Info received from Valve ONLY - NO questions/discussion

[Apos]

As the thread title says, please only official info in this thread: emails from Gabe or other confirmed Valve sources about the game and engine. And please check to make sure there are no duplicates. The point of this thread is to have easy readable access to confirmed answers on HL2 questions about the engine and game mechanics NOT the game's story, NOT what Gabe had for breakfast this morning (even if Gabe emailed you about it), and NO spoilers.

Remember: if you want to discuss them, use OTHER threads that raise a specific topic, or start your own thread. Don't clutter up this one.

Also, PLEASE try to put only the Valve answers in bold if you know how. And if you're copying someone else's posted email, remember to credit them so they don't get mad.

Message from Munro, halflife2.net admin:

No one here is guaranteed to get answers from Gabe. If he isn't answering you, he isn't necessarily going to answer because several people spam him the question for you.

Again: this isn't a thread for begging people to ask questions: it's a thread people can go through and read the ANSWERS to.

Again: DON'T post questions that you've sent to Gabe that he hasn't answered yet. That's NOT the point of this thread.

Any off topic posts will be deleted and the user banned if repeated.

If you want to ask Valve a question, please find the relevant person (ie. General game specifics/detailed engine question/Steam question etc.) at this site:

http://valvesoftware.com/people.html

You'd probably get most luck in e-mailing one of these three people though:

gaben@valvesoftware.com (Managing Director of Valve, has answered hundreds of questions already)

ricke@valvesoftware.com (Senior Engineering Lead - Has a great knowledge in game specifics and engine elements)

lombardi@valvesoftware.com (Director of Marketing - Has great general knowledge of the game)

[Apos]

From EVIL

Hy Gabe, (I can call you gabe right?)

Some rumors are going on about the video card on the dell machine (the one
that ran the e3 tech demo) featured the Ati radeon 9800 pro 256mb version
Is this true, and does the 256 mb version has an advantage in Half-Life²
over the 128 mb version?

---

And does Half-Life² uses a SOF2 kind of damage system?

thnx for your time Gabe

Bye

==================================================
=====

The way Source is designed, hardware manufacturers can update materials to take advantage of new hardware as it comes out by shipping updates (probably via Steam). So if they come out with a 512 MB card or double the number of instructions possible in a pixel or vertex shader, then customers who have
that card can be updated to take advantage of that.

Specifically to answer your question, I think the cards were actually 128 MB cards but we do take advantage of 256MB cards. If I'm remembering right, we froze the hardware for the demo before ATI had sent us the 256 MB cards.

No, HL-2 doesn't have a SOF-2 style damage system.

Gabe

[Apos]

quote:
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The physical interactions look perfect, but some sequences felt a little strange. Frame-by-frame analysis of the e3 videos showed exactly what: objects were reacting to impacts prior to the actual, visual impacts. For instance: there's a splash before a box hits the water, boards break before the crowbar reaches them, soldiers start flying away from a girder before it actually contacts them.
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The physics behaviors you point out are an interpolation artifact during demo playback, not of the physics system. They aren't there when you play. It didn't really occur to us that people would be doing a frame-by-frame analysis of shaky cam video of demo playback. Demo playback is NOT even vaguely pixel or frame accurate to actual gameplay - if you want that you need to make a movie instead and be really careful about how you manage time in your production pipeline (and you will have to ignore pixel and motion artifacts introduced by your compressor). The current demo playback behavior is good enough for our uses.


quote:
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-sparks appear to show right through other objects (barrels in tech demo sequence, and when manatee thing is shooting at you through cars) They also seem to happen too easily: slow moving barrels bumping into each other don't generate sparks.

-Dying creatures go limp too fast, like puppets whose strings have been cut. For creatures like headcrabs, you can't even tell if they've actually died, because they just stop moving: there's no twitching, clutching, or flipping over like there was in HL to let the player know that the creature is dying.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Both the remaining issues are on our list.

Thanks for the mail.

[LoneDeranger]

Could you please tell me what the big flying manatee-like thing in the E3 video called?

It's the Alien Gunship.

I have another question. In the E3 technology demo, Gordon uses a different kind of manipulator (one that moves objects around with a blue beam as opposed to throwing them). Will this weapon be in the final game? Is it like a secondary attack for the regular manipulator?

It's a different weapon.

Also, in the video Gordon drops his shotgun in order to pick up the RPG. Does this mean we would only be able to carry a certain amount of weapons at the same time?

We're tinkering with inventory and weapon management.

----------------

Many questions remain unanswered though. Gabe must be busy. Or my questions were stupid

[Apos]

From MOD

Here goes the small man's pickering:
The E3 demos are amazing.
Just one thing that bothered me, the birds. There is a gun battle going on, birds don't want to be there.
If the birds can fly around, and fly the hell away when gunshots sound, that would be amazing (and not too easy to code). {meant hard, `doh}

GJ on HL2, it truly is looking amazing.

PS:
Voice (Home): 206-***-***

is this correct? if i were you i'd take it off @%&@$& databse O_o


Answer:

We had the birds hanging around in the demo cause we theought they were cool. In the game they are more skittery.

Yeah, that's my home number. I don't mind talking with people so long as they realize that calling me at 4:00 am is not a good idea.

[Apos]

From Lemures

"Hello. Honestly, im just really bored right now, and
with 94 days left until HL2... im just way to
pumped up to just sit here lol. I had a few questions
for you, you dont have to answer any of them i guess,
but it would be cool

1. How many emails per day do you think you get from people like me?

a lot

2. The source engine is scalable.. is that dynamic,
like if its starting to run sluggish it lowers the
polys, or is it set when you start the game or
something.

yes it is dynamic

3. When is the SDK coming out

it will be staged; some people have it already

4. Is it possible to convert any of the maps or models
from the HL1 engine to HL2?

we've made this as painless as we could

5. Are there any... um.. ambient(?) creatures other
than birds that we will see? i will probably never
stop laughing if i see a couple chipmunks running away
from a strider...

heh

6. The crowbar. is it just like.. damage straight
ahead, or does it sort of swing, like a bat, and it
depends at what angle you hit something?

it's physically simulated - it's a bar swinging through air

7. Inverse kinemetics or whatever. i just like sayign
that outloud. no this isnt really a question.

deformation mesh is also fun to say

8. can i have HL2 early

depends. what can I have in trade


thanks!
-- your devoted fan (how many times have you seen
that?)"

he sent me this response in about TEN MINUTES from when i sent him the email. then i replied with another question..

"lol... deformation mesh....

i didnt expect you to respond so quickly! wow!

one more quick question.. in the e3 demo, it says you
can essentially build the guys out of water by
applying the right shader or whatever. well, if you
make the guy out of water.. when you shoot him, does
he still bleed? or will it splash? it would be cool to
see them sort of melt or whatever when they die, but
thats not gonna happen. could that sort of 'splashing'
thing be easily programmed in? (probably, its jus the
sprite and sound right..)"

his response:
"Yes, they would splash, at least that would be the easy thing to do given the material. Splashes aren't sprites actually."

[Apos]

From jhero:

Q: I was just wondering if there would be a visual difference between a dx6 card and above type of cards when visual goodies are turned up full? Also I heard that Source would the lod lower automatically if the game was playing at a below playable frame rate...is that true? One more thing, in terms of sound, will the engine take full advantage of an audio card such as audigy2 and will there be music played during singleplayer campaigns and possibly multiplayer?

A: Yes, there will be a big visual difference between DX6 hardware and DX9 hardware. Yes the LOD changes dynamically. I'm not sure what it means to "take full advantage of an audio card such as audigy2" but we do have a very sophisticated sound engine. Yes there is music for singleplayer. We haven't said anything about multiplayer.

Q: ok, thnx for replying! well I myself have a radeon 9700, so lets say somewhere outside during half life 2 my fps goes like to 15....will the engine change the LOD so it will boost my fps? Could you give me an example of a big visual difference between DX6 hardware and DX9 hardware? One last thing, I heard some talk about releasing a direct feed of the e3 demo shown at this years e3(like a video of the demo). Would you mind spilling some light on this or is it just speculation?

A: Yes, we dynamically change LODs.

Pretty much everything looks better on DX9 across the board.

Yes, we will be releasing the videos over steam in the next few days.

[jhero]

i guess you put it up

Q: ok so I got steam, when I go on steam the day the video[s] come out, will it download automatically? thnx

A: Yep.

[Apos]

STEWART: In the e3 demonstration, you showed the manipulator weapon... now, I was wondering what the restrictions are for the weapon... i.e. Could I pull an enemies weapon from his hand, and is there a "weight" limit to the objects that can be picked up? How will you know which objects are manipulatable? (is that even a word?) I was just worried that it would be like all these other games where, for example, your character can climb walls... but wait... ONLY "special" walls that have the texture "w_rocks1" (just an example)... and then there are walls that have that texture but can't be climbed.

GABE: The manipulator "opens" when you can pick something up that you are pointing it at. There is a weight limit. Most everything can be picked up. I hate special cases, too.

STEWART: Sort of indirectly related to the above question... what restrictions are there to the physics... I noticed in the vehicle driving scene that there is a wooden bridge that the player must drive up... was/is it possible for the bridge to be destroyed? And... if so... what then? Are there alternate routes?

GABE: If you can destroy something it may be useful but it can't be critical to completing the game.

STEWART: Finally, will there be a co-operative mode? (I'm probably pushing my luck here, since you said you want to keep the multiplayer side of HL2 a big secret... but hey... you can't blame me for trying...)

GABE: We aren't doing a cooperative mode, but a couple of MOD teams want to do one so we'll work with one of them.

[Zerox]

From me:

Q: when can we expect new official info?

A: Pretty soon!

[Apos]

from sharp

Hello Gabe,

With the current HL 1 netcode / engine I can easely play HL DM or a mod like CS with no lag (ping 60 for example). I use now ISDN 64K (sometimes 128K) and CS for example is well playable with ISDN. But here is the question: People who can't get broadband in their region, are they able to play HL DM with ISDN without lag?

I heard STEAM is broadband only (they recommand atleast 512kb/s download rate)

Does that mean that people who don't have a broadband connection can't play multiplayer with HL2 anymore? I would be disapointed because even CS is playable with isdn...

Grtz,

There are two issues - content delivery and playability.

HL-2 has better netcode than HL-1 thanks to Yahn and Mike Dussault's new approach. It takes less bandwidth for the same game on HL-2 than HL-1.

For content delivery, it's a question of how soon do you want it? If you leave your Steam connection on all the time and we deliver a 10 MB update, it's going to be delivered in the middle of the night so you won't even know that it's happening. If you turn it off and you have to wait for the update when you turn it on, then it's entirely a function of your bandwidth as to how long it will take to be delivered. The reality is that Steam will do content delivery over an arbitrarily slow connection - it's more a question
of whether or not you leave that connection active all the time.

[Apos]

Links to interviews with Gabe are fine too (don't post fulll interviews for copyright reasons, but you can summarize the basic info):

http://www.gamingnext.com/articles/index.asp?id=17
(talks about physics, "soundscapes," eyes, facial expressions and human animation, AI more context aware, cites system min. requirements as "800 MHz P-III and a DX6 level hardware accelerator (TNT)"

http://hl2central.net/?page=articles...yarticle&id=11
(talks about hating bunnyhopping, TF2 design, creating your own "material," confirms usable alien weapons, denies mp3 playback capability, interpenetration "is a bad thing.")

[Apos]

From planethalflife:

Rumor: A Half-Life 2 SDK (Software Development Kit, what mod makers use to help make mods) will be released before the game is released.

Erik says: "Yes, we will be releasing an SDK for the Source engine for MOD developers before the game is shipped."

Considering the SDK for the original Half-Life wasn't ready until months after the game's release, this is great news!

Rumor: The Day of Defeat team is already working with Source.

Erik says: "The Day of Defeat team is currently working on the follow up release to Day of Defeat 1.0, which will be version 1.1. They are not yet working with the Source engine."

[Zerox]

http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=14716
(development time, favorite creatures, Half-Life movie, etc)

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/feature...710_2221941__1
(features that were cut out, facial animations, physics engine)

http://www.trepid.net/interviews/200...benewell.shtml

(texture size, maximum "acceptable" polygons, Half-Life 2 demo, thoughts about HL2)

[Apos]

from: Timm

The physics in the single player part (judging from the movies from E3) look absolutely fantastic, but how will physics work in multiplayer? Won't there be a problem with sending all the physics information packets to all the players? Are you perhaps scaling the physics engine down for multiplayer?

Gabe
"Well, the simple answer is that there are client-side and server-side physics behaviors. You use client-side when maintaining cross-client coherence isn't important. This cuts down network traffice while maintaining the appearance of physical simulation throughout the world.

Yahn, anything you'd elaborate on?"

Yahn (follow up on Gabe's question)
"No, that's basically correct."

Me (asking for clarification)
"So basically what you are saying is that the physics appear to the player just like they do in the single player game without scaling it down, but objects that aren't required to have a correct placement in the world (like soda cans, small rocks, and so on) will be handled client-side, but bigger things (like a crate that's thrown on a player with the gravity gun, or a mattress falling down to block a hole in the ground) will appear in the correct spot for all players?"

Yahn:
"Yes, it's definable per-object, so exactly what's client vs. server simulated is tunable."