The SEVEN hour war

[kupocake]

And no I haven't heard of the 24.

Or the recent version of War of the Worlds either.

 

[Jintor]

Yeah... same mental image.

 

[who is gman?]

? Can someone please tell me what the 24 is??

 

[Planetary]

Guys, Striders are NOTHING. They likely weren't used in the seven hour war at all. What we've seen of the Combine is just a garrison, Earth is just an outpost , the first world they found in our Universe. The seven hour war would have their full force in, which would be unstoppable.

Striders were definitely there. Go back and look at the newspaper clippings in Black Mesa East. You can see a ruined city-scape with Dropships carrying Striders flying overhead. Though they did used more then just them, for sure. The pic of the U.N. headquarters being blown up in New York by something like a gunship, but much larger. I imagine that the Gunships in the game itself were used as the equivalent of fighter jets and other such things, taking out any flying opposition, but that big unnamed thing in the picture was what went after buildings, I think, and did the majority of destroying Ground forces would probably have included the Crab synth and Striders too.

? Can someone please tell me what the 24 is??

Some TV show. Nothing special.

 

[Asknoone]

24 is a fantastic, real-time TV show about the most awesome man ever. Jack Bauer.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Striders were definitely there. Go back and look at the newspaper clippings in Black Mesa East. You can see a ruined city-scape with Dropships carrying Striders flying overhead. Though they did used more then just them, for sure. The pic of the U.N. headquarters being blown up in New York by something like a gunship, but much larger. I imagine that the Gunships in the game itself were used as the equivalent of fighter jets and other such things, taking out any flying opposition, but that big unnamed thing in the picture was what went after buildings, I think, and did the majority of destroying Ground forces would probably have included the Crab synth and Striders too.

Yes, there may have been, but there would have been thigns we haven't seen yet, incredibly powerful synths we can't even imagine, as I said, striders are pathetic soldiers, way beyond us, but compared to some of the things in the combine army, they are worthless. And combined (pun intended) with the fact there would have been billions of these uber-synths, its unsurprising we lost in 7 hours

 

[soulslicer]

din think this thread would garner lots of discussion..

anyway, sometimes when i think abt it, i wonder why the humans just din nuke the combine dead..probably had sheilds or something

 

[Slug Advisor]

If there was a 7hr war mod then it would be very boring. If you played as Earth you'd get wasted. If you played as the Combine you'd waste.

But it could still have plot twists. For example, what if the whole portals thing was a inside job?
Think about it. As you said, you could run away from the city, fight in the country yard and lead the resistance. You could go to Xen for some reason. Or you could play as Barney and see Eli lose a leg. Or something like that.

 

[ríomhaire]

din think this thread would garner lots of discussion..

anyway, sometimes when i think abt it, i wonder why the humans just din nuke the combine dead..probably had sheilds or something

Because the Combine teleported their forces into the middle of the remaining human cities. Nuking them = killing most of the rest of humanity.

 

[Rapstah]

I'm gonna enlarge those newspaper clippings.

EDIT:

 

[ríomhaire]

Do I see someone with an AK-47?

 

[soulslicer]

man, its like the combine are just opening up portals in all over the sky. Would have been an AWESOME sight if it had been in a game. Imagine, bombs and bullets flying everywhere. Fighter jets and synths zooming over the sky. Then, portal storms open in the sky and a huge infantry of ships start coming out and attacking. Would be a great sight indeed.

 

[Tagaziel]

There's a Strider next to the UN building.

 

[Frentzen]

And Bloody large it looks!

 

[ShadowJustice]

it is a shame that those newspaper clippings are such low-res textures. They could have crammed a lot of nice plot details and images in there.

 

[Rapstah]

They did.

 

[ShadowJustice]

I mean, they could have crammed more

 

[Narvi]

I really hope that Episode 2 graphical update adds more detail to those newspaper clippings.

 

[Rapstah]

There is no Episode Two graphical update. All it does is update draw distance, i'm pretty sure no-one at valve wants to remake all textures to be more high-res.

 

[Frentzen]

Has anybody found the Source texture? It might be interesting to look at it. Applying and Detail levels do not apply so perhaps we might be albe to see more that way.

 

[Rapstah]

That WAS the source texture.

 

[Frentzen]

Crap then.

 

[Narvi]

There is no Episode Two graphical update. All it does is update draw distance, i'm pretty sure no-one at valve wants to remake all textures to be more high-res.

The bigwigs were going on about upgrading it quite a bit. I doubt they were going on about just draw distance. The difference in HL2 would be negligible.

 

[Rapstah]

Link me to the interview, then.

 

[soulslicer]

hopefully hl2ep2 has some areas with higher res textures..

 

[Narvi]

Link me to the interview, then.

Aargh, must I? That was ages ago! Tell you what, YOU link me to where they say they're only going to update draw distance.

*grumbles and goes to look at HL2 news archives*

EDIT: Here's your effing link. If they're going to add effing HDR, then it's not too far a leap of logic to assume they're going to up the textures a bit. After all, HL2 will look out-of-place compared to Episode 1 and 2 otherwise.

 

[Stene]

Ep2 should have atleast 768x768 textures instead of the 256x256/512x512.

1024x1024 would be nice.

 

[Frentzen]

768x768 is not a power of 2.
Too bad.

 

[ríomhaire]

Edit:
Nevermind, I misread the previous posts.

 

[Dogmeat]

I've been thinking about how cool a Seven Hour War mod would be.

I know the fight would be one-sided, but it'll be a good challenge and make a change instead of the usual 'kill the enemy, win the war' scenarios we've all fought.

It'll be exciting to have a game where the objective is simply to survive against all odds. The main goal simply could be to survive for the seven hours since the combine show up until Breen surrenders the Earth.

You could possibley play as a scared civilian in the chaos of the invasion. You need to salvage any weapons you could. Trying to locate your seperated family members perhaps? I know its similar to War of the Worlds, but it'll still be fun. And you could possibly get multilple ratings or endings, depending on how many you save, how many die, if you survive or die if you get captured or escape to the country. Its a pretty ambitious project, but it'll have lots of replayability!

The lack of combine trooper is a problem however, for the game would be lacking of a mainstream enemy and at the moment, the majority of the combines other units are not known, its hard to assume what could take place of the troopers. Maybe whoever makes the mod will have to design their own beasty to replace them. I have some ideas, but I guess an easier solution would be to make a new skin for the trooper and refer to them as some other kind of humaniod, that perhaps due to certain weaknesses to Earth's atmosphere or whatever, would make an unsuitable long term occupation force. Or perhaps some conscripted xen aliens from HL1 could make a reappearance, like slave vorts or anyone missing the Alien Grunt any chance? Maybe even.... shock troopers or something similar, though I don't think more Race X is a good idea.

Weapons are also an issue, you need firepower that can kill combines, else it'd be no fun. But you still want the combine to have the advantage in firepower as they do have to win the conflict afteral. Heh, maybe you could use the counterstrike weapons for the humans weapons? I dunno if you could do that though.

I still think a 7 hour mod has lots of potential, wish I could learn how to mod!

 

[soulslicer]

yeah, a mod in a single city would be ok, cos i read somewhere that when the xen creatures flooded earth, humans rushed to crowded cities to escape them. Then the army defended the city from all those creatures. Would be really a cool sight to see, like Day of Defeat+HL2 kind of thing

 

[Dogmeat]

Yeah, As I understand it, put basically the scene is:

1) BM incident, causes portal storms and general chaos over several months or years even. Humanity is taken by surprise by sudden aliens everywhere. They fight all the Xen beasties, but are forced to take refuge in cities, while the Xen creatures roam most if not all of the countryside.
2) Combine teleport huge citadels in the middle of most of these cities, which start spawning tonnes of synths and basically catch humanity when it is most vunerable. Maybe...*START OF SEVEN HOUR WAR MOD*
3) Humanity's last official stand. Fierce fighting. After seven hours, Breen (who during the Portal Storms became the main authority) surrenders on behalf of the Earth. *END OF MOD*

Maybe the mod could be structured like that, with humanity already fenced in the cities as their last stronghold, with the military busy fighting of the Xen creatures. And then basically the Combine catch them with their pants down.

I think it has quite good potentional to be an entertaining mod, espically if you could see a massive citadel actually teleport in the middle of a city during the game, and the peoples reactions when swarms of synths fly out of it and swamp the defenses. Would be quite cool.... but difficult to pull off I guess!

 

[Operational]

I'm afraid a 7 Hour War game sounds less like a job for a Mod and more like a job for a Full Game. Given the interest in this however (it is a really good environment) I wouldn't be surprised if it is the focus of the eventual third-party expansion.