10 Years of Half-Life 182
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:That's awesome but... (Score:2, Informative)
It downloads the final chunk needed to play the game, you simply cannot play HL2 without downloading a lot of stuff first even if you have the CD. On dialup even those megabytes can take too long and I've been on an uni connection once (student dorm) where Steam simply wouldn't work (nothing except HTTP and a few other things worked).
Minerva (Score:2, Informative)
Re:An outstanding game - yet I know loath it..... (Score:1, Informative)
Sorry but I find that just a little hard to believe. There's been a system in place since Steam was released to clear up any sort of problem that could arise from a stolen account or stolen CD key.
Just as a related aside, a month ago I purchased Day of Defeat: Source for cheap at a local store, only to find out after entering the CD key that it was "already taken". I contacted VALVe's Steam support system, emailed a picture of the box and scan of the CD key insert, and was up and running within 24 hours.
Re:A true innovator (Score:3, Informative)
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.
I played Marathon, which manages to both throw you right into the fire *and* establish context, and has a more compelling story to boot. The real shame is that Valve gets the credit for something that, frankly, Bungie had already mastered... just because Bungie released their game for a less popular platform.