B
Banana
Guest
Hello Mr. Newell,
How are you and the rest of the Valve team? I like your work so far and I am really looking forward to Half-life 2.
I was wondering if you could answer some questions if you had the time. If not then that is OK.
1) How are things at the offices at the moment? Are people stressed about getting the game out or are things on schedule enough where things are still relatively calm?
People have done this before, so things are relatively calm. It's actually easier to be close to the end than to be in the middle.
2) Do any of you just take a break and play Half-life 2 for fun? Decide not to look for bugs and just play it as a game (whether it be the single or multiplayer portion) or does the fact that you made the game take some fun out of playing it for pure enjoyment?
Not really. It just isn't possible to have been this close to something for this long and play it as a game. I still can't play Half-Life 1 for fun. I keep gritting my teeth and wishing we could have made X better or fixed Y.
3) On a related note, is there any person on the team that still has not played parts of the game?
No.
4) Do any of you still play the original Half-life singleplayer?
We've all played it so many times we can play it in our heads without a computer.
5) Does Dhabih Eng still work for you? How much art does he contribute towards the game? Is there any concept art drawn by him or any of the artists that did not make it into the game in any form and if so can/will that be released to us for drooling purposes?
Yes Dhabih is still here and still doing great stuff. We'll release more of his illustrations as we get closer to shipping.
6) Do you guys listen to music while working and if so what are the popular songs around the office?
We've really fragmented musically. I have been learning to sing khoomei in self defense. Most people have become hyper-eclectic. Eric Smith uses DVDs instead of music for his background audio.
7) Not revealing anything about the story, HL2 seems to be (as far as i can gather) less linear in that there can be more than one way to solve a problem. Will there be multiple endings? More specifically i was wondering if there is an ending if you die. Most games just let you reload but if the player dies do we get information on how things turned out because we
failed?
8) How often (at the moment) do you read forums where people are discussing your game and do you ever feel like joining the discussions?
We'll check on the forums if there is something we need to respond to (like random retailer ship dates), but lately we have had less time to hang out on the forums than we usually do.
9) Metal Gear Solid 2 (and maybe 1 i dont recall) had name tags for dead people and those names were the names of some selected fans. Have you ever thought of doing something like this (incorporating fan names) into the game somehow? If so, can i be Dead Scientist # 42 ?
There will be some surprises in the games. There's at least one Easter egg in the videos that no one has noticed yet.
10) After the game is released, if i send you (Valve) my game box (Limited Edition Hopefully) will you sign it?
Sure. We'd be happy to.
11) Lastly, a more technical question: Do you support gaming on laptops? My laptop is fairly high end as far as laptops go (2.0Ghz, 512 Ram) but it has a Mobility Radeon 9000 64MB vid card. Now this (in my opinion is a great video card especially for a laptop. Will the game run nicely on the system or will i have to suffer because i have a laptop? Some gaming companies dont
like to support laptops
.
A bunch of us have laptops we play on when we travel (or when we need to demo), so HL-2 will be laptop friendly.
How are you and the rest of the Valve team? I like your work so far and I am really looking forward to Half-life 2.
I was wondering if you could answer some questions if you had the time. If not then that is OK.
1) How are things at the offices at the moment? Are people stressed about getting the game out or are things on schedule enough where things are still relatively calm?
People have done this before, so things are relatively calm. It's actually easier to be close to the end than to be in the middle.
2) Do any of you just take a break and play Half-life 2 for fun? Decide not to look for bugs and just play it as a game (whether it be the single or multiplayer portion) or does the fact that you made the game take some fun out of playing it for pure enjoyment?
Not really. It just isn't possible to have been this close to something for this long and play it as a game. I still can't play Half-Life 1 for fun. I keep gritting my teeth and wishing we could have made X better or fixed Y.
3) On a related note, is there any person on the team that still has not played parts of the game?
No.
4) Do any of you still play the original Half-life singleplayer?
We've all played it so many times we can play it in our heads without a computer.
5) Does Dhabih Eng still work for you? How much art does he contribute towards the game? Is there any concept art drawn by him or any of the artists that did not make it into the game in any form and if so can/will that be released to us for drooling purposes?
Yes Dhabih is still here and still doing great stuff. We'll release more of his illustrations as we get closer to shipping.
6) Do you guys listen to music while working and if so what are the popular songs around the office?
We've really fragmented musically. I have been learning to sing khoomei in self defense. Most people have become hyper-eclectic. Eric Smith uses DVDs instead of music for his background audio.
7) Not revealing anything about the story, HL2 seems to be (as far as i can gather) less linear in that there can be more than one way to solve a problem. Will there be multiple endings? More specifically i was wondering if there is an ending if you die. Most games just let you reload but if the player dies do we get information on how things turned out because we
failed?
8) How often (at the moment) do you read forums where people are discussing your game and do you ever feel like joining the discussions?
We'll check on the forums if there is something we need to respond to (like random retailer ship dates), but lately we have had less time to hang out on the forums than we usually do.
9) Metal Gear Solid 2 (and maybe 1 i dont recall) had name tags for dead people and those names were the names of some selected fans. Have you ever thought of doing something like this (incorporating fan names) into the game somehow? If so, can i be Dead Scientist # 42 ?
There will be some surprises in the games. There's at least one Easter egg in the videos that no one has noticed yet.
10) After the game is released, if i send you (Valve) my game box (Limited Edition Hopefully) will you sign it?
Sure. We'd be happy to.
11) Lastly, a more technical question: Do you support gaming on laptops? My laptop is fairly high end as far as laptops go (2.0Ghz, 512 Ram) but it has a Mobility Radeon 9000 64MB vid card. Now this (in my opinion is a great video card especially for a laptop. Will the game run nicely on the system or will i have to suffer because i have a laptop? Some gaming companies dont
like to support laptops
.A bunch of us have laptops we play on when we travel (or when we need to demo), so HL-2 will be laptop friendly.
