Half life 2 PC gamer scans are out

[Alientank]

No I won't post them, YES I've seen them on other boards. This looks like an AWESOME game, that's all I can say! There's a german mag out too but it has tons of spoilers and I didn't bother looking at those scans, the PC gamer ones don't ruin anything which is how I want to keep it.

[DoomDan]

Im still not really interested in the game.Ill check them out later if I am in the mood to look for them.

[AndrewB]

This just goes to reinforce the point that pictures sell games.

[Bucket]

Except I was sold on the movies that were released months ago.

[S1lent]

I've gotten so tired of Sierra and Valve saying "HL2 will be out!" then "HL2 is being pushed back!" and so on and so forth. Honestly, I'm not even gonna care about HL2 until I see it on a shelf somewhere.

I think they should have looked at what iD did. They said "When it was done" and didn't give a release date until they were absolutely sure it would come out. And did it? Yes. Perfectly on time and no one was dissapointed about it's release date it being pushed back.

[Sephiroth]

remember how close duke4 was to releaseback in 1998, then agian in 2000? i can hope HL2 doesn't suffer a similar fate. I DID like the original. also valve seems like a good company. howeve ri hope that $80 issue has been dropped. and they just sell the entire game as one unit for around $40-$45 US.

[Fredrik]

Numbermind said:

Except I was sold on the movies that were released months ago.

A movie is a picture with an added dimension for time.

[AndrewB]

Movies are far better than screenshots for judgment ability. You get to hear the sounds, see the physics, and sometimes, the logic of the gameplay. Of course, very few demo movies show off their "enthralling and addicting puzzles/adventures/whatever" because, well, there just isn't much to go around.

[Revenant100]

But weren't all the videos faked? Like they weren't of actual live gameplay, but a bunch of scripted sequences they just ran through to make it look like they were playing the game.

[AndrewB]

Revenant100 said:

But weren't all the videos faked? Like they weren't of actual live gameplay, but a bunch of scripted sequences they just ran through to make it look like they were playing the game.

Ah, good point. I forgot about the HL2 physics scandal.

[Captain Red]

S1lent said:
I think they should have looked at what iD did. They said "When it was done" and didn't give a release date until they were absolutely sure it would come out. And did it? Yes. Perfectly on time and no one was dissapointed about it's release date it being pushed back.

Yeah, but I would like to play this game one day.

Revenant100 said:
But weren't all the videos faked? Like they weren't of actual live gameplay, but a bunch of scripted sequences they just ran through to make it look like they were playing the game.

what about thoses people who've claimed to have played it?

[Revenant100]

Well everything that was in those videos that were released (Not counting some of the newer ones) were all in the leaked beta build, and everything in the beta was scripted. They weren't actual levels, just small chunks of them for the purpose of the E3 demo.

My point would be that even though it's all ingame footage, those videos weren't of actual gameplay. One example would be the Traptown video. There was a part where the player went inside a building, close a door, and pushed a table in front of the door. A combine soldier would try to open the door but find the table in the way, eventually just kicking the door open and knocking the table down. It looked like an impressive show of AI in the video, but in the leaked beta it's revealed that's it's just a scripted event. You don't have to push the table in front of the door and you can even kill the soldier on the other side. The door will still be kicked open even though there's no enemy to do it. Granted, it seems many things in the beta seem broken, but there's no doubt really that many of the "innovations" that we've seen gameplay-wise aren't even being shown in real gameplay. Now, maybe these things have been implemented into the game since then (The PC Gamer review was incredibly vague and fairly ambiguous), but you can't actually judge the videos Valve has released as an actual representation of the game. To me it seems like we're being directly lied to (I don't see Valve mentioning anywhere that just about everything they presented at E3 was a bunch of scripted sequences and faked gameplay), but most developers seem to be doing that anyway.

[S1lent]

Captain Red said:

Yeah, but I would like to play this game one day.

So would a lot of people. But there are plenty of others games to focus on until Sierra and Valve can make up their minds. Like I said, I'm to the point of not really caring about HL2 until I see it on the shelf of a store. They've completely lost my support. Valve has gotten so sloppy and they never seem to think things through all the way.

[Quast]

Revenant100 said:

but in the leaked beta it's revealed that's it's just a scripted event. You don't have to push the table in front of the door and you can even kill the soldier on the other side. The door will still be kicked open even though there's no enemy to do it.

You haven't played it, have you? The leaked beta build doesn't have complete levels or functional ai...as in, monsters don't do much other than run away when shot at, and die. In fact IIRC that traptown level isn't in it, at least in full, but nothing resembling the video level. There is only one level with any scripting i believe, and it seems to be a VERY early version of the trainstation video...the part where gordon is pulled out and told to enter some room

The only things completed (for the most part) seem to be a few weapons/sounds/textures and the dune buggy

[Revenant100]

I do have the leaked beta. It contains all the levels from all the videos that were shown at the E3 show (e3_bugbait, e3_hydra, e3_lab, e3_seafloor, etc.), and many, many other actual game levels that are in various stages of completion. The traptown in the beta is the exact same Traptown from the video, except for some reason some of the physics objects are a little quirky, so the swinging beam falls as soon as the map starts, killing a few of the enemies there. Otherwise all the scripted events (Enemy kicking door down, zombies being spawned) happen as they should. The AI works just fine, except obviously they're all scripted enemies so they don't navigate the maps very well, but otherwise they'll shoot and attempt to run around for cover and attacks and such. A lot of things are completed (At least relatively) in the beta build, as it's basically just everything that was finished in the build at the time the leak happened (Which apparantly is "4 days until 9/30/03"). Anyway what I mean to say is that I have played it.

[AndrewB]

Quast said:

You haven't played it, have you? The leaked beta build doesn't have complete levels or functional ai...as in, monsters don't do much other than run away when shot at, and die.

So, in other words, people are touting a game for its physics and AI when it has exactly ... zero physics and zero AI?

[Linguica]

AndrewB said:

So, in other words, people are touting a game for its physics and AI when it has exactly ... zero physics and zero AI?

I dunno about AI but it certainly has physics up the butt

[AndrewB]

A door being kicked open by nothing is not physics. That's hard-codedness.

[Scuba Steve]

Ha ha, Gordon Freeman is soo Emo.

[DoomDan]

Who cares about Physics?? Is that all Half Life 2 is gonna be about???

[Job]

DoomDan said:

Who cares about Physics?? Is that all Half Life 2 is gonna be about???

Probably.

[DoomUK]

Well I at least hope some of the locations shown in the 'gameplay' videos actually make it into the game, such as the part where you operate the crane; don't tell me they scripted something like that just to show of how advanced the physics are...

[toxicfluff]

Quast said:

You haven't played it, have you? The leaked beta build doesn't have complete levels or functional ai...as in, monsters don't do much other than run away when shot at, and die. In fact IIRC that traptown level isn't in it, at least in full, but nothing resembling the video level. There is only one level with any scripting i believe, and it seems to be a VERY early version of the trainstation video...the part where gordon is pulled out and told to enter some room

The only things completed (for the most part) seem to be a few weapons/sounds/textures and the dune buggy

Actually, one of the beta levels had some really impressive AI. It was a dark town map, with lots of buildings you could run around in and rooftops you could climb around on. Basically, you had these zombies which could climb drainpipes and efficiently run and jump to nearby rooftops. I tested it out pretty thoroughly and they managed to find a way to me almost no matter where I went - probably some of the best navigational AI I've seen in a game so far.

DoomUK said:

Well I at least hope some of the locations shown in the 'gameplay' videos actually make it into the game, such as the part where you operate the crane; don't tell me they scripted something like that just to show of how advanced the physics are...

Well, you were actually able to operate the crane how you wanted in the beta. Ironically though, what happened once you achieved your goal with it was scripted in the most blatant and horrid fashion.