CS Source beta is going on. Valve said that it would only take a couple weeks, and it may take a while (longer than cs:s at least) for VU to test halflife2, so they wmight just send in CS:S when their 1/2 way done w/ checking hl2.

I was gonna write the same thing, but the problem is they're testing the CS:Source to test the SOurce engine, which obviously powers HL2. So they wouldn't be able to send off a RC until they know that would work okay. Otherwise, what happens if the CS:source beta has major Source engine issues?

 

[DevgruSeal]

Well, Sept 20th is 3 days after TS2 comes out...I'll have Sims 2 to play while I wait for HL2... :hmph:

Oh well...that'll be fun until HL2 comes out... :dork:

 

[ACLeroK212]

"Sigh"

Please read my original post. I dont give two shits when CS:S is due for release. The CS:S BETA, which is a test for the Source engine, is due on the 28th. Do you really believe Valve will release a public beta/test for an engine they intend on finishing two days after the test? That just wouldnt make sense, there's no way in hell they could fix all of Source's bugs in 2 days.

Please refer me to these "other threads." I'm very curious.

The CS:S beta testing is not a source engine test. They've already done beta testing for that. It's just a conversion and probably doesn't even utilize the full capabilities of the source engine in the way HL2 does so why would they do beta testing for an engine on a game that doesn't even measure up to the full potential of the engine. Yes they will be testing for CS:S bugs within the engine but that is just to make sure the conversion goes smoothly from the old engine to the new one.

They also have not stated that CS:S will ship in the box. Yes, they've said "with HL2" but that could just as easily mean they'll release it over steam along with HL2.

edit:
btw, the original HL only required one RC, and considering how adament valve is about releasing the game "when it's done" there's just as good of a chance that the original RC for HL2 could go gold as there is of there being multiple RCs.

 

[subtlesnake]

The CS:S beta testing is not a source engine test. They've already done beta testing for that. It's just a conversion and probably doesn't even utilize the full capabilities of the source engine in the way HL2 does so why would they do beta testing for an engine on a game that doesn't even measure up to the full potential of the engine. Yes they will be testing for CS:S bugs within the engine but that is just to make sure the conversion goes smoothly from the old engine to the new one.

We're quite close to shipping Half-Life 2. One thing you'd like to do before you ship a brand new game engine to millions of people is make sure you haven't missed something that is going to affect a bunch of people (.e.g "argh, why didn't it occur to us that some people might have DX 9 hardware, but only have DX8 installed").

So we wanted to ship something that people could play, that lots of people knew how to play, that would get the Source engine into lots and lots of people's hands. Shipping a part of CS:Source was the best compromise of a number of factors. Hopefully it will go smoothly, and we'll be that much closer to getting Half-Life 2 out the door. If it doesn't go smoothly, better find out now rather than after we've shipped Half-Life 2.

We have to restrict the number of people just to manage the amount of data we get back. Cybercafes are nice, because we can also talk to the cybercafe operators to find out what they are learning as well. CZ owners are a good group because we know they are recently active.

 

[Deadlor]

Who's to say that HL2 will not be released just as CS:S comes out of beta. That's what I expected to happen all along. Maybe they just put the beta CS:S on the disc and it updates through Steam when HL2 is released?

 

[GorgeousOrifice]

The CS:S beta testing is not a source engine test. They've already done beta testing for that. It's just a conversion and probably doesn't even utilize the full capabilities of the source engine in the way HL2 does so why would they do beta testing for an engine on a game that doesn't even measure up to the full potential of the engine.

Wrong.

Think about it: what does Valve benefit from the CS:S beta? It doesn't help HL2 any because the two games share nothing in terms of content (maps, textures, etc.) Both of them do use Source. Source needs wide testing because it's a completely new engine. If there are any huge bugs in Source that somehow escaped Valve's testing (and there probably are), a large beta test will help solve that. So, what should they test? HL2 multiplayer, which is hotly anticipated and is going to RC soon? No, because they want that to be a surprise. DoD:Source or TFC:Source? Not a big enough userbase. CS:S? Thousands of servers, tens of thousands of players -- bingo.

The only reason for the CS:S beta is to test Source. That's IT.

They also have not stated that CS:S will ship in the box. Yes, they've said "with HL2" but that could just as easily mean they'll release it over steam along with HL2.

Right.

"Included with", which is what Doug has said on numerous occasions, means that if you buy HL2 you will also get CS:S AT SOME POINT, i.e., "when it's done". Steam would be the obvious choice. Maybe they'll include a voucher in the retail box to mail in and get a CD when it's done, assuming CS:S isn't ready when HL2 is.

I seriously doubt they'd hold up HL2 once it's ready to go because CS:S isn't ready. VU would kill them.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

I'm getting really tired of HL2.net these days.. it used to be fun, but now all I see are threads of people complaining and flaming.. arrrrrrrr....
* Shuzer jumps off a cliff

All good things end.

AND I'LL MAKE DAMN SURE OF THAT!!!

We can come back here in 2 years with 1 member and 2 guests browsing the forums and remember what it used to be like. You'll be damn grateful there were people to argue to with! You'll be grateful there was emotion such as happiness, hate, love (babyheadcrab loves 63), disappointment, anger, frustration. You'll be sitting in this empty shell of a community and remember the "old times".

Soak it up. This is halflife2.net when it's full of life and in it's prime. It won't last forever.

So, un-jump from that cliff!!

 

[kungfucheez]

well ina bout 2 years they might be rleasing hl3 so by then we will have screens and stuff plus by then ill be playing CS:s or other games that have been released cause we would have been playing hl2 for about 2 years, and for me I usually like palying games for a bout a year

 

[Mr-Fusion]

well ina bout 2 years they might be rleasing hl3 so by then we will have screens and stuff

If Valve ever finished a game in 2 years i would roll over and die.

That sort of thing just doesn't happen!! :hmph:

 

[Orange]

the RC for hl2 doesn't necessarily include CS:S. Even if they come in box (who knows) they could be. . .*gasp* on seperate cds! and CS:S would need its own RC!

But that's just speculation. It's not whay I think will happen. I don't have a clue.
It's a POSSIBILITY.

I don't think anyone has proof WHAT is being tested and debugged with CS:S(netcode, source engine, SDK , whatever, performance, etc). Any deducing we do could be wrong because we don't know what they are/will be doing, or if anything unexpected comes up.

 

[ACLeroK212]

the RC for hl2 doesn't necessarily include CS:S. Even if they come in box (who knows) they could be. . .*gasp* on seperate cds! and CS:S would need its own RC!

But that's just speculation. It's not whay I think will happen. I don't have a clue.
It's a POSSIBILITY.

I don't think anyone has proof WHAT is being tested and debugged with CS:S(netcode, source engine, SDK , whatever, performance, etc). Any deducing we do could be wrong because we don't know what they are/will be doing, or if anything unexpected comes up.

if it's going to be released in the box with HL2 then it will be in the RC because vivendi is going to want to test anything they put they're name on before it goes on sale.

 

[psyno]

As we know, CS:S beta is a beta, or public test program for the Source engine(source), therefore if these dates were true, Valve have given themselves a total of two days to find and eliminate all the bugs that CS:S beta reveals.

Public "betas" are quite frequently internally known as release candidates. If you have Win XP SP2 RC2 installed on your computer, for example, you're taking part in the Microsoft's public beta, but it's not actually beta software, it's a second go at a release candidate.

My bet is that the CS:S beta is more to get the community excited about HL2/CS:S than to find bugs.

*edit: VALVe also knows it can get away with non-critical bugs because of easy patch distribution via Steam. :|

 

[ACLeroK212]

Public "betas" are quite frequently internally known as release candidates. If you have Win XP SP2 RC2 installed on your computer, for example, you're taking part in the Microsoft's public beta, but it's not actually beta software, it's a second go at a release candidate.

My bet is that the CS:S beta is more to get the community excited about HL2/CS:S than to find bugs.

*edit: VALVe also knows it can get away with non-critical bugs because of easy patch distribution via Steam. :|

I agree that the beta is probably more of a marketing tool than anything.

 

[Seppo]

Since Half-Life 2 isn't coming out before my vacation ends, it doesn't really matter if it's released in late August or late September. I'm just glad it's coming out in like two months. And the first weeks of school usually go pretty fast, plus I have Doom III in my hands by the 13th of August.

 

[GorgeousOrifice]

If Valve ever finished a game in 2 years i would roll over and die.

That sort of thing just doesn't happen!! :hmph:

Half-Life 1 took two years.

 

[kungfucheez]

Whyt he 13th of august, thought Doom3 was August 5th

 

[Seppo]

Whyt he 13th of august, thought Doom3 was August 5th

Yeah, but all us lifetime losers living in Europe are getting the experience at the 13th of August.
Except for those royal UK'ers who will of course get it before us

 

[oldagerocker]

Good Ol' US of K.

 

[InSaNe TuBaíNa]

i´m thinking Half-Life 2 will be released on 30th September, corresponding to the Half-Life´s 6 years date.

If this is the date, there are 76 days left until release. I think Valve will have time to fix al the bugs, release the cs beta, fix it´s bugs, send it to vivendi........

 

[Stryyder]

Speculation as to what is possible or impossible is pointless at this point as we have no idea what resources Valve has available, where they are currently at progress wise, or what they truly intend to do.

Secondly the CS source is a BETA which means it may be a few levels, and needs not be that functional at all but what it will do is give a good test as to how STEAM distribution to a large number of users with a decent size file will work on STEAM's current configuration. I originally believed they would do this with the E3 2004 Binks but with Doom 3 coming out no one is going to give a crap about those. Also by using the BETA which is only being Distributed to CZ and Cyber Cafe users, they can also test their security on STEAM as well.

It makes perfect sense that they would test one of their distribution methods at the same time they are submitting an RC for review. It will then allow them to put resources into STEAM if they have any issues while they are waiting for Vivendi to get back to them with issues.

 

[Cyber$nake]

yeah that just about sums it up...

 

[RoguePsi]

Who said CS:S has to go through the RC process at the same time as HL2? The July 30th date was about HL2 and no mention of CS:S was made. I know they are to be released together but given the vast difference in game size, it'll take a lot less time to go through the RC of CS:S then it would of HL2.

 

[iamaelephant]

From the Valve info thread-

The release of CS:Source is basically the Source engine plus CS game
code plus the content to play one map (probably de_dust).

The reason we are doing this is primarily to find out what problems
there are with the Source engine when we give it to a couple of hundred
thousand people.

We're doing this before we RC Half-Life 2 to give us time to fix any
issues that surface (e.g. "on this graphics card with this version of
this BIOS and this video adapter the game won't run in widescreen
modes").

iamaelephant: 1
All of my doubters: 0

He also says at the bottom:
CS:Source is in great shape, and I don't see it impacting the RC date.
It is the plan to include it in the regular and collectors edition
boxes.

But personally, I just cant see how it's even possible to do a full beta test and fix all the bugs in two days. Even if CS:S beta came out today I would have my doubts.