[Paco]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by yellowmonkey</i>
<br />those guys at Sierra have really outdone themselves<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Don't give the credit to Sierra - they aren't the developers, they only market the game when it's completed.

CZ has taken so long that I don't imagine it will be very popular - especially if it isn't released until AFTER HL2.  If CZ wants any sales, they better release it BEFORE HL2 comes out.

I think the best part about HL2 is not the graphics, but the object interactivity and gravity.  EVERYTHING in the game is an object and responds to any sort of manipulation, and uses real gravity - very cool.  Doom3 can't even do that.  Doom3 has better graphics, but given the choice between the two, I'd go with HL2 - it'll be out first anyway.

[Harley]

Isn't Rooster working for Sierra now?  Maybe he has something to say on this?

[Paco]

I'm pretty sure he works for RedStorm Entertainment (the guys who market the Tom Clancy games).

Sierra has absolutely nothing to do with MAKING the Half-Life games...

[Basher]

Doesn't Valve make the HL engine based games?

Nick R.

[yellowmonkey]

Well whatever, I know they don't develop it, but it is legally their game... so valve and whoever else worked on it did a great job. And as far as I can see Doom 3 does not have better graphics, I mean: look at the models for HL2... look at the textures (even on the monster models) for HL2, the stuff for the enviorments is a lot better, the oly reason Doom 3 textures look better sometimes is becasue everything had a shadow cast on it... and thus made it look more detailed. I really think HL2 has a better quality as far as graphics and it looked like HL2 was a lot more advanced. Don't yell at me becasue I don't know as much as you Poco, but the graphics in HL2 looked better to me.

**note: I don't know what engines the games both use but HL2 still looks better.

P.s. Don't the critters in HL2 look a bit similar to the bugs in Starship Troopers to you all? Not that they are exact replicas, but still, they look a lot alike to me.

[yellowmonkey]

one quick question before this thread is forgotten... These newer games like HL2, Doom3, or Unreal 2... do they still use ray-casting in these newer HDCG(my play on acronyms (High Definition Computer Graphics)) ones?

Man I kill myself sometimes.

[Ninja]

I'm unfamiliar with the term "ray-casting"
I think you might mean raytracing, which isn't used in PC games because it doesn't work in real-time.  HL2 is brilliant because it is using shaders to replace many of the environmental textures and maps. (Not level maps, texture maps.) This is standard practice in 3d graphics work.  The modeling for HL2 was done in Softimage (probably XSI) which is a high-end 3D modeling and animation package.  Textures were probably real photos that got Photoshopped.  

Yeah, I agree with Paco.  The only thing Doom 3 has over HL2 is the graphics, and the only reason it looks so dang good is because Carmack himself coded the lighting.
HL2 on the other hand appears to have a legitimate plot as well as characters, not to mention the interactive environments and physics.

Yeah. Sign me up.
(Hopefully HL2 is the reason Team Fortress 2 went AWOL in '98)

[yellowmonkey]

Ninja your quite the game expert, you have informed me well. I do know about ray-tracing and such, and I know that ray-tracing can't be done in real time (takes me 20 seconds to render a sphere on my mediocre-ok computer). It's just that a friend of mine was saying that the generation of 3d games that spawned from around the late 90's to around now, have used ray-casting to draw objects.

   Ray-casting (from what I understand) uses rays that simply outline the object but keep continually moving in one direction, instead of reflecting off surfaces and traveling back to be interpreted by a camera like ray-tracing. Then the pseudo-surfaces formed by rays is taken into account with light and other effects then interpreted by a camera. I'm not that familliar with the actual code and physics of game engines, but I'm trying to get the big picture of it.
 
  I should really read up on the subject, but unfortunately it is very hard for me to do anything right now. I have a condition which the doctors call "lazyness", and... there is no cure.

[Ninja]

I think I follow you with what you're saying.

Half-Life is going the right route with shaders, but the lighting in Doom 3 is absolutely incredible.

[kopper]

I hope that the storyline of HL2 is as good as it was for HL... it really made the single player game as good as it was. In my opinion for a single player fps, you can have the best graphics in the world, but if you don't have a good storyline, the game isn't that much fun.

[Screwloose]

Yeah I did enjoy the whole stoy and plot of HL, but I got stuck at some point in the SPlayer game and just stopped to do the Multiplayer. I had some terminal computer crash, and never bothered to replay the game to return to that point.
Personally I cannot wait for the Multiplayer part.

[Ninja]

Well I'm banking on the last vestige of hope that TF2 is going to be soon after HL2.  After all, HL2 will probably have good multiplayer, but mods are where it's at now, and Valve knows that.  They left a whole bunch of features out that are possible, but they didn't want them in their game.  The mods will have a plethora of abilities with the new engine.  I can't imagine that Valve would release the game with a standard multiplayer set and not do a "mod" of their own.  I'm hoping TF2 is TFC for HL2.

[Screwloose]

Yeah I have my toes crossed on that one too. But come November I'm going to need them back for OPRO, so Valve better not take too long getting us this game (hopefully games).

[Paco]

Okay, here it is from the horse's mouth:  HL2 is officially delayed with no new release date:  http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/28497

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
Half-Life 2 Delay [Sep 23, 2003 : 11:06 pm]
1143 Comments - Steve Gibson
We've managed to get an official statement from Valve Software on the release date of Half-Life 2 being pushed back. Here is word that I got directly from Doug Lombardi of Valve Software. Valve seems to have been having some mail issues so you may not see this on other sites, however we can confirm with absolute certainty that this is valid:

The previously announced September 30th release date for Half-Life 2 is being pushed back. We are currently targeting a holiday release, but do not have a specific "in-store" date to share at this time. We will release that information as soon as we have confirmed a new date.

As more information becomes available from Valve we'll have it here for you.  
 


<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

No big surprise, but I just LOVE the rumor mongers with this stuff...

I'm confident that they will get it out before CHristmas.  They will lose too much $$ if they don't since it will compete directly with Doom3 otherwise.  They'll make a LOT more if they can get it out in a quarter before D3 comes out.  I think they also pushed it back a bit to squeeze out CZ before HL2 is released.

[Ninja]

Well...I'm disappointed.
I thought Valve was really turning over a new leaf.  Oh well.  I guess that means I can buy another game  that I otherwise wouldn't have.  

I agree with you on that last part, Paco.  They'll probably push out CZ (too early, but no one will care), let it hit some sales figure, then release HL2.