Took a trip to Valve, heres the story

Nice Interview. I myself have thought about strolling down to Valve and asking them what's up. But as I have no contact with anyone there I doubt I'd be invited in.

We should get everyone in the Seattle area together and petition for a tour. We could tell them it would be good publicity from the *LARGEST* half life 2 community on the net. We need a high powered person here to make it so!

PLEASE!!!
 
Damn I'm SO jealous of you, Algor, you couldn't imagine. Great info on the helicopter and their playtesting. It's good to know that they're busy playtesting, gives me some hope that they're actually nearing completion, instead of redoing stuff because of the leak.

I'd love to see what's on the whiteboard, though I understand your reasons for blurring it.

Overall: excellent job! /me faints of excitement
 
Thx Algor

but can you say how many people you saw at the valve office?

And did Gabe of some other employee said about re-coding some parts of the source engine because it got leaked?

He was so surprised that he jumped in his seat, which is always good to see in games.
What? The AI controlled player in the chopper?

Was that battle you discriped an AI vs AI or Human vs AI?
 
Great job Algor. It's people like you that give the HL2 community hope :).
 
sharp said:
What? The AI controlled player in the chopper?

Was that battle you discriped an AI vs AI or Human vs AI?

I believe the copter was AI controlled, and the person working on the chopper was controlling the player. That's what I got out of it, and I'm pretty sure that's what he meant
 
sharp said:
Thx Algor

but can you say how many people you saw at the valve office?

And did Gabe of some other employee said about re-coding some parts of the source engine because it got leaked?


What? The AI controlled player in the chopper?

Was that battle you discriped an AI vs AI or Human vs AI?



as i understand, the guy playing was on the ground and there was a helicopter being flown around trying to kill the player and the player was hideing behind stuff and the helicopter surprised him..
 
Kon said:
as i understand, the guy playing was on the ground and there was a helicopter being flown around trying to kill the player and the player was hideing behind stuff and the helicopter surprised him..

yeah I know that but that isn't an answer to my question :)
 
sharp said:
Thx Algor

but can you say how many people you saw at the valve office?

And did Gabe of some other employee said about re-coding some parts of the source engine because it got leaked?


What? The AI controlled player in the chopper?

Was that battle you discriped an AI vs AI or Human vs AI?

Whooooooa... don't hurt yourself there Sharp. Can you say "spellcheck?" :) :thumbs:
 
is that guy from picture "hello" a midget or is his monitor really that big?
 
NSPIRE said:
Whooooooa... don't hurt yourself there Sharp. Can you say "spellcheck?" :) :thumbs:


I'm sorry, my motherlanguage isn't english.

And I am dyslectic :|
 
NSPIRE said:
Whooooooa... don't hurt yourself there Sharp. Can you say "spellcheck?" :) :thumbs:


He had about 2 misspellings.. what's the problem?

Sharp, the guy showing the scene jumped in his chair when he got snuck up from behind

Sp00fman said:
is that guy from picture "hello" a midget or is his monitor really that big?

Looks like a 21" monitor to me, I have a 19" in the other room, but it's not as big as that one

Doubt he's a midget lol
 
Sp00fman said:
is that guy from picture "hello" a midget or is his monitor really that big?

O believe me, I could understand. *looks up to his looming 21in monitor and hugs it*
 
Good news: advanced AI capable of remembering human actions and predicting future ones. chess computers with guns that can out wit their fleshy counterparts.

Bad news: looks like we're back to turning round a corner and falling to an instant death in an unseen lava pitt.

The most impressively executed cheap shot in gaming history?

By the way, hidden somewhere in there is me being impressed once again with the AI ;)
 
YES!
More stuff!
This is excellent! Are you the guy that told me he where going to Valve the other day without a digital camera, and you found one, or are there another guy on the way? I really wish u took more pictures :( I understand why u didnt ask about the release day though that has been kinda overdone and ppl would have been too mistrustful about it anyways. I like the ppl whos mistrustful about stuff though they save all the gullible people. :)
 
Just a useless bit of info but in one of the pictures the book on the table (Inner loops) is about optimising x86 code so it'll run faster, hopefully this is a portent that we’ll see good code in hl2 and not halo or dx2 style inefficiency.
 
Wraithen said:
Bad news: looks like we're back to turning round a corner and falling to an instant death in an unseen lava pitt.

LOL, Tomb raider using the source engine? (*shudders at the thought)
 
"Beat the God Damn Chopper" Mod :cheese:

That would be very interesting for Sven-Coop 4 too :p

Hey Algor tell us more about what you see from HL2!
 
nicenicenice said:
**Edited: behave **

Hey look, it's one of HL2W's illustrious members!
Do you have nothing constructive to say? Then don't say it, especially if you're going to flame HL2.net directly without merit.
 
Keep this mature guys and not turn this into another site vs site thread. Thanks.
 
Fenric said:
Keep this mature guys and not turn this into another site vs site thread. Thanks.

Just to clarify, I wasn't flaming him. The first line could have been regarded that way, but I meant it with good intentions overall, it was a dig at him, but I was trying to prove a point. Sorry for that.
 
Just to clear some things up...
Yes, the player was on the ground being controlled by a human.
Yes, the helicopter was AI controlled.

Also, I think during this same scene, the player ran backwards into a small hanger, where there were some grunts inside.
But they flanked him really fast so he had to get the hell out of there :)
The AI is looking scarily real.

As for how many people I saw, well there were 15-20 people at the Steam meeting, and maybe 20 or more people outside in the other rooms.
So in total, somewhere around 50. And still there seemed to be a lot of people out that day, which Gabe noticed, by saying, "where is everyone today" :)

Maybe the coolest thing I saw there, was the concept art room. There were maybe 30 or 40 sketches on this wall, many overlapping each other and stuff.
Just TONS of different sketches of humans, aliens, vehicles, and things like that.
I found it really cool, because I am wondering what to expect in HL2, maybe they are going to be throwing lots of curveballs at us
 
Sounds awesome, Algor. What'd the grunts look like? HL-style grunts or are you referring to the combine soldiers/metrocops/whatever we've seen?

Kinda curious in that respect, great info :) Wish I could've seen the sketch room, or, the scene they showed you
 
man so you get to read that whiteboard and we can only pretend to :p i see what's going on

hehe thats pretty sweet algor :D
 
Algor said:
Just to clear some things up...
Yes, the player was on the ground being controlled by a human.
Yes, the helicopter was AI controlled.

Also, I think during this same scene, the player ran backwards into a small hanger, where there were some grunts inside.
But they flanked him really fast so he had to get the hell out of there :)
The AI is looking scarily real.

As for how many people I saw, well there were 15-20 people at the Steam meeting, and maybe 20 or more people outside in the other rooms.
So in total, somewhere around 50. And still there seemed to be a lot of people out that day, which Gabe noticed, by saying, "where is everyone today" :)

Maybe the coolest thing I saw there, was the concept art room. There were maybe 30 or 40 sketches on this wall, many overlapping each other and stuff.
Just TONS of different sketches of humans, aliens, vehicles, and things like that.
I found it really cool, because I am wondering what to expect in HL2, maybe they are going to be throwing lots of curveballs at us
I was already looking forward to it, but that sounds very cool. I can't wait :E
 
You should of given Gabe a twinky, then all the secrets would have been spilled.
 
The next person that visits valve is required to take hundreds of pictures - or better yet, a long unedited video.
 
Algor, you look very familiar. Any chance you live in the Vancouver, Canada area? And if you do, take me to Valve next time you go!!!!!!!
 
Algor said:
Well from what I saw they were doing some, what they called, "final tweaks" on the helicopter. (No, not the alien gunship one)
It was really cool to see what it did to find the player.
The guy kept running in between some big containers trying to hide from it and take pop shots at it.
There were some containers on many sides of the player and ones strewn over the top..
The chopper seemed to be using its last known location of the player to track it down, and then trying to shoot over some objects to get a more clear shot at him.
He ran through some more and was expecting the chopper to come out in the front where it was, but it snuck up behind him and got him good :)
He was so surprised that he jumped in his seat, which is always good to see in games.

As far as the movements of the helicopter went, it looked very real, and very cool :)

and I blurred the whiteboard because there was lots of writing on there.. and I didnt want to take the chance of something being secret and them getting pissed :O

If they didnt have you sign an nda then there is no reason to hide any of the content you photographed, just poste it, if it is anything special then valve will just send some men in black over to murder you, nothing drastic . . .
 
Thx for sharing Algor.

Back to that 'ship often' philosphy. Yeah, it is ironic that a Valve guy would give that kind of advice.
 
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