[HN Gopher] Half-Life
___________________________________________________________________
Half-Life
Author : dmazin
Score : 406 points
Date : 2025-02-23 08:18 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| victorstanciu wrote:
| Obligatory mention that if you want to enjoy Half-Life today (in
| spirit if not exactly the same game), Black Mesa is the best
| option for doing so:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/
| graynk wrote:
| Yes and no. The original is still very much playable, one does
| not replace the other, both are very good
| bl0rg wrote:
| As someone who has played both, why not just play Black Mesa?
| Tsiklon wrote:
| The game mechanics and how the story is told is worth
| experiencing by itself in it's original form before seeing
| the modern interpretation in Black Mesa
| worble wrote:
| Just a quick bullet point list of differences from the top
| of my head:
|
| - Half Life has much faster run and gun gameplay (stemming
| from it's quake roots no doubt), while in Black Mesa it's
| much slower paced
|
| - The AI in the game is completely different, Black Mesa's
| soldiers feel way more aggressive, again encouraging a
| slower pace of play compared to the original
|
| - Lots of levels have small changes - some are cool, others
| kinda feel like they're just different for the sake of
| being different
|
| - Xen itself is completely different; Unpopular opinion, I
| liked the original! It feels otherwordly and alien and
| oppressive, the new one is certainly pretty but lacks that
| atmosphere, imo
|
| Black Mesa is a great game, one thing I have nothing but
| praise for is it's presentation - it's really nice to look
| at and they did a bang up job with the graphics and
| animations. But which is better is a matter of opinion, and
| personally I much prefer how HL1 actually feels to play.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| A couple to add, with my own biases included because I
| love Black Mesa
|
| - Joel Nielsen's great sound track / sound design work in
| Black Mesa ... I believe he admitted in an interview that
| some of the "squelching" sounds are recorded by slapping
| _someone_ 's arse O_o
|
| - The reworked Gonarch fight is, hands down, one of the
| most entertaining and intense boss fights for me in
| recent memory. It's way better than the original for
| sure, which I remember just being frustrating (lack of
| ammo).
|
| > Xen itself is completely different; Unpopular opinion,
| I liked the original! It feels otherwordly and alien and
| oppressive, the new one is certainly pretty but lacks
| that atmosphere, imo
|
| I see both takes. Like, in the original game I actually
| liked Xen (except Gonarch). It felt otherwordly and
| empty, as if one of the reasons for earth being invaded
| was because there was nothing left. But BM Xen is
| literally another world. I prefer BM Xen, but I did enjoy
| the original at the time.
|
| For a deeper look into Black Mesa / Half-Life and some of
| the changes, Soup Emporium did a great video here, where
| he only stole _some_ of the points he raises
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d8KAq78gco
| nobankai wrote:
| > some of the "squelching" sounds are recorded by
| slapping someone's arse O_o
|
| Quite reminiscent of deadmau5' famous trick:
| https://youtu.be/4mx_P_gPyiE
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| Does it run on MacOS? (That page suggests not?)
| haunter wrote:
| ymmv but runs under CrossOver https://old.reddit.com/r/macgam
| ing/comments/1e4pomu/black_me...
| karlgkk wrote:
| While the original version did not get a port to Mac OS,
| later on the updated version did for Mac OS X
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Black Mesa is not the same game!
| ekianjo wrote:
| Black Mesa is a recreation but it's not identical to the
| original either. So... Yes if you want modern graphics, no if
| you want the real thing
| davikr wrote:
| Skip Xen if you're playing this.
| loehnsberg wrote:
| Why skip Xen? Xen in Black Mesa is really good. I found it to
| be much better than the original.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| It is so long, and I did not enjoy my time there. "Alright,
| here is the third or fourth energy door unlocking puzzle to
| slog through". It was so much slower paced you lose the
| thread from the human world of what you are even doing
| anymore.
| deergomoo wrote:
| Overall I think Xen was much better in Black Mesa than HL1,
| but why they felt the need to make it _so_ long is a mystery
| to me. Half to two-thirds of the play time could have been
| cut and it would have only improved things.
| on_the_train wrote:
| I really didn't like black Mesa at all. It's different for the
| sake of being different
| deergomoo wrote:
| There's still a lot of value in playing the original, but what
| the Black Mesa team achieved with what is effectively a fan
| project is incredible. And in a world where Take Two goes after
| people doing cool stuff with 20 year old GTA games, it's great
| that it got the official blessing from Valve.
| scrlk wrote:
| Why do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties?
| reubenmorais wrote:
| > And then there are an awful lot of jumping puzzles, shoehorned
| into a game engine that has way more slop in it than is ideal for
| such things.
|
| I was taken aback by this comment. The original Half Life engine
| has super tight and responsive movement, to the point where the
| average "tryhard" in a server would be executing all kinds of
| movement tricks that require frame-perfect inputs or very close
| to it. Watch some speedruns or HL:DS games and you can easily
| find examples of gameplay involving super precise movement. In CS
| there was a huge scene of movement based maps like surf_, bh_,
| and deathrun_.
|
| Makes me think of something in the reviewers setup while playing
| Half-Life was introducing extra input latency and creating this
| feel of sloppiness.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I also found it very weird back then.
| wingerlang wrote:
| My favorite pasttime in HL/CS back in the day was bhopping and
| kz_. To some degree I think it has too responsive movement. I
| recently went back to play HL and I fell down so many crates
| due to the instant movement, having been used to some inertia
| in games since.
| reubenmorais wrote:
| I remember never quite getting into Counter-Strike: Source
| because of the difference in inertia. I had friends who were
| masters of movement there so I know it wasn't a sloppy game,
| but my muscle memory from 1.6 just made it feel... uncanny :)
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Super tight and responsive movement wouldn't necessarily mean
| jumping puzzles make sense in a 90s single player FPS. Would
| also say what a tryhard is attempting on a server playing every
| day is going to be a fair bit off from the bulk of people who
| played through the main game.
|
| My memory is that it wasn't the controls but the sizes of the
| spaces you had to jump to and the clarity of where they were so
| you could adequately position yourself that were the issue. The
| latter of which is probably more down to texture usage than the
| engine itself.
| reubenmorais wrote:
| > Would also say what a tryhard is attempting on a server
| playing every day is going to be a fair bit off from the bulk
| of people who played through the main game.
|
| Fair, my point is more that in order for it to be possible
| for mere 12 year old mortals to learn to casually execute
| these tricks, the game has to have predictable, responsive
| and reproducible movement. In other words, the opposite of
| slop.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Slop is an unfair word to use, agreed.
|
| I suppose it's possible that they're viewing those factors
| as being inherent in the original Quake engine rather than
| something Valve should be credited for and relying on them
| in their fork so heavily when it didn't suit the overall
| game was a bad mishmash.
|
| It's more likely they're just conflating how ugly a lot of
| those later levels are with the engine.
| amlib wrote:
| Turok on the n64 had way more instances of jumping puzzles
| while controlling like a boat and having a nauseating FOV by
| even today's console standards. Yet the game was praised and
| well liked back in the day. Half-Life on a 90s PC in
| comparison is a much better playing game.
|
| All that said, I still enjoy both. Maybe I've got enough
| muscle memory to plow trough the BS and enjoy the level
| design and challenge, specially regarding Turok on original
| hardware lol. Meanwhile people who didn't grow up with those
| games are off put whenever a hard jumping puzzle appears or
| the lack of direction gets them stuck.
| da_chicken wrote:
| I assumed it was a general complaint about Xen.
|
| I liked Xen when I played it. I thought the boss fights were
| terrible, but I think most FPS boss fights are terrible. The
| other complaint is that the healing pools were too slow. The
| navigation and obscure puzzles were great, though. They
| scratched an exploration itch I didn't know I had.
| CannonSlugs wrote:
| Well it was responsive but it wasn't physically accurate at
| all, which makes it non-intuitive. The whole reason side-games
| like KZ and surf could exist was due to the bad physics. I
| competed in local IRC KZ tourneys and also surfed a lot in 1.6.
| The fact that you gained speed by moving left and right
| repeatedly doesn't make any intuitive sense. The surf scene was
| also heavily infected with frame-rate tricks (hotkeys to
| increase fps-limit in the air, and then lowering it on the
| ramps) since you floated more in the air the higher your FPS
| was. In the beginning you needed to have a PC that could
| support 250+ FPS to be a high-end surfer. This was fixed later
| with server-set fps limits etc. though.
|
| It created an entire universe of movement based mini-games that
| I treasured more than the base-game, but it was mostly based on
| unintuitive physics and engine bugs.
|
| I do agree that the modern game's "inertia" and slow heavy
| movement feels bad though. Last modern game that I remember had
| really fast and rapid movement was The Talos Principle.
| mrkeen wrote:
| > Makes me think of something in the reviewers setup while
| playing Half-Life was introducing extra input latency and
| creating this feel of sloppiness.
|
| I distinctly remember a noticeable delay between moving the
| mouse and the view turning, even when the frame rate was high.
| I think the fix was switching from DirectX to OpenGL.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Dupes:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42478326
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42472847
| gxd wrote:
| One of the saddest things in my gamer resume is that I was never
| able to get into Half-Life. I can absolutely see what everybody
| likes in the game - both technically and in terms of gameplay.
| But I was never into its uneven pace when compared to Doom, not
| even back in the day. I always felt that the game couldn't decide
| whether it was a shooter or a puzzle-adventure, what the article
| refers to as "friction".
|
| The Orange Box console versions also suffered from a non-
| adjustable field of view that made me feel sick after a few
| minutes of playing.
| mrkeen wrote:
| I played through the single player, but like you I think I
| preferred doom.
|
| That said, half-life mods were imo the golden age of gaming.
| Vampire slayer let you scare the shit out of your friends at
| 3am in a LAN. Day of defeat and firearms were the cod and mw of
| the day. Natural Selection crushed it in terms of fps/RTS
| hybrid, teamplay and overall quality and polish. Science &
| industry? Pirates Vikings & knights? Tfc? Several attempts at
| matrix mods & the opera. So much amazing diversity - it's such
| a shame that CS (the most banal, vanilla, milquetoast game
| ever) got all the mindshare. Even when CS ventured into making
| things more interesting/diverse (hostage rescue, shield, etc.)
| those things seem to have died off back to the 'standard' game
| mode (80% of players dead and spectating while "the bomb has
| been planted" sound effect plays).
| hypercube33 wrote:
| I deeply miss Science and Industry. Half life is still being
| modded these days just isn't as popular. Jollywangcore
| features some of the single player mods
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| Jolly's Hardcore Mod is still one of my favourite youtube
| videos -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL8rxqodeRI
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Let's not forget Action Half Life.
|
| The variety sometimes meant you only played your favorite mod
| a few times at the LAN parties. Because people had so many
| other things to play as the 90s and early aughts progressed.
| archagon wrote:
| AHL was great, but The Specialists was GOAT. Never felt
| more like a badass after disarming an opponent, hitting
| slow motion, and chucking a katana at their head while
| diving.
| archagon wrote:
| I disagree, the CS betas were great. I miss the as_ maps the
| most -- sneaking away to victory as the VIP with all my
| teammates dead and seconds left on the clock.
| musha68k wrote:
| At that time in 1998 I mostly played Q1/Q2 online and
| contemporaries wise I preferred Unreal and SiN over HL's single
| player experience. Also Unreal's graphics were just truly next
| level on the Voodoo2 vs anything else. HL DM at LAN parties was
| surprisingly good and a bit overlooked though; the beginning of
| the game until the dimensional rift was definitely fun. What
| stood out the most to me was the soldier AI actually. I always
| felt the series was a bit hyped but I've come around as I
| returned to the games on my Steam Deck OLED last fall. In
| retrospect; clearly classics and the high praises were well
| earned after all. SDOLED apart from actual CRT setup is maybe
| the perfect way to experience it today IMO.
|
| Of course DOOM is its own thing completely; a timeless
| distillation of the 80s - the arcade, Super Mario and D&D all
| astonishingly abstracted into an unreasonably blissful
| bleeding-edge hellscape; 93 till infinity.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| SiN did have more character and tried some innovations of its
| own, but the gameplay needed a bit more polish. Bullets felt
| so slow you could run past them. JK/DF2 had this problem too.
| uniq7 wrote:
| > I always felt that the game couldn't decide whether it was a
| shooter or a puzzle-adventure
|
| I think I remember reading an interview with the dev team where
| they explained that playing action for too long was boring, as
| well as solving puzzles, so they consciously designed the game
| with interleaved phases of action/puzzle. Your recompense for
| solving a puzzle is action, and your recompense for killing all
| the bad guys is a relaxing puzzle.
|
| It's funny you didn't liked that, because for me it was the
| complete opposite. I like pure action shooters, and I like pure
| puzzle adventure games, but I really loved Half-Life and I
| didn't know why until I read that explanation.
| mft_ wrote:
| It's a long time ago now so my recollection is likely very
| flawed, but with HL I didn't like the feeling of a created
| path that must be followed, irrespective how of the
| interleaving of different aspects. There are lots of modern
| games like this too - which on the face of it are relatively
| open-world, but underneath the apparent freedom there's a
| strict path to find and follow for success. (I'd definitely
| include one of the modern Doom games --I forget which it was
| I tried-- in this category, - it was so linear that it felt
| but one step removed from the old-fashioned shooters where
| you're literally on a conveyor belt and shoot whatever
| appears.)
|
| In the original Doom, in contrast, the only requirement was
| to make it to the end of the level, figuring out the map and
| puzzles along the way. Anything else (did you chase 100% kill
| and 100% secrets?) was optional. I guess it just felt more...
| honest?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Tried it when it was release, then bought it myself in 1999,
| after I finally had managed to purchase a new PC - can't remember
| if it was a Nvidia TNT2 or 3dfx Voodoo 3 card I bought with it.
| But it was the first time I could play the game without it being
| sluggish and looking like crap. We had bought a family PC 4 years
| earlier, which had cost a fortune - but by 1998/1999 it was
| woefully outdated. Also, a thought: Imagine purchasing a PC today
| for $5k, and it being unusable for games in 3-4 years.
|
| One thing I (in general) miss from those days, was how easy it
| was to get into modding. Whether that be to make your own maps,
| or more involved game mods. The modding community really was
| something, and kept the game somewhat fresh for years. I also
| vividly remember downloading all the new iterations of counter-
| strike, which really took off - until settling on 1.6
|
| On a side not, it's a bit tough to think that all this was 25
| years ago now, but I still remember all this quite well - having
| only been a teenager back then, and in 25 years I'll be this old
| man. Wonder if all the memories from LAN-parties etc. will be as
| fresh in 25 years, as they are now.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I loved world building with the valve map tools. It was
| fantastic. Almost as much fun as the game itself.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Which in turn led to an exploding mod scene, clans, hosting
| and communities. Truly a world-changing game at a golden
| moment in game history (beside Unreal). And yes, like a good
| story book a generation have memories of escaping the
| crumbling Black Mesa facility chased by alien horrors.
| Mission accomplished Valve.
| joquarky wrote:
| Worldcraft was so much fun!
|
| At least until "LEAK LEAK LEAK" appeared
| lqet wrote:
| > On a side note, it's a bit tough to think that all this was
| 25 years ago now, but I still remember all this quite well
|
| I also remember it like it was yesterday when, after school on
| a hot summer's day, a friend showed me this "cool new mod" he
| recently downloaded for Half-Life. It was an early version of
| Counterstrike. It took him an entire night to download the mod,
| and it only ran on his machine with a 320x240 resolution. It
| looked like crap and was basically unplayable. 6 months and a
| hardware upgrade later, we all played it for hours each day,
| and often non-stop for 12 hours on LAN parties. I also remember
| that you could contact the internet provider (Telekom) by mail,
| and after a few weeks they would activate something called
| "Fast-Track" for your connection, which would drop the latency
| from around 110ms to only 35ms, a huge advantage for MP
| games... it really blows my mind that all of this was 25 years
| ago.
|
| In the early 2000s, CS was arguably better known than the
| original HL. I had some friends who probably played CS for
| thousands of hours, but never even touched the original HL.
| time0ut wrote:
| I was just reminiscing about this with a friend last night.
| We had tons of free time and games like Counter-Strike were
| the wild west of creativity. My fondest memory was a Spring
| afternoon in 2000 after school playing some janky fan made
| map whose name I don't remember and feeling so happy.
| Everyone was playing. We played every day. We went to a 300
| person LAN party that summer. We formed a 5 man team and
| competed online.
|
| It was so fun cobbling together a computer that could run it.
| Trying every trick to squeeze a few more FPS out of it.
| Trying to shave a few milliseconds off my dial up ping. Going
| to that one guy's house who had broadband internet.
|
| It really felt like a golden age back then.
|
| My friends and I planned our own mod and started working on
| it, but our ambition outstripped our ability. That's how we
| all got our start though. Now we all work as software
| engineers.
|
| About six months ago, I felt nostalgic and started looking
| into what was up with CS. Amazingly, it is still going and is
| popular, but seems very focused on competitive play. I wanted
| to experience that public lobby on a janky fan made map feel.
| I found a server running custom 'zombie' maps which scratched
| that itch for a few days. Then I got busy again and haven't
| touched it since.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Rats maps or the ones with a ton of vehicles were the most
| fun before the game got way too serious (before 1.5)
| fuzzzerd wrote:
| I ran a server that was primarily rat surf maps with a
| Warcraft/RPG server mod for years back then. It was super
| fun and something that modern games just can't touch in
| terms of that kind of niche.
| lqet wrote:
| I still remember the name "gimli", a creator of high-
| quality maps around 1.3.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| He still publishes maps!
| RGamma wrote:
| CS2 community servers are nothing like the 1.6 or Source
| golden era. Those games are still going, but the playerbase
| has shrunk considerably.
|
| I'm glad I got to experience it all (primarily in Source):
| gun game, deathmatch, RPG, surf, jailbreak, zombie mod and
| escape, iceskate, sliderace, hide'n'seek, trickz, xtreme
| climbing, multigames, deathrun, knifeball, HE wars, vehicle
| maps, bob, nipper maps, even hack vs hack, and the many
| many communities, each uniquely flavored and with their own
| story.
|
| Back then I took it for granted...
| Stagnant wrote:
| I totally feel that. The most fun I ever had gaming was
| back in my teens playing various different game modes in
| source. And yeah the communities really made it so
| special, to this day I'm good friends with some people
| that I initially met in CSS.
|
| I can't help but feel Valve dropped the ball with cs:go
| and cs2. I mean, they did become incredibly popular but
| IMO there was potential for so much more if they would've
| supported custom game modes even just a little bit.
| aradox66 wrote:
| I spent long hours playing CS Surf. What a wacky mod.
| Good times, odd memories.
| RGamma wrote:
| You may be interested in KSF. They host skill surf
| servers and publish chill WR runs:
| https://youtube.com/@ksfrecords
|
| The more modern surf maps are aesthetically quite
| pleasing and smooth to play.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| It's still tons of fun but definitely different now, and
| since they came out with counter-strike 2 a while ago, it's
| me being specced out on my old gaming computer all over
| again - as with you I'm way too busy as a working adult to
| get too deep into it, was fun to play a lot during the
| pandemic though.
|
| The craziest innovation I seen is counter strike 1.6 in the
| browser, fully playable multiplayer. Not sure how safe
| letting that much execution happen in wasm environment
| truly is but was still pretty funny to see how far the game
| has come in terms of graphics. Basically a bunch of the
| same maps still even though a couple have always been way
| skewed to one side or the other.
| lqet wrote:
| > About six months ago, I felt nostalgic and started
| looking into what was up with CS. Amazingly, it is still
| going and is popular
|
| I played the "original" CS (at least a version that looked
| like 1.6) around 3 years ago, and was surprised how
| painless it was to install it on Linux using Steam. I was
| also surprised that it was still no problem to find a
| de_dust server with > 20 players.
|
| > That's how we all got our start though. Now we all work
| as software engineers.
|
| Yes. It was so easy back then to play around with game
| development, web development, or desktop development.
| Around 2002, I hosted a web site for months on my local
| desktop server, reachable via a DynDNS solution.
|
| Sorry for getting nostalgic, but it was even _easier_ in
| the mid-90ies. As a 9 year old, I created a Dyna Blaster
| clone using a Demo-Version of "Klik&Play" on Windows 3.11
| [0]. You could develop quite advanced games by just
| dragging around sprites, animating them, listening to mouse
| and keyboard events and object collisions. You could even
| "compile" the game into a single portable .exe! It was dead
| simple, but it introduced me to the basic concepts of
| programming and animation, and I didn't even realize it. A
| little later, I was able to teach myself BASIC by just
| reading the DOS man pages. We didn't even have internet
| back then. I very clearly remember realizing that "if ...
| then ... else" statements and variables were exactly what
| was missing in my "Klik&Play" demo-version. In the demo,
| you had to simulate these concepts by triggering the spawn
| of a hidden moving object and listening for the collision
| with another object. The hidden objects encoded the game
| state. Basically, the developers tried to remove Turing-
| completeness from the demo version, but failed and forced
| kids like myself to restore it via wild tricks (I remember
| feeling very clever when I had the idea for this trick). I
| only realized 2 decades later how useful these experiences
| were for a career in computer science.
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/e2e98t/maki
| ng_ga...
| time0ut wrote:
| Very cool.
|
| The first web site I ever made was for my CS clan. I
| hosted it on the Linux server in my university dorm room
| that also hosted our CS server. I don't remember what I
| did for DNS back then. I learned so much that I still use
| to this day.
|
| I also think its neat, guessing based on your ISP, that
| you had such similar experiences at the same time half a
| world away from me (in the US).
| t4h4 wrote:
| I think you meant "FastPath"? - an alternative error
| correction scheme for DSL connections.
| lqet wrote:
| I did!
| agumonkey wrote:
| The hype was so hot and fast around HL when it came out, that I
| remember playing it without a dedicated graphics card (I think
| I was running on a motherboard integrated gpu) in the lowest
| resolution possible because there was this feeling of "you have
| to try it".
| rusk wrote:
| I got by for years on a Pentium 75 and 8mb of RAM. The specs
| always said the game wouldn't work, but it did. You could get
| away with this right up until PC gaming (finally) moved away
| from DOS. One big issue was the real mode DOS Plug n play
| drivers (dwcfgmgr.sys - burned into my brain) which occupied
| just enough of my 640k that most games would fail to start
| cause they couldn't claim the whole lot.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Specs similar to mine. Not far after that I got a diamond
| nv3 ..
| rusk wrote:
| 1MB ATI Radeon all the way baby :)
| pcdoodle wrote:
| ATI 3D Rage (1996), 500 nm, 50mhz or so.
|
| Had to look it up, didn't know they had 1MB 3D
| accelerators.
|
| I think my first was 8MB and it blew my hair back for
| sure.
| rusk wrote:
| It wasn't a Rage it was a Radeon :) not even a 3D
| accelerator :) this was the first generation of graphics
| cards that had hardware acceleration for 2D
|
| Was just about time for MDK, Quake, Tomb Raider etc even
| though it was way outside the official specs for these.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Oh wow, I stand corrected. Didn't know they brought back
| the moniker.
| maccard wrote:
| > One thing I (in general) miss from those days, was how easy
| it was to get into modding. Whether that be to make your own
| maps, or more involved game mods. The modding community really
| was something, and kept the game somewhat fresh for years.
|
| Modding still exists. It's just called "UGC" now. Fortnite,
| Roblox, Minecraft have thriving and accessible options. GTA has
| an unbelieveable number of players playing role playing mods of
| it too.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| It's not the same though, most FPS' games lock down their
| code and require you to use their servers. More or less
| murdering any chance of modding. For example, the same time I
| played halflife and all the mods (including this mod named
| counter strike), I played the shit out of battlefield 1942.
| It's modding community was insane! With total conversion mode
| that game was like 10 different games. And for a poor teen,
| that and half life were god sends for getting me into gaming
| teamonkey wrote:
| Traditional modding still exists, especially for PC RPGs,
| where the community is huge. Also UEFN is an extremely
| powerful tool that sits closer to modding Fortnite than UGC
| for Roblox, say.
|
| The problem is that multiplayer games and any game with a
| server component - and the engines that make them - are
| specifically designed to have security against cheating and
| hacks. No-one wants to play against a modded game. That
| makes supporting mods, even solo mods, all the more
| difficult, and it's harder to make the business case for
| doing so.
| Sophira wrote:
| > No-one wants to play against a modded game.
|
| Au contraire. There are plenty of people who would like
| to play against a modded game. They just might not want
| to play against a game that's modded differently from
| their own.
| jhbadger wrote:
| >Traditional modding still exists, especially for PC RPGs
|
| Yes, I've recently been playing Fallout: London, which is
| a total conversion mod for Fallout 4. It obviously
| changes the setting to post-apocalyptic London, but also
| adds new quests, monsters and things. And it's pretty
| good quality -- in fact the mod kept getting delayed
| because Bethesda saw the mod in progress and kept hiring
| the people working on it because they were so impressed.
| maccard wrote:
| It's not the same but the environment isnt the same
| anymore.
|
| There are lots of games that will let you mod the ever
| loving crap out of them. UEFN and Roblox are modding with
| distribution platforms. Cyberpunk has Bethesda level
| modding. Games like lethal company are existing in an indie
| space that was just unfathomable when I was playing those
| games.
| throwaway519 wrote:
| > purchasing a PC today for $5k, and it being unusable for
| games in 3-4 years.
|
| A time when technology changed that fast, too.
| BlaDeKke wrote:
| Should be changing faster today, it's just not always
| visible.
| crackez wrote:
| I just replaced my HP z800 from 2008 because it was holding
| it's own with the addition of a few ssd's and an RX580 GPU
| over the years. Went from 6c12t Xeon to 16c32t (R9950x) and
| 7900xt.
|
| Performance just hasn't out paced people's needs in the
| last 15 years the way it used to...
| BSDobelix wrote:
| Wait are you me? i shut down my z800 about a year ago
| (was my mainmachine for about 13 years) i buyd a second
| cpu for like 10$ after 5 years and upraded the ram to
| max, i think it was 46gb, also ssd's....and a rx580 which
| is still in use.
| crackez wrote:
| So, what's your replacement machine consist of?
|
| I used to use the hardware raid to stripe 2x ssd's to get
| over 1GB/s from my sata drives.
|
| New machine has a pcie5 gen5 m.2 nvme. Stupid fast at
| 12GB/s.
|
| I gotta figure out what to do with the old machine now...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The crazy thing is there are still a few people playing Half
| Life!
| rpicard wrote:
| Nightmare House was a super fun mod that I found at some point.
|
| I don't remember where or how, but it scared the heck out of
| me.
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| > One thing I (in general) miss from those days, was how easy
| it was to get into modding. Whether that be to make your own
| maps, or more involved game mods.
|
| Another game from that time that was also easy to mod was The
| Sims 1.
|
| For a bit of context, EA/Maxis released modding tools BEFORE
| the game was released, to let players create custom content for
| the game (like walls and floors) before the game was even
| released!
|
| And installing custom content was also easy, just drag and drop
| files in folders related to what you downloaded and that's it.
|
| Imagine any game nowadays doing that? Most games nowadays don't
| supporting modding out of the box, but of course, there are
| exceptions, like Minecraft resource packs/data packs. I don't
| think Fortnite and Roblox fit the "modding a game" description
| because you aren't really modding a game, you are creating your
| own game inside of Fortnite/Roblox! Sometimes you don't want to
| play a new game inside of your game, you just want to add new
| mods to enhance your experience or to make it more fun. There
| isn't a "base game Roblox", and while there is a "base game
| Fortnite" (Battle Royale... or any of the other game modes like
| Fortnite Festival or LEGO Fortnite) Epic does not let you
| create mods for the Battle Royale game. You can create your own
| Battle Royale map, but you can't create a "the _insert season
| here_ Battle Royale map & gameplay but with a twist!".
|
| Of course, sadly EA/Maxis didn't release all of the modding
| tools they could (there isn't a official custom object making
| tool for example, or a official way of editing the behavior of
| custom objects) but they still released way more modding tools
| than what current games release.
|
| I think that most modern games don't support that easiness of
| modding because the games themselves are complex, because as an
| example: The Sims 1 walls are like, just three sprites, so you
| can generate a wall easily with a bit of programming skill, the
| skin format is in plain text in a format similar to ".obj", so
| on and so forth.
|
| Lately I've been trying to create my own modding tools for The
| Sims 1, and it is funny when you are reading a page talking
| about the technical aspects of the game file formats and the
| author writes "well this field is used for xyzabc because Don
| Hopkins said so".
| no_wizard wrote:
| The official toolkit for modding Baldur's Gate 3 is extremely
| extensive. You can make an entirely different game on top of
| the game if you wanted
| paavohtl wrote:
| Really? Officially they don't even support modifying or
| creating new levels:
| https://baldursgate3.game/news/community-
| update-27-official-.... You are mostly limited to visual
| changes, UI mods and balance / tuning changes.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Factorio has an extensive modding community - one of the
| community mods was adopted and became an official expansion.
| archagon wrote:
| Modding was amazing back then. I wasn't a modder myself, but it
| felt like something new and crazy was happening every week. The
| excitement for every beta release of Counter-Strike. The buzz
| around newcomers like Action HL, The Specialists, and PVK.
| Experiments like Science & Industry that didn't last long but
| were a fun romp nonetheless. Endless rounds of TFC and DoD. And
| there were _always_ populated community servers for any mod you
| plucked fom Fileplanet.
|
| We've lost something along the way.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| this balancing act between scripted story and open gameplay with
| "conscious" AI defense is so hard to pull off. In the scripted
| entertainment league Half-Life rules I think. Crysis had the tech
| to do the real thing and failed - too much cinema and a bad
| story. But the realism, the mechanics of movement and physics -
| it was all there in god tier quality.
| agumonkey wrote:
| there were other brilliant ideas bridging nascent technology
| for the sake of gameplay, like surround sound to locate some
| fast (nearly impossible to see coming) enemies. It really was
| perfectly executed.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Great early examples of simulated acoustic spaces matching
| geometry, like delay networks for metallic ducting in the
| crawl spaces. And notable firsts in sound management - before
| there were really "sound engines".
| Christian_A wrote:
| This was the game that brought me into counter-strike and in my
| opinion still one of the best stories there is. Well done,
| especially when you think about how limited their possibilities
| were in the days back then.
| hadriendavid wrote:
| I remember playing on the computers at university. Someone had
| modded the campus map, was so fun to play.
| sylens wrote:
| The observation that Doom was on more PCs than Windows was very
| astute. Doom was everywhere at the time - it was not uncommon to
| find the shareware on computers inside many typical office jobs
| bombcar wrote:
| The shareware version of DooM was more of a complete game than
| many boxed games at the time. It's no wonder it spread so far -
| especially because it was also an amazing hardware demo.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Wonderfully written article, but especially delighted to see
| extensive mention of DF2: Jedi Knight. This game absolutely
| dominated mine and friends free time for multiple years, both
| single player and multiplayer. Up there as one of my favourite of
| all time, certainly most played.
|
| Lucasarts absolutely ruled on the story based games genre merges.
| See of course all the point and clicks such as Monkey Island and
| Day of the Tentacle, but also of course XWing and Tie Fighter.
| DylanSp wrote:
| The same author has full articles on Jedi Knight [1] and
| X-Wing/TIE Fighter. [2]. If you go through his archives [3],
| he's also written a lot about LucasArts' adventure games; I
| think the first posts that talk about them are the three "A New
| Force in Games" posts.
|
| [1] https://www.filfre.net/2024/04/jedi-knight-plus-notes-on-
| an-... [2] https://www.filfre.net/2021/02/the-second-coming-of-
| star-war... [3] https://www.filfre.net/sitemap/
| gyomu wrote:
| _> It was far from flawless, but it was really trying to push the
| boundaries of a young medium._
|
| Great read, it made me realize how far we've come. Video games as
| an art are really in an interesting spot right now - big budget
| projects all end up being bland, buggy, cookie cutter rehashes of
| the same couple templates.
|
| Companies that once represented the pinnacle of creativity and
| what could be achieved with high budgets - Blizzard, Bethesda,
| Ubisoft, etc - are now the laughing stock of gamers. Not that it
| matters when the bulk of gamers are still putting dozens of hours
| and plenty of microtransaction dollars into decade old games like
| Fortnite/Minecraft/GTA every week.
|
| What's the last big budget release that actually left a strong
| artistic impression? What's the next big budget release that will
| actually move the needle of the medium meaningfully?
|
| Thankfully, there are a bunch of indie developers that still
| release fresh experiences - but they too kind of end up falling
| into the same tropes (if you like 2D roguelike/platformer/puzzler
| there's plenty of choice, otherwise...).
|
| Not too unlike the state of the film industry. It's hard to
| imagine what a solid shakeup of these behemoth, mature industries
| could look like.
| ekianjo wrote:
| GTA5 had a super big budget yet received very good feedback
| from gamers and critics alike, and is still played to this day.
| So not sure you can just discard big budgets as a whole.
|
| And then Star Citizen is quite innovative in many regards and
| has virtually unlimited budget, and would not exist in the
| first place without a long runway
| dijit wrote:
| GTA5 released more than 10 years ago fwiw, the zeitgeist has
| changed significantly in the last 5-7years.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| In what way(s)?
| dijit wrote:
| The way the parent suggests.
|
| > Video games as an art are really in an interesting spot
| right now - big budget projects all end up being bland,
| buggy, cookie cutter rehashes of the same couple
| templates.
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/rs-gaming/indies-
| games-...
| ekianjo wrote:
| hardly. I bet GTA6 will be a major success just like GTA5
| was at the time, which will again counter the argument
| that big budget is killing the creativity in games. And I
| see no counter against Star Citizen yet
| throwup238 wrote:
| I haven't played V or online but after III/Vice/San
| Andreas, GTA is the last game I'd use to argue for
| creativity in the gaming industry. It's just the only
| game series in the "run over streetwalkers in a stolen
| car" genre, which is still a profitable niche apparently.
|
| (But I don't play many video games these days so what do
| I know)
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Why are you opining on things you're wholly unfamiliar
| with
| throaway1989 wrote:
| GTA5 was criticized for dumbing down the driving and other
| mechanics, and generally being way more goofy and casual than
| 4 and even San Andreas & Vice City
| msm_ wrote:
| >What's the last big budget release that actually left a strong
| artistic impression?
|
| Witcher 3 comes to mind. But I just realised it was released 10
| years ago...
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I'm playing through that now. Just finished the main
| question, and doing Hearts of Stone. Probably the best
| single-player game I've played. Maybe it's the "next-gen-
| update", but the graphics are still great.
| cr125rider wrote:
| Cyberpunk 2077 I hear is great now after its many bug fixes
| and DLC
| hackernewds wrote:
| not from a large American gaming production company. Black
| myth wukong comes to mind but also in the same bucket
| leoc wrote:
| CP2077's not American but it largely came out of the
| usual mould of big-budget, big-studio game software,
| especially after CD Projekt Red ended up abandoning
| promises to do certain things differently.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| I hope Stalker 2 gets to this point as well, with more
| A-Life brought back in after whatever performance
| optimisations they can squeeze out.
| nobankai wrote:
| Spoilers: nothing short of a complete story rewrite could
| salvage what _Cyberpunk 2077_ ended up being. It 's less of
| a _No Mans Sky_ redemption story and more of a _Duke Nukem
| Forever_ one.
| coffeecantcode wrote:
| Black Myth Wukong had a fairly hot entrance onto the market
| but fizzled out a bit, keep an eye out for the upcoming DLC
| though.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I haven't played it, but I got the impression it didn't
| fizzle out so much as that it simply had one single player
| campaign and no reason to keep playing once it's finished,
| and that many people seem to have forgotten games with a
| finite nr of playing hours like that exist because of the
| roguelikes, hero shooters, MMORPGs, Minecraft-likes, etc
| that keep you hooked for as long as possible.
| coffeecantcode wrote:
| Very true, there is still a loyal following of new game
| plus players, including myself, holding down the fort but
| having a linear single player campaign was refreshing.
|
| I have my opinions on the execution quality (or range of
| execution quality) of the game itself but it still served
| as my favorite "AAA/AA" major release of 2024.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Uh.
|
| That's the "new game" I'm still meaning to start.
|
| God time gets weird as you pass through middle age.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Developers really put their hearts into it. I loved the
| _Dziady_ reference.
| drodgers wrote:
| BG3 was great.
|
| I don't think it counts as big budget, but I've recently gotten
| into Last Train Home and it's a fantastic and unique premise
| (with gameplay that's a mix of Company of Heros + XCOM + This
| War Of Mine).
| mock-possum wrote:
| Last train home is coming up soon on my todo list and I'm
| pretty psyched to get around to playing it, the demo 100%
| sold me on it
| huckyaus wrote:
| > What's the last big budget release that actually left a
| strong artistic impression?
|
| Elden Ring. You'd need to go quite a bit further back for the
| last one before that though.
| azakai wrote:
| Definitely Elden Ring.
|
| As evidence, even Harper's Magazine wrote about it:
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/2024/11/dying-is-a-form-of-
| educa...
| popcar2 wrote:
| > What's the last big budget release that actually left a
| strong artistic impression?
|
| Elden Ring and its DLC, probably. The Japanese games industry
| is doing far better than their western counterparts, there have
| been huge headlines that in 2024's Game Awards, 4 of 5 games
| nominated for Game of the Year came from Asia (3 Japan, 1
| China). The last game (Balatro) was an indie game developed by
| one person.
|
| Not a single nominee was from a major western company like
| Ubisoft, EA, etc. They may be financially successful now, but
| the games industry is imploding. This is what happens when you
| treat developers poorly and chase greedy trends while expecting
| consumers to put up with it. Like you said, most AAA games
| releasing these days are either dead on arrival or completely
| unnotable and miss expectations.
| hackernewds wrote:
| the nominees did, but the winner ultimately was still
| indicative of the circus that is US gaming awards
| frontfor wrote:
| For one, id software is still making great big budget single
| player experience, see Doom 2016, Doom Eternal, and the soon-
| to-be-released Doom the dark ages.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| > What's the last big budget release that actually left a
| strong artistic impression?
|
| Talos Principle 2. Does that count as big budget?
| TingPing wrote:
| Croteam is quite small, 40 employees total.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| That checks out; I think I should not have included it as
| an example, given that context. Maybe it instead reinforces
| the point that we rely on smaller companies for the gems.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I love Talos Principle, but I did not
| feel a strong connection to the world of #2 vs #1. The sequel
| levels just seemed like, "Here is some sexy stuff the art
| team designed." No real connection or unifying theme. Super
| pretty, but that is true of any number of AAA games these
| days with big action set pieces.
|
| At least in one, it felt a bit more cohesive in that you
| could imagine that canned video game assets had been
| corrupted and copy-pasted into new configurations.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I recently got to play Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Gameplay
| is virtually the same as the previous entry in the series, but
| the story is interesting and entertaining.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > What's the last big budget release that actually left a
| strong artistic impression?
|
| To add to the other answers - Half-Life: Alyx ;)
| maccard wrote:
| > What's the last big budget release that actually left a
| strong artistic impression?
|
| Kingdom come deliverance, baldirs gate are two massive titles
| in the last 12 months. God of war, spiderman, Indiana jones are
| other titles that are just stand alone artistic experiences,
| again in the last little while.
|
| > What's the next big budget release that will actually move
| the needle of the medium meaningfully?
|
| I think it's funny you mention that because the games you
| sniped at (Fortnite Minecraft GTa) were seismic shifts in
| gaming - in the last few years - Fortnite wrote the book on
| live service games IMO. But, when they're "popular" suddenly
| they're not cool anymore.
|
| > It's hard to imagine what a solid shakeup of these behemoth,
| mature industries could look like.
|
| What do you want? IMO the industry is in an ok place - aside
| from the mass layoffs over the last 24 months. But for
| consumers there's so much choice - there's massive hundred
| million dollar budget tiles with new content every year
| (Ubisoft/CoD/ Sony/microsoft doing these) there's "smaller"
| budget games in the 50-80millon mark that are achieving
| critical success on PC and Console, there's AA-budget games in
| the 15-30 million mark coming out every month that are hits and
| misses, there's a thriving indie scene for every genre you
| could possibly imagine, and many you can't (e.g. trombone
| champ).
|
| There's options at every level, dozens of games coming out
| every year - more than any single person could ever play.
|
| disclaimer: I've worked on one of the titles you're talking
| about here, but don't anymore. Opinion is mine, not theirs.
| TingPing wrote:
| My concern is that consolidation has hit the industry pretty
| hard in the last decade and is only a bad thing for its
| future IMO.
| maccard wrote:
| In my experience working there - it comes and goes in
| waves. Layoffs happen, people leave and start their own
| studios. We saw consolidation under publishers in the 90's
| and people laud it as one of the best periods of games.
|
| I do think we lost our way a little from around about
| 2018-2022 where we had these absolutely gargantuan flops
| like Concord that were a symptom of many things, but I
| really really believe we're in another golden age right
| now.
| throaway1989 wrote:
| Kingdom Come was from 2018?
| maccard wrote:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1771300/Kingdom_Come_Del
| i...
| tikhonj wrote:
| I haven't played many different games over the last few years,
| but both Half-Life: Alyx and Zelda: Breath of the Wild left
| strong impressions. Both games have a rare sense of _place_
| that 's hard to replicate in other mediums--the same thing that
| stood out for me after the first time I played Half-Life 2.
| These games feel less like a movie I've seen or a story I've
| read and more like _somewhere I 've been_.
|
| This isn't _unique_ to video games--I 've had the same feeling
| from, say, _2666_ or _Stalker_ --but video games seem
| especially well-suited to do this as a medium.
| lokimedes wrote:
| I literally got the t-shirt (came with the game), and later
| became a particle physicist, working at CERN, we received a
| crowbar for the initial startup of the LHC.
|
| This game defined my life.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Well, please be bloody careful and don't create any resonance
| cascade scenarios.
| baruchthescribe wrote:
| Lokimedes doesn't need to hear all this. He's a highly
| trained professional.
| _benj wrote:
| Lokimedes, we have complete confidence in you.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| they're waiting for you Lokimedes, in the the chamberrr
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Wow that's inspiring. Let us know when you are asked to send a
| crystal into the testing chamber. I'll go to the mountains.
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| Let us know if we need to prepare for "unforseen consequences".
|
| Also I am really sorry but I messed up your lunch in the
| microwave earlier.
| vasco wrote:
| > how many computers were currently running Microsoft Windows in
| the United States. The number of 20 million that he got back was
| impressive. Yet he was shocked to learn that Windows wasn't the
| most popular single piece of software to be found on American
| personal computers; that was rather a game called DOOM. Newell
| and Harrington had long enjoyed playing games. Now, it seemed,
| there were huge piles of money to be earned from making them.
|
| Later on they also found out that introducing gambling to kids is
| indeed a much better business than just selling games. Going on
| for many years without anyone cracking down, and doing
| workarounds when governments try to make it illegal.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I'm reminded of my art professor whose friend worked designing
| lottery scratch offs, and found it unfulfilling yet well paid.
| While my professor struggled teaching at a B-tier state
| university and contracting for prestigious brands.
|
| Around the same time I gave up my dream of making videogames
| because pay and hours were terrible, and I had no prospects in
| the Midwest.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| One of the unfortunate fallouts of Half-life was Quake 3 arena,
| which could be viewed as it's exact opposite. I am convinced that
| after half life people just couldn't appreciate the opposite -
| just shooting, without any story. And it didn't create the
| deserved following.
|
| Instead we had almost 15 years of Spunkgargleweewee-s as defined
| by Zero Punctuation.
| k__ wrote:
| I loved Q1 and Q2, but Q3A just felt like half a game to me.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Great article on the single player aspect of the game and
| absolutely accurate about how exceptional it was - and still is -
| in the canon of modern gaming.
|
| What really gave Half-Life its legs was the multiplayer
| component. It came in just as broadband internet was appearing in
| households across the United States and Canada. The ability to
| host servers and coordinate through ICQ and message boards
| created a one-of-a-kind community.
|
| I know because I lived it.
|
| The [R]age Board for the Elites. The CLQ. Adrenaline Gamer and
| Counter Strike.
|
| Half-Life was incredible and still has an online presence of note
| - mostly in developing countries. Their hardware matches the lift
| to run at decent FPS and join games. Now and then I still hop on
| a server through Steam.
|
| The di clan video - digital immortality - can do more to
| highlight "why" HLDM and its physics and weapons were such a game
| changer, even compared to Q3 and UT at the time. There is nothing
| like using the long jump and tau cannon to literally fly around
| maps. Other games have tried, but I've never gotten the same high
| as with HL.
|
| Mostly I miss the community, as juvenile and crass as it was.
| Like the NFL, it was a young man's game. Most of us were under 25
| with rare exceptions. I'll never forget when Neo Maximus Babson
| went missing.
|
| This article bring back a lot of memories and than you for
| sharing... -p$ychos!s- out (LMS, CML, syn, di)
| divs1210 wrote:
| Half Life is my favorite game franchise of all time.
|
| Played all the canon games and SO MANY mods.
|
| Still obsessed with it.
| baruchthescribe wrote:
| I was completely blown away when I realized that the opening
| cinematic was the actual game engine. First time I'd ever seen it
| and the scenes cleverly foreshadowed what was coming.
| ge96 wrote:
| I played this game on 512MB of ram and a 20GB HDD
| simonw wrote:
| I got my start in the tech industry thanks to Half-Life - or more
| specifically thanks to the Half-Life mod Team Fortress Classic.
|
| I built an early fan news site for that game (effectively a blog
| before I knew they were called blogs) which got me a job with an
| early online gaming company ~1999 where I got paid to learn how
| web development works.
| kleiba wrote:
| _> Newell and Harrington had long enjoyed playing games. Now, it
| seemed, there were huge piles of money to be earned from making
| them._
|
| The gaming market today is completely different, very
| competetive, very saturated, ranging from huge stakes at the top
| end, to an enormous number of indie studios and individuals
| toward the other end that are trying to make ends meet.
|
| Yet, I've been seriously thinking for a while to start-up a game
| studio. The hope being that it would be one of these crazy ideas
| that everybody recommends against ("it can't be done") until you
| actually do it and prove them wrong.
|
| Ideally, I would like to start the studio as a loose group of
| like-minded people that have time for developing a game solely a
| hobby, and if that pans out, transition it into a business. Not
| AAA, of course, but with the definite goal of making the best
| game that such a setup could realisitically produce.
|
| The thing is, with today's tech, you can get started with very
| little capital if you begin doing this as a hobby.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| The indie market is a bloody red sea right now. But as long as
| you don't care about money or can expense your hardware and
| internet costs, I think it's good enough.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I sorta want to do this, but developing completely open source
| games.
|
| Maybe even developing my own game engine.
|
| Of course all this costs a lot of money with no clear way to
| make it back. If I had to come up with a monetization model, I
| would come up with an ad network similar to Unity.
|
| If Unity needs 2 billion in revenue to barely keep going, I
| reckon a more focused engine could be funded for 20 million a
| year.
|
| It's a moot point since I'll never have that much money or be
| able to raise a VC round.
|
| But HN, let's dream. Imagine a .net or JavaScript engine that's
| web first. With mobile and PC support coming later( PC can just
| run a local server). The engine developers dog food their own
| engine, making very high quality examples for the community.
|
| Keep the engine focused on small lightweight games.
|
| Unity's ultimate problem is they keep trying to do literally
| everything.
|
| I wouldn't do that. I'd say straight up this engine isn't going
| to do AAA gaming. It's not going to scale. I'm not supporting
| 800 design patterns.
| kleiba wrote:
| Don't write your own engine, unless you want to do that just
| for fun. But if you actually want to make a game, use one of
| the exiting engines.
|
| If you want to develop a game engine as a product to make
| money of, it's probably better to forget that idea. There are
| enough very sophisticated engines out there, so why would any
| third-party developer take the risk and use yours instead? I
| mean, even the big open source engines that already exist
| today have trouble gaining traction.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > Not AAA, of course, but with the definite goal of making the
| best game that such a setup could realisitically produce.
|
| have a read up on Savage Game Design and the SOG Prairie Fire
| CDLC for Arma 3.
|
| hands down, the best DLC ever created for Arma3. a good chunk
| of the original team were Unsung modders. they went down the
| road of CDLC, now they're working on their own standalone game
| and a bunch of other stuff (look through Rob/Eggbeast's posts
| on the SOG PF discord for more info).
|
| Arma is actually a great way to hack something together for
| basically nothing. buy Arma, start scripting sqf to build a
| gamemode, create new assets in blender and stick 'em in a mod,
| host a server. though the engine has lots of weird
| bugs/footguns, your costs are basically Arma+devtime+servers.
|
| disclaimer: i'm a maintainer on the Mike Force multiplayer
| gamemode they released. do it in my spare time for kicks
| (although been slacking recently).
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a ton left that can be done by small companies -
| factorio is just one example out of the hundreds waiting to be
| discovered.
|
| Find a niche and polish it to perfection and you can make
| headway.
|
| Most big-budget games have more to do with interactive movies
| than with gameplay, anyway.
| cryzinger wrote:
| Balatro also comes to mind. And that one's the work of a solo
| dev!
| kleiba wrote:
| The problem is - there are literally thousands of indie
| devs that don't make the cut. The days of Mojang or Fez are
| long over, the novelty of the indie dev has worn off,
| unfortunately.
| Tycho wrote:
| I only ever played Half-Life on a friend's PC, but it still made
| a big impression. Especially the start, how you arrive at this
| massive research facility and get to just walk around before
| things really kick-off. Part of the appeal also in the _Hitman_
| games, I think.
|
| I remember playing _Deus Ex_ on our iMac which was barely
| powerful enough to run it. Severe slow down during intense
| moments, and some major lighting problems. And yet, it remains
| probably my fondest gaming experience. Something about the way
| game worlds can capture your imagination when you're young.
| mikehar wrote:
| Nice writeup. FWIW, I never saw Michael Abrash wear a tie. :)
|
| We were very into 3D cards back then. We had a lot of ties to
| that part of the world. I had been doing video drivers for OS/2
| and NT. I got to know Abrash from his writing on the VGA, 8514,
| and, of course, asm. At Valve, we hired a couple of great guys
| from 3dfx. I still have a 3dfx hat somewhere that I bust out on
| special occasions. The killer setup back then was hooking up two
| 3dfx cards (SLI). But I usually played on a standard card because
| I wanted/needed to see it run like most people would experience
| it.
|
| We had a deal with one of the companies, maybe 3dfx, but I forget
| who, to include the first three levels of HL with their card.
| Even though the game wasn't anywhere near finished, we sent off a
| disk to the company with our first three finished levels so we
| could get paid. Somehow, it leaked. We were pissed at first, but
| then it took off. People loved it. It really gave us the
| confidence that we were on the right track. It was our _first_
| game. The validation was just what we needed.
|
| Fun times.
| dleeftink wrote:
| What was the other fish?
| JadoJodo wrote:
| Perhaps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnik
| mmustapic wrote:
| It was called Half Life Day One, and I remember seeing it as a
| bundle with some hardware, not sure which one.
| sho_hn wrote:
| This is how I was introduced to Half-Life - I got it with my
| GPU and played Day One.
|
| Unfortunately I also don't recall which it was. I do recall I
| had a Voodoo, then moved to a TNT2 and then later a GeForce
| 2. The TNT2 came out well after Half-Life, so it must have
| been 3dfx at least.
| i_c_b wrote:
| I was knee-deep working as a technical game designer + engine
| programmer on Soldier of Fortune when Half-Life came out. I can't
| put into words the impression that the opening that game left on
| me; I still remember very distinctly experiencing the tram ride,
| just being utterly entranced, and then being deeply irritated
| when an artist walked over to my cubicle, saw the game, and
| jokily asked what was going on, pulling me out of the experience.
| For me, it was one of those singular experiences you only have a
| very, very rarely in gaming.
|
| It's funny, though - I would say in retrospect that Half-Life had
| the typical vexed impact of a truly revolutionary game made by a
| truly revolutionary team. In terms of design, the Half-Life team
| was asking and exploring a hundred different interesting
| questions about first person gaming and design, very close to the
| transition from 2d to 3d. And their influence, a few years later,
| often reduced down to a small handful of big ideas for later
| games influenced by them. After Half-Life, because of the impact
| of their scripted sequences, FPS games shifted to much more
| linear level designs to support that kind of roller coaster
| experience (despite many of Half-Life's levels actually harkening
| back to older, less linear FPS design). The role of Barneys and
| other AI character also really marked the shift to AI buddies
| being a focus in shooters. And the aesthetic experience of the
| aggressive AI from the marines as enemies also cast a long
| shadow, too, highlighting the idea of enemy AI being a priority
| in single player FPS games.
|
| Certainly, those were the biggest features of Half-Life that
| impacted our design in Soldier of Fortune, which did go on to
| shift to much more linear levels, much more focus on scripted
| events, and would have resulted in much more emphasis on AI
| buddies too if I hadn't really put my foot down as a game
| programmer (and in my defense, if you go back to FPS games from
| that era, poorly implemented AI buddies are often, by a wide
| margin, the most frustrating aspect of that era of games, along
| with forced poorly done stealth missions or poorly implemented
| drivable vehicles - the fact that Barneys were non-essential is
| why they worked well in the original Half-Life). You can see this
| shadow pretty clearly if you compare Half-Life to, afterwards,
| the single player aspects of Call of Duty and Halo. Both are
| series that, in their single player form, are a lot more focused
| and a lot less varied than Half-Life was, but they clearly
| emphasize those aspects of Half-Life I just mentioned. And in
| practice, those were the single player FPS games that were in
| practice actually copied for quite a while.
| sunnybeetroot wrote:
| Thank you for soldier of fortune. It was a pioneer in its own
| way with how brutal the enemy destruction was. I loved it.
| Incredible game that is up there with DOOM, Half Life and Halo
| for me.
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