At least we have a more narrow timeline for xen.
Nice work, guys! But ValveTime in Source engine always works)
I think that Crowbar Collective may release it in next year, but it must be as perfect as it could be. By the way, as I remeber, in November 8-th 2018 Half-life 1 will be 20 years old. Perhaps this is the best date for do-or-die deadline.
Now, would it be better to fully integrate On a Rail Uncut to the final game? Just some polishing and couple of cuts will make this chapter great addition to the whole game.
Thanks again Crowbar Collective! And good luck!
Having to delay (and then having to announce it publicly) is always hard, but I’m glad it’s in the name of getting improvements like this in the game!
The deferred light thing in particular really excites me and I’d like to see more details - Is the entire renderer deferred now, or is there still a bunch of forward rendering going on? Are the dynamic deferred lights their own entity, or is it a flag on the existing light entities? How many of these can we use at once before the game slows to a crawl?
Xen looks gorgeous by the way - I’m really liking the nebulous skies and those rock props!
Same, I got some neat horror map idea yesterday that could use that dynamic lightning, so it’s a really neat addition
I believe the CSM and new lights use the deferred rendering and everything else is still forward, but don’t quote me on that. That’s brogrammer wizardry territory.
I can’t recall the technical details, but I believe that the dynamic lights use some kind of global atlas which means that 1 light functionally has the same performance impact as 256. So you can basically use as many as you want. The limit is, in practise, is probably substantially lower, because we hope to eventually have muzzle flashes, explosions, alien fx, etc on the new system, so those have to be accounted for. But the limit should still be enough that you can basically do whatever you want.
The dynamic lights are a separate entity. Source’s baked lighting system is still very much in play for most of the lighting’s heavy lifting.
What about shotgun animation for mp playermodels? Is it fixed?
Gorgeous!
Xen is so gorgeous! Though I’m a little disappointed when I hear it’s delay to Dec, but a masterpiece needs fine carving. Keep on going on your nice work,GUYS!
So can we expect little updates before Xen is out? In consideration of there is no update for a longtime, the current game need new blood, just like the new features and improvements that you have mentioned.
Can I provide one bit of feedback looking at the images a little longer?
Needs more green colours in the ground/structures.
I was looking forward to playing it. A shame it had to be pushed back, but you can’t skimp on quality, especially considering the amount of detail the team is going for.
I LOVE the second exterior screenshot. Out of curiosity, what environments that exist IRL did the level designers use as inspiration for the level?
Not a dev (duh), but I’m pretty sure that coral reefs served as inspiration for the level. Especially with the blue sky, and the godrays that look like sunrays being cast through some sort of water surface above.
Beautiful work! It has a very aquatic atmosphere, nice touch! And I love how you can see signs of scientists poking around. Since your Xen is clearly more touched by humans than it was in HL, will we get to interact wiht humans in Xen? I mean is there going to be any survivors from the expedition team?
Can the dynamic light system be used as main lighting for a map i.e. global illumination? If the system is flexible enough, I might try to move my maps and content to the new engine and try making a full time-of-day system.
Wonderful! I’m eager to play it! (I hope the marine AI is more forgiving in the paid version, 
)
Those are some nice diving photos from vacation. Now where’s Xen?
Just kidding. ^^
Seriously though, such beautiful maps. Now i see that when i will play the Xen, i will surely
be happy just as i was the first time playing Black Mesa.
We have had to deal with a lot of new code and our pipeline for Xen has had a lot of bumps to get it where we want to. Mostly due to having to get Wallworm working in max the way we need it to. Shawn has done some really amazing things with the program and integrating it with Max and several other 3rd party commercial plug-ins. The other thing you have to remember is these are very narrowly focused pics of areas you will be seeing. No one liked the original Xen so everyone has their ideas on what the maps should be, just remember these are our ideas on what it should be (we aren’t mind readers). I have been knee deep in detailing these maps (the wireframe pics are stuff I did over the last week/weekend) and it is nothing like any source game on the market. As to it being a “4 month” delay, we never claimed what part of summer it would be released…summer lasts well into Sept.
Wow, I stop watching the boards for a few days and this happens!
These new screenshots have gone a loong way not just in convincing me that the delay is worth it, but also that the overall artistic design for Xen is indeed on a good track. I think the ‘coral’ props might be pushing the underwater angle alittle bit heavily, but other than that this is damn near perfect.
Not so hot on the color-correction, though. It’s just immensely, overpoweringly purple, and while the original rock in Half-Life did indeed have a more pinkish texture the CC is also affecting concrete and other artificial textures in a very weird way. I dunno, maybe it’s just an effect of the gif format, but the screenshot lower down still looks really purple too.
The prospect of lighting improvements is enticing, and in particular I’m intrigued by some love being shown to dynamic lights that could allow the creation of a day-night cycle, but I’m also kind of worried about the direction of the last few rounds of lighting engine improvements. We’ve seen a lot of things that add impressive new graphical effects to ‘conventionally-lit’ maps, but not a lot that would allow mappers to take the good old-fashioned pre-baked lighting in new directions. Things like very even lighting in asymmetrical rooms, colored accents or areas of darkness in rooms that are already bright, and accent lights that won’t illuminate the rest of the room are very hard to create even though once they were baked into the lightmaps they would be literally free to render.
No it won’t work like that. This isn’t GI it is dynamic lights and dynamic lights with shadows. We are limited in the number that generate shadows. To further clarify, we can’t turnoff gbuffer (what is used by the deferred renderer) now its not optional any more, it will stay on. Flashlight is also being re-implemented using new lights. So 10-15% performance hit can’t be avoided. Same with new lights. But godrays and new shadows will be optional. All this will hopefully get released pre Xen as mentioned before so people can test it out.
Great work guys, looking forward to playing the final chapters!
I do hope that there still are a few small floating islands in Xen 
Everything looks fantastic! The stones, the flora, the skybox, it’s all very atmospheric and gorgeous!
I’m sorry you guys couldn’t make it by summer, but we definitely understand. Shit happens, y’know?
Also that dynamic lighting looks beautiful! What effect does it have on compiling times when compared to vanilla Source’s crappy dynamics?