Valve doesn’t need an excuse why ep3/HL3 takes so long. They owe no one and they probably keep the release back on purpose. How do you even suggest that it’s taking them so long. We don’t even know if they are really working on it now (probably they are) because Valve doesn’t give out any information about it. Valve has enough money to delay the release of such a bomb and can keep on developing without any stress. They simply do not give a fuck and so does the BM team.
Wouldn’t you, having had a smashing success with both of the main titles and their subsequent episode releases, think towards the future and start even the most basic of design functions for the next game instead of waiting 13 years down the line when people were itching for another epic adventure? It would be the smart thing to do, even if you had to constantly scrap concepts throughout the process.
And to top all that off, if you WERE working on it (but not close to finishing it), there would be less fallout in the end if you stated that things were no longer working out as planned then if you stayed silent about the failure and kept everything under wraps while your fanbase (at least a portion…I ain’t going nowhere…) decided to leave.
With BMS we at least get updates (in a way?) every so often like amazing screenshots of nostalgic areas to get our hopes going (and the trolls trolling…) and to remind us that things are actually still going on. The way Valve is acting is beyond annoying…they don’t HAVE to show us anything, but it’s not going to help THEM in the end (reputation wise) if they turn out to have been yanking everyone’s goats these past years…
I don’t think time will make Valve lose fans. Look at Diablo 3. 3.5million sales in one day.
Other than developing their other extremely successful titles that they have been releasing for the last 5 years. I’m pretty sure that has a lot do do with it.
Also the fact that you claim to actually believe interest in HL+ will drop… I think you’re projecting. It sounds like there’s something else going on in your little noggin there.
My god. There it is.
You think it’s personal. You mistake their silence for an attack. That’s you’re whole problem. That’s everyone’s problem. You, the BM trolls, everyone. You see radio silence as a spiteful response for your enthusiasm. I mean, just look at that quote. You directly call out a non-offensive tactic as an offensive tactic. Do you even know what you mean by “yanking everyone’s goats?” Are you implying HL+ will be sub par or nonexistent or what? You talk about the silence as if it’s some sort of trick; do you not see how absurd that is?
What is this “Diablo 3” you speak of? Is it some kind of swoard!?
I only hath knowledge of the existence of Diablo III.
To join the fray, no, I don’t think Valve will have made a net loss in the popularity of the HL series once HL3/Ep3 is finally released.
That being said, aren’t they missing out on a resource that might be able to improve the quality of the game? Which is - the fans.
Are they a resource worth taking advantage of? Or are they just dead weight?
Well, fans are like fire. They can keep you warm - or roast your ass.
It depends on how you use/abuse them.
Half Life 2 and its episodes are so good that Valve can prety much get away with anything, in this case taking years to develop a 5 hour campaign. I’m a fanboy, so I trust in their ability to make something I won’t regret waiting for.
And yes, Half Life 2 is THAT good, prety much every modern game engine is derived from Valves source engine, and its not even that. People would of played it no matter what the quality and sill would of loved it. Why? because its HALF LIFE, a 10 years in the making masterpiece. Its the same with Diablo 3, people are willing to overlook all its flaws, and yes it has a shitload of them, just to play the damn game, because its DIABLO.
So basically you’re saying that with the success of their other titles they only have ONE or TWO teams to do development?
Portal is pretty much DONE (unless they try for the ‘you’re now playing as robotic test subjects’ idealism…)
CS:GO is a given…they’re going to be updating that for a long time…but not long enough (or nearly as hard, I suppose) on another full campaign based game and it’s probable future episodes…
L4D, who the hell knows…they released 2 so close to 1 that they pretty much told everyone they could develop games as quickly as they damn well pleased.
TF2…dunno how to even explain how they would even fathom as to WANTING to develop that into a sequel. Hell, would they even NEED to?
Dota : Well, if that’s their flagship title ATM then so be it…this is perhaps the ONLY title they currently have running that actually would take out a large chunk of their development staff.
And even after all that…if they hadn’t started on HL3 by now…well, CS:Go and DOTA more then likely don’t have the same teams working on them. Have those other people standing around do something…
How can I project to the facts of how the human brain works? People, when removed from something for an extended period of time, FORGET. ABOUT. IT. Hell, there are people around who are older then me who are asking what HL2 is when people are screaming about HL3…those same people are the ones who heard all the hoopla about it when it was named game of the year and was ported to the 360…forgetting about something that had been released only 5 years before.
I’m saying it’s either nonexistent and they should have told us by now so we can RESET and wait till they START, that it’s existent and maybe 1 screenshot would do the trick, OR it’s nonexistant and they’re too damn ashamed to admit that they dropped the ball that they want to remain silent WHILE they START work on it (“yanking our goats”)
…either that or they just don’t want to get hacked again after they say the game is being developed…
They may forget about HL3, Episode 3, or even Half-Life in general, but when Ep 3 and HL3 come out, they’ll remember.
They better run a promotion…selling HL1, HL2, and all the episodes together in one package like they do during the holidays to bring in some wanted attention…
Nothing like a sale of some good games to make people want to finish off the series…
Sir, please google “Valve Employee Handbook”, download it, and read it. Read it very carefully. VALVe employees do not work in teams which stick to projects. Valve Employees work on what-ever-they-fuckin-want and when-ever-they-want-to. Because that’s the best way to use their talent.
I can imagine at least 2 directions in which Portal could proceed – one: Chell decides for some reason to return to the LAB, two: Chell realises, to her great dissapointment, that the Earth she was dumped into is in bad shape, and she needs to use her wits and the Portal gun to [survive|win]. I’m pretty sure the geniuses who have given us Wheatley and Cave Johnson are able to come up with something to enjoy.
You know, that valve in the head in the logo of VALVe is supposed to be a follow-up to the original “valve in the eye”, as in saying: “Open your eyes --> Open your mind” You’re still thinking inside the box, and that’s why you cannot imagine anything grander than some tiny updates like for TF2. Really, OPEN YOUR MIND.
L4D can be developed fairly quickly, because huge portion of its contents is generated procedurally. They don’t need to script that much, besides the few places in each level which are scripted, and even that is usually very simple (“press button” – “bridge opens” – “infected swarm”). Ask Raminator or others how long it takes to properly choreograph and hunt all bugs in a single dialogue in Half-Life, and then ask some L4D modder how simple it is to build one of those hold-the-fort or cross-the-bridge events.
Once again, “in the box” thinking. You do realize that on Dota, they are conquering the ground of real-time strategy, and that we might very well, in the foreseeable future, get some variation of Starcraft or Age of Empires from Valve? After Command And Conquer has been turned into retarded parody, and since Starcraft II, while loved by multiplayerists, is quite dissapointing due to the short missions (usually around 30 minutes each), VALVe has a window of opportunity here to give us a product we might love.
It is entirely possible that while Laidlaw, Wolpaw and Faliczek have some story concepts and that designers have plenty of concept art, others simply find DOTA, TF2, CS, Portal and L4D more interesting to work on right now, and so they do. Gabe Newell does not tell his people what to work on, plain and simple.
Like Bioware did with Mass Effect 3? Gabe Newell recently talked about Episode 3, but he was using the codename “Ricochet 2” for it. And he said that he simply won’t reveal anything until it is solid, because they have in the past dissapointed fans by teasing them with stuff that wasn’t in the game at the end. There’s been an Episode 2 trailer at the end of Episode 1, and they changed quite a lot from it. The demo of Half-Life 2 showed scenes which were not in the game, even the stolen Alfa, mere 1 year before release, featured things from Borealis etc.
We’re going to have 2 points of view, and that’s that.
I am one of the users who want some news of even it’s EXISTENCE…and nothing more. At that point if it got canceled I’d be pissed off like the rest, but at least I would know they had been trying and could always pick it up later. No, I’m not taking their silence as a personal attack to me wanting to play the game…It’s the equivalent of KILLING me. I’m sick of all these other crappy games released these days and F2P junk…I want something with some SUBSTANCE that doesn’t require a language patch or going back 20 years into pixel land. I want the story to CONTINUE…they way EP2 ended sealed that ideal…the mind raced in circles of what could be in the next game, just like how I was when Halo 3 ended (and subsequently when Halo 4 was announced).
I don’t want to be like one of these other people who either A) Get angry and troll people with “Haw haw 90 more years gonna be a grandad when this comes out back to COD!” type people or the B ) people who sit there and pretty much could wait until they DO turn 90…never really wondering when or if the game would ever be released.
You can lump me in with whatever group, or put words in my text, or whatever you want to do…its not going to change the fact that something CAN be said about the game (Canceled, in-development, soon, etc.), but for some ODD reason they WON’T…
wat
L4D2 went a lot faster because the game is broken in to a few 1 hour campaigns. Combined with all of the assets being reused, I can picture the development going very smoothly. I saw a tour of Valve where they explained that the L4D2 cabal was specifically designed for speed. There was an art department on one end, and a whole map building team on the other. The desks also had extra chairs so someone could easily swing their monitor and keyboard around and say “take a look at this.” Also, as you said, there isn’t a lot of scripting in a game like L4D. The Source engine is already there. There really isn’t any new tech in that game like Portal either. So all they have to do is design the AI for the zombies and simple things like health counts, how much gun X can hold, etc. The only rigorous part of the development would probably be the director. Which isn’t really new tech like portals or anything. That’s just an AI that checks how well the players are doing and changes the game based on their performance within the combined difficulty.
A “fuller” game such as HL3 simply could not function that way. The story is much richer than anything out of Left 4 Dead and scripting and other things are detailed and complex in HL3. And as mentioned earlier, a lot of the work in Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 was either done or didn’t take much time to complete.
So main point, HL3 could not be done in a year. HL1 was done in a year and was originally supposed to come out in 1997. But Valve basically told Sierra if they wanted quality, then wait another year. So they rebuilt HL pretty much from the ground up save for a few things. That was all done in a year but it wasn’t nearly as dynamic as HL2 and it’s episodes where. That game didn’t even have facial muscles except for a ventriloquist dummy-like mouth animation.
Quality simply takes time.
I lol’d
I’d like to point out that in 1998, having even the mouths move was considered high-tech facial animation. So “not even having facial muscles except for a ventriloquist dummy-like mouth animation” was quite the feat.
For god’s sake people ram already warned us, the current discussion is off-topic to the thread and should be directed to a new thread or something
Thank You
I’ve been thinking about it and I think it would be pretty awesome if a few Valve devs could interview some BMS devs podcast style.
Interview was great.
I had no idea what a herculean task they had taken on, none whatsoever.
I always thought of this project as simply ‘buffing up’ (if I can use that term) the basics of HL.
Explains a great deal of the why’s and wherefores and it was a breath of fresh air to hear someone being so candid for a change.
My feeling is, with the release of this media/screenshots over the last few days, that we won’t have that long to wait.
We may all be surprised and in a pleasant way.
That was actually one of the things i use to like about adventure gaming, does pressing use on this do anything? Nah. This, hidden door opened. Its got absolutely trashed these days, “Press the button you just bound to pick up/use”. Items flashing at a distance. More on-screen prompts about pressing what key you bound to reload, every single time you need to reload.
Regarding the hand holding comment on RPS, if you want to help newbs so they stay interested just remember the difficulties. Newbs shouldn’t be on the hardest difficulty so thats where the prompt stuff, detections (like cursor highlighting when taget can be shot, has been shot) etc should be removed, unfortunately developers are forcing their newb features on the more experienced gamer. Whats the point of nice graphics if immersion is going to be broken? It agitates me you cannot escape from it.
What are you talking about? It’s distinguishing assets that are useable from ones that aren’t. It’s not like they are making them “glow” when you can use it and adding a big “PRESS USE” button prompt. Tons of early games did this, even in their switch design so you can tell what you can press.
You should understand what you are replying about before you make yourself look like a moron.