Please do me a favour!

[PrivatePanic]

Hi everybody!

I'm from Germany, and I look forward to HL2 very much.

I wrote an e-mail to Gabe N. but received no answer at all... and because I see in the "Info from Valve ONLY"-Thread that Gabe uses to answer to EVERY mail, to some even not more than minutes after they've been sent, I came to the conclusion that my mails somehow don't reach him... maybe they get lost in the ocean, dunno

So I wanted to ask YOU, someone who's located in the US, to forward my mail to Mr. Gabe Newell and then post the mail w/ his answers into the "Info from Valve ONLY"-Thread.

I hope someone of you will be so nice

Anyway, here is my mail with my questions:

8<-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mister Newell,

I hope you find some time to answer my little questions

I saw the scene where the "sharp metal thing on top of the motor" cuts some of the zombies in halves in the tech-demo.
This and your quote about the crowbar being a "physically simulated metal bar" brings me to 2 questions:


1.) Would it also be possible to create sharp melee weapons like swords in a MOD, that behave realistic (cut soft stuff but recoil from hard stuff)? Would be cool to do a swordfighting MOD

2.) If a person falls onto a spike that points into the air, will the person become impaled to it? Or would he just bounce off.

Some other questions not related to the above:

3.) Would it be possible to apply effects on the live-soundstream from one player to another (the gamevoice), for example to create a radio that actually sounds like one, including static noise and the telephone bandpass?

4.) Is the physics engine capable of simulating physics in a zero-G environment? If on one level of a MOD the gravity would be 0, would the objects, the forces etc. behave realistically?


And one little request (if possible):

Since I only have a DirectX 8.1 capable card (GeForce4 TI 4400), I wonder what graphical FX I'll miss. You answered this question a million times yet, I know But I wanted to ask if it'd be possible for you to post some screenshots of the same scene with DX9, DX8.1, DX6.... hardware so that one can see exactly where the differences would be? Of course it'd have to be a screen with things on it that look different on the differend levels, for example water etc.


Thanks a lot for your time!

Sincerely yours,

Tim M.

PS. please don't mind my School-English

 

[Letters]

He doesn't answer every mail sent to him... just the ones he answers are put in that thread...

 

[Sgt.Igneri]

Originally posted by PrivatePanic
"sharp metal thing on top of the motor"

And one little request (if possible):

Since I only have a DirectX 8.1 capable card (GeForce4 TI 4400), I wonder what graphical FX I'll miss. You answered this question a million times yet, I know But I wanted to ask if it'd be possible for you to post some screenshots of the same scene with DX9, DX8.1, DX6.... hardware so that one can see exactly where the differences would be? Of course it'd have to be a screen with things on it that look different on the differend levels, for example water etc.

AKA= Helicopter prop.

You will not miss out on much with a ti4400.

 

[thehunter1320]

this article can answer your last question:
http://www.planetdescent.com/lyris/hl2_mpc.html
but i'm not going do that e-mail thing cause gabe never answers me no matter what. and e-mails are never lost unless you get a message that they were. so just try again and hope for the best

 

[Chris D]

I can try and answer from what I know.

1) It will be possible to make realistic sword fights. Gabe has said that the HL2 crowbar is physically simulated through the air, meaning if it was to collide with someone else using a crowbar in deathmatch they would recoil away from each other.

2) This would be possible. It may or may not be included directly in HL2, depends if the storyline or design of one of the levels is designed in a way that this might happen. We've seen in the Strider video that a soldier gets impaled on his leg. I guess it could be a similar principal if someone was to fall on a spike.

3) All we know so far is that they are using a much better and clearer voice codec this time around. Whether or not it allows for adding effects to the sound during playback, I don't know. I would have thought it'd be more of a design decision rather than a technical limitation as it may spoil the clarity of the voice. But if it is possible, it'd be a cool realism feature.

4) I've seen a physics engine do this and it handled it quite well, despite it not looking as good as the Havok physics engine that Source uses. It should be possible. Gravity plays a major part in physics, I'm sure it's possible to change the physics perameters.

DX8-DX9 - According to Gabe, the notable differences are that DX9 can do more in a single pass than DX8. Also with DX9 you'll see all the full water effects such as the refraction and reflection and a few more visual details. As they work out how to unlock more features of DX9 they'll be implemented through Steam. This is in the last few pages of the Info thread and it has a little bit more about what would be missing with DX8.

 

[Ridic]

i wish that they would just remove the word delay from the dictionary.

Interesting enough this is the wrong thread

 

[PrivatePanic]

Thank you for your answers so far!

I'd rather not try again and again and again because I already tried it twice (ca. 1 month apart) and I don't want to fall on his nerves

Well let's see, maybe I'll try it one more time after another month...

 

[dscowboy]

They are good questions. I have a feeling Gabe and company don't answer any e-mails where they'd have to say "no".

 

[Ahnteis]

>>1.) Would it also be possible to create sharp melee weapons like swords in a MOD, that behave realistic (cut soft stuff but recoil from hard stuff)? Would be cool to do a swordfighting MOD

You can only cut things into pieces where those pieces have been predefined. That said, you could certainly have damage specific to certain objects.


>>2.) If a person falls onto a spike that points into the air, will the person become impaled to it? Or would he just bounce off.

Ever watch the strider video?

 

[koopa]

I would guess (not that I've emailed Gabe) that the shorter the question, the more likely to get answered. A list of good questions like that needs a lot of work, where as he can answer 'TELL ME IS IT DELAYED' in about 5 seconds.

Maybe it would be better to split the list into a couple of separate emails?

For what it's worth:
1) Yes but probably not the hard/soft thing without some fiddling about
2) Would guess bounce off if it's part of level geometry. Moddable with some effort?
3) Probably
4) I'm sure that the gravity (static acceleration) would work out of the box. Other effects would depend on the simulation depth.

 

[koopa]

Originally posted by Ahnteis
>>2.) If a person falls onto a spike that points into the air, will the person become impaled to it? Or would he just bounce off.

Ever watch the strider video?

I suspect that's a scripted effect, but the strider is not part of the level. I would guess that if you let the player get impaled you have to be careful with your level design. Gordon would be banging his head on tables, stubbing his feet on the floor and all sorts

 

[ReZeroX]

alot of your questions were answered in HL1. sword fight mod -> PVK. zero-g -> we could float in HL1 so why not? (sv_gravity) radio with effects -> the marines had it so im sure that sound filters could be applied on the fly.

im not trying to be an ass if it sounds like i am, just pointing out that many things people ask if they are possible in HL2 were already fesible or were done to some extent in HL1.

 

[koopa]

Surely the marine radio effects are just in the recorded WAV files, rather than applied as filters in real time. Pedantic, I know

Thanks for posting the headsup on PVK, I'd never heard of it:

http://www.planethalflife.com/features/motw/pvk2.shtm

 

[PrivatePanic]

well.

sword fight mod -> PVK. zero-g -> we could float in HL1 so why not? (sv_gravity)

The difference here is: HL2 has got its physics engine that HL1 didn't have. Things work a little bit different here, and with "realistic physics in a zero G environment" I DON'T just mean "floating players"

radio with effects -> the marines had it so im sure that sound filters could be applied on the fly.

Ummm. The grunt voices were prerecorded wave files with effects applied to 'em. Off-line, if you want so. This has NOTHING to do with FX for sound streams, like gamevoice, to what my question applied.

By the way: No - I also don't want to be an ass

 

[ReZeroX]

im pretty sure that the physics will work the same in zero-g to 100-g, its not the physics have preprogrammed responses right? i dunno anything about coding but it just seems like it wouldnt make a differnce how the gravity is.

also i do know the grunts were wavs, but applying a filter for a sound, such as static, takes all of 3 seconds on a mid-range comp (i mean it does on my comp when i mess around with the filters in cool-edit) so applying a lesser quality filter over a message should be really easy. i think i remember a program or a headset that could change your voice as you talk, and there are toys at TRU that do it too. so should be the same? at least thats my take on it.

 

[PrivatePanic]

Well the SB!Live for example can do it. So with EAX it's possible in any case (because the SB has a DSP on it) but it'd be sad if it'd only work for SB!Live owners.

The main problem here is rendering the FX on the stream in real-time.

 

[ReZeroX]

yeah, im sure the majority of people dont have the right hardware/software/power for it. one thing they could do is make it an option to toggle. remember the first HL had that sound test at the begginning? well they could make a more advanced one for HL2. could work.

 

[Ridic]

cant wait to hear my audigy2

 

[Dile]

Fking Deja'vu;( ...

 

[lambda^2]

Hey Private Panic, thats funny cause I'm also from Germany and I also tried to ask Gabe the exact first question in your email some weeks ago

I also have a question about HL2 itself, if you have the time I would really apprecaite an answer, here goes: When the crowbar is a simulated steel bar swinging through air, the damage it brings is dependant of it's mass and velocity. But is it also dependant of the shape of the object? Now, when I create a weapon with the same mass as the crowbar, but with sharp edges or spikes, will it automatically affect more (or different) damage than the original crowbar? For example, when the "rotating blades-machine" in the traptown video wouldn't have been modeled with sharp (thin) edges, would it still have cut the zombies? Would it have done the same amount of damage?

I even sent 2 emails with that question but no reply ... (my 3rd mail about the easter egg and a screenshot was replied, btw) I think it's pure coincidence when he answers and when not, but there seems to be a quite high probability. Just send it again, I bet he just didn't read the first one so he can't be annoyed when you try again... or he just hates German people cause we messed up the german HL1 single player :E j/k