Half-Life 2 Mod Creation FAQ Released 33
blue2k writes "The VERC website has released a new official FAQ containing plenty of new information pertaining to the forthcoming, eagerly awaited Half-Life 2 SDK, and development with the Source engine." The FAQ answers such questions as how to get lip-syncing working in your mod ("To start with, you'll need to author keyshapes, or morph targets for each of your characters. Our facial animation system uses 34 keyshapes, 14 of which are required for proper lip-sync animation."), and co-operative gameplay in Half-Life 2 ("..we aren't doing a co-operative mode, but the mod community.. [particularly] Sven Co-op has expressed great interest in this.")
Counter-strike (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Developers not finishing their job? (Score:2, Interesting)
You could wait an extra three months while they add co-op play to Half-Life 2, or you can get it sooner, and in three months (or less), co-op play will exist from the mod community. The developers aren't saying they don't WANT co-op. Just that they know that they aren't necessarily the best ones to provide it. They want to provide (again) a ground breaking single player experience.
the half life2 left me wondering (Score:3, Interesting)
-it will work on a pIII800.
ok, this one didnt leave me wondering. I just laughed. I have a pIII600 and the radar map in ennemy territory makes my computer crawls, just because there is a lot of grass. Can you imagine the same on a pIII800 with LOTS of shaders, physics and ai as they showed in the video? That is a joke.
-the physics system:
look closely at the video.
In the physics part of the video, the melon breaks some time after having been shot.
In the gameplay part (with the booby traps), when the player destroys the wooden logs barring a door, they break before he actually hits them.
In the same part, look at the huge swinging iron bar, it stays swinging and it's in no way slowed down by hitting things or just by time. It looked like a scripted event in fact.
I have some doubts that the explosion which hurls the car is also scripted and not a "physics" event.
-multiplayer aspect of the game:
Watching the video made me shivers at the thought of the multiplayer games that can be made. But then, what can of connection can handle this.
Look at the "physics" scene, when the barrels come down and the wooden logs are being shot, now imagine 32 players doing the same, throwing fumes and hurling objects at the same time. What can of connection can handle this amount of datas flow? internet2?
If we're talking about degrading the size of the data flow, then we're talking about "killing" the physics system, then we come back to the regular old type of game.
-the mod scene:
If all i wonder above is in fact true, and they found a way to actually make all this work on a pIII800 and on regular dsl connection. Who is going to be able to actually make mods? Apart from a few really big and very well organised pro-like mod teams?
The models look like killers to do. And the map will need a terrible amount of work. Right now, some quake3 maps, which are quite simpler to do in terms of textures or modelling, take one year of work to their authors.
Look at the people who did q3f (and some of them did ennemy territory afterwards, if i'm not mistaken), they could do wonders with such an engine. But look at the time between the releases and now imagine that with an engine such as what they showed in the video. Can you say a lot of years between releases?
(*cough* team fortress2 *cough* has probably been in development for years and they are the authors of the engine)
Or maybe we're talking about mods not using this engine in its entire scope? Which would be a change since mods usually go beyong the engines they are built upon.
Petition for a linux port of Half-Life 2 (Score:1, Interesting)
The creator wants to reach 5000 signatures before he sends it off to Valve.