Snarkpit Forum Index » General Banter » How long did it take you to beat HL2?
How long did it take you to beat HL2?
« previous page 1
2
Post Reply
Quote
 Re: How long did it take you to beat HL2?
Posted by Kage_Prototype on Fri Nov 19th at 1:56am 2004

You could try a wall, I'm pretty certain it won't attempt to reason with you.
[addsig]



Quote
 Re: How long did it take you to beat HL2?
Posted by GrandMasterLee on Fri Nov 19th at 2:00am 2004

I'm almost 30. I freaking *luv* games and computers. Been doing stuff with them for years.

--The GrandMaster




Quote
 Re: How long did it take you to beat HL2?
Posted by GrandMasterLee on Fri Nov 19th at 2:07am 2004

? quote:

? quoting Orpheus

son beat game in less than 12 hours.. he says its a great game, i says 60 bucks and 12 hours does not signify greatness in my book..

no HLDM and a 12 hour game after 5 damned years.. valve is beginning to annoy me.. perhaps i will learn to map for doom III, at least it met all my expectations for a followup game genre'



The game itself rocked though. I think that the reason most of us beat it so quick is because:

1. It just keeps you going. The story and transition are so fluid and dynamic.
2. The action is intense and the maps are just ridiculously huge. (waaay better than Doom3)
3. The characters are not only visually pleasing, but also have great personalities.

A game with this much depth and takes so little time to complete isn't so bad IMO.

It's like a great book you just can't put down. Some people read 400 pages in a day, and spent 25 bucks. So I don't think that logic applies to *good* works.
I'm really amazed at what valve did. They do annoy me a little, but not enough to switch to Doom 3 mapping. LOL!

--The GrandMaster




Quote
 Re: How long did it take you to beat HL2?
Posted by Orpheus on Fri Nov 19th at 2:08am 2004

? quoting Kage_Prototype
You could try a wall, I'm pretty certain it won't attempt to reason with you.

next time someone asks me why i remain here.. i promise this comment will come to mind

even if i never map again, you guys are enough reason to stay.

[addsig]



Quote
 Re: How long did it take you to beat HL2?
Posted by KungFuSquirrel on Fri Nov 19th at 5:22am 2004

? quoting Orpheus
seriously andrew, how hard would it have taken them to add the relevant parts to make HLDM a viable option?


HL2DM works. It's not officially supported, nor are there any maps, but the framework is still there. I doubt it's very balanced, but it can be done.

? quote:

you are one of the few we can trust to get a straight answer about content creation in a game as complex as HL, or any modern FPS..

are we talking months? and millions? or were they just catering to the masses and doing only the CS parts?


Yep, for a large scale title like HL2, the time spent on content creation would be ridiculous. I mean, look at every texture in that game as well as every model, down to the smallest detail strewn about the map. Then break something and look at the pieces it shatters into - those all had to be built by hand, too. Facial animation requires a ridiculous amount of bones and vertices (look at the important character models in wireframe and see where there's just rows and rows of 'wasted' polys they need for all the deformation). Any one piece of content can still be done relatively quickly, especially once your team gets into a good groove of content creation (which makes for good times ), but there's just such a huge list of things to make anyway that even if everything was perfect in the first pass, it'd still take years to get the game put together. As it stands, it took years and then who knows how long polishing and tweaking almost every aspect of it.

And when I say polish, I mean polish. I can see why this title took so long. I will openly say that I was not particularly impressed by what I saw as the three main selling points in this game: the AI, the facial animations, and the engine. However, Valve took the time to tweak the hell out of the combat to make it incredibly fun, regardless of AI. They spent the time to make the important characters really stand out and have real depth to them, regardless of how simple some of the facial stuff was. And no matter how simple many of the levels look and how many tricks they employed in sometimes horrible spots to make it run, the art content and art direction of the entire game is so well refined that it covers any weakness in the technology itself. They spent ages getting all that right, and it paid off.

? quote:

truth be told, i don't se me releasing a map within the next couple months, but dangit, i wanted to be able to


Well, you're in luck - you can if you want. The levels in HL2 weren't overly complex. In many cases they got away with box hallways and rooms with just a physics object or two. And all the content is already made for you. When making the game, Valve was not so fortunate as you to have completed texture sets and art assets for quite a while. In that regards, community development will always have it much easier than the dev teams. Everything you need is already there, which should allow you to do your thing pretty normally. It'll still take longer to make maps, but for MP/DM purposes I sure as hell don't want to play some gargantuan thing where I'll never find anyone to fight, so by keeping the size reasonable you keep the construction time reasonable as well.

? quote:
I don't know why, but it seems people (in general) consider "Next-Generation" games to be games with "ground breaking" graphics. I doubt many people think about the AI matrix(s) or anything like that.


Even considering AI, HL2 barely qualifies as next-gen. They really didn't do anything too impressive with it, unfortunately, and with one exception I can think of (Dog's fetching in the grav gun training) most of the cool events were either scripted or hinted by the node placement (which might as well be the same thing - those were called ai_scripted_sequences in HL). There's still artifacts of HL AI in there.

Now please don't get me wrong, I had a tremendously fun time through the game and it ranks among my favorites. But that doesn't change the fact that without laying down a crazy number of entities, the AI still has a hard time navigating the world.

I made it through in 10 hours, but I assure you I didn't rush it. And nor did it feel like only 10 hours. I still re-do the math to try and prove myself wrong, but I pulled it off somehow and didn't really miss anything - I was exploring, I was fooling around with stuff, I died, I got lost a couple times, etc. etc. Valve just did an incredible job of keeping the flow so consistent from beginning to end. right from the start, bam, you're in the thick of it. It basically grabs you by the balls from the start and doesn't let go until the end, at which point it kicks you in said balls but in such a good way.

Ugh. that was so wrong... [addsig]



Quote
 Re: How long did it take you to beat HL2?
Posted by Orpheus on Fri Nov 19th at 10:48am 2004

thanx andrew, i feel a bit better knowing they had an excuse at least.

i guess i'll wait for a proper DM like everyone else.. breathlessly.

[addsig]




« previous page 1
2
Post Reply