Half-Life 2
 

Whoo, new Half-Life 2 screenshots were released today.

New Screenshot 01

New Screenshot 02

New Screenshot 03

Man, that first and second screenshot are sexy. I can't wait for this game. Valve needs to hurry their asses up.

would've been out earlier if people hadnt stolen the code.

the game rox and i'll get it and see how it goes on my athlon 2000+

Valve is a comprised of morons. I'm sure they manage to screw up somehow so we won't get the game until summer of next year.

That first picture.. the building reminds me of a Computer.. hahahaha

oh and uh...
/droooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool. :D

I played the level the first screenie is of on an Ati 9800 and an FX5900, it did not look as good as that so they've come a long way since the leak. It looks a lot like STALKER in that shot to tell you the truth.

A rusty, rundown wherehouse/compound/etc is a rusty, rundown etc, etc.

Will be cool to see the finished product for just the graphical stuff.

Never got into any aspect of Half-Life (outside of counterstrike).

I have seen the last two, but that first one is *nice*.

Well, since they were lying about the degree of completion at E3, I dont see why they would have changed their policies. I'll be surprised when they release it, but Im not putting any faith in Valve until they give me some hard evidence that they'll have it done anytime soon.

I hadn't seen the E3 video yet, and I downloaded it today. Not the benchmark demo that simply shows the graphics, I'm talking about the actual gameplay movie. That was absolutely amazing. The graphics were incredibly, but the part that really did it for me was the gameplay. I loved the magnetic-gun thing. I can't wait for this game to come out -- now it's looking better (not necessarily prettier) than Doom 3.

-Lasereth

No, it actually graphically looks a lot alike, especially after testing out the Alpha Benchmark Build of STALKER.

cool... hope its better then HL1.

if it is connected with STEAM in any way it will freaking suck. I laved the original and CS but STEAM has ruined it for me. The lagg, connection problems, and just all around reliability issues are not worth the effort. Uninstall... reinstall.... update..... crash..... uninstall... ect...................

Gimme 1.5 back

I was so excited about this game coming out.. Now I dont even think about it anymore. What a major let down!

thats one nice looking game tho

Why's that? Did you try out the leak? Remember that it was barely complete and what was there was fairly impressive since you were able to play the Tech Demo's Lasereth saw in the big video (of course a little tweaking was required).

Same here. I was all ready to play it then it got pushed back and I started to forget all about it. Then I walked into a Game store and they had Half Life 2 display boxes on their shelf like 2 months later that were left there when they thought they were going to inventory the game for the first release date.

If you want to get a feel for the Havok engine that HL2 runs on check out Max Payne 2. Nice physics in that game too.

I was all ready for HL2 with a new pc only to be dissapointed. I still don't belive the whole breaking/code stealing story. Just a ploy to delay a game that wasn't ready for release.

Check out Deus Ex 2 if you want to see the Havok engine in action too, Deus Ex 2's physics are amazing.

Um, no it wasn't a ploy. Don't ask me how I know. j/k

What a well-composed, sensible statement.

I never liked Half-Life much,but I'm a huge fan of the mods..like CS,DoD etc.



The new graphics engine is pretty nice,can't wait to see what mods come out for it ^_^

The code-stealing was true, but what was stolen was nowhere near complete despite Valve promoting a September 30th 2003 release. This pissed a lot of people off, Valve lied and refused to tell the truth even when they got hacked "Oh, we gota rewrite some more code... and stuff."

I'm not really bothered, I mean how many Big Name games do you know of meet it's initial release date and turn out to be good? (Max Payne 2 is one)

Looks sweet, hope my 5600 can run it :)

Maybe this can shed some light. I got it off Filefront:

The EuroGamer says that the Half Life 2 SDK will be here in the 'coming weeks'. That is very good news for all the code monkeys out there. They also say Valve has just finished up some kind of legal tie up having to do with the code being released.
However Ellis' email also mentioned a "legal hang-up that has now been resolved" was the cause of the SDK's extensive hold-up, prompting further speculation that physics gurus Havok may have sued Valve over the infamous source code leak - which included Havok physics code. However Lombardi was quick to deny this, telling GameSpot "The legal hang-up... was simply in reference to us finalising some paperwork involved with the distribution of the code in the SDK."

Half-Life 2 game of the year.....u'll see.

IF it is released this year. :D

You don't know how truly accurate that statement is.

Ha ha, watch Valve jerk a Rare with Perfect Dark for the N64. "Sorry, but Half-Life 2 has been delayed until late 2005."

I remember when Rare delayed Perfect Dark a solid year after the release date which was only a month away. That was the longest damn wait ever. Well, except for maybe FF8. That was a long wait too. :)

-Lasereth

I've waited longer for a piece of dookie -> Daikatana :) Boy was that embarrassing

Well, if you work in high tech, you'll soon run into people who are so into the technology they are creating that simple things like SECURITY, etc, go by the wayside. This is typical, and whether the farce was real or not will never be known to the rest of us.

Either way, I know I will buy the game when it is released. And I'll buy it retail...on a CD...in a store.

By the way, thanks for the screenies omega2K4. I hadn't seen them yet.

HL2 looks awesome and I will be in the store buying it. I love the first one still even though the graphics blow but its hella fun. Thanks for the screens btw.

Man, I can't wait. This game is sure to rock. Damn!! Hurry up and release it.

Just a little note, a "retail" version of Half-Life 2 has been on sale in Russia for a month or so now. Somehow some software piraters got a hold of a near-complete version of Half-Life 2 in Russian.

Valve leaked the code on purpose. It's all about the hype.

I'm a security noob and even I know that mission-critical machines that have important source code on them DO NOT GET EXTERNAL INTERNET ACCESS. That means an internal lan and an external lan, of which neither of them touch, ever.

I think this game is going to be awsome becuase its going to be more interactive with the surroundings and stuff. Games are just getting better and better.

Wow those new screens look wicked. I am so looking forward to the game.

This was the alpha leak with several tweaks and cleanups.

oh man hurry up with hl2 valve, i wanna see how much frames can my 2ghz, 512 ddr ram, gf 3 ti 200 128mb produce...

i wouldnt be suprised if it was between 10-20 fps, since the games graphics is sooooo 1337, does anybody know the system requirements?

I believe they actually will release in April, they can't afford to leave it any longer. They'll lose heaps of support if they do I feel, and modders will get very annoyed. I also think the hacking made little difference to the release date, it just provided a handy excuse for why it was delayed. Although they will have had to recode some of the anticheat, that can't take 5 months.

those are great screen shots but the game has been in the works forever! when the hell is it coming out!

Remember it was only unveiled just a little over a year ago, considering that they're doing very well. Take Duke Nukem Forever, that fucker was announed last century, and recently a press release said it'd be out in 2005 when it's done.

Actually I have a beta copy of DNF, funny thing is the box has the phrase 3D scratched out and Forever written over it

How old is the Beta? They've scraped the entire WIP several times now.

THeyre getting the FBI to hunt the code thieves, omg

/. Story

Hah Hah get those geeks. Siezed their computers and all they must've pissed their pants.

New Half-Life 2 "Release Date".

It is probably Valve bullshitting around again, but I'd figure I'd post it.

Part of me wants to not care about HL2 and say screw it... the other part of me wants to play it oh so bad.. :(

Damn that 2nd screen is straight nasty.

I was suggesting that DNF will be a copy of DN3D (the one from like 1995 that was really cool at the time). The only change would be that the box art would have 3D scratched-out and Forever written over it.

its teh funny.

I'm quite looking forward to it, but I doubt my PC will be able to handle it

The graphics are amazing but I have to say, chasing alot of flying little robots around doesnt seem like fun to me. Reminds me of the robotic frogs in Daikatana.

I will not believe any release date from Valve until a copy of HL2 is in my hands.

HOLY *@$#!!! NICE GRAPHICS! lol i remember wathing a demo on my geforce 2 video card in a 900 mhz and the freaking VIDEO of the game was lagging me rofl. now i got a 2500 though so all should go well, except the fact i still have that shitty ass geforce 2 in here, oh man ima change that soon... if i can stop upgrading my paintball marker! omg lol

yeaa. they say not till september .. isnt that gayy

Bummer. Slip slip slip. I want to play now. Oh wait, I still have Max Payne 2 and Hitman 2 with shrinkwrap on 'em.....NEVER MIND! What was I thinking?

Here's some more screenshots I found while browsing the 'net today..

screenshot 001
screenshot 002
screenshot 003
screenshot 004
screenshot 005
screenshot 006
screenshot 007
screenshot 008
screenshot 009
screenshot 010
screenshot 011
screenshot 012

Here's some screens from Counter-Strike running on the new engine:

cs: source 01
cs: source 02
cs: source 03

As of today (August 6th, 2004), Half-Life 2 will ship on September 1st, 2004.

Damn they need to hurry this up... Far-Cry and Doom 3 have already stolen a lot of its thunder, both of them apparently topping it for graphics... HL2 still looks to have a better physics engine, but given that the gameplay is as yet unproven, thats about all it has on FC and Doom3 at the moment...

If HL2 plays anything like HL, it will rock Doom 3 and Far Cry's asses.

Probably. But like I said, no one knows that right now. As of now, all anyone knows is that the physics engine kicks ass and Duke Nukem Forever is gonna come out before it does...

Cs Source looks just like CS with tiny improvements, eh.......its still CS and CS is way boring.

HL2 has quite a bit of competition in Doom 3, not so much FC. FC was boring HL2 better not be, I have been waiting for a long time to play this.

i dont see any bump-mapping at all in those screen shots. all flat textures boooo! doom 3's graphics are definately better. i mean that growth all over the base for example! the texture, the way it moved didnt even make me want to step in it in the game.

Maybe I should post this in Paranoia, but I have a "theory" of what really happened with Halflife 2. You see, they said it would be coming out in september 2003, but they were WAAAAAY behind schedule, too much time spent snorting cocaine off strippers ass cracks and whatnot. So what do they do to buy more time? Make two goons their strawmen and have them "steal" the source code of the game, then release it to the net. Then start screaming nonsensically that because of this, they need to rework the source code so that people can't reverse engineer their game. Brilliant! That would buy them time, they figured, but they knew we wouldn't wait forever before we started bellowing for their blood so they said something reasonable, like April 2004. But it's soooo HARD to stop being lazy after you've made a life style out of it, so here we are, 10 months after the originally proposed release date, three months after the revised release date, and still have two months to go before the re-revised release date, when they will tell us that a Columbian death squad stormed their offices and stole all the computers that had the data on them.

A complete Half-Life 2 official screenshots archive for your enjoyment:

http://members.home.nl/roelvdeerden/...20Pictures.htm

:)



Oh, and this game is going to rule all. Release candidate should be shipped to Vivendi in the next couple of weeks. They're looking for a September/October release.

You can still play 1.5 in one of two forms. One way is without STEAM using the No-WON patch. This is ideal if you don't like STEAM (like me), however, there aren't many No-WON patched servers at the moment. The other alternative is to download the STEAM ported version of 1.5 which is being hosted on a lot more servers, but obviously uses STEAM.

I dont get why so many people bitch about steam. From what I saw on my own computer, was nothing near of what people bitch over.

Steam doesnt slow your computer down, steam doesnt cause more lag, steam doesnt cause connection problems, Steam made HL and HL based mods more stable, lower pinged and quicker loading.

If steam was so bad, maybe just maybe dont you think they WOULDNT use it on a entirerly seperate game?

Please tell me about how it lowered loading time while I go download the next security module. =(

Recoding the anticheat. Well, it depends on just how much code they changed. I agree it should not take 5 months, but since the code was out in the open like that, I would bet they change everything. Every function and variable name. Every dll name. Everything that the previous version had should be changed, even slightly, to make sure that hackers who get the game will have no chance of cheating, disassembling, etc. That seems like a huge task, but worth the money.

Personally I think they've changed the entire game, not just the code. Made alternate maps and scenarios and the like, which is good because it's given them time to make even better versions of what they had before.

The reason I say this is because the Doom 3 Alpha had no map that was in the final retail version, however some portions of those maps were re-used. It's kinda unfortunate because we got to see some amazing stuff in both leaks.

HL2 was never going to make it's supposed sept. 30th release date, never. And the code was really stolen, but was never an excuse not to release the game.. seeing as how the people that stole the source code stole it a few days after sept. 30th.

I'm pretty sure they stole it before, and yeah, the game was in no condition to be released on the 30th (unless they wanted to pull an ENTER THE MATRIX on us). I still think they're re-working the entire game, I certainly hope so, will make for an all new experience.

Agreed, and I can't wait to play it.

I just wish they would finally announce that it's gone gold. I've upgraded my machine now to play Doom 3 and it looks nice but I want more story and interactivity that HL2 promises to have.

Now this game I am excited about. Doom what?

Looks good. Too bad my computer sucks.

Anybody here have one of the ATI vouchures? Just curious how Steam will be doing with the ability to DL the game with all of the ATI users most likely trying to DL it at the same time.

Okay guys I need some help here from someone who has been following HL2 development closely. I've only been paying attention on and off and there is one thing that has confused me to know end: Purchasing the game.

Now since the dawn of time, I have gone to the store, purchased a box, and then have been set. In recent years, if I felt like it, I could download mods for free. Easy stuff.

But I've heard all sorts of things about HL2 having multiple "versions" to buy, like SP only, MP only, super-fun-happy pack that comes with everything + 40 acres + mule. Then I've heard about people with some mystical vouchers. And some other people are planning to buy it & download it straight through Steam. Given all these possibilities, I don't know which are valid or which were just speculation.

So onto my questions:

1) By buying it online and through Steam, is it cheaper because you avoid the middle man + production costs of box/manual/cds? And what guaruntees do I have that I'll get the product incase their servers overload and gammy out. Or if my HD blows up and I need to download it again, do I have to pay for it again?

2) Are they going to charge for mods now? One of the biggest reasons I am buying HL2 (besides the SP of course) is to play the new Day of Defeat. Am I still going to be able to download mods for free, or will I have to pay for the ones that got bought by Valve (like CS and DoD).

3) Are there really going to be multiple versions even in the store such as SP only, MP only, etc?

Thanks to anyone who can help me out. Official links with comprehensive info would be appreciated too... I can never seem to find anything myself on this except fan sites that I don't trust.

How do you guys think this game will perform compared to Doom3 in terms of sys reqs? Doom3 is just barely able to run adequately on my computer and I'm worried about HL2.

Doom 3 is far more spec intesntive than HL2, if you can run Doom 3 well then Half-Life 2 will be blazing.

NOTE: To those that have the ATI Half-Life2 Vouchers.

When you go to scratch off your key code, use a vinyl/plastic eraser, if you use anything hard, you risk the chance of scratching off the code itself. I found this out the hard way, and luckily only 2 of the digits came off (only have to try 100 dif numbers).

Just thought I'd throw that info out on here.

EDIT**

As for how fast you'll download half-life2 off of steam... I figure it's going to take atleast 1 1/2 days, with the possibility of it going up to 3 days (Cable). Unless of coarse Steam gets an extra 15-20 MAJOR pipes to host the files from.

1 1/2 days? doubt it... maybe an hour to 4 hours with cable.

Depends on the speed of the Cable Connection.

When I beta tested SW:Galaxies it took well over 10 hours to DL and my cable connection at that time was pulled down large files with no complaints. The problem I'm looking forward to is Steam choking on so many users that nobody can get the game even after it's available causing even more undue delay in getting a completed game in the hands of those who most deserve to have it...THE GAMERS!!! (sounds really negative but I think if Steam survives the initial onslaught of a massive DL then perhaps Newell et al have done things right for once and Steam may outlive it's less than stellar reputation).

I think your forgetting about the other 10,000ish amount of people that have the cards. And for the fact that it took me a full 24 hours to download the works off of steam (barely breaks 1.7gb), that's where I based my assumption. Yes, steam does have some good hosts... but they randomly pick them for you. Some may have 20~50kb/s, some may have 100+.

Let's not forget about the day steam came out officially. It took most people 3~4 days to get cs 1.6, and the content servers went down like flies. Obviously they learned what went wrong there, and may/may not have fixed it.

EDIT*

(10,000 people having the cards is just my estimate. After saying it, it sounds a bit high... but I'll stick with it.)

i don't want to offend any doomers out there or anything but HL2 is going to rock its ass. after playing doom 3 i realized that i had much more fun with the HL2 "beta." It's just more fun to be able to shoot EVERYTHING and have it react then only a limited number of things. dont get me wrong DOom3 is a BAD ASS but it hasn't ruined my anticipation

Yeah Doom 3 hasn't ruined my anticipation of HL2. If anything, it has only built it that much more. From what I've seen in the movies, the much greater depth of interactivity, (i.e. the total interaction with your environment as well as NPCs) will blow Doom 3 out of the water and make me hope that whoever licenses the Doom 3 engine can make a game as rich in story and interactivity as the graphics already are.

Okay, so I'm pretty excited about HL2 since I loved the first one... and I heard that the "pre-load" has started yesterday over "Steam." Could someone fill me in on what the hell this means? What is "Steam" and what does it do?

Steam is basically Valve's way of distributing content. As soon as a patch or game is ready, they upload it to Steam and make it instantly available for download. It also acts as a server browser. And the preload is just Valve releasing content early so that the downloads get spread out over a period of time, keep in mind you can't actually play it until Valve decrypts it. On another note the Half Life 2 preload got delayed... Valve can't seem to hold a date for anything.

Everything's so... smooth :)

ok, yea, you are going to have to tell us more than that, what's smooth? gameplay? FPS? download speed? If you are gonna make a short post, make sure all relevant information is in it.