HL2 to vivendi

Yak_Fighter said:
Leave it to the French to ruin all our fun. If they do shut down steam I will not be pleased.

bash doom III once more, and i will put a mojo on your HL2 reception joesph :biggrin:

whispers

did i mention, brenda studies white magic books?

"Gabe Newell deliberately concealed the capabilities of the Steam system from it and misled it over Valve's distribution intentions."

That is just pure B.S. I read about steam and it's "hidden" capabilities years ago on the valve website. Although, it had previously occurred to me that Vivendi might not be so happy about the developer bypassing their distributor. I assumed it was all kosher though.

Tracer Bullet said:
Although, it had previously occurred to me that Vivendi might not be so happy about the developer bypassing their distributor. I assumed it was all kosher though.

I was thinking the same thing... Now, it seems like Valve went right over the top of Vivendi and started distributing via Steam, and now the s**t's hit the fan. If this is true, doesn't Vivendi have the legal grounds to stop distributions via Steam?

Orph :biggrin:

and no, if you read all the claims it says that Valve demanded the HL intellectual property returned to them from Sierra. Along with granting that Sierra also allowed Valve to distribute things via the internet on their own, or something to that effect. Basically they granted Valve the ability to do something like Steam, realized their blunder, and are now trying to regain control. Sucks to be them, and I hope they fail miserably in their suit.

Anyways, Vivendi would be foolish to think Steam's going to put a huge dent in their bottom line, as they're going to make millions off of HL2. Steam will help provide longevity to the game through mod support and such which will hopefully give HL2 many years of staying power. Plus Vivendi is losing money as it is and to delay the release because of Steam would be a really stupid move.

Yak_Fighter said:
Orph :biggrin:

does jig

i knew all those damned books would come in handy... someday.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/09/24/news_6108100.html

If Vivendi does hold it back shakes fist

Guess what, PC Gamer is going to review HL2 in its next issue, and that issue will be out within the week. There won't be any holding hostage or such nonsense. We are on the final stretch boys! :biggrin:

I seem to recall once a magazine had a review of Baldur's Gate: Dark
Alliance 2, which then failed to be released for another few months due
to publisher problems. So while I wouldn't say this is a 100% sure
guarantee that the game will be out very soon, but its certainly a
positive sign.

There's about 4 or 5 magazines that have announced a review, 4 of which will be out within the week. :smile:

I cannay wait!

Yak_Fighter said:
We are on the final stretch boys! :biggrin:

I second that notion, although ill be surprised if half of the people that post here will actually play the game.

EB told me they're getting it in stores on November 5th. And that my 5$ deposit from May2003 (thats right, 2003) is still valid.

And yes I will actually play the game.

I've had HL2 purchased for about a year and a half now ...

By the way, Gamestop in general doesn't know when anything is coming out. Its a company so distraught that its subsidiaries fight amongst themselves. Thus Babbages always says EBX is wrong, and EBX says EBGames is wrong and EBGames says Electronics Boutiques is wrong and they say Gamestop is wrong, and yes these are all stores here. I believe they also own FuncoLand.

I never trust what the game stores say, here theyre telling me its November 2 (probably because America gets its games released before Canada....sorrt WC). I can only guess were in the final streach because valve is in HL2 preloading phase 4 now. And Game Stop and FuncoLand are the same "company" I guess you could say.

Apparently it's been revealed that HL2's only multiplayer is CS:S, (www.halflife2.net) and frankly that sucks. Though I've been proven right when I initially said that was the case way back during E3 2004, so it's not a total loss :razz: . Who's up for making a HL2DM mod?

Most UK sites are listing the release date as 5th Nov. too so they might be onto something there...

Well s**t, if they don't ship it with HLDM2 I'll definatly sign on to making one of our own!

I concur. I was thinking HL2 MP might be some cool Resistance vs. Combine thing or something. Oh well. :sad:

See, that's what I was thinking too, like some sort of team dm type game. It's really too bad though, because there are too many s**tty realism mods out there and I just know that any dm mod made will be some sort of severian/ozdm clusterf**k that's horribly unbalanced and retarded. I can't imagine making a dm mod would take more than a week, so there's no reason why Valve didn't make it.

Remember that Valve want people to think that there is no HL2 multipayer (or at least to keep HL2 MP a complete secret), and that at no point have they said anything about the multiplayer content. My decision on HL2-MP waits until somebody actually has a retail version of the game.

You'd be surprised what it takes to get the right weapon balance, timing, speed, etc. etc. Not counting getting the content made and in decent shape for it. I'm surprised they didn't do anything with a more standard MP game type, but given the amount of content work that has gone into HL2 alone, not to mention CS:S, I suppose it shouldn't be that much of a surprise. Still disappointing, though. I'd almost rather it have no MP than tacking in what might as well be a different game.

Jeff: You do have a point, as the PC Gamer reviewer played HL at Valve instead of out of the box. I think I'll hope against hope as well. :biggrin:

KFS: I admit that you're very right about the balancing, extra work, and all that jazz, but DM doesn't exactly require that much additional content, especially when you'd be reusing all the weapon and player models, textures, and world models. I didn't think the the player movement and weapon behavior/damage was all that different in HLDM and HLSP anyways.

It really doesn't seem like Valve to do this sort of thing. They abandon all creativity and simply think "**** it, we'll do Counter-Strike with better graphics. That'll do. Everyone likes Counter-Strike, right?" Compared to the level of work that has obviously been put into the single-player portion, it just seems like something tacked on at the last minute with little thought. It's like Rainbow Six having Painkiller as it's MP, it just doesn't fit. They're two seperate games. I realise that it will generate more sales, but I know that Valve are creative people, and it's sad to see that creativity wasted on a five year old mod.

But I can live with that. What really annoys me is that Valve didn't even bother to clarify any of this between now and E3. They just kept quiet, as if they were hiding something. I wonder if Valve realise they've annoyed quite a substantial amount of the Half-Life community, a community they claim that they feel a part of. I know they've supported the community a lot more than other developers are willing to, it just feels a bit like a slap in the face to keep us in the dark, when it could have taken 30 seconds to clear it up.

Kage_Prototype said:
It really doesn't seem like Valve to do this sort of thing. They abandon all creativity and simply think "**** it, we'll do Counter-Strike with better graphics. That'll do. Everyone likes Counter-Strike, right?" Compared to the level of work that has obviously been put into the single-player portion, it just seems like something tacked on at the last minute with little thought. It's like Rainbow Six having Painkiller as it's MP, it just doesn't fit. They're two seperate games. I realise that it will generate more sales, but I know that Valve are creative people, and it's sad to see that creativity wasted on a five year old mod.

But I can live with that. What really annoys me is that Valve didn't even bother to clarify any of this between now and E3. They just kept quiet, as if they were hiding something. I wonder if Valve realise they've annoyed quite a substantial amount of the Half-Life community, a community they claim that they feel a part of. I know they've supported the community a lot more than other developers are willing to, it just feels a bit like a slap in the face to keep us in the dark, when it could have taken 30 seconds to clear it up.

I'm pretty sure there'll be an HL2 mulitplayer. If not's from HL2 DIRRECTLY, then you can all bash it all out hard core in Sven-Coop2. :razz:

/edit which has already been planned :razz:

I'm pretty sure there'll be an HL2 mulitplayer.

Even when the person who reviewed it for PC Gamer said that CS:S is the only multiplayer component for HL2?

I agree that there will eventually be a deathmatch mod or something, but for Valve to not develop even a DM for the basis of mod-making is just baffling.

Its a very annoying piece of news, but fingers crossed Bullit from the
AG mod might now be tempted to make an AG2 and have a lot more support
from the community. The potential is there to get maps in what could
turn into the essentially "official" HL2DM mod :smile:

But, the thing is, PCGamer doesn't have a retail copy. We don't even know if he has the release canidate. So, you can't really jump to any conclusions. Magazines can be wrong, especially PCGamer. But, who knows for sure? No one has a copy that they went out and bought, which is the copy that matters.

Hmm, its a good point, but I'm sure Valve would have specified for the
review copy that it is missing the still to come multiplayer component
if that was the case. The only way I think a DM mode could appear would
be in the form of a free download at a later date, as happened with
TFC, DMC and Ricochet.

Well, what if they're still working on it? The same way the DoD team is working on DoD:S?

The point is: No one really knows for sure except most everyone who works at Valve. Not to mention, until its out its most definatly way too anal to bitch over how dissapointed you are. <~ General comment, not really directed at any one person.

If they are still working on it, I'm sure they would have made it clear
to the reviewers. If they are still working on it and its in a state
that they couldn't even give SOME representation of it to the
reviewers, then it doesn't sound like they are far enough into
development to be giving out review copies, or that the DM mode won't
make it into the shipped copy and will come at a later date.

I do hope it will be in, and of course the word of one reviewer doesn't
make it certain, but it just doesn't seem likely after what has been
said. I hope I'm proven wrong however :smile:

The point of a prerelease for review is to generate more interest in an upcoming title. Impossible in this case, but you would still think that they would want to disclose any multiplayer componant which is planned just for the free publicity. I mean, what's the point of keeping it under wraps until people actualy start playing? I think that would be a strategic mistake.

I wasn't saying there is a stratigic point, I was just mentioning the other possibilities.

Sven-Coop2 is coop. :razz:

If HL2 doesn't come with a DM mode, I'm guessing everyone will want to make one of their own, which can't be a good thing. We'll have far too many variants on our hands, and mapping for a standard DM style is going to be quite impossible :sad:

But then again, maybe the mode is available, but VALVe isn't going to make official levels for it. Or something.

Yak_Fighter said:
Orph :biggrin:

and no, if you read all the claims it says that Valve demanded the HL intellectual property returned to them from Sierra. Along with granting that Sierra also allowed Valve to distribute things via the internet on their own, or something to that effect. Basically they granted Valve the ability to do something like Steam, realized their blunder, and are now trying to regain control. Sucks to be them, and I hope they fail miserably in their suit.

Anyways, Vivendi would be foolish to think Steam's going to put a huge dent in their bottom line, as they're going to make millions off of HL2. Steam will help provide longevity to the game through mod support and such which will hopefully give HL2 many years of staying power. Plus Vivendi is losing money as it is and to delay the release because of Steam would be a really stupid move.

If it weren't for a similar move by IBM and Microsoft back in the day we would never have the systems we do today. Great stuff often comes out of mistakes.

yea just ask my parents.

I'm ashamed that it took me two reads to get you there JFry

I find this whole turn of events very disheartening. No DM out of the box? 6 years in development and a re-tooled mod is the only multiplay?. Well throw this straw up there on top of the already overladen camel and pray his back does'nt break. I don't play CS, nor do I care to, source engine or not, and as already stated, how many mods will we have to sift through before finding one that suits the bill? Bah!

And another thing, how come this PC gamer guy can divulge this seemingly significant bit of news? No word from Valve themselves on MP?. I'm hoping he's wrong, cause I will find my DM jones elsewhere if need be.

I can't see it being released without DM. It was such a big part of the original - and a base for all mods to work from - I reckon they're telling porkies :wink:

I can't understand this either... After they made such a big deal about how the multiplayer was being kept a secret, but didn't keep anything secret with CS:S. What were they talking about when they said that HL2 multiplayer was a secret?

I think they were saying it was a secret well before CS:Source was
announced, and remember when CS:Source WAS announced the way it was
worded kind of suggested it was HL2's multiplayer component. I think
the secret may have been that its multiplayer was CS:Source.

That said, apparently CS:Source is out next week over steam, which
makes it seem more of a stand alone product than HL2's MP component...

Yeah exactly. It isn't a multiplayer component, it's a multiplayer game that you get free with HL2. Personally I would be a bit annoyed with Valve if they don't have some kind of multiplayer set in the HL2 world.

well we will know when the time comes i guess

http://www.steampowered.com/?area=news

phase 5, we must be getting close

PC Gamer UK has given HL2 96%, which is pretty f**king brilliant considering only three other games have been rewarded a score that high before, the original HL being one of them (the other two being Quake 2 and Civilisation 2).

A few quotes:

It's: Astonishing, Robits!, Revelatory
It's Not: Ever stupid, Corridors, The end of the story

"This very european city is populated by frightened and desperate American immigrants, and sits under the shadow of a vast, brutalist skyscraper that is consuming the urban sprawl with crawling walls of blue steel. It's a powerful fiction. City 17 is one of th emost inventive and evocative game worlds we've ever seen. The autocratic and vicious behaviour of the masked Overwatch soldiers immediatly puts you in a high pressure environment. People look at you with desperate eyes, just waiting for the end to their pain, an end to the power of the mysterious combine..."

"But even with Gordons sinster silence there are reams of dialogue. It is spoken by bewilderingly talented actors and animated with almost magical precision."

"Combine police take less kindly to tin cans being lobbed at their shiny gas masks"

"You can even use it to grab hovering combine attack drones and batter them into tiny fragments on the concrete surfaces"

"It was all in that moment when I laughed. I couldn?t believe it was quite this good. I chuckled in muddled disbelief. My nervous fingers reloaded the level, knowing that I had to see that breathtaking sequence one more time. It was then I knew for certain: Valve had surpassed not only themselves, but everyone else too. Half-Life 2 is an astounding accomplishment. It is the definitive statement of the last five years of first-person shooters. Everything else was just a stopgap. Half-Life 2 is a near perfect sequel.?

"A symphony of shooting, a ballad of blastery. Gordon's story finds a new and astonishing trajectory in a brutal dystopia. Own this."

A bit of proof for the doubters.

A bit too much hyperbole for me to swallow, but nevertheless, it's nice news. :smile: Apparently, PC Powerplay has also reviewed it and given it 90%, though this has yet to really be proven.

Simply awesome. Not that I had any doubts about HL2's quality, mind you, but having some concrete evidence beforehand is always nice.

Only 96%!!!!!! I expected at least 98%!

HOLY

FLURKING

SCHNIT

Whoever thinks HL2 has lost it's spark graphically deserves a head exam. :eek:

[EDIT]: btw, these shots are from the DVD included with PC Gamer.

[EDIT 2]: oooh, another one :biggrin:

Looks... pretty... awesome... :eek:

Hey, isn't that a slave without a collar? Hmm...

Kage_Prototype said:
HOLY

Unbelievable! :shocked: I'll never wash these eyes again.