Valve lies? The hacker tells the truth? Is it all they got?

I saw a picture with three or four guys standing outside that door when it knocked the table over.
 
Discussing wether it's scripted or not is useless, since it's obvious that it's something that they'll fix before the release. If it works when released, then who cares?

I say chill out, grab a coke, watch TV and before you know it, HL2 is out and you can enjoy it like nothing happened, m'kay?

EDIT: so very sorry, but I forgot to say thanks for writing a post actually worth reading. Great job, my fellow Swede :)
 
Originally posted by Gilgamesh
"working their asses off and then get a thank you like this,"

It's their friggin job.
Click to expand...

Yeah their job is to program a game while earning their monthly paycheck, not getting bent over and treated like bitches by spoiled brats that just wanna play witch hunt.
 
It's not scripted, for three reasons:
1) There are many (infinite?) guards that come and one of the ones not killed could have kicked it open.
2) You don't have to close the door if you don't want to. If you don't close it I doubt they will close it themselves just to kick it back open.
3) It seems like they would only kick the door in when the door is blocked by the table (in the videos they try to open the door two or three times and it rocks the table back and forth... then they kick it in).

EDIT: Forgot a closing parthesis.
 
Originally posted by Manty
Valve owe everything to it's customers. We do pay their wages.

Another dumb thread... who cares
Click to expand...

No, you don't pay their wages. You pay $30 for an endless ammount of fun, and I would say it's pretty damn even, if not rather that you owe THEM for giving you so much fun for that little money. Yeah in the end they get millions from it, but do you think 5 years of developement with a large team plus other expenses comes for free?

The only thing they owe you is to deliver a product that works as the specification says, nothing else. I would say that they have so far given that and alot more.
 
What if we assume it was a scripted, what then? Ok, so Valve presented an awesome E3 demo, with a shit load of way cool effects, amazing AI and physics that could skin a cat...there was just this one tiny portion they couldn't figure out in time, they kept getting an error. Maybe the error was: even if you kill this dude, the door still bursts open. Oh well, valve thinks, we'll clean that up before the final release and it wont even matter, cause we aren't going to kill the dude in the E3 demo. Then johhny white ridder lone ranger sentinel of justice hacker (who for some reason finds it entirely free of hypocrasy to accuse a software company of lying and being duplicitious while hiding behind the warm blanket of anonymity (name me that movie) that allows him to say whatever the hell he pleases without reprocussion) rides onto the scene and exposes valve's tiny mistake, the one smudge on the glory of HL2, and somehow uses this as "evidence" that the whole halflife vintage has gone sour. What. The. ****.

So valve had one "unscripted" event that maybe wasn't in an early, alpha E3 demo. Whoop de freaking do. The game is still amazing, that little scripting error or whatever will be fixed in the retail game, and the dude will only break down the door if he is alive. Who cares if it is scirpted? What matters is that it happens; not how it happens.

I'm sorry, this is a pretty incoherent post. My point is: let's stop making a mountain out of a molehill; this whole "door kick incident" is a non-issue. What the community has at the moment is not the retail game. Valve did not release it. Valve did not approve it. No judgements can be made based on this software for those exact reasons.
 
I'm sorry, this is a pretty incoherent post. My point is: let's stop making a mountain out of a molehill; this whole "door kick incident" is a non-issue. What the community has at the moment is not the retail game. Valve did not release it. Valve did not approve it. No judgements can be made based on this software for those exact reasons.
Click to expand...

I don't think the post is at all incoherent. I just can't imagine how your point and the thead starter's point is not obvious to people. . .it's just a no-brainer.

But then again I assume that most of the people who make a big deal out of it and actually belive this 'leaker', are waaay too bored with their lives and should find some kind of constudctive hobby. . .like drag racing! Oh wait. . .you need to be at least 16 for a drivers licence, ok scratch that. . .go bowling, get your mom to drive you there.
 
It is unscripted in the sense that you simply bump into the monitor and the game's physics make the monitor fall down. However, it's scripted in the sense that the level designers had to put the monitor there to be bumped and make it possible for the object of that type to be bumped into.
Click to expand...

As I see it, the script part of the lab scene is that when you hit the monitor, it falls down using the generic physics engine without any script of any kind, then when it hits the floor, it triggeres a script that makes the professor talk to Freeman saying "be careful". In the old Half-Life 1 way, the script part would start when freeman touches the monitor, and it would just be a prerecorded sequence of animation instead of generic physics applied to the monitor. This is the big difference between HL1 and HL2 scipts. Actually, scripts is a stupid name for it... I would rather call it animations, because that's just most of the so called scripts are in HL1.

Let's try and break down the traptown door-breaking script as well as I would imagine it should be working:

1. Freeman enters the room and hits a trigger that tells the x soldiers to run to the door.
2. The first soldier that hits the door calls the Check Door script to see if it's open or not.
3. If it was closed, try open it using Door Opening Script.
4. If it was open, run in.
5. If it was closed AND blocked, call the Kick Door Script.
6. Enter the room when door is unblocked and/or opened.

The AI part of all this is pretty much only the part when the soldiers have to find their way up the stairs to the door, and then avoiding gun fire or shooting back through the window.

Hm.. I hope it's not considered giving away spoilers writing about this :p
 
Haha, hey I like bowling. . .would you rather I say goto the rollerskating ring?
 
Originally posted by Cander
Maybe its because that is all Valve thought he got.

If you walk into your house and your tv is gone and the police come to fill out a theft report. Then later you realize mo erwas stolen, are you a liar?
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You don't know for sure that they lied!
Who knows? the hacker only logged to Gabe's E-mail
Not to his Local Network.

BTW Keep on the Good Job Valve I don't care how long it takes as long as i will be able to rush to the shop and buy your Software :)

(BTW i think i pressed the wrong quote button - oppsss!)
 
It cant be all they got.


Gabe said that HL2 multiplayer is great and he plays it all the time. How come in all this shite I havent heard one good thing about multiplayer. EH?


Maybe Gabe lied. But I don't believe that.
 
Originally posted by Eldeorn
As I see it, the script part of the lab scene is that when you hit the monitor, it falls down using the generic physics engine without any script of any kind, then when it hits the floor, it triggeres a script that makes the professor talk to Freeman saying "be careful". In the old Half-Life 1 way, the script part would start when freeman touches the monitor, and it would just be a prerecorded sequence of animation instead of generic physics applied to the monitor. This is the big difference between HL1 and HL2 scipts. Actually, scripts is a stupid name for it... I would rather call it animations, because that's just most of the so called scripts are in HL1.
Click to expand...

I bet this is what's happening. The major advance in HL2's immersion experience, for lack of a better word, is that with the new physics engine, objects react in realistic ways to the player and interact realistically with the environment. This includes things like metal drums sinking in water and bodies floating, or a watermelon snapping in half when shot.

When Gordon pushes the monitor, the physics engine uses gravity to pull it to the ground and also generates the specific sound of "monitor-like object striking metal floor". The NPCs have listeners that react to those events, so Kleiner hears the monitor hit the floor and tells Gordon to be careful. This is not new at all. HL1's enemies could hear the player's guns and get a fix on his position based on the noise he made. Other games did this too around the same time.

None of this means that the game has been "scripted" in the sense of certain things must happen in a certain order regardless of player interaction. It means that the game tries to react realistically to player interaction using the physics engine and having other objects/NPCs be aware of the effects of the player's actions. In concept, it's not that hard. The implementation would be a bitch, though. :)
 
Originally posted by Eldeorn
Hi there people. As a retired games programmer and a fan of Half-Life, I felt I need to talk about a few things regarding all this about the hacker, the current state of Half-Life 2 and what I believe is true about all this.

I was a professional programmer in sweden for about 6 years, and was lead programmer for 3 PC titles (Clans release by Strategy First, Dragonfire and The Shockman Show) and then senior programmer for another 1.5 titles (yeah the one half didn't get finished :p), so I believe I have a bit of knowledge in the process of developing games and a bit of understanding regarding software companies and procedures.

Anyway, here are the common questions that I want to adress:

a) The hacker has told the truth.
b) Valve has NOT told the truth.
c) The leaked version is all they got?
d) Valve are nothing without the community, so they owe us?

a) The hacker has told the truth.

Ok, lets dig into question A first. The only thing that I personally know that is true so far is that the hacker known as Anon has released a source for Half-Life 2, claiming it to be real, which then was proven to be so. I really want to know what else he has said that was true so far? Mind you, truth is only proven by facts, and only fact I know is that he didn't lie about the source authentity, nothing more than that.

What boggles me is also the opinion that the hacker "must be talking the truth since he have no reason to lie, while Valve do"! Seriously, people lie and cheat all the time out of spite and to ruin for others they don't like. Also, the hacker don't have to face the result of being caught, since he can hide behind his .nfo files. For him there is no harm to either lie or telling the truth.

Now, can someone point out any facts from the hacker that has been proven by your own two eyes?


b) Valve has NOT told the truth.

Now, this is what I really don't understand, perhaps beacuse I simply lack the knowledge, or because it just don't make any sense.

They (Valve) showed a movie to the public, and stated that this is how the game is going to be, with not only scripted sequences, but with a good AI as well. Now, we have this situation where people seems to be focused on the fact that the E3 demo and the leaked version has a scripted sequence where a door gets kicked up even if the unit that should be kicking it is actually dead. This is indeed a pure script without any AI whatsoever (at least when it comes to the door kicking part).

The fact is though, this is the E3 ALPHA DEMO, not the finished product, or even the current state of the game. Now I don't know this for sure, but I can bet you that this is made like this to show how it is SUPPOSED to be, and they only forced the sequence with a script to make sure that it won't bug when they run it.

Anyway, the only thing that I know that weren't true was the September 28th realease date. They did however change that to holiday release in good time before the hacker attack, and any distributor can and usually do change the release date since they find new things to fix or balance.

A while after the hacker attack it's said that the game once again is delayed to April 2004, but this is at this point NOT officially confirmed by either Valve nor Vivendi. Due to this RUMOR, people are beginning to ask if it's a scam by Valve, and that the release was never intended to be this year at all. It's kind of funny that one of the biggest and most skillfull game developers in the world suddenly totally fails to make the game they say they are making, and start making up storys and scams to protect themselves... Come on, REALLY. Not even the smallest and crappiest software companies do things like this, and I bet you that *none* of the bigger ones would even consider doing a thing like this when it would hurt them and their community so badly.

For Valve, it would be devestating to be caught lying or making up things like some think they do. Mostly because the fact that even if people may think so, they don't earn *that* much money compared to any other big company in the world. It's a common assumption that game developers makes money like movie stars... I got news for you, they get crap pay. Gaming industry is one of the toughest industries to get a foot hold in, and it takes *alot* of hard work to keep that position.

So my question is... what exactly are the lies that Valve has told? Can anyone give me officiall quotes or give me details that would prove the lies they have told us?


c) The leaked version is all Valve got?

The hacker stated that the latest source leak is the latest source there is for the game, but how on earth can he prove this unless Valve go public and let everyone actually visit their office and compare the source within their SourceSafe database? All the hacker knows is that what HE got was the only thing HE could find, and nothing more than that. Even if he did get access to Gabe's computer, it's not certain at all that he actaully managed to connect to Valve's encrypted SourceSafe database to download the latest build that they had been working on.

Gabe is not a programmer. He is the boss of Valve, and it makes little sense that he sits on the latest builds every day from the the source of the game when he has absolutely no daily use of it whatsoever.

Why Gabe had the source at all is something I can only speculate in. Perhaps so he could compile and run the demo to show it for visitors... who knows. My own boss never had the source, but he did have the latest demo build of my games on his laptop so that he didnt have to come running after the programmers to show off the game.


d) Valve are nothing without the community, so they owe us?

Yeah, it's true that without the huge community, Valve wouldn't make the big money to make Half-Life 2 and such. However, the community get a neverending fun for a one time cost of $30! Also remember that the HL community would not even exist if it wasn't for Valve in the first place, busting their balls to make the best games there is. And let's not forget the creators of CS and how Valve recognized their work, hired them and let them earn something for their excellent work they did for free before, and making it the biggest online competition game in the world.

They owe the community? Naa. The only thing we do is pay $30 once, while they spend 5 years 8 hours a day with a payment that is nothing over the ordinary (for the programmers that is), working their asses off and then get a thank you like this, with the theft of their work, all the mistrust, false rumors and accusations. It's their job to do their best, and unless we are the ones paying their monthly paycheck, we don't owe them jack shit. I paid $30 and I got years of entertainment for that little money.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

I have a few questions on your post:

1. On (b) you mention a september 28 release, did I miss something or wasn't it september 30th?

2. If Gabe himself states while talking on the E3 video that this is actual AI and not scripted sequences, exactly how does that really make up for how something is "supposed" to be? Especially if the release wasn't even on time so we all could see how the game actually played?

3. On (a) didn't the so called 'Anon' hacker also release the pre-alpha of Half-Life 2? Or in what way is the release of the source a 'fact' in comparison to the HL2 pre-alpha? I mean, which 'evidence' points to one fact and not the other?

4. As far as i know, Valve never showed a game to the public and stated that "this is how it is going to be" (referring to my remark number 1) but they said that this is how it in fact really was.

5. As for Valve being a part of the community, well, the only time at least I've heard this is when Gabe comes clean that something from them has been stolen and that they wanted help on finding hackers. I did not on one other occasion hear them telling the 'community' information of something about the game delay or why it didn't get released when they said it would be (30th of september). Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean that they "owed" it to us to release it on the 30th, but it would seem strange that they held in on that information until the very last few days instead of telling the "community" that it would be delayed.

And last, it really sucks that the hackers probably made the game's release push back even longer, but Valve could have handled at least the release (or the information of the delay) of the game a LOT better.
 
I have no idea how much this hacker got into Valves system, but to me it seems pretty far, he waited about 7 days to actually get out with the stuff acording to valves timeline, i'm sure he had acess to ALOT of valves network, so i bet he did get the latest build on the internet comps, but i'm sure that there is a latter release on comps that aren't connected to the net.. but valve should come out and tell us something. but even then it might not be the truth, we dont even know if the hacker is lying or not... its a bad situation for the coummunity becasue no one knows who to beleive
 
Originally posted by pnag
This whole thing stinks to high heaven of lies, and not just by the hacker, but Valve too. I don't think we'll see Half Life 2 til Sept. 30th 2005, as it seems to me that a little more than 30% of the game content is there, at a crappy estimate. After all, they've still got CZ to milk for at least 6-12 months to make it pay for itself; who would if you could play it with the HL2 engine???
Click to expand...

They've been working on it since Half-Life went gold, they announced a release date for this year, and you think they've only got 30% done? They are professional game developers, not escaped mental patients.
 
Come on, everyone knows they waited until 2 months before they announced the game to start making it.

The whole E3 presentation was an elaborate hoax made in XSI.

They prerendered the entire thing, had someone memorize the path and timing of all the actions, then pretended like everything was reacting to his actions.

Then after they built up the hype they stole the code to the Duke Nukem Forever engine and modified it to look more like Half-Life.

With a month of work (on and off) they made what maps and weapons you see in the leaked "beta" version.

This explains why some objects are left out of the "beta," because Valve clearly did not have enough time to convert them all over from their fake E3 presentation.

Then, they had their coders whip up a ton of crap and add it to the HL code so that it looks like it could be a game and it actually compiles... then they released this "source code" under the guise of an anonymous hacker (though, I am still unsure as to whether or not the "beta" leak was intentional or the work of someone at ATI or nVidia).

They then used their "leak" as an excuse to push back the delay of the real game until April 2004 so that they could get the first half of the game finished and release it.

"Just the first half?" you say?
Of course, they wouldn't be able to finish the entire game in such a short time... so they do half of the game and make the game crash at the middle (and pretend like the whole game is done but some error is preventing users from finishing the game) until they can finish the next few levels and send them out to users via Steam (which is why you are are forced to run HL2 through Steam).

They will continue adding a few levels at a time in this manner until they finish the story.

I have also heard a statement from a reliable source at Vivendi saying that they are planning something similar for multiplayer, as well.
He hinted that the authentication servers would crash (read as 'get unplugged') to prevent people from being able to play multiplayer until they finish it and blame the delays on Steam's new untested code (remember? the source "leak" forced them to recode Steam).

It's so obvious.

I can't believe none of you knew.
 
The game is obviously a mishmash of old files and some od new files. There are so many missing textures, AI path files and other files it aint funny. You cannot claim that Gabe lied to you and stuff about it not being near complete if you base this as your judgement. Hell the videos he showed us, cannot even be replicated properly in teh beta because of missing files. So what does that tell you.

Clearly the hacker is not as smart as he thinks he is. Since when do people start trusting anonymous hackers over someone that has done so much for the community.

Crazy i say.


Cheers,
bbyybb.
 
I too believe that there is no way in hell the beta is even close to what they have. I mean, they arte already playtesting it. So gfx are all done. the beta had a bevy of shit textures and orange walls and other graphical oddities.

If this is all they have we'll be waiting much longer than April for it.
 
If VALVe only would tell - be calm, we had the game almost finished by the time of the leak, the leak is a very old build with incorect AI etc...
Many people would be very happy.
 
FYI the "hacker" that said he had the pre-gold, said that the leak was "all Valve had" and bitched about the door thing, was a phony. The real hacker said so when he released CS:CZ.

Sorry if someone already said this, I didn't feel like reading all the responses.
 
Very funny post OCybrManO :)

And I agree with this post, although I've been saying this for over a week, I guess this guy put it together better than me. Although I know for a fact the Hacker does not have all the Resources, like I've said, there is no possible way. If he did have all the Resources, then there wouldn't have been all them Errors we didn't see in the E3 Videos. Man, I'm to tired to type all this, forget it, what needed to be said was said, going to bed, g'night
 
The fake hacker was an idiot. He said the beta is all valve had, but then he was releasing the pre-gold later. Whatever.
 
That fake hacker did get ALOT of people suspicous towards VALVe though
 
What I'm woundering is how in the world did he manage to download over 1.5GB in few hours without anyone noticing, Valve must have an OC48 connection in their offices.
 
Eldeorn - excellant post man, thats all I can say

**hands him a beer** :cheers:
 
BTW, the numbers and the date on top right corner say;

BUILD -4- DAYS BEFORE 9/30/03 .... it doesnt now say 4 days before 9/30 but BUILD #4.
 
Actually, I think it does say 4 days before 9/30/03... some guy in an IRC channel said that the code in one of the files of the engine source (something like "BuildNumber" or "BuildNum"... or whatever... I don't remember) calculates the build number based on the date the program was first run after it was compiled.

Can anyone verify this?
 
A logical structured assessment, I hope it gets released soon, but I reckon december. Valve can take as long as they like, but if vivendi proves to be the ultimate source of the problem then I will not be surprised!
 
Re: Re: Valve lies? The hacker tells the truth? Is it all they got?

Originally posted by Ford the Word
I have a few questions on your post:

1. On (b) you mention a september 28 release, did I miss something or wasn't it september 30th?

2. If Gabe himself states while talking on the E3 video that this is actual AI and not scripted sequences, exactly how does that really make up for how something is "supposed" to be? Especially if the release wasn't even on time so we all could see how the game actually played?

3. On (a) didn't the so called 'Anon' hacker also release the pre-alpha of Half-Life 2? Or in what way is the release of the source a 'fact' in comparison to the HL2 pre-alpha? I mean, which 'evidence' points to one fact and not the other?

4. As far as i know, Valve never showed a game to the public and stated that "this is how it is going to be" (referring to my remark number 1) but they said that this is how it in fact really was.

5. As for Valve being a part of the community, well, the only time at least I've heard this is when Gabe comes clean that something from them has been stolen and that they wanted help on finding hackers. I did not on one other occasion hear them telling the 'community' information of something about the game delay or why it didn't get released when they said it would be (30th of september). Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean that they "owed" it to us to release it on the 30th, but it would seem strange that they held in on that information until the very last few days instead of telling the "community" that it would be delayed.

And last, it really sucks that the hackers probably made the game's release push back even longer, but Valve could have handled at least the release (or the information of the delay) of the game a LOT better.
Click to expand...

BINGO!!!!
 
Originally posted by OCybrManO
Actually, I think it does say 4 days before 9/30/03... some guy in an IRC channel said that the code in one of the files of the engine source (something like "BuildNumber" or "BuildNum"... or whatever... I don't remember) calculates the build number based on the date the program was first run after it was compiled.

Can anyone verify this?
Click to expand...
\

No my friend, Id post a pic, but that would be against the rules so I'll tell you exactly how it was;

Source Code 2 (BUILD -4- days until 9/30/03)

in other words "build 4" "unknown days till 9/30"
AND in some maps that were shown on E3 Gordon has more updated weapons then the leaked beta, I think the "loser" stole the OLD build and NOT the most recent one Valve has.

When I tried to play the map with the 50ft tall Strider it said it was OUTDATED ... which means this build is older then the E3 build ..... actually ALOT of maps were outdated and alot of weapons missing.

I really hope Valve will get the shat together and start working on the damn thing.
 
I had the same person send me a pic of a couple of parts of the source relevant to this topic.
I understand what is being done in that code... and you are incorrect.

I'll keep the posting of actual code to the absolute minimum to prove my point... nothing more.

Here is part of the statement that generates the message:
"Source Engine %t/%s (Build %d - days until 9/30/03)"

%d represents the number of days remaining until Sept 30th, 2003 (negative is before, positive is after).

Need anymore?

I'm not saying that this is the latest version of HL2.
In fact, I am positive that it isn't.

The hacker could have found the content on a computer without the binaries, then compiled the source on the 26th to create the executable files to go with the content (or he could have just recompiled it for some reason). That would explain it.
 
Originally posted by Hallucinogen


I really hope Valve will get the shat together and start working on the damn thing.
Click to expand...


what the fuk do you think they have been doing for the past 5 years?
 
Originally posted by crabcakes66
what the fuk do you think they have been doing for the past 5 years?
Click to expand...

Obvisouly not working on the damn thing, if they did they would have no issues releasing it by the 30th of September :dozey:
 
Originally posted by Hallucinogen
Obvisouly not working on the damn thing, if they did they would have no issues releasing it by the 30th of September :dozey:
Click to expand...
And why would that be? You obviously have not a single clue how much time it apparently takes for a big game like HL2 to be released. It was likely Valve wouldn't make 30/9 and indeed, they delayed it. And if they delay it it doesn't mean they need more time to fry their marshmellows up over the campfire, they need more time to work on the bloody game (because, apparently, it wasn't done yet). And now with the hack, they need even more time to make it more resistent to cheats. All of it hopefully leads to a very succesful endproduct and since it is Valve's job to make it as successful as possible, they can make the decision whether they need more time or not.
 
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