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First Person Shooters (Games)

Half-Life 2 - A Canvas for Original Works 32

Posted by Zonk from the paint-young-modders,-paint! dept.
Moe Napoli writes "Nearly six months since its release, Half-Life 2 is not only making ripples for its being a great game, but also for the works being made from the game itself. Garry's Mod (aka GMod) is a extremely popular and fun "sandbox" modification for Half-Life 2, that allows you to play with the game's exceptional physics engine as well as pose characters, create Rube Goldberg-type devices and other physics phun inside of HL2. Taking advantage of GMod's character posing, the compelling and professionally produced Apostasy is an online comic that follows 3 characters from the HL2 universe and is interwoven within and around the game's original narrative. Still Seeing Breen is an excellent machinima music video created by intercutting the game events with a singing G-Man - ultimately displaying Valve's powerful FacePoser software (which comes with the game's SDK) and HL2's capabilities for machinima development (spoiler alert for those who haven't completed the game yet). It's really great stuff - I'm looking forward to what the next six months brings."
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Half-Life 2 - A Canvas for Original Works More

Half-Life 2 - A Canvas for Original Works

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  • Wait a sec... (Score:5, Funny)

    by the_unknown_soldier ( 675161 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @12:39PM (#12262415)
    Did you just link to a 90mg file hosted on a blog webserver?

    Somethings going to burn, and it isn't city 17

  • Warning for 56kers (Score:4, Informative)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @12:41PM (#12262424) Journal
    The images in the comics load in one fell swoop; in Apostasy, for example, the cover and first seven pages are all on one screen. Of course, since it's been linked to on Slashdot, it's not going to be up long enough for it to be an issue. :)

  • ...havok (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    is the physics engine that's used in half-life 2.

    same physics engine is in a lot of other games, too.

    and too bad it was never used in hl2 to enable creativity in the player. never, not once. every time the player just has to do something envisioned before.
    • I'm totally sick of all this HL2 hype, ESPECIALLY when it comes to "their amazing physics engine". Havok is great, but give credit where credit is due!
    • What? So the game has to say "be creative here?" I know I used the physics engine (or the ability to move and pile stuff) to make barricades so that the combine soldiers couldn't rush me, and I carried all the turrets with me so that I had 8 turrets in the teleport chamber instead of 3.

    • Re:...havok (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @04:11PM (#12263736) Homepage
      and too bad it was never used in hl2 to enable creativity in the player. never, not once. every time the player just has to do something envisioned before.

      HL2 is a linear FPS with a strong story line element, not Sim City. Besides, there were quite a few interesting sequences that took advantage of the physics. Moving objects so that you could walk around on the sand. Squishing bad guys with shipping crates from a tower. All of the floating / weight puzzles.

      Arguably the best thing in the game was the gravity gun, and that was completely physics based. The second best thing was blowing things up and watching the physics-driven debris take out baddies all around. The third best thing was rolling garbage into the hanging tongues, but maybe that's just me getting petty revenge. And, of course, there were the driving sequences.

      I certainly had a lot of points where I moved things around to get better cover, or to cause more debris to fly. If anything the seamless nature of the integration makes it a success. The game wasn't about physics any more than it was about health or guns, but it used both with reasonable subtly and to good effect.

      • In your examples there was *A* solution to the problem (well, usually two. one involved using the environment, the other involved running and shooting a lot). A game with such a great physics engine shouldnt have a "floating puzzle" for anything more than a novelty. It would be better if they just threw you into an area with a thousand way to solve the problem. Why do I have to use the barrels to float the ramp, instead of building a better ramp, or wedging something under the existing ramp that doesnt

        • Re:...havok (Score:5, Insightful)

          by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @08:32PM (#12265181) Homepage
          What's wrong with linear gameplay? Why would having a great physics engine imply nonlinear play?

          As a developer, pseudolinear play is a pain in the arse. Sandbox / true nonlinear play is appropriate for certain areas in Tenchu, for example, where your goal is to kill everyone in a level and it doesn't matter how that happens. I love sandbox games, but you have to make the entire game around such things. HL isn't. Most of HL is getting from point A to point B without getting killed, in order to drive the plot forward. Giving the player 1,000 ways to do it will just mean the player takes their sandbuggy, jumps the fence, and the level is over. It's a different type of game.

          If you give the player 3 different ways to do something (which I'm calling pseudolinear), you're now making each level three times. You also have the problem that it isn't always clear what to accept or ignore. And, trust me on this one, players will find a way to wedge themselves into a position they can't get out of.

          If you want nonlinear or pseudolinear play, try Deus Ex 2. Honestly it was a bit of a mess because it was too nonlinear, what with all the keycards and lock picking and getting people to let you in places and blowing things up, etc. But it was an OK game. Deus Ex 2 also used the Havoc physics engine (although an earlier iteration). Not surprisingly, the solutions to puzzles that used physics, basically had one way to solve them. Pile up boxes, move things over, jump on top.

          I love nonlinear play. But with certain goal structures too much nonlinearity is inappropriate. HL2 is one of them.

    • Re:...havok (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I beg to differ. [img35.echo.cx]
    • and too bad it was never used in hl2 to enable creativity in the player. never, not once. every time the player just has to do something envisioned before.

      Really? [penny-arcade.com]

  • well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @12:59PM (#12262523) Homepage Journal
    It's not really surprising, Valve developed Half Life 2 with modders in mind, the knew how the Mod Community helped make Half Life the huge success it was.

    By opening the game up for easy modification, they increase the lifespan of their product, and it also allows them to fish for new talented staff from the fans who create the mods. Good going valve, and more importantly, good going to the mod creators.
  • All this sortof stuff was happening on Quake1, and has happened on every other id game, as well as many other games by diff companies. The fact that it happens with HL2 is not surprising, but totally obvious!

    Still the stuff is cool, and I do like Garry'sMod

  • me likey the web comics. just in case of slashdottedness, here's a coupla coral caches for the first issue of the apostasy series:

    Part 1
    http://www.phwcomics.com/index.php?pid=12&cs=13&ci d=148.nyud.net:8090 [phwcomics.com]

    Part 2
    http://www.phwcomics.com/index.php?pid=12&cs=13&ci d=150.nyud.net:8090 [phwcomics.com]

    Part 3
    http://www.phwcomics.com/index.php?pid=12&cs=13&ci d=151.nyud.net:8090 [phwcomics.com]

  • When will we see more games following suit? I mean, time and time again the most played of these types of games have been fan-made mods. Team Fortress, CS, Desert Combat, DoD, Natural Selection, etc.

    Companies are going to be realizing more and more that innovative gameplay is what wins, and they can't provide it because they're too risk adverse. What they CAN provide is the best physics engines available since they have the time and R&D dollars to sink into it.

    I really wouldn't be surprised if they b

    • Have you played Max Payne 1 or 2? They both used the Havok physics engine, the same one HL2 licensed to use! id Software wrote their own physics engine for Doom3, Far Cry has it's own physics engine, Blood Rayne 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are both using the open source ODE physics engine, the list goes on...
    • Havok provided the physics engine. True, Valve gave it to the masses, but that doesn't mean they sunk a cent of R&D into physics, when they could focus on content.

      And focus they did. Source sucks versus every other modern engine in every way imaginable, with one exception: Half-Life 2 runs on it.
  • I posted about it on my AQFL site [aqfl.net] (might not connect due to domain changes right now).

    See here [facepunchstudios.com] for amusing screen shots. Be warned some of them contain nudity.
  • One thing that I don't get is how these movie developers can keep putting in obviously copyrighted music tracks into their movies (I'm assuming even Breen has done this without permission).

    I'm about 97% sure that here in Australia doing such a thing requires two things:

    1) A license from APRA (the not-for-profit that provides licensing for such things) for 'telesyncing'

    2) Explicit permission from the copyright holder

    Does including a whole audio track fall under 'fair use' in the US copyright laws?
    • IANAL, but in the States nearly all of the songs used in these machinima vids do not fall under "fair use" and would require the permission of the label/artist/copyright holder for distribution.

      That said, they usually run below the radar and for the labels that are aware might even see it as promotional use (I said, might).
      • Wasn't "Rebel vs. Thug" done with blessings from the artist, intending it to be the music video?
        • Yup! That and "In the Waiting Line" by Fountainhead/Ghost Robot (for Zero 7) are the two Machinima music videos that were made with the approval of the artist/label. I suspect we'll see more artist/label-backed machinima music vids in the future too.

          btw, my mention of "in these Machinima vids" should have read just "in Machinima vids." Too rude a use of my adjectves. :)

          • In the waiting line? Is that the one with the robot alone on the space station doing it's duties as if the crew were there?
            I loved that song/video and at the same time I cant see it without getting this sad/melancholy feeling. I think it is tying into my childhood memories of seeing Silent Running.
  • A Canvas for Original Works? OK, HL2 is nice and everything and their mod tools aren't bad but a) Unreal still has a much better platform for both mods and machinima and about 100x more content to boot and b) Quake based works have been a "canvas" for years now, including their GPL'd engines.

    It's always interesting to see a quick summary of what people are doing with an engine, but the fanboy title is just more evidence on how lazy slashdot has gotten.

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