Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility at all. Mac software is OS version dependent, and the OS version is hardware dependent, and if you don't have the approved OS and hardware combo then tough luck.
Say what you will about Windows and Microsoft, but they live and breathe backwards compatibility.
I played through Black Mesa the game after visiting the “crowbar collective” booth at pax east, and missing half life the first time around. Really loved it.
IIRC you should be able to download it and then put Steam into offline mode and it won't call home until you flip that toggle again... unless they changed how that works since I last fiddled with it. Might need to play once before flipping toggle off.
It's a whole different engine that may have some advantages that make it worth checking out over or in addition to the updates Valve has made for this special release: improved performance (through a more efficient culling system, etc), support for modern features like dynamic lighting, use of HL mods on newer systems by providing compatibility fixes. The engine can also run other games and works on mobile devices with less common screen resolutions, but YMMV. For a while, it was a good fallback to the official game if you were having a problem with it on new or less-supported hardware, but with this anniversary release, maybe it is less "necessary" and more "cool" to use an OSS alternative engine.
As one of authors of Heroes III one I could say Xash3D is amazing project worth to check for Source 1 game fans.
Valve support for their old games is outstanding and they all have native support, great performance, constant updates. It's like extremely rare for old games to be supported that well.
HL1 is already quite performant though and does have native support for Linux and Mac on Steam without needing third-party engines.
Not disputing that engine replacements / source ports can be great (I work on one myself) but it's weird that there are three replies that sidestep the actual question: What does this particular engine replacement add over vanilla GoldSrc?
The offline system for steam is way less glitchy than it was pre-2010. Like another commenter said though, you may need to be online the first time you launch the game.
There have been CAPTCHA problems with Steam for at least a year. Search "steam captcha broken" and you'll see endless Reddit threads about it. Last week it took me two days to get it to work - the only solution was to solve the CAPTCHA from a mobile device in order to do a password reset. CAPTCHA just did not work on MacOS or Windows at all. After solving the CATPCHA on mobile and resetting the password, I was able to use it to login via Windows and MacOS.
To add to the problem, there are numerous "solutions" about flushing DNS caches, disabling IPv6, using the audio CAPTCHA, and other tricks that just did not work for me. I tried every "solution" in a dozen threads until the mobile suggestion finally worked.
To add to the confusion, I encountered this about 2 weeks ago and power-cycling my router did fix it. My IP didn't change, so it must have been something cached on the router? It's just so weird that this issue has about 10 different "fixes" that may or may not work for someone.
Why not make a new account? Valve is giving this out for free, partially to get people to use their program more. Why not support them in that small way at least?
Captchas can be an endless hellhole if you are on a network that the captcha provider happens to dislike. No fault of your own.
I’ve had situations in the past where I tried 10-20 times to complete captcha and it just kept throwing one after the other at me. Whereas when I am at home and not using VPN I always complete every captcha in like one or two attempts.
the captcha on https://archive.ph is an endless loop of clicking the "I'm not a robot" reCAPTCHA checkbox for me. sometimes i'm lucky enough to get to the "click all boxes that have a bus" and i never know if the one tile that has a fraction of the side mirror counts as being a bus or not. sometimes i guess correctly, and sometimes i find myself in another endless loop of identifying objects. i suspect it's a nanny service on my work machine because if i fire up a windows sandbox instance and archive the site there, i can sometimes get some luck.
it's a stiff price to pay for getting around the data science medium articles that require a sign up, and then an app, and then a subscription.
In his defense, the best way to solve a captcha is by pretending you are partially blind. If you actually select all the relevant squares, Google just says “nope lol go again!”.
My theory is that, if the real goal of the captcha is for AI training then you would want to get rid of the people that were close but not quite right (let them proceed) . If the user was 100% correct on the first test, you'd probably want to give them more tests.
I'm not really a game person. The point is that getting things the right way should be a better experience then going to piratebay.
Nonsense like captchas only hurt legitimate users, and when those captchas are asking you time and time again it's simply not worthwhile. Had I wanted to actually spend good money on a game they would have lost a sale, and for what -- to stop a robot asking for a password reset email to an existing account?
Steam is a perfectly fine experience and captchas are the universal standard these days. They lost someone who's 'not really a game person' and wasn't willing to fill in a captcha for a free game, I don't think they're too worried about lost revenue. I highly doubt tracking down and downloading a legit version of the updated Half-Life from a torrent site is an easier option, but you do you.
Steam is a ... somwehat tolerable experience. The client is extremely bloated for its primary function (installing and launching games) and this is only getting worse.
Steam is also dropping support for older operating systems - ones that you originally used to buy your games. That is also NOT perfectly fine.
Seek. Medical. Attention.
God I still love this game. The welcome speech of the Mark IV. How the scientist talk to each other, and how different the talk is when they speak with guards. How they first hope for a government rescue which decides to kill any and all in black mesa. How fearsome those black assassins are. That you can tickle that insect-bomb thing. In my opinion, HL2 felt much more scripted and less lively. No mention of a recompile for Intel 64bit Macs though.
Hmm it won‘t start on a High Sierra iMac after the update. It did before, happened to play it just 3 hours ago :) Guess they didn’t do a lot of testing on 10+ year old hardware, CRT or not.
Yes, Portal 2 and Half-Life 2 are both more playable because they don't use x87 to the same extent. It's only HL that uses it heavily enough that it becomes unplayable.
Side note, I think HL2 does for physics, or something; fast moving objects and explosions cause drastic frame drops via Rosetta. I haven't been able to look into it in detail to confirm the cause.
Edit: The best "official" way to play Half-Life on an Apple Silicon machine is through Parallels, which uses WoW64's x87 translation instead of Rosetta. I've also heard you can compile Half-Life yourself using the leaked Source Engine code, but I haven't tried it myself.
x87 is different from modern floating-point, including the modern floating-point operations on x86 CPUs (SSE and later instructions) and ARM64.
x87 calculates with 80-bit floats ("long double" in C), but the host CPU's FPU typically supports only 64-bit floats ("double").
So accurate x87 emulation can't translate all operations directly to host FPU operations. It must use software floating-point on the host instead, which is much slower.
I got my first real introduction to first person shooters with Quake II. I used keyboard only, with page up/down keys for vertical look. When Half-Life came out my friend would only let me play if I looked with the mouse instead. I thought that was so dumb. Why not just use both sides of the keyboard? Why split controls across two devices? But I relented and picked up this wonky control scheme pretty quickly. Then I bought my own copy and wore it down to the nubs over the course of years. I loved mods. My favorite was Action Half-Life. I played Counterstrike a few times when Xena Warrior Princess posters were plastered around maps and scientists acted as hostages. I thought it was too derivative of other accurate combat mods.
When Half-Life 2 came out I bought the pricier version which came with HL1 and all the expansions, mods, etc on Steam. Those are my oldest purchases on the service, naturally.
Dota 2 is a complete re-implementation that Valve did independently. Dota is a Warcraft 3 mod. Icefrog was the main persona of someone who balanced the game. Valve was able to bring him over from Dota to work on Dota 2.
Quake 2 just had a remaster released a few months ago, and Quake 1 had one too a few years ago by the same team. The remasters were put into the existing Steam releases, work great on the Deck too, and were also released on consoles. It's really cool to see all these classic shooters get updated to work well on modern systems.
I love that they brought back the software renderer (and allowed you to disable texture filtering). There's something about that style I find charming.
I'm just waiting on my steam deck to charge so I can curl up on the couch with this for a few hours before bed.
EDIT: I tried it out on my laptop while waiting for the deck to charge, and I'm seeing some bugs in the software renderer with missing textures for semi-transparent objects like floor grilles, so I'm switching back to OpenGL for now. If anyone at Valve wants log-files or information on my setup in order to reproduce, I'm happy to provide it; my email is in my profile.
> I love that they brought back the software renderer (and allowed you to disable texture filtering). There's something about that style I find charming.
You are definitely not alone. There are quite a few released and upcoming indie retro FPS games on Steam now and some are quite popular. I think this is one reason they decided to add these settings.
Got recommended a game called ADACA on steam. Early access but very much a Half-Like.
Somehow missed it in the sea of games but after I found the first secret it took me right back.
Got a demo too.
I was never any good at aiming with the analogue stick in FPS games. On the deck I'll usually use the trackpads (configured as a trackball with haptic feedback) to aim approximately and then gyro for fine tuning, and I've found my aim is significantly improved. It's no keyboard+mouse, but it's close enough for me, that unlike with the analogue sticks, I don't find myself needing to reduce difficulty levels or enable any kind of aim-assist.
I sometimes find myself wishing I had a controller with the same layout as the deck that I could use when I have it docked to my TV.
> I sometimes find myself wishing I had a controller with the same layout as the deck that I could use when I have it docked to my TV.
You can pair basically most first-party controllers for the PS4, PS5, XSX/XSS, and Nintendo Switch (the exception being the original non-Bluetooth Xbox One controller) to the Deck, should you have one laying around.
I've seen people use a combination of both. The analog stick / trackpad for macro movements, and the gyro for fine tuning. I tried it once, and I think it could be fine if I practiced a tiny bit.
But I've also got a normal PC with keyboard and mouse, so I don't need to.
You can also use the touch pad for aiming. Or turn on gyro only when touch pad is being touched, which is useful for micro adjustments. Pretty customizable, although I mostly just use the sticks.
I played Prey and Tiny Tina's on the Deck, both of which worked pretty well
Sure does! Best use of it is on the Zelda games, IMO. Aiming the bow with the stick works fine when out of combat, but if you want to manually aim e.g. while riding a horse, doing the broad strokes with the stick and the fine tuning with the gyro works great.
This game holds such a special place for me, not only for just fun childhood memories, but also so much of what got me into the excitement of how cool it was to see the rapid progress of tech.
Certainly, it isn't atypical for software industry folks of my age to have games be a gateway into tech, but I think I was a bit different in that I rarely considered wanting to make games, rather I enjoyed the tinkering with my computer and the rapid pace at what games could do as much as the game (which continues today with my spending more money on playing with the hardware and toys rather than the actual games) and half-life just
I first played Half-Life on a family PC with no graphics accelerator and I loved it, but I remember the jank from ~15 FPS at a few hundred lines of resolution. This is what drove me to build my first computer and after debugging my way through all the issues that a 12 a year old would make when building a computer before the age of YouTube, I remember being absolutely blown away by the lighting and speed of what this little piece of hardware added to the experience.
That wasn't the first time I felt the rush of getting a computer to do something I wanted (that would probably be getting doom running in windows 3.1 after dealing figuring out the mystical "command line") but it certainly was one of the most drastic in just how fast tech changed.
A small addendum to this... I really want to figure out how to bring similiar experiences to my kids, because it was that loop of problem -> learning -> breakthrough that I think was hugely transformative to not only my career trajectory, but also just in learning to love learning.
So thanks Valve and Half-Life team for this happy memories... but maybe I won't feel the same when I try and play HL DM this weekend and inevitably realize how slow my reaction times have gotten in the last ~25 years ;)
One of my favorite documentaries was made by Noclip, which tells the story of Half-Life and Valve. It is soo good, a must watch. Interestingly, though, it features no one from Valve, as they, in typical Valve fashion, ignored their requests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQLEW1c-69c
So I'm very excited to watch this new documentary featuring people who worked on the game, made by the same people, such a surprise haha.
I immediately got a déjà vu feeling from the intro like I had seen this already in a Noclip documentary. Nice to finally get this 'episode 3' in the documentary series.
Aside from just generating tons of goodwill, does anyone have any insight into why Valve would do this? Obviously, I think it's great regardless of the motivation, but are there rumblings of Half Life 3 that I've missed or something?
Because Valve does whatever it feels like doing and honestly, I love them for it. I wish more companies would follow in their footsteps (e.g. not going public), but few have the luxury of being founded by someone who was already set for life financially at the time.
Valve isn't beholden to any external shareholders, and Steam is as close to a money-printing machine a private company can have. Combine that with the fact that Gabe and company seem to have pretty decent values in line with their customers' interests, and you get nice outcomes like this.
They make 30% on almost every PC video game sale in the west. Even if they sell 10 million copies of HL2 tomorrow, it's only going to move their bottom-line marginally.
And that's ignoring the fact that HL2 is 90% off right now ($1) and they're giving away HL1 for free.
No. Valve just does whatever Valve wants. The most valuable thing they're getting out of this is probably goodwill.
I don't think so. HL2 is an old game by now, way older than HL1 was when HL2 came out (6 years from HL1 to Hl2, 19 years from HL2 to now) and I just don't see it appealing to players unless they're going back to view older games.
I like Valve / Gabe / Steam, but let’s not be false and pretend that they weren’t coasting before the build-up to the Deck release. Steam had gone without significant updates for almost half a decade.
They also did the Steam Controller (while the hardware was a failure, the software developed for it lives on in the Deck) and the Steam Link (the hardware there was more successful, but porting the software to smart TVs and streaming boxes and EoL’ing the hardware was the right move going forward).
Big picture mode was completely stagnant, until like stated, they started working on the Deck. The new Big Picture we have is nothing but a Steam Deck UI backport. Hell, for a while it would use Steam Deck’s screen ratio no matter what, meaning you’d get black bars on 16:9 screens.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great they’re finally pushing things again, but they were stagnant for a very long while. Ramming the downvote button in a blind panic doesn’t make that less true :)
Besides second order stuff like that it might help some Steam Deck sales (mostly by demonstrating their commitment to the platform and attract other companies to develop for it, moreso than anybody rushing out to buy a Steam Deck specifically to play Half-Life), the fact that Valve does stuff like this that's not directly "make all the money right this second"-driven is in no small part why Valve has such goodwill with the PC gaming community.
In theory, it's not that hard to compete with Steam. Valve's cut of game sales is massive, and a competitor could easily slash into that to undercut them. Which is what Epic Games is trying to do. Yet, Valve maintains an extremely dominant market condition largely predicated on that goodwill.
And, of course, exactly because of that dominant market condition, they've got all the money they could possibly want to burn on random vanity projects.
Well it's not exactly trivial to build a software as extensive without just being a rip-off and having the share of games at launch. Gamers are extremely picky and it costs tons to build out a scalable system. This is where Epic failed. Sure they gave me a ton of free games, but their UX was horrible that I just never went to it and stayed within Steam.
Epic launcher actually randomly crashes my display window manager from time to time, I just can't have it running in the background as I do with Steam.
It's just a little dose of nostalgia. I think Half Life was one of the highest rated games of all time before Baldur's Gate 3 (both are 97% at PCGamer, for example). That's a pretty rare accomplishment worth celebrating, especially for those of us who grew up with the series...
I do kinda wish they incorporated the fan Black Mesa remake and improvements, though.
Alyx was really good (though I'm a wuss and couldn't finish it) but not a continuation of the cliffhanger that we've been sitting on for 16 years since episode 2.
A decade ago, yes. Valve was riding high on the dual successes of Dota 2 and Portal 2, we were only 6 years out from HL2Ep2, and CS:GO was newly released.
Today, not so much. Aside from a prequel, the series had been dormant for as longer than it had been alive (11 years alive 1998-2007, 13 years dormant 2007-2020), and the prequel required a pricey hardware peripheral to run. It’d get attention, but it wouldn’t be that big of a deal at this point.
I’m waiting for an update that lets me play it without VR. I’m probably never going to have a VR rig that’ll play it. My wife has a couple for work (not capable of playing that game, though) and we’re both free to use them for whatever we like, but never bother. Certainly not gonna pay for a headset just for one game. I have enough barely-used electronic crap around as it is.
I tried it in VR for half an hour or so. It was really nice compared to most VR shovelware. High production values, fun interactivity, etc.
But remove the VR and you're left with an above-average short FPS that would've been entirely unremarkable if not for the Half-Life tie-in. If they released it for non VR, it would probably get trashed just for not being HL3.
Honestly I don't think you're missing much. It's a good VR game only because the bar for VR gaming in general is so much lower.
It's not a proper Half-Life game if you don't play as Gordon Freeman.
Alyx also misses many of the things that made the HL series great and replaces them with "modern" game design anti-features. Not looking forward to future HL games going even further in that direction.
The new voice actor doesn't even sound anything like alyx FFS and her lines are a perfect argument why the silent protagonist in the HL games was not a mistake.
Just like a lot of early 3D PC games weren't possible to play without a graphics accelerator card (GPU for you younglings) which not a lot of people had, these new VR games are not possible to play without VR hardware.
Doesn't mean early 3D PC games weren't PC games, and it doesn't mean that contemporary VR games aren't also PC games.
All games ended up needing a GPU and a soundcard - in fact they became so necessary that all CPUs and motherboards today come with a GPU and a soundcard respectively. While VR headsets were a gimmick of the moment.
(Yes I know some CPUs come with no GPU but that's because you will buy a discrete GPU which only furthers my point)
I guess that's it and some general marketing for their stuff. I doubt there are all that many people who would pay for HL1 remaining after 25 years unless it's a remake or something.
It still makes a few dollars. New players are born every day. The original Half Life has a lot of sentimental value for the company and they won't let it rot.
Just a few days ago I downloaded a Half-Life PS2 ROM because it looked like the only way to get decent analog stick support for the game.
After purchasing a Steam Deck earlier this year, Half-Life was one of the things I was really looking forward to. It was pretty disappointing once I realized the gamepad support wasn't quite there.
The update claims they've improved this and verified it for the Steam Deck. So excited to give this a go later this weekend.
I would really, really love to be able to play Half-Life again for the first time.
I feel the same way about the first Bioshock, and about the early years of World of Warcraft. Those two are from a bit later obviously, but the three of them really raised the bar for me personally in what was possible in a game.
With HL, it was how immersive the world was, and how very strange and complex the story turned out to be.
With Bioshock, it was the story above all, and how for the first time I was taken in by an "unreliable narrator" in a video game. The reveal around "would you kindly" was really shocking to me, like a good book can be.
With WoW, it was everything, but entering Ironforge for the first time was just a stunning moment for me in particular.
> The entire UI has been reworked to scale at larger screen sizes. We built most of this stuff for 640x480 CRTs and apparently some of you have upgraded since then.
Black Mesa is definitely a beautiful experience – especially for "younger" folks like me who missed the HL1 boat by a few years.
Mind, though, that development appears to have ceased on Black Mesa; and while it's basically 99% complete, I encountered a few show-stopping crashes and performance blackouts requiring some intense googling to bypass. I'd still recommend it, though.
It’s pretty but it’s not an exact reproduction. It’s the remake of a classic movie that keeps some scenes, changes some, and adds new ones.
It is a mistake to just play it and think you have had the HL1 experience.
For me as someone that played (and modded) the original when it first came out, it’s Jackson’s Hobbit movies vs the book when your first of many reading was years before.
The Black Mesa Xen levels are one of the best things I've played recently, and sucha monumental improvement. I loved the whole sequence to bits and got stuck thinking about it for days after I finished it: it just feels so right now.
For anyone who wondered "WTF was supposed to be the story behind Xen?" this guys spent way to much time piecing it together and came up with a pretty solid proposal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpp0Jh5514g
No, it's a reimagining not a reproduction and takes liberties with encounter and enemy design throughout the game. I don't mean to disaparage Black Mesa but if you want to play HL, play HL instead of pretending that some other similar game is the same.
worth every minute of playing. However for me gameplay of the original is still worth a try. I think it forces you to plan, explore and look for alternatives more. Black Mesa has more "modern" gameplay.
As someone who first played a CD copy of Half-Life before picking up the Steam version, it's amazing to see that they brought back features which were neglected from the Steam release – most notably the viewroll when moving left & right and a semi-recreation of the old main menu.
Many of the QOL changes are greatly appreciated (especially grenade physics), the changes to technical limitations (and addition of func_vehicle) will be a godsend for modders, and I'm surprisingly over the moon that Valve have acknowledged the psyched out Barney from the alpha.
If you still have the serial from that CD copy, you can plug it into Steam and redeem a copy (and also the expansions, depending on which version you bought).
Welcome to the H.E.V. Mark IV protective system, for use in hazardous environment conditions.
High-impact reactive armour activated.
Atmospheric contaminant sensors activated.
Vital sign monitoring activated.
Automatic medical systems engaged.
Defensive weapon selection system activated.
Munition level monitoring activated.
Communications interface online.
Have a very safe day.
Love this. I do wonder how the bug fixes will affect speedrun attempts, and if people will start using this for speedrunning or if they'll stay on the prior version.
The Steam version is basically dead; WON is what most runners play. (Though it would be interesting if this revitalized the Steam categories.)
For those curious, you can download WON from https://www.speedrun.com/hl1/resources ("GoldSrc Package" and "Half-Life 2005 Package" are the builds allowed in the WON categories). You will need Half-Life on Steam to run them (which is currently free until Nov 20 - get it while you can).
This is cool , Im just really confused, I somehow coincidentally was JUST playing Black Mesa this evening, ( Hl1 redone in Half-life Source Engine apparently by a fan base with permission) and I am ofcourse a bit surprised to hear this news ( as I rarely play games ) , but also because I don't understand how it relates to Black Mesa.
Black Mesa clearly seems to look better basically as its in the new engine ( but I note a couple of very small things are missing such as how you customise your player model in HL MP) - and it took a long time to make, so I am a bit confused why they have gone back to improve the original code but not port or not just improve Black Mesa. Sorry if I am out of the loop, I'm honestly just in the dark how the 2 product relate, reasoning wise.
Unless you are looking for the full-on nostalgia trip, I think Black Mesa is how people should play the game today. Many quality of life improvements and stream-lining decisions. Except for Xen. Worst part of the game, and they made it longer.
I don't agree at all, Xen was my favorite part of Black Mesa and my least favorite part of the original Half-Life. I was blown away by how good they managed to make it look (with a 2004-era engine, albeit with updates), it's absolutely gorgeous. The gameplay and puzzles were far more fun for me too, and I greatly appreciate that they made this part of the game longer.
One of my favourite memories of early teens was playing HL1 Deathmatch with my brother. We didn't have a situation that enabled actual Internet play, and we were not "in the know" about metastrategy or anything. Learning to endlessly use the longjump module with the OP4 covert ops character that did flips when jumping, to fly across boot_camp in seconds, was just exhilarating and eventually led to my brother never playing against me again. I'd just fly around the map picking up health/energy/grenades and then just blast him with the grenade launcher and disappear again.
I don't know where to get the updated code to make mods with though. A lot of the changes they mentioned were specifically for modders, so I don't know why I can't find the source code anywhere.
Can anyone tell me what's the best version to play: black mesa or the original (this anniversary update)? I installed both last night, original plays 4k out of the box.
I ended up comparing the intros, in the rail cart bit last night. They are quite different surprisingly. (Hrm, I'm developing weird habits as a sleep deprived parent).
I'm on a good pc, 3070, Ryzen 3600.
I never really played this back in the day. Though I did buy half life 2 around release and nearly completed it but this was before steam did cloud saves so I don't have my save file anymore.
I see I can buy the full collection for a bout 4 pounds. Opposing force looks interesting.
I really shouldn't be buying games I don't have time to play!
Black Mesa is a modernised version, so it plays different, more like a modern shooter. The original has aged well compared to many other games from its era.
I don't mind old blocky graphics at all, especially if it's running at 120fps at 4k :)
It's part of that uncanny valley thing I guess, the more graphics have improved, I find humans in the games look more ridiculous. Though something like dishonoured gets this right, the characters look more like paintings rather than an attempt to look totally real.
I have to say, I had HL - bought it, and a few other games - moved to Steam, moved the games there, then in the end, few years later, bailed on Steam. Customer service was appalling. I lost everything.
I love HL, and if I could get hold of it without Steam, I'd have it, but I don't know of a way to do that, and I've lost the copy I originally bought because leaving Steam meant loosing everything.
> I love HL, and if I could get hold of it without Steam, I'd have it, but I don't know of a way to do that, and I've lost the copy I originally bought because leaving Steam meant loosing everything.
(Used) physical copies are still reasonably available. For Half-Life 1 those should all be pre-Steam AFAIK. The high seas are also always an option - don't let others' morals stop you from preserving your childhood memories.
Also while I don't mean to be uncritical of Steam and Valve, loosing access to your games sounds highly unusual. Did they actually take your stuff or are you simply choosing not to use Steam? If its the latter and you still have a working login, then you could download your Games using Steam, steamcmd [0] or reverse engineered downloaders [1] and play them forever using the Goldberg Emulator [2] instead of Steam.
I love the fact that on the games requirements on the Steam page it still says it runs on Windows XP when in fact all support has been cut for long now, leaving out many of us who got into Steam on the first place because we either wanted a legal digital copy of our physical collection or because many physical game keys WOULD also activate a digital license. I still keep Windows 8 because it's still supported on Steam but that too will change in january 1st next year. The irony is even sweeter, given that this update should very well work on period correct machines (which again, many of us still keep running) but alas, you'll still locked out.
We'd gladly trade all the distractions the client forces down our throat (stickers, trading cards, avatars and all of that stuff) for the ability to single play the games we legitimately bought. But that's not an option we have, unlike say GOG, who also doesn't support old OS but at least gives us the possibility to download the games. I'd even concede some form of DRM that doesn't involve the Steam client but naaa, "the h4x0rs will get into your XP box that you keep solely for retro gaming and shut off the world. you must upgrade, re-buy, expend!"
Steam uses Chrome for its web integration. They *can't* support OS's that Chrome doesn't anymore
If you already own the game though arguably it's not unreasonable to download a "NOSTEAM" torrent (if any still exist) of the relevant game you'd want to play on your XP rig
They CAN choose NOT to use Chrome. They used Windows' browser before and no browser component before that. Steam doesn't NEED an embedded browser, having one just makes things more convenient for Valve because they can reuse their website in the client.
They CAN maintain support for older versions in their fork of Chrome. Browsers are expansive but not rocket science. Valve has the funds to maintain one.
They CAN make a specced down version of Steam (or GUI for steamcmd) for older operating systems. They don't have to keep selling Games on older operating systems (or could require an external browser for that) but taking away the ability to run already sold ones is unacceptable.
Problems caused by middleware are still the responsibility of the developer using that middleware. The end user does not and should not have to care how you cobble together your software.
They have simply decided that doing the right thing would be more costly than whatever cost they will incur from dropping support. That only works out for them because people accept this shit rather than demanding Valve keep their promise that you can continue to play the games you bought from them without trying to add additional conditions.
Artifact (2018) released to terrible reception, and DOTA: Underlords (2019) eventually just died off. Half Life: Alyx (2020) is one of the highest-rated single player VR games. Counter Strike 2 released 2 months ago, and has very active development.
Valve also allegedly has a game named Neon Prime in development and apparently slated for announcement soon(tm) [1]
They have a bunch of cancelled/unreleased games [0] because their standards are so high.
I don't think they want to be known as the company who made the best PC gaming platform in the world, but who also released some really crappy games on there.
Games are in their DNA, so I expect we'll see something absolutely amazing from them in the future.
> They have a bunch of cancelled/unreleased games [0] because their standards are so high.
Their standards for recurring revenue maybe. Most of their recent games(discounting smaller demos that are really just platform/hardware ads) are casino simulators.
(Less profitable) single player games don't get enough attention to be finished. Alyx is the exception that proves the rule - and even that might never have happened if they didn't need a game to showcase VR.
> Games are in their DNA
This is such a nonsensical statement. People can change. So can companies made up of people.
Besides the low brow "wen half-lyf-3?" comment, is valve planning on releasing any other games like hf? Anyone in the industry have anything to spill regarding this?
def no insider info on my side but from what I've heard/read they pretty regularly have a team spun up to explore a half life 3 but at this point they're afraid of a duke nukem forever (not that they'd make a shitty game like that) and that even if it's a great game it'd be seen as underwhelming because the community has hyped itself up so much on it over the nearly 20 years.
(no spoiler) From a storytelling perspective, Half Life 2 Episode 2 (the last mainline Half-Life game which Half-Life 3 was expected to be the sequel for) sets up Half-Life 3 as a proper ending to the game's story and confirmed by Mark Laidlaw's release of Epistle 3. I can see why they wouldn't want to rush quickly to the exit but at the same time, HL2E2 left them without much wiggle room. This issue alone is addressed in Half-Life Alyx.
From Valve's perspective, the Half-Life property is pretty valuable and its served them well as a means of demonstrating the newest source engine updates with a ton of hype bootstrapped because it is Half-Life.
Despite it's popularity, Half-Life is a delicate property in the sense that the story hinges on a lot of unknowns that are not revealed straight forwardly, similarly to LOST, the lack of detail stokes that mystery to the audience's delight, because they know there will be a big payoff that explains these mysteries at the end of the tunnel. That's a lot of pressure for the writers room @ Valve, especially so considering the development process of the game engine/assets itself.
It works for Valve. It sucks for fans, but the alternative is ending the property early or extending the property far beyond its intended shelf life. As long as I live to see the end of the narrative, I'll be happy. If not, then valve pls fix.
> Despite it's popularity, Half-Life is a delicate property in the sense that the story hinges on a lot of unknowns that are not revealed straight forwardly, similarly to LOST, the lack of detail stokes that mystery to the audience's delight, because they know there will be a big payoff that explains these mysteries at the end of the tunnel. That's a lot of pressure for the writers room @ Valve, especially so considering the development process of the game engine/assets itself.
They have noone else but themselves to blame for writing themselves into a corner. LOST is another example why you should absolutely not write a Mistery without knowing how it plays out before releasing the first part. Most importantly, it does not excuse their shitty cummunication about the development status of Episode 3 - to this day they have not formally acknowledged its cancellation. And all the vague hints at a sequel throughout the years which amounted to nothing are just abusive. Any hack can use the unknown with a promise of a future reveal to lure an audience but if you don't even have what you promise to reveal yourself then you are not better than a snakeoil salesman. Selling a promise you don't know you can keep is a scam, simple as.
Although with valve specifically I don't even believe that they couldn't manage to tie the story up but rather that they can afford not to - because they have found a more profitable business in selling other people's games as well as a few gambling simulators of their own rather than making single player games themselves. That alone would be sad but at least understandable - what's less OK is gaslighting their fans instead of coming clean about their plans.
> As long as I live to see the end of the narrative, I'll be happy. If not, then valve pls fix.
Good for you but many fans have died waiting for a sequel. Many more have moved on.
No insider info again but, IMHO, Half Life: Alyx was a genre-defining success that has not yet been matched but even that did not hit the bar expected of a Half Life 3. It’s an impossible expectation and they don’t have a financial need to try.
I think part of the issue is Half-life 1 & 2 were groundbreaking in terms of level design and storytelling in a FPS. It wasn't just about completing a maze, that was why Half-Life was so beloved there was nothing like it really before. Half-life 3 would just be like every other FPS game now, the trail has been blazed.
> Half-life 3 would just be like every other FPS game now
Artistically, aesthetically, nothing quite compares to the Half Life universe in other FPS games. A lot of people would be happy with just another chapter to explore.
There are too many open world boring grinding simulations nowadays.
Black Mesa was just a remake of Half Life 1 and it was so much more fun and immersive than any recent FPS game that I have played.
I think a lot of the special sauce with the Half Life games is their "Show don't tell" approach to game design.
You load up the game, watch an intro (for games after HL1) and boom you're in the game. Nothing is going to appear on your screen beyond your HUD except for one time tips when acquiring a new weapon and chapter titles when progressing to a new level. Everything happens in real time and everything always happens from the POV of the player. There are no cut scenes, there are no cinematic transitions, and the player's POV is never intercut with cameras/external perspectives.
It makes the games feel grounded and more cinematic, IMO. Its a game design language that really puts the onus on the player to witness the story and game for themselves. When I play a Half-Life or Portal game, I feel like I'm discovering the story as I play, while other games often feel like I'm being presented or shown a story as I play. The execution is more nuanced than that, but the game's simplicity makes it difficult to focus on anything other than the story and world within the game.
When you look at the stories of each Half-Life game, each game tends to follow the same structure with the same kind of plot points. But for me, it never feels repetitive because the experience of witnessing the story is different for each game. Of course Half-Life isn't the only game that does this and this of course isn't the only reason why Half-Life has been enshrined as one of the GOATs.
The underlying content of the game, its aesthetic, the textures and models, sound design and score, voice acting, ect. all are great in Half-Life, but I wouldn't say that Half-Life is the best at any of these things. I also wouldn't say the game's narrative is the best of the best either. Despite this it remains my all time favorite game franchise, possibly/probably because I grew up with it but also because the game does a fantastic job of using that underlying content to give little clues. Everything feels like it has a purpose, whether it is apparent in the moment or not.
But I am just a storyteller that happens to be a barely competent programmer with absolutely no experience in game development, so all of this is just my opinion based on my own experience!
Absolutely agreed overall, Half-Life's dedication to maintinging the player perspective is something many modern games could learn from. So many games are too focused on providing a cinematic experience of their story that they end up taking freedom away from the player with cutscenes where the character acts exactly like the designers want rather than how the player would. In a sense, cutscenes are a crutch that is too often used to force (or skip over) story developments that make no sense.
> You load up the game, watch an intro (for games after HL1)
HL1's train is also an intro that you more or less watch even if you can move around a bit and choose what to look at. Same for Opposing Force's helicopter flight but you are even more restricted: no more movement, only limited camera rotation. Kinda sad that they stripped away even that in the later games but I guess HL1 had the benefit of not having to show what happened previously.
> It makes the games feel grounded and more cinematic, IMO.
I don't think cinematic is the right word here - rather the opposite: HL feels much less like watching a movie.
You're right that if Valve made Half-Life 3 today it would be just like any other FPS - and Alyx does back up those concerns. But that doesn't mean that it has to be like that. Even just making Episode 3 with little technical and design changes from the other HL2 entries would be a breath of fresh air today. And that's just the bare minimum possible - there are many things about games that are still incredibly primitive.
They just happened to have the foresight to develop the most lucrative business model in gaming (owning the distribution platform) and Half Life 3 was the opportunity cost. They could have made a ton of money with that cliff hanger if they remained like every other game developer on the planet, instead of a metric buttload of money.
Opportunity cost? Steam was created shortly after half-life 1 and existed prior to half life 2's release. It was already a huge cash cow when they released games like CS go and TF2.
But further, the skills to write a game are different from the skills to manage a game distribution system. It's not like by having the HL2 devs valve was squeezed for cash or resources to expand steam.
I think it's pretty reasonable to assume if Valve never made Steam, they'd have made Half-life 3 do you disagree? Businesses tend to focus on what moves the bottom line most dramatically.
