Half-Life 2 Celebrates 20th Anniversary (arstechnica.com) 48
Each day leading up through the 16th (the official day Half-Life 2 was launched), Ars Technica will be publishing a new article looking back at the game and its impact. Here's an excerpt from an article published today by Ars Technica's Kyle Orland: When millions of eager gamers first installed Half-Life 2 20 years ago, many, if not most, of them found they needed to install another piece of software alongside it. Few at the time could imagine that piece of companion software -- with the pithy name Steam -- would eventually become the key distribution point and social networking center for the entire PC gaming ecosystem, making the idea of physical PC games an anachronism in the process.
While Half-Life 2 wasn't the first Valve game released on Steam, it was the first high-profile title to require the platform, even for players installing the game from physical retail discs. That requirement gave Valve access to millions of gamers with new Steam accounts and helped the company bypass traditional retail publishers of the day by directly marketing and selling its games (and, eventually, games from other developers). But 2004-era Steam also faced a vociferous backlash from players who saw the software as a piece of nuisance DRM (digital rights management) that did little to justify its existence at the time. In honor of the anniversary, Orbifold Studios released a new Half-Life 2 RTX trailer. "[T]his is a remastering project that leverages the technologies of NVIDIA's RTX Remix and has the blessing of the original developer, Valve," reports Wccftech. "Orbifold Studios, a team of experienced modders, was founded specifically to bring this project to fruition." It's unclear when exactly this project will be finished.
Nvidia is also giving away a custom Half-Life 2 themed RTX 480 Super Founders Edition.
While Half-Life 2 wasn't the first Valve game released on Steam, it was the first high-profile title to require the platform, even for players installing the game from physical retail discs. That requirement gave Valve access to millions of gamers with new Steam accounts and helped the company bypass traditional retail publishers of the day by directly marketing and selling its games (and, eventually, games from other developers). But 2004-era Steam also faced a vociferous backlash from players who saw the software as a piece of nuisance DRM (digital rights management) that did little to justify its existence at the time. In honor of the anniversary, Orbifold Studios released a new Half-Life 2 RTX trailer. "[T]his is a remastering project that leverages the technologies of NVIDIA's RTX Remix and has the blessing of the original developer, Valve," reports Wccftech. "Orbifold Studios, a team of experienced modders, was founded specifically to bring this project to fruition." It's unclear when exactly this project will be finished.
Nvidia is also giving away a custom Half-Life 2 themed RTX 480 Super Founders Edition.
Darkness (Score:3)
Stop it. You're not helping.
Re:Darkness (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do these game devs think they can improve a game by making everything much darker?
Stop it. You're not helping.
They don't. This is a side effect of taking a lighting concept that was developed for one system and shoehorning raytracing into it. Darkness is a side effect of realism based on how the assets are placed. The lighting was not designed nor laid out with accurate light bounce in mind and it turns out when you simulate the result you find things are darker. You can see that on the subway scene. Notice how the subway is lit up by 2 spot lights about 3m apart? Compare that to the inside of an actual subway or train which has (for obvious reasons) strip lighting across the entire length of the ceiling.
It's a case of taking a game where lighting and assets were two different things, and turning it into a game where lighting comes from assets. The end result is just not well designed.
If you've ever painted Warhammer minis (Score:2)
In the early days of high definition gaming the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 couldn't really crank out 720p and 1080p games. They just didn't really have the horsepower for it. At least not without God tier programming
So to get around everything looking like crap they basically did a wash. They made everything look darker and used a grainy filter. If you want to
Social Media Crap (Score:3)
In their terms and conditions, "To enter this promotion, you must: Like and comment on any of the posts detailing the builds on GeForce social media channels on X, TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram". Well what if you don't subscribe to any anti-Social Media channels? Looks like a big FU from nVidia for us.
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Even if you do you apparently can't enter yet, at least on faceboot. Where the link goes it says the content is unavailable.
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> Well what if you don't subscribe to any anti-Social Media channels?
Then they can't make money out of your every day. Why should they care about you?
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2) It probably runs afoul of lottery laws in the US. (If social media actually is the only means of entering the contest.)
3) USians should learn what empathy is. (Big ask of cavemen. I know.)
Digital Restrictions Management (Score:3, Insightful)
DRM has always been about Digital Restrictions Management. The fake "intellectual property" (not a thing) people want to pretend it's about rights... rights that don't exist by law... rights they demand ought to exist, pretend do exist, and sue for the, and lobby to legislate to create.
Intellctual property (IP) is not a thing. There are copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets... and those ARE codified in law. It's not property. There are no titles, liens, etc. It's not intellectual. It's a big pretend thing. Like crypto non currency.
DRM has been around FAR LONGER than Steam or Half Life. In the late 1970s we had "bad sectors" on floppy disks and if the disk didn't read a bad sector and make a crunching sound your software wouldnt' load. A copy would have a readable sector of no useful data. That same mechanism made its way into the 1980s but then we could vary the drive speed when writing a copy of THAT particular sector. It wouldn't be readable at normal speed and would register as a "bad sector" thus preserving DRM, which we knew as "copy protection."
HDCP maintains the term. DRM is an attempt to makeover the term. EIther way i's 100% bs.
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Intellectual Property is in fact codified in US law.
If you had ever read Title 17, you'd not have made it past the very first chapter without encountering it
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"Intellectual Property" is a modern term that encompasses Copyright (Title 17) and Patents (Title 35).
You will find the verbiage spread throughout both.
Hell- the executive position of Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property is literally directly authorized in Title 35.
While you're looking around, you'll want to take a look at the Intellectual Property and Communications Omnibus Reform Act of 1999, which includes the additions of the term into Titles 17 and 35.
Again,
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Remember Valve got hacked & HL2 source was sto (Score:2)
I'm not a big fan of DRM, but I get why the companies have done it. Because there are plenty of people who want to enjoy the fruits of someone else's labor and not pay a penny for it.
I don't like when when I can't make backups of my audio/video/
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There's a difference between copy protection and DRM. Copy protection lets you use your copy; DRM can deny your use of your copy if it wants to (say you're in the wrong country, the online store yanks them all back, etc).
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Steam? (Score:2, Interesting)
When I played Halflife 1 and 2 ...
Steam did not exist.
So no idea what the summary is about.
Re:Steam? (Score:4, Informative)
Half-Life 1, yes. Half-Life 2 required Steam to activate it though, even physical copies included a Steam CD-Key.
Unless you liberated a copy while sailing the seven seas as a privateer of course. Which was somewhat more common [gamesradar.com] before Steam hit its stride.
Re:Steam? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yea Steam was not around for HL1. (Launched on Nov 19th 1998). They used a highly modded Quake engine (Doom (id Software) in real 3d basically). I don't remember activating HL2 thru steam (Launched Nov 16th,2004),but looking at my Member status it says Since Nov 16th, 2004, so I guess I did. HL2 used their own built Source Engine, so they could push the graphics and gameplay more. I have the boxes for both games, HL2 collectors edition actually came with a HL Hat. I will wear it in celebration. Both games were great and really pushed what could be done with characters and AI at the time. I actually was in the Room at GDC when Gabe announced Steam, it was small room, most people didn't know what was to come, but he was convinced that digital distribution was the future.
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I wonder if GDC recorded and archived that Steam announcement as a video. I couldn't find it.
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Although, I did eventually track down a Sierra copy of HL1 and it's expansions.
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When I played Halflife 1 and 2 ...
Steam did not exist.
Steam absolutely existed for Halflife 2. I distinctly remember activating it when I bought it on release day.
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Half-Life 2 was the start of the extortion scheme known as Steam.
No one on this planet owns Half-life 2 on the PC, you are all renting it.
Which makes steam lovers' complains about other stores exclusives all the more retarded. Steam was founded on the exclusivity of Half-life 2.
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I bought half life on a set of CDs.
And certainly activated nothing with "steam" in its name.
Usually there was a code printed on a leaflet that you had to enter during installation.
I do not remember that half-life required an internet connection/steam to run.
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Which makes steam lovers' complains about other stores exclusives all the more retarded. Steam was founded on the exclusivity of Half-life 2.
Yes Half-Life 2 (from Valve) required Steam (from Valve). If you don't understand the difference between shipping your own launcher with your own product, and what Steam lovers are actually complaining about, namely other stores signing exclusivity deals for 3rd party content they didn't develop themselves, then I really don't know what to tell you.
Valve enters in precisely zero exclusivity contracts with 3rd parties. Anyone publishing anything on Steam is free to publish it anywhere else at the same time.
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When I played Halflife 1 and 2 ...
Steam did not exist.
Not only did Halflife 2 require Steam, the underlying system that ultimately became Steam formed the basis for Halflife 1's multiplayer matchmaking in a later patch. Steam ultimately came out of the first halflife, and was mandatory for the second.
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You literally couldn't play HL2 without Steam.
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Half-Life deserves an anniversary celebration, whenever that is. Half-Life 2, meh. It looked nicer, but it was many steps backwards. For starters, Half-Life 2 ended abruptly, you needed to get Half-Life 2 Part Deux to have a full game! WTF?
Unpopular opinion (Score:3)
HL1 is better than HL2 and its derivatives, which are just variations of the same theme for 20 years: wandering around a post-apocalyptic eastern European hellscape and interacting with vehicles.
I loved HL1 for the fantastical science facility you got to navigate. Such a much more interesting setting to inhabit. Alyx was the worst of them too, as you had to wander that post-apocalyptic eastern Euorpean apocalyptic hellscape while a millennial-written oh-so-quirky character yammered in your ear the entire time.
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You're right. I liked Portal but then was just, "eh, I finished this concept, I'm good on not playing Portal 2." A friend strongly recommended it so I finally tried it, but it's like nonstop yammering.
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I loved HL1- dearly- but HL2 was so much more fleshed out story wise, with the combine, etc.
HL1 is a classic, but HL2 was the far better story.
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I can't argue that HL2 has 100x the story as HL1.
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System Shock suffered in the beginning and was rough to get into, but after a certain point was incredible -- at least back then. HL1 was lots of fun early on, a good shooter, but that eventually wore thin.
I never played HL2, but I really enjoyed ALYX and I can certainly u
Yes, but where is Hl 2 Episode 3? (Score:2)
I get that episodic gaming is dead, but I still feel like they should create Episode 3, or let someone else do it, for the story's sake.
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I know - I'm still waiting to see where the story goes.......I wish they could have at lest done some kind of short to wrap it up from where it was.
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I think Alyx was a hint that things are happening.
But the first time I had that thought I'd have expected HL3 or at least a short HL2 chapter 8 alyx-length desktop game as a sort of appetizer to have happened by now.
Also Wireless Index 2 should have happened by now.
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Actually lived up to the hype (Score:2)
Freeman's Mind (Score:1)
Oblig ref. Accursed Farms ftw. Still hilarious, even after 17 years. check it out... [youtube.com]
GPU Typo in Summary (Score:2)
RTX 480 Super Founders Edition
This should be an "RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition". The "480" would refer to the GTX 480 of which only Gigabyte (I think) made a "Super" version.
The Orange Box (Score:2)
2007-8? That was my introduction to Steam. Those were the days... TF2 and Portal.