What is Valve doing?

[jabberwock95]

No, not a complaining thread or another delay thread. Just vote with your opinion on what aspect of HL2 valve is working on now. Please no conspiricy theories or 'I hate valve' whiny posts, but feel free to explain your choice.

 

[63]

No, not a complaining thread or another delay thread. Just vote with your opinion on what aspect of HL2 valve is working on now. Please no conspiricy theories or 'I hate valve' whiny posts, but feel free to explain your choice.

sounds to me like we have a Valve hater...

 

[jabberwock95]

sounds to me like we have a Valve hater...

Huh? Quck post...

I don't even remotely dislike valve for the delay (well maybe mild annoyance) but I do have idle curiosity as to what they are doing at the moment. Personally I think they have finished leak cleanup and are trying to improve the game. Good for them (and us)! I just wondered whether others felt the same way or if they thought the leak had more drastic effects. Thats all.

 

[Dr. Freeman]

wheres the "eating pie" and "wacking off" options?

j/k!!!! :E

i think they just finished up on cleaning up source leak stuff, and now are improving things and polishing up so HL2 could look nice an' shiny :afro: :dork:

 

[jabberwock95]

i think they just finished up on cleaning up source leak stuff, and now are improving things and polishing up so HL2 could look nice an' shiny :afro: :dork:

Yeah... I figure they're going to be a little ticked off that anyone interested can d/l the alpha/beta/leak/stolen/whatever the hell we're calling it now. I expect them to slightly polish up, just so they can still amaze the people who grabbed the whatever version.

 

[maximus0402]

someone should....

Ask valve what they are doing currently.....why shouldn't they respond....its a good question.....like what stage in the development process are you?? or are you creating new material still??(that would not be a good sign for halflife coming anytime soon) just what are those brainiacks doing?

 

[WhiteBoy]

I think they are still working on the game. If the leak was current to september develupment then they still have a lot to do

 

[Dougy]

As said by valve and qouted by me and others countless times the Leak did NOT cuase the delay.


the game simply was not finished on time and they had to push it back to 2004.

 

[Wolf]

I chose 'Finished leak cleanup but decided to improve the game some more' but I think a more accurate guess is that it is an ongoing process with many unknowns. If the netcode was compromised then it would have been fixed already by now IMO, but Steam will be something they would be working on the whole way through - especially with the new provider and hopefully some peer-2-peer capabilities. As for accounting for the rest of the substantial development resources at Valve, it is a bit of a guess for me. It could go three ways:

1. They genuinely finished a while back apart from polishing / QA. The team is now working mostly on TF2 and another unannounced title.

2. The game needed solid work, and the hack just compounded the 'time-to-market' problem ten-fold. Won't be enough time for feature creep, and Valve won't risk it.

3. They were behind on construction and finishing, but they're now using the time needed to clean-up the hack as a catalyst to add things to the game / upgrade art assets as well as finish/polish/QA.. Will likely switch most of the team to TF2 etc soon.

I don't think 1 is very likely... I'd be happy if they just finished the game, fixed the outstanding issues (eg. clipping), but I'd also be happy if they add some new features too...

 

[Cole]

Umm....Well i think valve is stealing our pies and eating them. Hmm...where did my pie go...Ima go find it...and if i cant i shall make another one!!

 

[frances_farmer]

its interesting to wonder whether in the main previews valve gave etc where they said they were in the final playtesting stage (PC Zone preview) whether they were lying. And if so why.

We know that the delay, according to Valve at least, was not caused by the leak as they clearly stated they wouldn't have made Spetember 30th at all, leak or no leak. The time it's been since then to now suggests to me that at the time of the previews Valve weren't playtesting at all but still implementing a lot of content and were basically just a bit drunk on being in the limelight and so severely underesitmated the amount of development they still had ahead of them.

 

[Wolf]

We know that the delay, according to Valve at least, was not caused by the leak as they clearly stated they wouldn't have made Spetember 30th at all, leak or no leak.

Have they actually said that though? I've read the quotes, and I thought they said 'the game wasn't finished' not that the hack didn't affect their gold ETA at all. I'm not saying it was finished, but personally, I think that those statements were mostly damage control. They're hardly going to go into detail about what was and what wasn't compromised by the leak, and they know full well that the whole debacle has made them the butt of too many jokes / damaged their reputation.

I think it makes more sense for them to say - it's under control it needs to be finished, rather than reveal the extent to which their security incompetence damaged their IP and sales... I mean if there is even a wiff of them admitting Steam was compromised then they've blown a lot resources and people aren't going to trust credit card details etc in that kind of situation.

 

[clarky003]

Lol 52% think that there still cleaning up the leak, (of pre beta material )

I think people are spot on when they say that they havnt even finished cleaning the physics ,general final testing. and clipping problems, it makes the most sense . ... and then it goes GOLD. April.

 

[fizzlephox]

I still think that they cleaned up whatever the leak caused and are just improving the game.

 

[Dougy]

I still think that they cleaned up whatever the leak caused and are just improving the game.

:x


The leak DID NOT cause anything apart from rampant conspiracy theories.

 

[He@t!]

I still dont know what their doing but u should add this option

Playing the Far Cry demo.

 

[Space Cowboy]

Well, call me ignorant or stupid or whatever else you seem fit, but I don't think that the leak actually needed cleaning up. Firstly, surely wouldn't Valve have some backup system? Like if the office burnt down they would (and I think they do) have their current work saved off site. So if the leak deleted some of their work couldn't they just load up their work from the other day?

It seems pretty silly if someone could hack in and delete their work and not have some kind of security blanket.

 

[crabcakes66]

Well, call me ignorant or stupid or whatever else you seem fit, but I don't think that the leak actually needed cleaning up. Firstly, surely wouldn't Valve have some backup system? Like if the office burnt down they would (and I think they do) have their current work saved off site. So if the leak deleted some of their work couldn't they just load up their work from the other day?

It seems pretty silly if someone could hack in and delete their work and not have some kind of security blanket.

:dozey: :flame: :angel:

 

[Space Cowboy]

:dozey: :flame: :angel:

Good reply there! I completely understand where you're coming from.

/end sarcasm

 

[jimbones]

bwhahaa imagine the source got baleeeted by the haxx0r and they'd have to start from an older version of the game.. GOD HELP US ALL!!

 

[Styloid]

Well, call me ignorant or stupid or whatever else you seem fit, but I don't think that the leak actually needed cleaning up. Firstly, surely wouldn't Valve have some backup system? Like if the office burnt down they would (and I think they do) have their current work saved off site. So if the leak deleted some of their work couldn't they just load up their work from the other day?

It seems pretty silly if someone could hack in and delete their work and not have some kind of security blanket.

No, clean up means making Steam and what-not secure again. They obviously would have to redo everything to do with anti-cheating, payments over steam, etc. because the code is leaked all over the internet for any hacker to get a hold of.

 

[Space Cowboy]

yeah but the game itself must be realllly close to completion. they should just wait and release steam a bit later.

 

[X-FacToR]

Still not finished the game (major flaws, unfinished segments, bugs)

I doubt the major flaws part though... valve create a flaw? I think they kept all their flaw doings to steam and kept hl2 flawless Btw after the fourth download of steam seems to be error free

 

[Someone]

Didn't valve state in the information thread that the theft had zip to do with the delay?

I think the game was/is close to done, but all of the issues with Steam and Nvidia and things like that had a cumulative effect. Once the theft hit it's my belief they took the extra time to, not only fix things like steam and the Nvidia dx9 stuff, but are also taking the time to really fine tune issues which may have been there (but in themselves weren't enough to delay the game), and perhaps, but I doubt to a huge degree, they decided to add some things here and there. And, of course, correct/fix any information which was in the stolen build.

Value took 5 years to build the engine and game and could have come out ANY time to release it. They choose sept 30th because they KNEW it was close to being finished. I just don't buy the argument the game wasn't close to being done...it would make no sense to announce it at all when the game was so secret at that time, UNLESS it was close to being done.

In a nutshell, I think it was more than one thing....probably more than 2-3 things...which ultimately delayed this.

 

[X-FacToR]

I think the game just needed more time... think how long the original half-life was, half-life 2 is gunna take allot more time to create becuase of the scenerios, cities have tons of content allong with all the content and artwork they have to create. HL2 isnt gunna be your ordinary game its going to be the best action game of all time taking the thrown from the original.