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A thing I like about HL2 that future games in the linear shooter style frequently mess up on: Locking you in a room and having characters talk to you and stuff while you can interact with the environment is cool and still pretty neat from a technical perspective (even if it means you can like throw a book at Barney and he'll keep talking like you're not a huge prat)... but HL2 actually leaves you the hell alone after getting that out of the way. There are a lot of segments in that game where it's just you, the game world, and the atmosphere, no character yammering on in your ear or waiting on your sidekick to catch up. This is what I liked more about the first game than Episode 1 or 2 because being stuck with Alyx kind of detracted from the atmosphere a bit for me. I like Alyx, but I don't like being quipped at 90% of the time. edit: imo I think what makes HL2's narrative presentation special is not that it plops you in the shoes of the character during the story bits, but that they struck a good balance of short sections where you're trapped in a room between long sections of being just you and the game. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Aug 27, 2018 |
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Aug 27, 2018 15:13
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Mordja posted:If you wanted a team that could emulate Half Life's design ethos, I would 100% choose Respawn, because Titanfall 2's campaign was structured almost identically to HL2's, but with more giant robits. Well now I want fanart of BT and Dog hangin' out.
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Aug 27, 2018 15:27
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HL2 is also good at teaching you how to play it by putting a tutorial in front of you and making you do it without telling you it's a tutorial. - The guy who tells you to pick up the can is standing directly in your way so that you can't get past him without at least learning how to pick up items, but it's shown in a natural way that also immediately tells you what brand of assholes the metro cops are to normal citizens - The player first gets the crowbar from Barney after the lab sequence, and there's some boards you have to break in order to move on no matter what, so from then on you know you can break boards that look like that with your crowbar. Later on you have to shoot a barrel that's behind some boards that look like these so from there you are taught that you can also shoot through and explode them - The Combine helicopter in the sewer chapter won't kill you in its first machine gun volley to demonstrate that it does a ton of damage without accidentally killing the player with something they have no way to know - Playing catch with Dog in the junkyard is out-and-out a tutorial on how to use the gravity gun, but what's cool about it is that it's framed as Gordon learning how it works, not just you the player. It also shows you how far you can punt Rollermines and how to deal with them in general because Dog's 'ball' is a Rollermine - They show zombies that have been cut apart by traps and sawblades to show you that you can use the Gravity Gun to do the same with any sharp object, and so on and so on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc&t=51s This video goes in depth about how well designed it is and how much thought went into teeny tiny encounters to make them teaching moments without it being a tutorial even entering the player's mind. I bet 99.9% of players picked up a sawblade or a canister in that room and blasted their way out and then proceeded to do it for the rest of the level without even thinking about it. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Aug 27, 2018 |
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Aug 27, 2018 15:45
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HL2 & Portal are both a masterclass of "invisible tutorial" game design for sure. It may be Valve's greatest legacy. Especially Portal, which could have easily been a confusing mess in lesser hands.
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Aug 27, 2018 15:53
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One thing they do throughout all 3 games is using a scripted event to prompt you to look in a certain direction, so you have the best perspective on a second and much more significant scripted event. The commentary tracks in the two episodes are also very much worth a listen if you find this sort of thing interesting.
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Aug 27, 2018 15:57
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Valve also is really good at making the player look up, which they are totally correct about in their dev commentary, players never ever do it unless you force them to because the action is almost always at eye level or slightly above. edit: Well, 'was' really good at it. They don't make games that require you to look up anymore.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:10
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haveblue posted:One thing they do throughout all 3 games is using a scripted event to prompt you to look in a certain direction, so you have the best perspective on a second and much more significant scripted event. The commentary tracks in the two episodes are also very much worth a listen if you find this sort of thing interesting. They discussed this a bunch in the commentary for Lost Coast as well, IIRC. I want more games with integrated developer commentary.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:13
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CJacobs posted:Valve also is really good at making the player look up, which they are totally correct about in their dev commentary, players never ever do it unless you force them to because the action is almost always at eye level or slightly above. Valve games still make you look up... online price histories for hats!
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Aug 27, 2018 16:15
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exquisite tea posted:Valve games still make you look up... online price histories for hats! Booo! Hiss!
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Aug 27, 2018 16:18
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Improbable Lobster posted:HL3 is never coming out because, IIRC, Valve lets employees work on whatever they want (not a bad thing on its own) and assigns bonuses based on how much money their project made. These two things create a very strong incentive for employees to only work on stuff that is already making lots of money. Combine this with the steam marketplace making more money than game sales, and portal 2 showing nobody will buy cosmetic dlc for a single player or co-op game And yeah, I'll be surprised if valve does any more single player games. They're an esport company now, like blizzard.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:34
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haveblue posted:One thing they do throughout all 3 games is using a scripted event to prompt you to look in a certain direction, so you have the best perspective on a second and much more significant scripted event. The commentary tracks in the two episodes are also very much worth a listen if you find this sort of thing interesting. They playtest and iterate over and over. They also do things like use colors in textures to catch your eye and lead the player. Sad most games either don't care or can't afford that level of polish.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:37
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That kind of thing is standard as hell in all big budget games dude
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Aug 27, 2018 16:46
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lets hang out posted:That kind of thing is standard as hell in all big budget games dude Wasn't always like that in 04.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:49
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RyokoTK posted:Not only did Goldeneye have body armor, but it was the only sustainable damage mitigation on a level since there was no way to restore your actual health. Perfect Dark had no shields on Perfect Agent difficultly. It made some of the later levels rough. At least Goldeneye was nice enough to give you some armor on the harder missions on 00 Agent.
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Aug 27, 2018 18:04
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lets hang out posted:That kind of thing is standard as hell in all big budget games dude Letting extensive playtesting squash any chance of the player fumbling is standard in big budget games. Even Valve is guilty of this- Portal 2 barely ever opens up and lets you explore solutions for yourself because it's so focused on making absolutely sure you know what to do in every situation. But back in the day, they were excellent about taking player feedback with the grain of salt that it should always be taken with.
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Aug 27, 2018 18:05
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By back in the day you mean the one game they did before they started extensive playtesting with hl2?
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Aug 27, 2018 18:38
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Any tips for Hexen II, beyond installing the Hammer of Thyrion source port and adding +mlook to autoexec.cfg? And you know, "get used to hubs/connected levels", because they already loved doing that in the first Hexen.
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Aug 27, 2018 18:42
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CJacobs posted:It also shows you how far you can punt Rollermines and how to deal with them in general because Dog's 'ball' is a Rollermine I remember the guy who did Concerned ten years ago brought up some of these points about Valve's tutorials, but then mentioning that he took home the wrong lesson from this one, so the first time an active rollermine popped up he got out of his car, grabbed it, and started looking for Dog to show up because he thought it was Dog's ball. also the subject of Half-Life, SiN and Blood II came up for me a while ago and I remember joking that Monolith was at least a winner in that competition because even if Blood II did the worst out of the three, Monolith A) still exists, which is more than you can say about Ritual, and B) still makes actual new games, which is more than you can say about Valve GUI posted:I just started a replay of Doom 3 and I had forgotten how absolutely pointless the armour in it is. It absorbs a whopping 0.2% of damage. The last time I played Doom 3, after getting to a full 125 armor and 100 health, I somehow managed to, before getting any health or armor pickups, be brought down to 100 armor and less than 50 health. It's like they programmed something backwards and I'm supposed to be acting as the armor for my armor. What's even the point?
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Aug 27, 2018 19:03
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Half-Life sequels are the Szechuan Sauce of videogames. In actually-extant news, Q1 Speedmap Pack 186: Terracotta has 12 decent new ID1 maps to wrap yourself around. 
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Aug 27, 2018 19:34
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Mierenneuker posted:Any tips for Hexen II, beyond installing the Hammer of Thyrion source port and adding +mlook to autoexec.cfg? Also whack everything. Even walls. They went all-out on destructible environments and it kinda owns. I don't think progression is locked behind smashing open a hidden wall (anything you need to smash open is fairly obvious), but you can find hidden stashes of goodies this way, so don't pass that up. Lastly, I believe there's something on the Steam forums that'll help set you up with the CD tracks if you'd rather play with those than the MIDI soundtrack (not that there's anything inherently wrong with the MIDI soundtrack, but, like, redbook audio man). It also includes the files for the expansion, Portals of Praevus, which for some reason isn't on Steam, but I wasn't sure how  that'd be (I mean, they're not actively selling it, but at the same time, it's not yet gone freeware...) so I've opted not to link it directly; find it yourself.I should go back to Hexen 2 myself sometime... Shadow Hog fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Aug 27, 2018 |
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Aug 27, 2018 19:59
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The Kins posted:Half-Life sequels are the Szechuan Sauce of videogames. This map gives me Unreal vibes (looking at the top-right and right screenshots).
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Aug 27, 2018 20:01
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Mierenneuker posted:Any tips for Hexen II, beyond installing the Hammer of Thyrion source port and adding +mlook to autoexec.cfg? once you get to the floor tiles puzzle in the egypt hub, don't feel bad about noclipping past it i don't think anyone ever figured out how it works
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Aug 27, 2018 20:04
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Kadorhal posted:I remember the guy who did Concerned ten years ago brought up some of these points about Valve's tutorials, but then mentioning that he took home the wrong lesson from this one, so the first time an active rollermine popped up he got out of his car, grabbed it, and started looking for Dog to show up because he thought it was Dog's ball. This one? quote:I think I've talked about the tutorials in Half-Life 2 before, but the rollermines are a prime example of how Valve teaches you how to play the game while you're playing the game.
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Aug 27, 2018 20:10
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It's kind of a shame that the guy who made the excellent Minerva mod for HL2 got hired by valve, and then they just never made another Half-Life game.
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Aug 27, 2018 20:13
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Until someone figures out a way for a regular game, bought once, to rake in more money than the hats/lootboxes revenue model, we're not going to see a Half Life sequel.
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Aug 27, 2018 20:21
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With just a touch of guidance I think that Crowbar Collective would probably make a pretty good HL3, but then again we'd likely be waiting just as long as now. I would dig an Arkane-style Half-Life game too. I still want Machine Games to make a Duke game.
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Aug 27, 2018 20:24
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The Kins posted:Half-Life sequels are the Szechuan Sauce of videogames. TBF the Half-Life games are still great today and have a legitimate reason for continuation, whereas Szechuan Sauce is a dumb meme perpetuated by a bunch of weird obsessives with no actual redeeming value in of itself. I'll point to Twin Peaks Season 3 as an example of being a legitimately great experience despite spending a quarter decade labelled as something desired only by fanatics that'll never actually happen Convex fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Aug 27, 2018 |
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Aug 27, 2018 20:59
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I have discovered that for whatever reason the drdteam buildbot thing pumps out 64bit versions of the vintage gzdoom build even though it doesnt work. Was very confused for a few minutes
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Aug 27, 2018 21:12
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site posted:By back in the day you mean the one game they did before they started extensive playtesting with hl2? 'They' as in video gamespeople in general with Valve being the key example, dope
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Aug 27, 2018 23:32
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Convex posted:TBF the Half-Life games are still great today and have a legitimate reason for continuation, whereas Szechuan Sauce is a dumb meme perpetuated by a bunch of weird obsessives with no actual redeeming value in of itself. Hell yeah! Trent Reznor can be featured in both too, why not. Speculating about potential future games is what Early FPS fandom was all about back in the day, we gotta keep it going. And making weird player models. Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Aug 27, 2018 |
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Aug 27, 2018 23:48
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 Guys these levels are big and I feel slow
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Aug 28, 2018 00:01
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HolyKrap posted:
 What mod is this from? Last time I saw a level time that long, it was the Smithsonian level from Duke it Out in DC.
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Aug 28, 2018 00:42
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lets hang out posted:That kind of thing is standard as hell in all big budget games dude Doing some playtesting is standard. Doing what valve does is absolutely not standard. Valve takes like 6 years to make a game.
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Aug 28, 2018 00:46
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HolyKrap posted:
The first 3 or 4 maps in this mod are enormous confusing clusterfucks, the later levels get better though
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Aug 28, 2018 00:51
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Max Wilco posted:
Alien Armageddon. I haven't tried it out yet, but it looks pretty good.
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Aug 28, 2018 00:51
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^^^ The first level of Alien Armageddon took me about 90 minutes, and I still only found 3/8 secrets. I hold out hope that Valve will spit out the next iteration of HL when they have enough fresh tech and interesting mechanic ideas to justify another groundbreaking sequel. At this point it feels like a case of lightning striking twice, but ten years ago I would have pinned "taking massive steps forward" as part of their MO. To be honest, it's the game-changing ideas valve used to come up with that I want, not necessarily the games themselves.
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Aug 28, 2018 00:56
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CJacobs posted:'They' as in video gamespeople in general with Valve being the key example, dope Again, valve a terrible example because only one of their games wasnt extensively playtested and that was when they were a brand new outfit, dope And if you want to use they in a general sense in english you cant make the entire previous segment about one particular thing and expect that to be read as a general statement but go off i guess
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Aug 28, 2018 01:01
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site posted:Again, valve a terrible example because only one of their games wasnt extensively playtested and that was when they were a brand new outfit, dope What about the official releases of mods they picked up like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and whatnot? I would imagine those got some sort of play-testing between the initial fan mod and Valve's official release to iron out any issues or design flaws.
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Aug 28, 2018 01:12
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I mean, for mutliplayer mods i would say that feeback from a playerbase thousands strong counts as playtesting in that they iterated off of what players were complaining about. But i would also be hesitant to count that as the same type of playtesting as goes into single player game development at all I dunno, i thought about that earlier as well but it would seem to me that what you testing for between those two environments would be different enough to separate the two out, but thats just my non-dev opinion and i will grant i could be wrong. Aslo there is that the next few games like tf2 and l4d did go through the same type of extensive iteration in house before release so its a fine line i suppose /shrug l4d in particular as since it's doing campaigns they had to replay the same set pieces over and over and refine much like a single player game like hl2 maybe a way to think about it is that for the goldsrc mods, the base games were already there and changed several times before valve bought them, and they continued to patch and change afterwards but not drastically alter the games (i mean its been a looooong time since they were doing patches on these but iirc they were mostly just damage/accuracy tweaks and like, adding the riot shield to cs and stuff like that), whereas for hl2 and after they were playtesting and altering core parts of the games based on that feedback before release? E: lots of edits site fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 01:19
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site posted:Again, valve a terrible example because only one of their games wasnt extensively playtested and that was when they were a brand new outfit, dope If you already knew that valve hadn't been doing the extensive playtesting before HL2 then why did you assume that's what I meant anyway? Surely in that case one would say "the thing I'm about to reply with isn't the case, so maybe he worded it weird and he actually does know what he means to say" instead of being a pedant
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Aug 28, 2018 01:47
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