Half-Life Fallout: No Episode 3 in 2010? - Half-Life Fallout

Water in L4D2 is splendid, especially the swamp water.
Trees have had a sexy overhaul too in l4d2.

What Source does best is models, but due to it's completely outdated hl1-worthy map editing, all architecture/buildings is boxy (no, not bawksy) and ugly.

Still, it's a pretty thing to look at when you're outdoors.

Seraph, on 25 January 2010 - 10:14 PM, said:

Have you even seen source recently ?

Seraph, on 25 January 2010 - 10:14 PM, said:

That you see the same ruined city texture is more an art decision. Textures could use some improvements, though L4D2 shows that, that is within the possibilities.

In the end you have to remember that Source was designed with low-end PC in mind. Valve makes sure the majority of steam users can play their games. And facial animations are still quite good.

Berrie, on 25 January 2010 - 06:42 PM, said:

I still haven't seen any better.

neva-, on 25 January 2010 - 06:14 PM, said:

Take the fight indoors and its quite hard to argue against my point. They have beefed up the outdoors very well, L4D2 hosts some rather stunning outdoor areas. I'm not a real fan of the player models though, they still look very 2004 to me. (facial animations aside that is, I agree that valve still leads the pack there).

The source engine to me still looks amazing for a 6 year old engine, but within 2-4 years it will
probably be the best strategy to develop a new engine as it would be a smart move by valve.

Maybe once EP3 is released they should start focusing on maybe Half-life 3 and a new engine, It seems logical to me as Half-life 2 was developed with a new engine.

Rykane, on 26 January 2010 - 11:01 AM, said:

VALVe has stated numerous times that SOURCE won't have iterations. It was developed from the ground up to be a continually modifiable engine. Besides I don't want to wait ten years for the next franchise.

jaystein, on 26 January 2010 - 06:08 PM, said:

We waited for source so why not wait for another engine? I would prefer valve to make a totally diffrent engine than implement graphical and technical updates to source.

I doubt that they're never going to make a new engine.
Sometimes it's better to take what you know and start again from scratch.

Berrie, on 26 January 2010 - 11:17 PM, said:

I don't know shit about programming game-engines, and I obviously don't know how the Source-engine is built internally. But I can't help thinking that they are going to run into problems if they try to use the same engine and just adding/replacing parts of it constatly. Isn't there a risk of lots of left-over code and such? And I would also assume that changing some core-stuff would be quite difficult, like making the level transitions seem-less/streaming. But again, I don't know shit really.
I guess it would be like racing an old Ferrari, that USED to be really fast, against the Koenigsegg CCR or Bugatti Veyron and think you'll win by simply changing the engine or transmission...

Since Ep3 is suppose to end the current story arch (whatever that really means), then it would be pretty cool if the next game would contain alien-worlds like HL1 did. Places where gravity is low, plants and animals are dangerous, liquids are toxic and an overall highly detailed alien-world (think Avatars Pandora, but HL-style). Perhaps following into the Advisors world or something like that.

Yeah that's a neat thought there Sleeping Mind. Might be cool to visit alien worlds once again. As for Source, I still think its fine. Then again, I'm not a graphics whore.

Sleeping Mind, on 27 January 2010 - 12:11 AM, said:

I'd ****ing love it if they made actual exotic out of this world alien stuff. Like what Breen mentions as you are brought into his office.
The moons filled with sentient fungi, and gas giants with meteorological intelligences. That sort of shit.

Berrie, on 27 January 2010 - 10:19 AM, said:

Hell yeah! Xen times ten basically. As much as I loved Xen, the worst thing with the Xen-maps in HL1 was that they were so incredibly small, basically they were just a couple of floating islands with a teleporter placed in some random place. It would be pretty cool if we'd get to see new alien worlds that had more context and content, perhaps seeing the same thing that the combines/advisors did to Earth but on another planet. Seeing how they capture and transform alien lifeforms and destroy their cultures. I've kind of thought that what G-man saw Gordon as a person who could create equilibrium in chaotic places. So it would only be a natural evolution of Gordons role that he would travel to other worlds and try to save them as well - or going to the advisors planet with a massive troup and making Half-Life COD-style

Not to mention that I'd really like it if they brought back Adrian Shephard and gave him some out-of-this-world experiences as well. Since Adrian isn't part of the HL2-story (that we know of) that would basically mean a new type of arsenal and story-lines that could be damn interesting. Letting you be a part of a squad of Combine Overwatch that are being sent into a alien-world to fight the resistance only to turn on them and perhaps even get to see Gordon (like you get to do in OpFor). Or at least bringing Shepard into the HL-universe again, perhaps teaming up with Gordon and the rest of them. HL does lack the "real soldier character" who is trained to kill and who handles himself exceptionally in the warzone. He'd also talk like the Boot Camp drill instructor did in OpFor.

It's only a matter of time before Valve hires me as their senior story-developer. For sure...

Berrie, on 24 January 2010 - 03:56 PM, said:

For other's reference this is what he means.

my primary problem with hl is its map tools, although great for outputting efficient maps, it fails to help people make nice maps in the shortest amount of time. I cant believe they simply dont have an efficient mechanism to make entryways, roads, buildings, interactions and leave it to smart coding to decide how to optimize all the cuts to make the engine run smoothly.

Countless of times I have stopped making a map simply because it became too tedious and cumbersome to add details to a scenary. also, model loading and brush lookup is painful, (atleast since I remember).