THE REAL DEAL with the HL2 source

(Whoops, instead of editing the first post I posted another! Terribly sorry for the double error)

Mountain Man - heh, I wasn't entirely serious about that, but I can't help thinking that there's something cool about having very current **Half-Life 2** source floating around! whooppee!! :D


Originally posted by gloryofbach
It would be great from an environmental point of view if someone discovered how to make a revolutionary solar powered house and the blueprints were leaked, so we could all make our own houses like this without paying fees for the technology.

Yea that was why the analogy was bad.

having this information leaked is theft of his intellectual property

I do agree with some aspects of patents, almost all aspects of trademarks, and think that copyright is mostly a good idea (although taken way too far nowadays), but I do not agree with the notion "intellectual property". Ideas should not be owned. It is wrong. Also, no "theft" can occur with ideas.

If you do not think this is bad, you probably have never authored valuable intellectual property content.

Well it's value is dubious, but if I ever do create some worthy immaterial things, I will have to consider what do to do... it's a tough question.

Certainly a project on the scale of HL2 needs the protection of copyright for a limited time, otherwise the financial incentive would be too small.

Take it from someone working in the games development industry, this goes on all the time unfortunately, and just as common in app development.

In how large a scale? Sure, some segments will get copied, but surely not the whole engine?

Anyway, this point need not be debated - we'll just have to wait and see how HL2's licensing takes off to have some idea if damage has occurred.

Thanks for the tip. I did and the first result was:

hehe yea that's the bad point about that particular search. :) But the point still stands, having secret source code does not prevent the finding and exploitation of security holes, having it open forces a new level of security. Of course, Valve hardly would have hoped to have it happen so close to release...

I spent three years of a Doctorate Degree covering this topic as well as Alife issues. Rest assured if reverse engineering was as easy as you claim, there would not be a commercial software industry.

Wow

But you claimed it was nigh impossible, I said not quite, I didn't go so far as to say it was easy. I do know that at least many interoperability issues with Linux have been solved by reverse engineering and I'm under the assumption that crackers (ppl who break software copy protection) think it's usually doable.
 
Utter bull about underhanded devs not using or at least learning from the source code...


Think back to the days when you needed a term paper, and FAST! What did you do? Copy of course. But did you copy and paste? Hell no!

You shifted the body around, reworded the thesis statement, did a whole new conculsion, and threw in some errors to throw the teacher off.

Thats whats going to happen with this, Devs will make minor changes to the code and call it their baby.:x
 
reply

some asked : <quote>3. About the Outlook hack/vulnerability - was it the case that Gabe didn't patch his email client and left it open to attack?</quote>

its also quite possible he did patch and the patch didnt patch the problem. this recently happened with the rpc weakness in windows. the patch microsoft released did NOT fix the problem in rpc. It left open at least 2 known ways to exploit it. more info on that particular patch con be found at www.cert.org
 
Originally posted by p00m3rific
also reverse engineering is illegal
Click to expand...

hmmmhh? Not when I last checked, although certain evil entities have been making attempts to change the state of affairs. If it were, surely a lot of Open Source softfware projects would be in great difficulties?
 
Thanks for your intelligent reply Gotham, the point I wanted to make is software engineering is like any other industry, there are people with morals and people without. Unfortunately there are enough of the without morals people in the software industry to make this leak big deal.

This may be completely off the point, and again I mean no insunuations whatsoever, but a day or two before the leak, someone in this forum posted a link to the Valve people biography section, where an artist chap had had his entire biography replaced with "FIRED."

There was speculation that this was so unprofessional of Valve that he must have done something VERY silly to incite such spite of normally mild mannered Valve. Later, the biography returned to normal, a few hours before the leak happened.

Is this related? Gabe did not state which PC the source came from.
 
Suprised no one's mention the ATI/Valve relationship

I'm suprised no one's mentioned the potential for damage to the ATI/Valve relationship. If ATI did pay "in excess of $8 million" to have HL-2 bundled with their card, and based a whole product launch on being the card to run HL-2 on, this has got to be ringing alarm bells. From what it looks like, ATI pushed a lot of money in backing HL-2 and was expecting a BIG return on investment.

If the leak depreciates the Source engine, then it's not just Valve who is going to suffer -- ATI is going to take a bath right along with them. More worrying, ATI could have grounds to sue Valve for loss of income.
 
Originally posted by Gotham
hmmmhh? Not when I last checked, although certain evil entities have been making attempts to change the state of affairs. If it were, surely a lot of Open Source softfware projects would be in great difficulties?
Click to expand...
It really depends on where you live and exactly what you're trying to reverse engineer. Some countries like Germany have absolutely no legal restriction on reverse engineering while the United States has flirted with such legislation. As far as I know, bans on reverse engineering have never been seriously challenged or upheld in a court of law, so the issue is a bit murky at the moment.
 
Originally posted by Jackl
Utter bull about underhanded devs not using or at least learning from the source code...


Think back to the days when you needed a term paper, and FAST! What did you do? Copy of course. But did you copy and paste? Hell no!

You shifted the body around, reworded the thesis statement, did a whole new conculsion, and threw in some errors to throw the teacher off.

Thats whats going to happen with this, Devs will make minor changes to the code and call it their baby.:x
Click to expand...

again, i'm relatively new to the industry, so i'm probably not as cynical as a lot of devs out there. i'm only going on what i've seen so far, and so far it's been good. pretty much every up and coming developer out there idolises valve and what they've achieved and what they will achieve. to them, it'd be like stealing from their own mothers. granted, there are probably a few bad apples out there, but all we can do is hope that they see some sense in their actions.

as it happens i've never had to 'borrow' someone elses work for a paper because i actually do my own work, which is why i am where i am today. and i'm also attending university so i can learn more about programming, and from what i've learnt so far, code is Sacred. the professionals in the industry will not touch source. they may use it for inspiration (i highly doubt they'll even download the version available), but they definitely will not copy and paste or alter it, because if they've learnt how i'm learning, they'll know that code is Sacred. although another thing we've learnt is to look at other people's code to better improve your own. BUT, i draw the line (and i'm sure many others do as well) at drawing inspiration from source unless it's given or handed out by valve.

i think i've exhausted this topic now, let's try and keep it on topic with gloryofbach's post.
 
Originally posted by Dedalus
don't PM them saying "YOU FECKING BASTARD YOU STOLE HALF-LIFE 2!!!". that won't get you anywhere.
Click to expand...

No i wont bother to do that. But i hope some of them have sense to kick/ban some that request this code in their chan. I seriously hope the major BT source sites removes it. I used to respect the BT community but now... I have lost faith in that community and realize that the hacker groups and groups like Deviance, Fairlight and others alike are filled with absolute wankers who have no respect for other peoples lively hood.

I have lost the respect for Hackers (not that i had any in the first place). I didn't care of them. They were peripheral. But now they have indirectly seriously hurt the community so badly. This is the brainchild of Valve. And groups that are involved in distro of this source are such bastards i cant even begin to comprehend what bad thing i wish upon them.

They need to be punished and denied the right to own any electronic device for the rest of their miserable life, except maybe a lamp.

I am a nice guy. I barely hurt flies even. I have my own house spiders in my wooden house. Small ones that live in the woodwork in the summertime. I see them sometimes running across the floor and avoid stepping on them. But now... if i see a hacker... god help them.

To me, the insects that frequent my house in the summertime are more worth than these wankers. I mean it. I could not care less if they all blew their brains out and spared us all of their worthless being.

May sound wacky but this is how i feel right now.
 
Originally posted by gloryofbach
Thanks for your intelligent reply Gotham, the point I wanted to make is software engineering is like any other industry, there are people with morals and people without. Unfortunately there are enough of the without morals people in the software industry to make this leak big deal.

This may be completely off the point, and again I mean no insunuations whatsoever, but a day or two before the leak, someone in this forum posted a link to the Valve people biography section, where an artist chap had had his entire biography replaced with "FIRED."

There was speculation that this was so unprofessional of Valve that he must have done something VERY silly to incite such spite of normally mild mannered Valve. Later, the biography returned to normal, a few hours before the leak happened.

Is this related? Gabe did not state which PC the source came from.
Click to expand...

i believe this was an office prank. i can't remember the thread but it definitely was a group of Valve employees letting off some steam (no pun intended) and stitching up a colleague for a laugh. i'm sure it's unrelated.
 
Originally posted by Gotham
hmmmhh? Not when I last checked, although certain evil entities have been making attempts to change the state of affairs. If it were, surely a lot of Open Source softfware projects would be in great difficulties?
Click to expand...

If you think opensource survives because of reverse-engineering, not only have you been mis-informed but you dont know s*h*i*t about the concept of opensource.
 
Originally posted by Jackl
Utter bull about underhanded devs not using or at least learning from the source code...

Think back to the days when you needed a term paper, and FAST! What did you do? Copy of course. But did you copy and paste? Hell no!
Click to expand...
Hell no did I do any copying! Some of us do have a sense of integrity.
 
"cries"


I have spent about £1000 in last couple of months getting ready for this game now im going to be waiting good 3-5 months by looks of it ;(
 
Originally posted by p00m3rific
Written code is like your signature - it's not really easy to do what you are talking about and not especially for the stuff that the leaked code here does. Which school did you goto again?
Click to expand...

I went to a top school in my country, with 50000 enrolled students, and incidentally I happened to study computer science. Writing code on a professional level is nothing like your signature, it's like building a house according to a generic blueprint. Thanks to something called design patterns a good implementation of an algorithm will look almost identical to another good implementation of an algorithm made by somoene else, save for variable names, data structures, and orderings of statements and arguments.
 
Hi All, just a quick question, what does this leak mean to the relationship between Havoc and Valve?


**note, i tried to do a search, but soooo many posts regarding this**
 
another point i just thought of, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is also using the Soure engine, i wonder what that means for them.
 
god damn that sucks. :dozey:

i honest to god hope that the hacker gets caught and is jailed.
 
At last, it looks like this forum is working again :)

Please lets keep this thread informative for the community regarding the leaked Half life 2 source. So no flames please.

I have NOT downloaded the code, nor seen it, but have kept abreast of the work being done on the source via the internet.

Again there is widespread confusion on the forums and IRC on what has and has not been derived thus far from the Half life 2 source. Again I do not condone downloading and working with the Half life 2 source, and recommend that no-one on these boards get involved in such activities, but it is important to know the status quo Half life 2 source leak related, if anything to avoid the repeated posts on forums asking whats going on.

Here is what is happening this Sunday 5th October:

1) The leaked Half life 2 source files have been compiled successfully using Microsoft Visual Studio 6 and two addons that I will not name.

2) The resulting build, as stipulated in my early post, contains what appears to be all the executable files required to launch Half-life 2 including WorldCraft editing tool, but thankfully none of the resources required to play it.

3) As it stands, the compiled source cannot be used to load a level. It seems work has been done on a small pack of executables that allow the engine to load a level, albeit with completely minimal support, including no font displayed in the console window. This pack is unfortunately now widely available.

3) The build does contain a test map of a level, that is a simple texture mapped cube in which the player is placed. It seems mapping keyboard shortcuts to various actions via a config file, has allowed players to move around in the cube, jump and duck and nothing else.

4) Various groups are editing the original test map to create simple variations of it, and a physics test map has been seen, which works poorly at the moment.

This is what is happening now. Thankfully it seems at the moment from a Half life 2 game content point of view, it will be difficult to create a map even approaching what will be seen in the final release, let alone add weapons, creatures etc. From this point of view it is hoped Valve's gaming thunder is safe for the moment.

5) Finally there are unsubstantiated rumours that an alpha build of Half life 2 was leaked at the same time as the source, but is being held back for later release. Again these are rumours, and I advise people not to look into them. My personal feeling is the Valve invaders are unlikely to have just made of with the source code, considering the scale and time period of their Valve break in. Releasing an Alpha build of Half life 2 would possible be a final nail in Valve's coffin and the hope is that rumoured FBI involvement in this case, and the quick and effective actions of the community will stop any such event happening.

Thanks for reading!
 
I would love to see the hackers face when his door is smashed and a voice is yelling "This is the FBI. You are under arrest. Come out with your hands up."

An "owned" picture of that would be priceless :)
 
That's great glory. Wisest. Headcrab. EVAR!!!! rooflesomgurtehshitzbitch1"£"%^

Ahem. Yep, so thanks a lot for keeping us up to date.
 
Originally posted by BladeTurbo
another point i just thought of, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is also using the Soure engine, i wonder what that means for them.
Click to expand...

No mention of it over on their boards yet and I'm not pointing it out to them.
 
Ok, so I've been censored... Doesn't matter I guess, internal stuff...
 
As a small addition to you information gloryofbach.

I have heard that making a new map for hl2 is not as straightforward as it may seem, given that the latest worldcraft is in the source. It seems you can't just compile an old hl1 map to hl2 due to the difference in the material system or rather the complete lack of a material system in hl1.
For what i've been told this means that it will take the people who are working on it some time to "break" the material system format to make anything like a playable map.

I'd only say the person who told me this is 60% reliable tho...
 
Community Update: Things are moving very fast indeed...

I repeat I do not have the source nor intend to download it. This is for community information only:

1) The console font issue has been resolved. The console is now fully operational.

2) Multiplayer Half-life 2 is now working. Albeit poorly, at the moment it seems coloured dots represent player entities but it is very possible to make a server, connect to one, and interact with each other.

3) The map designing issue is being tackled head on as we speak. There now exist levels with among other things a maze and what appear to be water features. WorldCraft remains grumpy, but people are getting results from it now. Physics engine remains very touchy, it is responsive for 2/3 seconds then results in an engine crash.

To me personally, this highlights the extreme care software developers must take with exposing PCs with source material to the internet. Once your source is on the net, it is open season, and as can be seen from these results so far, progress in taking it apart can be VERY quick.

More as it arrives.

gloryofbach
 
Valve should release the singleplayer HL2 right NOW. Then nobody would care about this lame tries to get a game for free with stolen source.
 
So you guys are going to talk about this stuff till the game comes out ?

Then again, maybe something new could come up ?? Who knows...

I'm just tired of all this non-sense surrounding this game... I feel sorry for Valve but, oh well, there is not one week without BS and all (coming out / not coming out ? - Delay - Leak, etc.)

At least you still talk and think about the game which I guess is good for Valve... Let them get that...
 
Hi lhauert, I think this thread is more about documenting the half-life 2 source code leak, that is to say dispelling the stupid ideas floating around making people desperate to download the source because they think they can play a fully wokring half-life 2 early.

I hope by showing how useless, and in fact quite technical, it is to get anything really going out of this source leak, we can discourage more people from looking for it.

I am personally also leaning to the opinion now, that single player Half-life 2 should be released as soon as possible, once legal, bug and single player authentification issues are cleared up by Valve. Multiplayer release should follow later after the extensive repair work.
 
i have seen vids of some fellow dutchmen running around in a MULTIPLAYER map (there are no models of themselves, only purple dots), and there are also vids of cilinders breaking into stuff. (all confirmed real btw)

dunno if i can post links (doubt it) so i wont. anyway, so far: multiplayer works, chat works and some physics work
 
Actually, what makes u believe that it is "the real thing" that was leaked out or *how real* it is?
Is there anybody out there who can say:,, yep, this is really a hl2 source code."?
No, nobody can, cause even Valve programmers don't know the whole code and if they do, they will not say or they just can't say.
The question is not about authenticity of the code, but about which part of the code it is.

**And another fact or "About a today's game"**

As u said - game in general consists of two parts: source code and resources,
but u've forgot to say one thing, which I think is the most important(by fps engines mostly).
There is also a middle part(layer) - "the GAME" or the main modification, which is somehow bound to engine.
Not even programers can say where is the border between THE ENGINE, THE GAME IT SELF(usually compiled library that uses
engine for some operations) and THE RESOURCES. Developers have many possibilities on how to make the hierarchy of
the whole game.

For example: the Havoc engine can be integrated in the main engine library OR it can be integrated in *the main modification*, or
it is a completely stand alone library.
It depends on how fast is the communication between the engine library and the game library or on the will of programmers
(they have always some special reasons mostly because of bussines :(, for example: if they want to sell HAVOC as a physical engine
it would be wiser to make it stand alone. But this cannot happen in real, cause everybody could steal it).

Simple picture of the hierarchy:

RESOURCES - graphics,sounds,models,maps
|
GAME LIBRARY - the code of HL2, maybe also of HAVOc
|
ENGINE - usually graphical engine, also solves communication between other parts of the game (an ulitmate ruler ;) )

or the other case ;)

RESOURCES
|
GAME LIBRARY----HAVOC
| |
| +----AI
|
ENGINE

So if u make a modification, it will always use some functions or parts of the main modification(which is, in fact, also
a modification, but it has routines to comunicate with engine, this isn't true in every case)
At present many games support modifactions - all of this has started with quake 8 years ago.
It makes the game to look more simple for programmers.
Example of this kind of engine: Quakez, Unrealz, Lithtech and many others


I can say only one thing: My brother works in a game development team that is "known" for some games.
But the security there is very tight> they have a inner policy, every employee has only a limited access to data
(i think this doesn't apply only for game developement teams), everyone knows only "the stuff" he needs to know and so.
It's impossible to get trough the security especially of any "known" game developement team,
expect the case you want "somebody" to get trough the security intentionally.
There are many network solutions with very tight security on the market and I don't believe that Valve is using the cheap one
(especially when they're developing such an expesive game) or was the budget not enough?

I believe only in 3 possibilities:
-Valve kicked somebody from the team, he got angry and took DA SOURCE(this way he could pass trough security)
-Hype, excuse for delaying
-THERE IS AN ULTIMATE HACKER OUT THERE(I would expect something like this to happen in quake community not here).

How can u say what's a hype and what isn't?
In any case, there is no possibility to stop the spreading of the source code or what it is trough the internet(it can be also passed
physically)...
At least it is an excuse for delaying the release date...
Some important parts are surely missing.
 
This would be an unlikely move from Valve, but I also think that they should just fix the authentication code, and release single player now. I mean, that's the part of the game I'm really looking forward to. Multiplayer would be a component available to download through Steam later on.

But, again, I don't see Valve doing this. *sigh*
 
Excellent points Kimo.

Using your 3 tiered model of development, that involves:

1) Half life 2 RESOURCES
2) Half life 2 SPECIFIC CODE
3) GENERIC SOURCE ENGINE

100% guaranteed are the following facts:

2) and 3) are included in the leak *ALMOST* in their entirity. I say almost because there seem to be stability issues around the WorldCraft editor and the Havok physics engine, indicating perhaps a number of missing source elements, but for the most part it is all there.

The hope is that 1) does not appear any time soon!

Gloryofbach.
 
Well, stability issues might also result not from missing, but simply unfinished code... Gabe himself said that the delay did not occur because of the theft, and I'm inclined to believe him (why should he lie after it all went public?). So, maybe they really needed time to clean up the code and fix those stability bugs which people are now experiencing?
 
Thx. OK, it was a little negative but Don't missunderstand me. I really love HL and I'm looking forward to HL2.
I think Vavle is using the community only to look for the copies of the code. This way they can involve many people to do the hard work.
All this "Hacking" boom is only because they need people to search like "Search engine" and to eliminate every copy.It is faster than any computer(you are also in contact with the "dealer" of the code, in some cases like IRC), reasonable, clever and almost for free. I'm not blaming them, actually I would do the same.

What I'm trying to say is that it was no hacker who stole the code. For me it was just an programmer who got kicked and put the code on Internet. But what I really apreciate is the idea of using the whole community to get rid of the "unwanted child".

PS:Don't blame me for my opinion VALVE guyz I really like u ;) .
 
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