The little glowing thingummies...

Brian Damage

Brian Damage

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I don't recall that this has been discussed yet...

Did we ever find out, or were we ever told, what those little glowing will-o-wisp things were? Y'know, the ones that sometimes seemed to guide you... and were also in Nihilanth's chamber, if I remember correctly...

Ghosts? Bugs? Some kind of monitoring system used by the Xenians?

And will they be back in HL2?
 
not that i remember, and i've never heard any more about them in HL2.
 
Well, we still don't know exactly what original HL enemies/creatures will return in HL2 for the most part...
 
Thats a good point, I don't think there is a scrap of info in either HL or OF what those things are. There were alot of them at the beggining of HL though, they might be something from inbetween Xen and Earth.
 
mrchimp said:
Thats a good point, I don't think there is a scrap of info in either HL or OF what those things are. There were alot of them at the beggining of HL though, they might be something from inbetween Xen and Earth.
Click to expand...

I dont think he means the cockroaches in Black Mesa but the "butterflies" on xen, right??
 
if you play op4 u will see those alot, and when you get to the big pink portal thing, notice the little glowy things are going into the portal, i think they are some energy stuff i am not sure really
 
I think their nothing more than visual effects done the only way they could in the engine at the time. If it was redone in Source they'd probably look like bright lights zooming about which you often see in movies around vortex or wormhole type effects. I certainly don't think they were meant to be sentient. Just, energy type stuff being sucked into the large permanent portal that appeared
 
DESSTROYER said:
if you play op4 u will see those alot, and when you get to the big pink portal thing, notice the little glowy things are going into the portal, i think they are some energy stuff i am not sure really
Click to expand...

I agree with you there, it might be to do with DNA. Mainly because the creature at the end of op4 was called a gene worm. :bounce:
 
Rascall said:
I dont think he means the cockroaches in Black Mesa but the "butterflies" on xen, right??
Click to expand...

He's on about those little 'star' things that you see floating about some times, there's a load of them when that machine goes wrong.
 
if you have the op4 guide it tells about them, they have something to do with the portals, im not really sure its been a while since ive seen it
 
In OpFor there were a lot of them kind of guiding you and showing where you should go, but I don't remember seeing any of them in HL. Can someone give me a few examples where they were in HL?
 
in HL I never see then,maybe are something who the another race was apear in op4 use it and the original not use it,or maybe they are a help from someone or something(maybe G-man)to destroy that big worn
or maybe the creators of HL op4 made thet lights just because they like it
 
They are similar to the thing that guides you in Halo through the "Library"...
 
Well, they were guiding you. I seem to remember that there was at least one that kept popping up in that level with the simulated Xenian habitats...
 
Brian Damage said:
Well, they were guiding you. I seem to remember that there was at least one that kept popping up in that level with the simulated Xenian habitats...
Click to expand...

i remember that part too. whenever there was a hallway with big glass windows along one side facing onto where they had all the xen creatures, the light would lead you down the hall. i think i saw that in almost every hall like that--right when you stepped into the hallway the light would appear and go around to the other end.
 
The earlier comment about the cockroaches made me think... were they some sort of Xenian vermin? They certainly had yellow blood...

Stepping on the little buggers was fun...
 
Oh hell yes. But they can't be from Xen becuase they're in the Hazard Course. Unless they are some kind of Xen fauna that escaped the labs and spread like vermin throughout the facility but no-one noticed because they looked like normal cockroaches.
 
I remember em too :D. so are they like supposed to be an intelligent life form.. from the xen world... or something else... did they used to lead you perhaps into hard to find directions... ? but i cant remember getting stuck on which direction to go in...:p???, maybe they where a concious attempt to bring more detail into the game, intresting stuff. like the little glowing bug things
 
Yeah, like they only existed in gordons head... wooohoo! a crazy scientist who saves the world!
 
wow, valve might of really put some incredibly deep thought into Half Life, little niggly bits like that. Cant you just tell they know how to create an intresting enviroment through and through.:), cant wait to see what niggly little things they cram into HL2, and theres all these people criticising the game.. I still havnt lost any patience, im still waiting like a little boy going for a walk to buy his candy :)
 
Then hes high i guess... or perhaps it's those teleporter things and the wierd crystals that made him hallucinate.
 
I know BlackWolfDrk was... and probably still is...

Y'know, they obviosly did put a lot of thought into designing the world of Xen and other environments... those carnivorous "trees" that stab anything that gets too close, the lightbulb plants...
 
yeh they where weird, its almost dream like.. do you think gabe lives in the Xen world :p but I know alot of it was inspired by a book,, one I dont know the name of..:(
 
really ?... is that similar stuff to the Xen ideas,, ? maybe one of us should go research or ask a member of valve, :p
 
Does anyone know anything about this book?

Where to buy it from? What is in it etc?
 
I read the intro to the book and it doesn't sound anything like HL...

I liked Xen, alot of people said it was out of place or something... well of course it's out of place it's in a different dimension.
 
Brian Damage said:
Hippy scientist...?
Click to expand...

Well, he DOES have a pony tail!

And about "The Mist", it's a short story (I think, about 70 pages or so) by Stephen King. It tells a story of a group of people trapped in a grocery store while this weird white mist surrounds everything outside. It is hinted that something went wrong in a nearby military base, where they were supposedly doing some secret research into... err... something weird. Anyhoo, the mist brings some alien creatures with it and kill some of them, before they manage to seal up the place. So after a while trying to figure out what an earth is going on, they finally take a run for it and exit the store and... won't spoil _everything_ for you!

I always liked that particular story, among of the best of King's stuff, IMO. When Gabe mentioned that HL was much inspired by that particular book, I was really blown away. Despite the similarities, I had had no idea whatsoever... stupid me. :/
 
Brian Damage said:
I don't recall that this has been discussed yet...

Did we ever find out, or were we ever told, what those little glowing will-o-wisp things were? Y'know, the ones that sometimes seemed to guide you...
Click to expand...

If you're talking about what I think you are talking about (the circular sparkle sprite things that appeared more often in OP4 and would fly in a line to guide you) then I'm guessing they were just hint-indicators and not representative of actual things that were "really" there. In the hazard course, one appeared at the first health station HEV / charge station, so I guess it was designed to focus your attention on something. In OP4, they would appear to show you which way you were supposed to go.

I'm guessing these won't appear in HL2. Since in one of the bink videos we saw Gordon automatically focus/zoom in on Alyx, I'd guess that if we needed a "hint" or we're supposed to look at something, this zoom technique would be used instead of some floating sparkle.
 
Wait wait wait. What you are talking about were not in Hl1 at all (correct me if I'm wrong), at least not in the same state. IN the hazard course there are slightly different sprites that looked more like cartoon-style glints on shiny surfaces (you always see them on shiny cartoon teeth) and they were just to attract your attention. Since the Hazard Course also featured a hologram, they seemed perfectly credible to me. Also, the ones in the test chamber at the beginning were not the same thing. They were just random energy flux from the resonance cascade (probably). Whereas in Opposing Force, they flitted around and guided you to places. I agree that they are energy being sucked into a teleport or at least a small gap in the fabric of reality. Either that or something to do with that dastardly Race-X.
 
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