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Post by bikewer on Nov 26, 2012 16:29:27 GMT
Fans of the Half-Life series may not be aware that the long-awaited project to do a total re-make of the original Half-Life using the Source engine is complete and available for download. Free, too. Although you do need to have some specimen or other of the series on your machine. It's quite an effort; looks gorgeous and it's considerably harder than the original! release.blackmesasource.com/
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Post by wvengineer on Dec 9, 2012 17:28:26 GMT
Now there goes my whole weekend, and probably most of the rest of the year...
I have been a big fan of Half Life for years. I have watched this off and on for ages, but always assumed it would go the way of other stuff like Team Gizka. (SW:KotOR 2 revamp)
I am surprised that this actually was finished. Currently downloading...
Thanks a lot the heads up!!
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Post by c64 on Dec 10, 2012 18:15:51 GMT
Sadly, I have no computer powerful enough to use it. The most powerful graphic card I own sits in an AMD 2000+ and the fastest processor I own is equipped with an office graphics card. "Portal" is the very best they can handle.
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Post by wvengineer on Dec 28, 2012 19:20:03 GMT
Just finished it. It's pretty good. They did away with a lot of the jumping puzzles in the original that really made the game annoying. Also cleaned up the story some, but there really isn't that much story there to start with, so there is only so much you can do there.
Graphics are good, even by modern standards, WOrlds better than the original and even the disappointing Half Life: Source.
This game is pretty hardware intensive. One of the things that set the original apart is that they game was designed to have barely noticeable loading screens. The idea was that loading different maps would not take away from the overall game play. In this game, load points are obvious and time consuming. On my computer it started at about 20 seconds to load a map, but it got worse as the game progressed. It was 2-3 minutes by the end. This is on top of the 4 minutes it take to load the game.
My biggest grip is that it is still not complete. The game ends when you go through the Lambda complex portal. They are still working on the Xen levels. Supposedly those will be done sometime in the future. It just leave you in the middle of things.
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Post by c64 on Dec 28, 2012 22:29:02 GMT
That's the problem of the HL engine in general. You run a predetermined path and the maps are fully independent and have to be replaced completely by the next one. You can't explore the maps freely, just fight your way from map to map. The Graphics and the physics is good, but unlike GTA or other modern engines (e.g. Just cause 2), you can only do things in a pre determined order and run your way-points like a simple Bot! That's why there are no cool modern games for the Source engine, it's simply impossible! Well, the XEN maps can wait. A lot of people I talked to stopped playing in XEN since they disliked all this "Super Mario in 3D" kind of playing. Personally, I won't miss the XEN maps either if they are like the originals. Maybe they come up with XEN maps you can actually enjoy! Sadly, I can't play the game myself since I don't own any computer which has a fast enough CPU and a strong 3D graphics card.
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