I'm pretty sure they are still working on it. Last bits of information I heard were from Gabe. He basically said that it cost too much money to produce the episodes to the quality bar they had set for themselves and it also took too much time to craft each experience along the way.
From the sounds of it they decided to use the episodic model on other games more well suited to it. Like L4D and Team Fortress.
Ep3 is suppose to be equal to or perhaps larger than the original half-life 2 at this point. I think they are probably using their other episodic titles to help fund its development, but that's just speculation.
Anyways, yeah, as far as I know it's still going to happen, and is still in development. Lets hope it's epic.
I don't think Valve invented episodic content but I think they were the biggest name to run with it. I feel like that was the hot idea for a second, and now a year or two later it looks like the idea hasn't really panned out. And what with the economic situation, riskier ventures like that probably won't become popular soon. From a purely business standpoint, I wonder how well episodic content worked out for the companies that actually released them, like Tell Tale.
Anyhow, Episode 3 is my most anticipated game. I'm always excited to see what they're up to, but I also hope a new engine isn't too far off for Valve.
They've been quite tight lipped about it. Due to the delay and the secrecy I think it's more than likely that it is in fact Half-life 3 and not just episode 3. My bet is that it's probably going to be a full game.
"Gabe also reiterated the fact that Valve aren't working on any PS3 games."
Gabe no likely the PS3.
No wonder, it's pretty obvious why when your hear from programmers how much effort it takes to get stuff working (smoothly) on that thing.
Though Valve probably does have the budget for it.
they're still doing the death animation for that silly cow who hangs around with you
it's shaping up to be the most spectacularly satisfying death-throe anim ever, clocking in at a full 23 minutes last time i heard with 670 different twitches, all beautifully randomising but fully blended, but then i think they decided even that wasn't long enough
they're still doing the death animation for that silly cow who hangs around with you
it's shaping up to be the most spectacularly satisfying death-throe anim ever, clocking in at a full 23 minutes last time i heard with 670 different twitches, all beautifully randomising but fully blended, but then i think they decided even that wasn't long enough
I cant wait for that, I've been itching to kill the bitch.
I heard somewhere along the line in an interview or something of the sort that they're working on guns crazier than the portal guns for Episode 3. I'm calling shenanigans.
I'm always excited to see what they're up to, but I also hope a new engine isn't too far off for Valve.
God, you have no idea how much I agree with this. As much as I love their games, the folks at Valve need to end their affair with Source and build a new engine from scratch. It may be stable and they may know the ins and outs of it from working on various iterations of it for over a decade, but there are some serious problems with developing content for it.
I sure as hell wouldn't refer to the Half Life episodes as 'episodic content' when they take longer than a normal game in between. I suppose for a HL game 2-3 years would be considered faster but in general they're just on a normal schedule. Episodic should refer to something within or at most a year between releases, even then that feels like it's pushing it. that's just me though.
while Id software support ps3, xbox, pc, mac, linux
we can see who will be the clear winner here, steam or not.
Supporting every system does you no good if you never release anything ;P
It's funny though how easily coding can turn one into a complete hypocrite. I'm all for portable games, but fuck if I'm going to touch OpenGL with a ten foot pole. Goddamn anachronistic state machine. I'm an artist, not a programmer!
The irony of this is, they've got fans up in arms, because they've released Left 4 dead 2, too soon.
They cannot win.
I'm pretty sure the backlash from L4D2 is because they're releasing it without having a lot of obvious new features that seem like they're worth the money. If they'd completely reinvented the game with a ton of shiny new stuff, I don't think as many people would be bitching.
You mean like how they reinvented half life 2 with ep1 and ep2, right?
/shrug
I'm not one of the people boycotting it and I really don't see what all the fuss is about. I think it'd be pretty friggin' badass if they released updates using the same format as the TF2 ones, but I don't really care too much because I don't play the game very often.
I agree with swiz, Source is a pig to work with and needs an update at the very least. Of course I've only worked with the tools they've released so they could have some magic they're holding back.
The irony of this is, they've got fans up in arms, because they've released Left 4 dead 2, too soon.
They cannot win.
I thought they would be having more content packs with L4D but whatever, I loved it and I'll be buying the second one - I just sure as hell hope the lobby connects the two so all the content is available from one base location.
I think people were expecting too much considering how amazingly generous they've been with Team Fortress 2.
oh man. TF2..L4D2. HL:E2. Source 2
There's only room for 3's now. all the next versions will hopefully be on the next Source engine /self hype!
I'll just state it here and now while people still have interests in reading this thread.
Valve is nowhere soon going to update what they've got. So, if you're expecting new toolsets, a new visual engine altogether. Kiss that blissful thought goodbye (Though it's a nice one to have, and I wish myself if it were possible to come true).
I'll just state it here and now while people still have interests in reading this thread.
Valve is nowhere soon going to update what they've got. So, if you're expecting new toolsets, a new visual engine altogether. Kiss that blissful thought goodbye (Though it's a nice one to have, and I wish myself if it were possible to come true).
Yeah, I know. Valve has already said that they're going to stick to Source for a while because they can keep updating it with new stuff as the technology comes around since it's structured to be very extensible or something. I still wish they'd start work on a new, more modern engine with an easier, more powerful toolset that doesn't rely on core tech and code that's been around for over a decade.
Hell, even if they just updated it so it's easier to make custom content (especially, my god, custom weapons and animation) and left the real meat of the engine alone, I'd be happy. Being able to scale and deform models and preview stuff in the editor like Unreal would make me require adult diapers just from the excitement.
From what I remembering reading, HL2: E3 is the last episode in the HL2 series. I also recall them saying that they were also working on HL3 in tandem.
but that was something i remember reading earlier in the year.
There's a lot of conflicting stuff going around. Some people are saying they're doing Ep3 and HL3 concurrently, some are saying that the episodes will constitute HL3, some are saying they haven't even started on HL3...
Source was built and updated from the heavily modified Quake engine they used in Half-Life (GoldSrc), so at least a small part of the code base is from sometime around 1996.
Back to this L4D2 thing. Swizzle, you said people don't think there are enough "obvious" new features to consider it a real sequel. New weapons (as well as old ones), melee weapon feature, new characters, new zombies, new locations, improved gib system, more in depth storyline, new director improvements, and different types of ammo. Most if not all of this is talked about in just about any L4D2 interview you can find (pretty obvious to me ) and I think it is plenty. From what I hear, people just think it is too soon for a sequel but fuck people, I think it will be great.
I never really knew how popular the HL2 Episodes were. I thought they were just small things but maybe I should check 'em out...
The engine still has incredible character though, even if it is a bitch to work with
Eh. The only really great thing about the engine that sets it apart from others right now is that you don't need an external program like Beast to calculate really pretty lightmaps and stuff. It's not the greatest engine out there and it doesn't have really good support for fairly standard stuff these days.
You have the option of using spec, self-illumination and transparency on models, but only two of them at the same time because you have to put them in the alpha channels of the diffuse and normal maps. That means you also can't have colored spec maps since alpha channels are just grayscale.
Another problem is that you can't have decent shadow maps on models. All props are vertex lit unless you're using dynamic lights like the flashlights in L4D, and those don't have standard support yet.
There are a few features I'd love to see added to Source, but I'd mainly be interested in them adding a simple model and texture import GUI and seeing Hammer and the compile process get reworked to be similar to Unreal. There's already a lot of very good stuff you can do at compile time when it comes to controlling vis, lighting and other stuff, but I'd like to see them break the compile into separate stages so you can build the BSP as soon as you open the program and whenever you save and then build vis and lighting whenever you want separately from each other. Part of the reasoning behind this is that it's often useful to build the BSP to check for leaks and other errors, but I don't want to have to screw around with a bunch of textual commands and turning off Vvis and Vrad just when I want to do a leak check.
Back to this L4D2 thing. Swizzle, you said people don't think there are enough "obvious" new features to consider it a real sequel. New weapons (as well as old ones), melee weapon feature, new characters, new zombies, new locations, improved gib system, more in depth storyline, new director improvements, and different types of ammo. Most if not all of this is talked about in just about any L4D2 interview you can find (pretty obvious to me ) and I think it is plenty. From what I hear, people just think it is too soon for a sequel but fuck people, I think it will be great.
I think L4D2 looks fine. I'm probably not going to buy it unless I see that they've made really great improvements across the board on the art side, though; there are some things I'm interested in that they've talked about adding to the game (mainly day/night and weather cycles) that didn't sound like they were possible before in Source. If there are enough new features, I'd probably buy it just to use the updated SDK to make my own stuff even if I didn't really play the game very often.
To be honest one of the main reasons I have stuck with source for quite some time is the fact that there code support for mods is great.
All I want valve to add to the engine is scale-able models with collision scaling as well and lightmaps on models (although this could probably be done with the mod source code but I am too lazy).
If they tweak anything in Hammer, the first thing should be the displacement mapping tools push/pull system. Selecting the axis from a drop down menu and having the viewport locked is an insane way to work and not needed at all. The lack of light maps for props and static meshes is pretty lame, especially for TF2 which can get by with pretty simple flat tile textures as long as the light map is baked in properly.
I second the beef about scaling meshes. They double up on a lot of meshes creating special 1/16th sized versions for the skybox. Flipping models would also be very much appreciated.
Oh, god, displacements... They need to just completely rework displacements from the ground up. Give me an option to just grab the mesh and pull it in whatever direction I want. Making the displacements behave like metaballs or whatever would be nice, too; dynamic mesh resolution and editing would be a godsend.
You know the feature I'd like most, though? Out of all the incredible advanced features they could add, I'd like a simple one:
Ctrl+F to hide all selected items.
Selection sets are okay the way they are, but it takes so damn long to make them useful that it's just not worth the trouble of using them very often.
Hahahaha... yea hide selection shouldn't create visgroups, totally stupid, especially when it removes the object from previous groups. I like visgroups but it should be independant from show/hide objects. Just hide the object don't create a new group and hide that new group... grrr... hahaha.
On a side note I do like how Hammer is supper accurate when selecting things in the 3D viewport.
I would much rather see Valve go the direction Crytek has been going with their engine tech. "Real-Time".
The idea of exporting any asset from you're primary application and having the need to write a .qc script file to compile that model and texture is really rediculous.
I use Source at my job right now, and it's terribly frusterating to work with on many levels. As the engine on the visual support is dated. It's a good engine for it's own cases because Valve centered it to use the most of it's hardware resources on the parts more needed for good gameplay. Rather than focusing on heavy visuals that would lack that luster for what would be demanding for system hardware.
I mean the simple idea that i'm reviewing about source here is. If I create a soda cup. Model and texture the thing, & export it out to the format needed. I see no reason on the planet why on earth they havn't added a final format to just drag and drop to the root lookup folder. For the engine to resort to when loading the model. While there could be at the same time a live material editor to assign specific paramters to that object.
I would much rather see Valve go the direction Crytek has been going with their engine tech. "Real-Time".
That's what I meant when I said they should build a new engine. The real core, underlying technology behind Source is beyond outdated and the whole thing needs to be scrapped in favor of something that is easier and more powerful to work with. They can keep the baked lighting and building stuff with brushes if they like (and heaven knows it's served them and the mod community well and can give amazing results), but the way people work with the engine and the things they import needs to be modernized.
I'm sure it's obvious that I have a laundry list of complaints about the Source engine, but that's only because I love the games they've made with it and I want to be able to make really cool stuff for those games really easily.
Thing is, even if the tech is dated, they can still get stuff to look good on top of playing well. TF2 has pretty much the best art direction i have ever seen, and nobody's complaining about L4D's looks.
Doesn't make it less of a pain to work with for developers other than Valve, but then again, that's the reason you should consider something like UE3, which is a dream to work with compared to Source.
ive put one model from maya into source and will most likely never do it again, it is such a pain. the source engine is fine but needs some major updating. They also need to make it easier to import models imo... such a hassle. i cant remember where i saw it, but in a recent interview gabe had said that they were working on portal 2 and l4d 2 and cs2 was also brought up. i would like to see hl2 ep3 before any of these but im sure in the end they wont disappoint.
i cant remember where i saw it, but in a recent interview gabe had said that they were working on portal 2 and l4d 2 and cs2 was also brought up. i would like to see hl2 ep3 before any of these but im sure in the end they wont disappoint.
who cares about what engine they use as long as the game is fun?
I play HL for the story and gameplay, not the graphics.
Because if you add up all the time they must surely waste writing .QCs and going from .max/.maya to .SMD to .MDL and from .TGA to .VTF and back and forth for model and material updates and instead put that time towards doing something useful you would probably be having fun playing episode 3 right now.
i'm one of the people in the boycott L4D2 group. the reason i am boycotting it is because i think the 2 games should behave as if they are one game if you buy both of them. i know they claimed that they would do that but i don't believe them because they did not make it so that Half Life 2 is updated by the Episode's engines. i was hoping L4D would have it's engine upgraded over time so that you would be able to see the illumination of the other player's flashlights for example. plus i do complain about L4D graphics; for one thing, it looks to me as though the non-special infected do not even have normal-maps.
Replies
From the sounds of it they decided to use the episodic model on other games more well suited to it. Like L4D and Team Fortress.
Ep3 is suppose to be equal to or perhaps larger than the original half-life 2 at this point. I think they are probably using their other episodic titles to help fund its development, but that's just speculation.
Anyways, yeah, as far as I know it's still going to happen, and is still in development. Lets hope it's epic.
Edit: Oh and here is some up to date information on its status, pretty much the same thing I just said: http://www.halflife2.net/2009/08/14/valve-confirm-work-on-episode-3-continues-and-more/
Never happens.
Ever.
We need more games like this (Alan Wake?)
Anyhow, Episode 3 is my most anticipated game. I'm always excited to see what they're up to, but I also hope a new engine isn't too far off for Valve.
This in game shot has been leaked forever, surprised it's not done yet.
Gabe no likely the PS3.
No wonder, it's pretty obvious why when your hear from programmers how much effort it takes to get stuff working (smoothly) on that thing.
Though Valve probably does have the budget for it.
it's shaping up to be the most spectacularly satisfying death-throe anim ever, clocking in at a full 23 minutes last time i heard with 670 different twitches, all beautifully randomising but fully blended, but then i think they decided even that wasn't long enough
I cant wait for that, I've been itching to kill the bitch.
God, you have no idea how much I agree with this. As much as I love their games, the folks at Valve need to end their affair with Source and build a new engine from scratch. It may be stable and they may know the ins and outs of it from working on various iterations of it for over a decade, but there are some serious problems with developing content for it.
Also, yeah: Ep3=Glee
while Id software support ps3, xbox, pc, mac, linux
we can see who will be the clear winner here, steam or not.
Supporting every system does you no good if you never release anything ;P
It's funny though how easily coding can turn one into a complete hypocrite. I'm all for portable games, but fuck if I'm going to touch OpenGL with a ten foot pole. Goddamn anachronistic state machine. I'm an artist, not a programmer!
They cannot win.
I'm pretty sure the backlash from L4D2 is because they're releasing it without having a lot of obvious new features that seem like they're worth the money. If they'd completely reinvented the game with a ton of shiny new stuff, I don't think as many people would be bitching.
From what I've heard it seems like quite a lot, plenty enough to warrant a whole new game(well find out when it is released).
It just doesnt fit with peoples perceptions that valve must release new content for free a la Team Fortress 2.
You mean like how they reinvented half life 2 with ep1 and ep2, right?
/shrug
I'm not one of the people boycotting it and I really don't see what all the fuss is about. I think it'd be pretty friggin' badass if they released updates using the same format as the TF2 ones, but I don't really care too much because I don't play the game very often.
I thought they would be having more content packs with L4D but whatever, I loved it and I'll be buying the second one - I just sure as hell hope the lobby connects the two so all the content is available from one base location.
I think people were expecting too much considering how amazingly generous they've been with Team Fortress 2.
oh man. TF2..L4D2. HL:E2. Source 2
There's only room for 3's now. all the next versions will hopefully be on the next Source engine /self hype!
In the year 2020
Valve is nowhere soon going to update what they've got. So, if you're expecting new toolsets, a new visual engine altogether. Kiss that blissful thought goodbye (Though it's a nice one to have, and I wish myself if it were possible to come true).
Yeah, I know. Valve has already said that they're going to stick to Source for a while because they can keep updating it with new stuff as the technology comes around since it's structured to be very extensible or something. I still wish they'd start work on a new, more modern engine with an easier, more powerful toolset that doesn't rely on core tech and code that's been around for over a decade.
Hell, even if they just updated it so it's easier to make custom content (especially, my god, custom weapons and animation) and left the real meat of the engine alone, I'd be happy. Being able to scale and deform models and preview stuff in the editor like Unreal would make me require adult diapers just from the excitement.
but that was something i remember reading earlier in the year.
I've no idea what they're doing.
I never really knew how popular the HL2 Episodes were. I thought they were just small things but maybe I should check 'em out...
Eh. The only really great thing about the engine that sets it apart from others right now is that you don't need an external program like Beast to calculate really pretty lightmaps and stuff. It's not the greatest engine out there and it doesn't have really good support for fairly standard stuff these days.
You have the option of using spec, self-illumination and transparency on models, but only two of them at the same time because you have to put them in the alpha channels of the diffuse and normal maps. That means you also can't have colored spec maps since alpha channels are just grayscale.
Another problem is that you can't have decent shadow maps on models. All props are vertex lit unless you're using dynamic lights like the flashlights in L4D, and those don't have standard support yet.
There are a few features I'd love to see added to Source, but I'd mainly be interested in them adding a simple model and texture import GUI and seeing Hammer and the compile process get reworked to be similar to Unreal. There's already a lot of very good stuff you can do at compile time when it comes to controlling vis, lighting and other stuff, but I'd like to see them break the compile into separate stages so you can build the BSP as soon as you open the program and whenever you save and then build vis and lighting whenever you want separately from each other. Part of the reasoning behind this is that it's often useful to build the BSP to check for leaks and other errors, but I don't want to have to screw around with a bunch of textual commands and turning off Vvis and Vrad just when I want to do a leak check.
I think L4D2 looks fine. I'm probably not going to buy it unless I see that they've made really great improvements across the board on the art side, though; there are some things I'm interested in that they've talked about adding to the game (mainly day/night and weather cycles) that didn't sound like they were possible before in Source. If there are enough new features, I'd probably buy it just to use the updated SDK to make my own stuff even if I didn't really play the game very often.
All I want valve to add to the engine is scale-able models with collision scaling as well and lightmaps on models (although this could probably be done with the mod source code but I am too lazy).
I second the beef about scaling meshes. They double up on a lot of meshes creating special 1/16th sized versions for the skybox. Flipping models would also be very much appreciated.
You know the feature I'd like most, though? Out of all the incredible advanced features they could add, I'd like a simple one:
Ctrl+F to hide all selected items.
Selection sets are okay the way they are, but it takes so damn long to make them useful that it's just not worth the trouble of using them very often.
On a side note I do like how Hammer is supper accurate when selecting things in the 3D viewport.
I would much rather see Valve go the direction Crytek has been going with their engine tech. "Real-Time".
The idea of exporting any asset from you're primary application and having the need to write a .qc script file to compile that model and texture is really rediculous.
I use Source at my job right now, and it's terribly frusterating to work with on many levels. As the engine on the visual support is dated. It's a good engine for it's own cases because Valve centered it to use the most of it's hardware resources on the parts more needed for good gameplay. Rather than focusing on heavy visuals that would lack that luster for what would be demanding for system hardware.
I mean the simple idea that i'm reviewing about source here is. If I create a soda cup. Model and texture the thing, & export it out to the format needed. I see no reason on the planet why on earth they havn't added a final format to just drag and drop to the root lookup folder. For the engine to resort to when loading the model. While there could be at the same time a live material editor to assign specific paramters to that object.
I play HL for the story and gameplay, not the graphics.
That's what I meant when I said they should build a new engine. The real core, underlying technology behind Source is beyond outdated and the whole thing needs to be scrapped in favor of something that is easier and more powerful to work with. They can keep the baked lighting and building stuff with brushes if they like (and heaven knows it's served them and the mod community well and can give amazing results), but the way people work with the engine and the things they import needs to be modernized.
I'm sure it's obvious that I have a laundry list of complaints about the Source engine, but that's only because I love the games they've made with it and I want to be able to make really cool stuff for those games really easily.
Doesn't make it less of a pain to work with for developers other than Valve, but then again, that's the reason you should consider something like UE3, which is a dream to work with compared to Source.
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/gametrailers-tv/67?ch=1&sd=0
Was this episode. He did deny working on CS2 though.
Anyone else see a news post a few weeks back saying they were researching sign language for Episode 3? Supposedly between Alex and Dog.