Half-Life 2 - official (9/14 Black Mesa Source?!)

[epmode]

in case anyone is unaware, valve has released an excellent book (288 pages, limited to 50,000 copies) called raising the bar. essentially, it details the making of half-life 1 and 2.

Unprecedented access behind Half-Life and Half-Life 2
·A forward by Valve founder Gabe Newell
·Hundreds of art, design, preproduction, and other art pieces crammed into the book
·Over a dozen key members of Valve's staff interviewed
·Officially approved by Valve
·Behind City 17 and other locations
·The development of the Source engine
·A rogue's gallery of beasts, characters, and monstrosities
·Key weapons development revelations
·A tour of many of the game's locations, from inception to completion
·Filled with art, screens, and anecdotes from the Valve team

sample page (minor spoilers)

i just bought a copy for myself, but i won't open it until i finish the game, for fear of ruining later levels. and despite what the amazon page states, it's a hardcover book.

[Rumpy]

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/

For those that don't about Bill Harris, he wrote on Gone Gold for like 3 years. He was pretty much filler. He talks about everything, his kid, games (he's pretty into it, he upgrades his graphics cards a lot, has an HD set, all the systems, talkes about the sliders in Madden and such to make the comp play more real). And he's an awesome writer that has some contacts in the game industry (he knows to keep his mouth shut so they like to talk to him). Anyway, Gone Gold pretty much dissappeared and he has a blog now (which I linked to). Fun thing to read to kill some time. Find out some interesting tech stuff and he's just a good story teller and cool guy.

[MechDeus]

First HL2 was an overly-elaborate way to resize my desktop to 1024x768, and now it's just a nifty way to crash my computer while giving me a blurry picture of a city to stare at. How very not impressed am I.

Okay, I think I've figured it out; clicking properties tells me it's at 57% and needs an update. Now if I could only figure out how to update it, since double-clicking the file just makes it launch and then crash.

No, really, thank you Steam. As if you hadn't given me enough problems already.

[kedawa]

The first thing that came to mind while playing this game was 'is this a sequel to donkey kong?'

'Pugsy, maybe?'

Seriously, how realistic is it that a guy can lift an oil drum that's heavy enough to sink, and toss it around like a toy? And without even using his hands!
It's a cool gameplay mechanic, but it doesn't really fit Valves 'vision.'

[bing]

Mech, i had that problem also. for some reason it would open hl2 when it wasnt completely finished downloading. what i did was when i was at the blurry loading picture just alt+tab out of it and let it continue to load till you have 100%

[Eightbitbreaks]

I really hope this will run somewhat bearable on my Radeon 9200 nonpro.

I'm hoping 30 FPS with low/mid details. Is this feasible, people who have it?

[Compass]

This game is good.

Just thought I'd throw that out there...

And I'm getting the stuttering too big time. Infuriating since it's the one thing keeping me from enjoying this gift from God. Super smooth frames (except for the stuttering) at 1600x1200 with all details maxed and 8x AF (no AA; I don't like it).

My system:
Athlon 2500+ @ 2700
ASUS A7N8X mobo
X800 XT
1 GIG PC2700 RAM

Some have said lowering their AGP aperture size in their BIOS have helped them with the stuttering. Mine was already at 64 so I didn't change it.

[MVS]

What Drivers you have?

I had the newest ATI ones, and had major stuttering in Wolf ET, as well as a solid lock for 5 seconds or so every 2 mins. Going back to the previous version of the Drivers (4.10?) solved the problem.

What frames you getting on your system with those settings? Constant FPS?

Down to 53 minutes now.

[Compass]

I'm using the 4.10 drivers. 4.12 are downloading now (56k). My average FPS is prolly around 45. I haven't run FRAPS yet. It's smoother than Far Cry though and that's around 35-40.

[MVS]

Weird.

Give the new drivers a try, I guess.