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I'm looking forward to learning more obscure trivia because despite playing way too much Half-Life and reading about Half-Life and watching videos about Half-Life, there were still things I learned from the first episode already, which is just amazing.
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Nov 22, 2018 10:34
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Many thanks to everyone recommending my previous LPs, and new viewers who've said they'd like to check out my back catalogue. So here's a list of my previous LPs, oldest to newest: Wolfenstein (the 2009 one) My first LP, from 2012. A reboot of the Wolfenstein franchise, done by Raven Software, it's a great sci-fi/supernatural adventure that just happens to be set during World War 2. Bizarrely, reviews dismissed it as a 'generic' WW2 shooter with a few sci-fi elements... despite the fact that after the first hour of the game you are fighting Nazi wizards and cyborgs and mutants, and you can spend 75% of the game vaporizing enemies with a giant Ghostbusters particle cannon or electrocuting them with a tesla gun. It also happens to be a sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and has some nice nods and winks for veterans that played the early games. It also ended up being a prequel to the excellent Wolfenstein: The New Order by Machinegames - the gaming press thought that The New Order was going to be a total reboot that ignored it, but several characters and events ended up being directly referenced. Unfortunately the videos are a bit dark - I was unaware that gameplay videos look darker on YouTube, due to a more limited colour-space. (Using 'Computer RGB to Studio RGB' when rendering will compensate for this, but I didn't know that back then.) This means that in the intro movie you can't see that Blazkowicz is revealed as a spy because he is dripping blood from an injury underneath his coat. (Someone in the thread said they assumed he was discovered because he was wearing the wrong boots! Heh.) Also, in the first video I do a silly thing where I let myself get killed by playing recklessly... and then load the checkpoint and replay that section, with no editing whatsoever. Makes me cringe now. I learnt my lesson and used editing in subsequent videos, though, and I'm still quite proud of the rest of the LP. TimeShift A little-known first-person shooter from Saber Interactive, obviously 'inspired' by Half-Life 2, but set in an alternate-history 1930s caused by time travel, and you have time manipulation powers. Tissue-thin plot, but decent gameplay, and some interesting dieselpunk designs. Inversion A little-known THIRD-person shooter from Saber Interactive, obviously 'inspired' by Gears of War, but with gravity manipulation powers. It has a bunch of problems, but it is also quite surprising and interesting. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon An affectionate parody of 80s sci-fi action movies, from the big names like Terminator and RoboCop to the little-known straight-to-video B-movies. You play as Rex "Power" Colt, an action hero who could teach Duke Nukem a thing or two about one-liners. It has the same core gameplay as Far Cry 3, but instead of fighting pirates in a tropical paradise, you are throwing shurikens at cyborg soldiers armed with laser guns, in a glowing neon world under a radioactive sky. Singularity Thread one (archived) Thread two (still active! The LP's finished, but I'm still adding stuff to the first post, and the thread is still live.) This LP was a three-year labour of love. Another shooter with time travel and time manipulation powers, by Raven Software, the same guys that made Wolfenstein 2009. It's as if the Russians from Command & Conquer: Red Alert built their own version of the Black Mesa Research Facility, and it plays like a 'best of' collection of first-person shooters, including Half-Life and Bioshock. Every ten minutes you get a new weapon, power or enemy, or gameplay gimmick. Quantum Break My other current LP, which is up to the tenth video at the moment. I'm alternating between doing Half-Life and Quantum Break videos. It's a decent third-person shooter from the makers of Max Payne and Alan Wake, with amazing graphics and convincing world-building.... and it has a very impressive time travel plotline, with no plot holes or paradoxes. I also have a few LPs that I started but abandoned... Aliens: Colonial Marines, Mortal Kombat and Darkest of Days. Aliens: Colonial Marines was no great loss (and in fact I dropped it after just 3 videos) but I'd still like to go back and finish Mortal Kombat and Darkest of Days at some point.
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Nov 22, 2018 12:37
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You could always come back to Colonial Marines as well, now that they fixed the AI bug 
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Nov 22, 2018 13:38
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at least you still showed off how much fun Wolfenstein 2009 is, especially since you can't buy it through Steam anymore  You can probably still get physical copies for consoles...perhaps the rare boxed copy for Windows too?
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Nov 22, 2018 16:00
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Ruflux posted:While the LP Archive contains the best Half-Life LP ever made, Which one is that?
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Nov 22, 2018 19:48
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White Coke posted:Which one is that? This I assume, which is definitely the best Half-Life LP ever made.
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Nov 22, 2018 20:06
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Trizophenie posted:This I assume, which is definitely the best Half-Life LP ever made. I was assuming it was this one.
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Nov 22, 2018 20:22
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Tiggum posted:I was assuming it was this one. I can confirm this one is good. I was Venom Snake then changed to Horny Renamon in the last video.
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Nov 23, 2018 02:25
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Freeman’s Mind is the best HL LP, fight me
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Nov 23, 2018 17:18
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Trizophenie posted:This I assume, which is definitely the best Half-Life LP ever made. Tiggum posted:I was assuming it was this one. jesus WEP posted:Freeman’s Mind is the best HL LP, fight me
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Nov 23, 2018 18:24
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The best parts were when he would use nogravity or something to bypass the really video game parts like riding conveyor belts.
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Nov 23, 2018 18:46
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jesus WEP posted:Freeman’s Mind is the best HL LP, fight me You are correct.
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Nov 23, 2018 20:37
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jesus WEP posted:Concerned is the best HL LP, fight me
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Nov 23, 2018 21:44
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Now I’m conflicted because this guy is right too.
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Nov 23, 2018 22:47
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No the best LP is HL21 Wait, I think I did that wrong
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Nov 24, 2018 00:36
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But Concerned is a Half-Life 2 LP if anything, so that doesn't really count either
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Nov 24, 2018 09:10
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The second best HL Let's Play is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRUjjuUl7U. The best is probably this one. e: sorry if your workplace heard bad words while you were browsing something awful dot com RearmingStrafbomber fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Nov 28, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2018 07:55
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RearmingStrafbomber posted:The second best HL Let's Play is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRUjjuUl7U. While amazing, I don't think that LP counts because it's unfinished and is unlikely to update before 2020 at this rate.
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Nov 28, 2018 08:38
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Oh hey a new YET lp. Looking forward to this, digging the informative style. Half-Life was the first FPS i owned so it holds a special place in my heart. Haven't played retail in ages, i knew about the viewroll being gone in the Steam version but i wonder if they made any other changes. Trizophenie posted:This I assume, which is definitely the best Half-Life LP ever made. This is good poo poo right here
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Dec 2, 2018 15:19
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 Gordon has a flashback to his H.E.V. suit training, at Black Mesa's absurdly dangerous training facility.
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Dec 4, 2018 09:46
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That bloody long-jump module caused child me to tear their hair out for some time. The specific timing always did it for me, until I realised it was supposed to be almost instantaneous.
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Dec 4, 2018 12:58
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Yeah, young me just couldn't work out how to long jump properly. Shameful.
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Dec 4, 2018 14:13
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I almost always gove up on watching your LPs. It's nothing against you or the games your doing. YOu just make them look so interesting that I wind up getting them to play myself. Keep up the good work.
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Dec 4, 2018 15:40
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I don't think you even get that stupid jet pack thing until the very end of the game, right before you get to Xen. Long after you've forgotten this tutorial - also Xen has that annoying half gravity so you need to learn how to use it all over again any way. It can be added in multiplayer IIRC. Been a very long time since I've played though and HL deathmatch wasn't really my scene back then.
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Dec 4, 2018 16:50
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Really, the HEV suit only makes sense when you put two and two together and realize it's a prototype of powered armor for the military.
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Dec 4, 2018 17:00
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I actually had no trouble with the long jump (at least that I can remember - keep in mind I also don't remember much of 2007 in general since it was a terrible year for me), but I gotta say I think I like how the PS2 version works a bit better. Having to already have some altitude from a normal jump before you can activate it seems a little bit more useful. Also, I dunno if you were planning to mention it at a later point, but one fun thing about ladders is that you can climb up or down them at ridiculous speeds because of how they're programmed. Basically, they're programmed in a sort of redundant fashion - if you press forward or backward while looking up or down along the ladder you'll go in the relevant direction, but there's also a separate rule for looking horizontally (i.e. not up or down) and pressing whichever direction is towards or away from the ladder to climb along it as well. Normally, there's a third rule where you're given a maximum amount of speed you can acquire while climbing a ladder, but if you look straight up and turn 90 degrees away from the ladder, then press forward and whichever key is towards the ladder, both rules apply, and you shoot up the ladder at double speed. The switch to an assault rifle in place of the SMG with the HD pack/PS2 version is also funny because they didn't modify much of anything about how it actually functions, so it still shares ammo with the pistol outside of the PS2 version and is noticeably weaker per-shot than it.
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Dec 4, 2018 23:31
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Cythereal posted:Really, the HEV suit only makes sense when you put two and two together and realize it's a prototype of powered armor for the military. It's probably safe to assume that literally everything at Black Mesa is a prototype for the military.
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Dec 4, 2018 23:41
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your evil twin posted:Most definitely! I haven't decided yet whether to play using the unofficial PC port of Decay (which is probably the easier way to do it), or go for full authenticity by playing it using a PlayStation 2 emulator in split-screen. I know this was from a bit ago, but have you considered/tried recording a demo file on the 2nd computer and then video recording it after the fact with the first? I'm not sure if demo files would work with the PC fan-port of Decay, but it may be worth a shot. Of course that would add extra editing work on your end, so I could understand if you didn't want to do it (assuming it worked).
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Dec 5, 2018 01:46
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I recall that the training course was a pretty cool innovation for the time. Instead of just reading the manual or some nonsensical bit of randomness, they had a plausible in-game system to teach you the mechanics.
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Dec 5, 2018 04:41
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YourEvilTwin, keep this up. You have an unique perspective of Half-Life lore. I hope you continue this. On the off chance, do you think you could do a HL1 explanation of the super speed runs?
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Dec 20, 2018 10:08
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I like seeing the comparisons between the different versions!
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Dec 20, 2018 11:03
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redleader posted:I like seeing the comparisons between the different versions! Agreed, the PS2 version was the first one I played and i never even noticed the many little graphical tweaks and the occasional quality-of-life improvement when I went back and finished it on PC
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Dec 20, 2018 14:08
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If you had Blue Shift many of those tweaks and the new models were added back to the original game; never quite worked right on the Steam version though. Don't know if they ever fixed that or if any of the changes made it to OpFor since it was so heavily modified from Half Life.
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Dec 20, 2018 14:22
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There is actually now a Half-Life mod that faithfully recreates the PlayStation 2 version of Half-Life, including all the minor alternations to the maps. I haven't had a chance to play it myself yet, but it looks like the modder has properly nailed it. And what's nice is that it comes with a choice of either PS2 crosshairs or PC crosshairs. https://www.moddb.com/mods/yet-another-ps2-half-life-pc-port/news/yet-another-ps2-half-life-port-release-v10 (The few bugs mentioned have actually been fixed in the subsequent 1.1 update.) Bootcha posted:YourEvilTwin, keep this up. You have an unique perspective of Half-Life lore. I hope you continue this. Thank you! Yes I've been working on the next part. As I'm sure you can imagine, quite a bit of work goes into each video. As for super speed runs... I've never really paid attention to the speed running scene. I think it's very impressive, I've watched a few videos, but I don't think I even ever bothered to properly learn how to bunny hop or strafe run in any game. I've always played singleplayer games slowly and thoroughly, experiencing the story and setting and playing things 'the way the developers intended'. I was never interested in running through a game as fast as possible and skipping the story and enemies and puzzles. It infuriated me that in old multiplayer games people would bunny hop around the place. Some players loved it, and resisted any attempt by developers to patch it out, but I felt it spoilt the experience. In a shooter involving space marines or counter-terrorists or WW2 soldiers, how is it desirable to have all the players bouncing around like kangaroos and moving at 50 miles an hour? I love fast-paced deathmatch games, it wasn't a matter of things being too fast... it's just that I wanted to play the game that the developers had intended, where players run around and melt other with plasma guns or blow each other up with rocket launchers. But there were always annoying gits exploiting the buggy movement physics to bounce around the place as if they were wearing Inspector Gadget's spring shoes. I know some claim "it's not a bug, it's a feature", but if players were supposed to move that fast, then the devs would have simply set the normal run speed higher. And if players were supposed to bounce around like they were on pogo sticks, then the devs would have given the player models pogo sticks. Anyway, I guess that rant about multiplayer bunny hopping is a bit off-topic, but my point is that I know bugger-all about speedrunning. I am, however, familiar with some of the tricks and exploits in Half-Life that speedrunners make use of to skip certain sections of the game, and I'll be sure to show them off. Psychotic Weasel posted:If you had Blue Shift many of those tweaks and the new models were added back to the original game; never quite worked right on the Steam version though. Don't know if they ever fixed that or if any of the changes made it to OpFor since it was so heavily modified from Half Life. The 'Half-Life High Definition Pack' that came with Blue Shift didn't make any tweaks to gameplay though. It gave you new models (and a few new sounds and sprites) in Half-Life, Blue Shift and Opposing Force, but none of the altered levels seen in the console versions, or any gameplay tweaks. Blue Shift has the automatic duck-jumping from the console version, but installing Blue Shift and the HD pack doesn't add automatic duck-jumping to regular Half-Life, or Opposing Force. The HD pack doesn't touch Half-Life's code, the additions are all cosmetic. As for things not quite working in the Steam version... When the retail version of Blue Shift was first released in 2001, the HD pack that came with it had some issues. Some of the characters were missing animations; they were animations that were 'unused' in normal Half-Life, but which modders had used for scripted sequences in various mods and map packs. As a result the HD pack broke some mods. Also, it had a terrible-looking G-Man (briefly shown in my first video). The official Blue Shift 1.0.0.1 patch fixed the HD models and restored all missing animations, and installed a better-looking G-Man. In 2003 Valve launched Steam, originally as just a multiplayer server browser (and automatic download manager) for Counter-Strike, Half-Life and Opposing Force. But they didn't do a Steam version of Blue Shift - or the High Definition pack - until 2005. What's more, they messed up and used the unpatched Blue Shift models for the Steam HD pack, instead of the fixed versions. So anyone using the Steam HD pack to play Half-Life mods ended up with missing animations, and a rubbish G-Man model, old problems from 2001. Also, the way they implemented the Steam HD pack meant that custom models were disabled, so if you played a mod that had a new-look scientist or security guard, you would not be able to see the mod's new characters in the game. In 2006 I ended up creating the "Planet Half-Life Fixed High-Definition Pack for Steam" to solve those issues. It gave everyone the fixed HD models (from the Blue Shift patch), that users could simply plonk into their Half-Life / Opposing Force / Blue Shift folders as if they were custom models, and avoid using the Steam HD pack entirely. Eventually, after many, many years, Valve fixed the Steam HD pack, it has the correct G-Man and no missing animations. And if you're playing a Half-Life mod, whatever models that come with the mod will take precedence over the HD model folder. And the option to use the HD models is now a simple checkbox in the options menu, no complicated installation or removal procedures. (It only took a bloody decade...) However, for some reason the Steam version of Opposing Force does have some weapons with minor animation bugs. (The sniper rifle's reload animation is a bit messed up, for instance.) And you have to check 'Raw Mouse Input' in the options menu, otherwise you can't look around without your view constantly bouncing back to the centre of the screen. Nothing to do with the HD pack, though. (The Steam versions of Half-Life and Blue Shift have a load of bugs too, but Opposing Force is especially buggy.)
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Dec 21, 2018 19:34
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will this end with you reading the .txt file that half life episode 3 ended up becoming?
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Dec 21, 2018 22:08
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your evil twin posted:I am, however, familiar with some of the tricks and exploits in Half-Life that speedrunners make use of to skip certain sections of the game, and I'll be sure to show them off. Cool, that's what I'd be looking for. The forward acceleration stuff is fairly plain to see, but it's the mechanics of the levels that allow the batshit crazy stuff is what I'd be interested in learning.
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Dec 21, 2018 22:51
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your evil twin posted:But there were always annoying gits exploiting the buggy movement physics to bounce around the place as if they were wearing Inspector Gadget's spring shoes. I know some claim "it's not a bug, it's a feature", but if players were supposed to move that fast, then the devs would have simply set the normal run speed higher. And if players were supposed to bounce around like they were on pogo sticks, then the devs would have given the player models pogo sticks.
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Dec 22, 2018 05:23
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Fish Noise posted:And then sometimes the devs themselves join in on being annoying gits and go "it's definitely a feature now." Tribes 2
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Dec 23, 2018 01:36
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More like let's play half life for 20 years, amirite
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Dec 24, 2018 05:08
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your evil twin posted:It infuriated me that in old multiplayer games people would bunny hop around the place. Some players loved it, and resisted any attempt by developers to patch it out, but I felt it spoilt the experience. In a shooter involving space marines or counter-terrorists or WW2 soldiers, how is it desirable to have all the players bouncing around like kangaroos and moving at 50 miles an hour? I love fast-paced deathmatch games, it wasn't a matter of things being too fast... it's just that I wanted to play the game that the developers had intended, where players run around and melt other with plasma guns or blow each other up with rocket launchers. But there were always annoying gits exploiting the buggy movement physics to bounce around the place as if they were wearing Inspector Gadget's spring shoes. I know some claim "it's not a bug, it's a feature", but if players were supposed to move that fast, then the devs would have simply set the normal run speed higher. And if players were supposed to bounce around like they were on pogo sticks, then the devs would have given the player models pogo sticks. I think in cases like Quake/Tribes/Warframe the devs realized the potential of these bugs because they felt rewarding and added new layers to their game. It certainly doesn't make sense in a game like CS though, and i assume some of those games built on id's tech just had that left in the code by oversight. I could not imagine playing Quake without strafejumping tbh. And in this case it's a core feature of every entry. It just feels good to play with. It's got a learning curve, you gotta practice the technique to build speed and how to navigate the maps without getting stuck in walls, missing a platform etc. You can feel the difference as you get better. And it changes how the game is played in several ways. It's not something increasing movement speed can compare to. I can't remember earlier entires but at least since Q3 several of your guns cause knockback. And if someone is strafejumping they are not going to have very good movement control, and will be airborne most of the time (not to mention make a lot of noise), so it's easy enough to place a prediction shot to put them in a bad position, knocking them into a corner or juggling them into the air with rockets etc. I can't say i've ever tried strafejumping in Half-Life though. It doesn't play well with the flow of the game. Amebx fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Dec 26, 2018 |
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Dec 26, 2018 17:41
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