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10 Years of Half-Life
Posted by
Soulskill
on Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:38 PM
from the wisely-done-mr.-freeman dept.
from the wisely-done-mr.-freeman dept.
intenscia writes "After 10 years of Half-Life and dealing with its silent protagonist Gordon Freeman, ModDB looks back at everything that Valve made possible with the release of its first game. The freedom and flexibility the Gldsource platform gave modders resulted in a plethora of user-generated content such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress. In this article they take a brief look at the mods that made the jump to retail as well as the top non-commercial mods that have become perennial classics."
Planet Half-Life used the occasion to look back at the history of Valve. Valve is celebrating by offering the original Half-Life for less than a dollar on Steam.
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Late nite (Score:3, Funny)
I was newly married and this game kept me up to all hours. My wife would come into the basement at 3 am and reprimand me.
I've notices hl2 for original xbox used at gamestop and I hesitate to buy it. It may take over my nights again - and i have three kids now.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I received Half Life 2 for Christmas, a few years back, and had it completely finished by December 28th. I did the same when Ep. 1 came out, and then again for Ep. 2--which is not to say that I was done with the game when I completed it. I'm currently in my 3rd(?) replay of the entire series (HL1, Opposing Force, Blue Shift,
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When newly married other things normally keep you "up", if my fading memory serves me correctly. You sir are a true geek (albeit a married one, which knocks a few points off again, of course)
A true innovator (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people forget how generally unprecedented it was at the time for an action game to begin with half an hour of context and tone establishment instead of throwing you right into the fire.
Traveling through the massive subterranean tram network, checking in at the desk and grabbing your equipment to start what would have been a normal day's work... As the tension is slowly built, something goes wrong, and then aliens show up out of that, the effect is something vastly more profound than jumping into Quake and shooting stroggs straight off the bat.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Never has the /. "story" tag been so appropriate...
Open up the engine (Score:5, Insightful)
When a new Quake comes out, they open up the old engine. The original Half Life was OpenGL if I recall, and could be ported by the community to Mac, Linux, etc. etc. etc. Selling the game for $1 is a nice move. Opening the engine (a decade old engine that won't hurt Valve in the least) would be a better move.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
IIRC, a hybrid Quake1/2 engine was the basis for Half-Life's engine. Their license with id Software may not allow them to release the source, even though the Q1&2 sources were released quite a few years ago.
Re:Open up the engine (Score:5, Informative)
The Quake engine was the basis for both the Half-Life engine and the Quake2 engine, so they are related but there was no 'hybrid' per se. The Quake and Quake2 engines were released under the GPL. If the Half-Life engine source isn't available, it's likely due to it being a pre-GPL fork of the Quake engine (or something like that).
Uncle AC wonders if releasing code will expose vulnerabilities. Since so much of the engine has been available for years (since 1999, IIRC), there is relatively little risk. There was when the source for Quake was released. All kinds of hacks and cheats flooded around (for all Quake-engine games).. But that was long ago; perhaps people have forgotten.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For reference, people made all kinds of fun toys after gaining knowledge of the insides of the engine and netcode. They then fixed so much that they released their own versions of the server, and eventually used that as a great line on their resume to get hired into the game coding biz. :)
I think Slashdot would be glad to hear those details
/salute (Score:5, Interesting)
But then I guess that's what one can expect from a Valve game. Blizzard has a nice attitude: "when it's ready". Valve goes one further: "when it ready and only if it's fun". When HL2 was delayed by a year or so there was a lot of complaining... but nobody was complaining when that thing was released.
Here's to one of the best games ever released!
Re:/salute (Score:4, Informative)
>>but nobody was complaining when that thing (HL2) was released.
Wha? I guess you've forgotten the Great Steam Activation Debacle where millions of geeks were all trying to activate HL2 on the brand-new Steam network, overwhelming the servers with a giant self-induced DDOS. It took me two days to activate. Others, on dialup, much longer.
People were complaining bitterly -- not about the game quality (I agree with you -- GREAT game) but instead due the inability to play the game they just plunked down fifty dollars for. What a mess that was.
Parent
Grr... (Score:5, Informative)
User-generated? I don't think so. The original TF mod for Quake was made by TFS, which was just a group of players at the outset, but they were hired by Valve. Team Fortress Classic was a Valve product.
Team Fortress? (Score:3, Informative)
Nearly Three (Score:4, Funny)
...former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, instrumental minds behind nearly three generations of the Windows operating system.
And I have nearly three eyes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would highly suggest it. I bought it on Steam within the past year and never regretted it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only problem is, then the grandparent will have to play it through Steam. I will resent until my dying day the idea that my computer should have to connect to the internet even occasionally so that I can play a single player game, and even moreso that even when I bought Half Life 2, I couldn't play the copy I paid for until I got a non-dialup internet connection.
Valve should at least give people the option of not dealing with their content distribution shit. Let people permanently opt out of multiplayer
Re:That's awesome but... (Score:5, Informative)
Wait a minute. You buy a game through Steam...an on-line marketplace...then bitch about having to connect to it every now and then? Seriously?
There is an off-line mode for playing Steam games for those times when your Internet connection is down/missing-in-action.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The original Half Life was sold on a CD.
The second game was as well, but the disc was encrypted or something and needed to download gigabytes of crap from Steam before it could be played. Basically the copy of the game that one could purchase in the store was a giant trojan that put Steam on your PC.
Gigabytes of downloads aren't exactly compatible with dialup internet connections. There was no way to just put in the physical disc that I bought and play the game.
Steam has an off line mode. It makes you check
Re:That's awesome but... (Score:5, Informative)
Other PC games require you to insert the disc every time you boot the game. This could be considered equally atrocious as what Steam does. If you don't have a network connection no game for you versus no disc no game for you.
Steam only delivers ads for other Steam games. Not for Coca Cola or some crap. While it may install a startup agent(I don't remember honestly) it can easily be turned off. No steam code on startup on my system.
I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but Steam doesn't piss me off. It's acceptable to me. My biggest problem is that the Steam client itself performs like it was written in QuickBASIC.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
yea but that requires an internet connection, which is obviously beyond the GP's grasp...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When you do play it, it may see somewhat unspectacular now (but you should still find it plenty interesting)...you have to remember what FPSs of that time were like:
Kill monsters with mediore to bad AI, find blue key, open door, go to next level. Next level involed the same thing, except there is also a red key.
Half-Life had a continual story, no real level breaks, talking characters, and some of the AI (Marines) was particularly intelligent and worked together. It laid the groundwork for the modern FPS.
Re:That's awesome but... (Score:5, Funny)
I dare say. But aren't you selling yourself a bit short? :)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's awesome but... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was most notably how the story was told--first person, no cut scenes--that partially made the game so revolutionary. The atmosphere, AI, and sheer size of the game (it's pretty damn long for most people) are also pretty large points; for many situations you also had to develop a plan on how you were going to advance, rather than just figure out the best way to kill everyone in sight. The game isn't actually that similar to DOOM (which still is a great game to play that for some inexplicable reason has aged incredibly well, in my opinion) as DOOM is more oriented over killing the demons. In fact, to compare this game with DOOM seems to me that you either didn't play DOOM very much or you didn't play HL very much. Both are pretty different FPSes.
In addition, the game's friendliness to modifications leading to Counter-Strike and a host of other free mods has pretty much solidified its position as one of the greatest FPSes to come out.
Parent
You mean, the same as adventures for years (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's nice, but adventure games had told a story in game, without cut scenes for years. I don't think that, say, any of the 2d King's Quest games or old Lucas adventures stopped to give you a pre-rendered movie to advance the plot.
In 3D? Well, Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 managed to advance the plot just fine without cut-scenes, and if first person 3D.
So let's not go pretending that HL invented it all. HL just brought to FPS what every other game had already been doing for a decade.
Which is mildly ironi