1997 Half-Life Alpha Tech Demo

Man, this makes me think of Action Half-Life and the years I spent playing it... best mod ever!
 
I still laugh when they type on the computer and the guy is pretty much just punching the keyboard with his 4/5 polygon hands. Pretty awesome though.
 
More polys than WoW has! :p

And the banking camera when moving side to side... don't have that anymore!
 
The interesting bit is how the tech demo demonstrates new tech that is advantageous to gameplay, like new ai behaviors. Nowdays all you'd see in tech demos is fancy graphics or some other shit the MBA types like to think gamers want to see.
 
I was only 5 years old when this alpha was made so I don't have the nostalgia so thanks a lot you guys for commenting on this stuff. You're helping me understand how revolutionary this stuff was.

J So said:
Back then it was Nevah been done befohah!

I remember having my mind blown with that game. Interactive NPCs? guns that weren't just floating in air waiting for you to grab them? Enemy that would outflank you and throw grenades when you tried to hide? a plot?!?!

It was also my favorite multiplayer game for a long time and that modified engine gave us Counter Strike and Team Fortress Classic.
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That said, I'm also glad that games have advanced tremendously. I'd much rather play Black Mesa Source with good graphics than the original.

DaRkL3AD3R said:
Glad I can still install my CD copy of Half Life 1 from 1998 and play in 640x480 glorious Software rendering. You're missing out if you only experienced Half Life through Black Mesa Source.

Right around the end of 1999 was the pinnacle for gaming. You had Starcraft, Quake 2, Half Life, Unreal Tournament. Then you had the killer console games like Goldeneye/Perfect Dark, Starfox 64, Turok, Final Fantasy VII, just everything was so good back then. Man, I fucking miss those days.
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Voodoo 2 in sli.. (fear the dongle)... then my first nVidia card.. GeForce 256... sigh... memories.....
 
Despite all the hate on id these days, Quake engine games just ran so fucking tight. It was fast and responsive and shooting feedback was just spot on.
 
In my opinion, there has never been a better platform for modding to this day. I loved mapping for Half-Life and miss the days when even a single person could feasibly make a mod rivaling the original game; Neil Manke's work on mods like They Hunger was absolutely inspiring.

The best part was that although the engine was robust and feature rich, there was still so much innovation to be done by the community. Regular gamers would never know how much creative thought had to go into to doing seemingly unremarkable things, like working doors on elevators or making an object roll while moving forward.

As far as the graphics hardware in the demo video, unless they're using something extremely rudimentary for graphics acceleration, it looks to me like they're running in software mode. A voodoo2 would have smoothed out the textures considerably leaving no square texels on any surfaces, an ATI Rage would have blurred textures beyond recognition at any distance, and a Riva 128 would have had a super visible lack of z-buffering with dancing triangles everywhere. For the record, I had all three cards when half-life came out and am speaking from experience. Oh, how good we have it today...
 
Galaxy said:
In my opinion, there has never been a better platform for modding to this day. I loved mapping for Half-Life and miss the days when even a single person could feasibly make a mod rivaling the original game; Neil Manke's work on mods like They Hunger was absolutely inspiring.

The best part was that although the engine was robust and feature rich, there was still so much innovation to be done by the community. Regular gamers would never know how much creative thought had to go into to doing seemingly unremarkable things, like working doors on elevators or making an object roll while moving forward.

As far as the graphics hardware in the demo video, unless they're using something extremely rudimentary for graphics acceleration, it looks to me like they're running in software mode. A voodoo2 would have smoothed out the textures considerably leaving no square texels on any surfaces, an ATI Rage would have blurred textures beyond recognition at any distance, and a Riva 128 would have had a super visible lack of z-buffering with dancing triangles everywhere. For the record, I had all three cards when half-life came out and am speaking from experience. Oh, how good we have it today...
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They Hunger was a masterpiece, great GREAT mod and if you own HL and never played it I suggest you give it a try ASAP
 
blitzkommando said:
That would be pretty awesome. The "VG Hall of Fame" or something. Would be really awesome if they could somehow have a LAN center set up for old fashioned DM fragfests. I miss those old twitch shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament.
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Yes. And thanks to the internet I found the ISO :)
94cd67d896cdc19b2097578.jpg
 
defaultluser said:
Read the Youtube video description by the author!

They were posted on Reedit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1665n3/update_finally_got_a_copy_of_that_half_life_alpha/
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Thanks!

Galaxy said:
Neil Manke's work on mods like They Hunger was absolutely inspiring.
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Nerd boner schwiiiiinnng. They Hunger was simply fantastic. I remember it came on the PCGamer magazine CD Edition. I still have a stack of magazines with cds/dvds starting from 1996 in a box somewhere in my garage.
 
Another thing this tech video didn't mention is just how much better the netplay was over Quake. I still remember the very first time I played online, I thought something was wrong because my movement wasn't completely arsed up with lag from my 28.8k connection. In Quake, tricky jumps were basically impossible because Quake multiplayer locked movement to a clunky grid of imprecise nodes- you couldn't move just a little bit in any direction without lurching forward to the next node. Also, lag in Half-Life only affected interactions between player, whereas lag in Quake even affected your own movement. If you have a ping of 400 in Half-Life it might make your aim off, but a ping of 400 in Quake meant that there was a 400ms delay for every single keystroke you made. The term "Ice Skating" was popular back then. Half-Life's multiplayer gameplay was the best damn thing ever in 1998. The deathmatch was great, and SvenCoop was even more fun.

By the way, I don't suppose any of you guys remember an obscure deathmatch mod called Rocket Crowbar?
 
Galaxy said:
Another thing this tech video didn't mention is just how much better the netplay was over Quake. I still remember the very first time I played online, I thought something was wrong because my movement wasn't completely arsed up with lag from my 28.8k connection. In Quake, tricky jumps were basically impossible because Quake multiplayer locked movement to a clunky grid of imprecise nodes- you couldn't move just a little bit in any direction without lurching forward to the next node. Also, lag in Half-Life only affected interactions between player, whereas lag in Quake even affected your own movement. If you have a ping of 400 in Half-Life it might make your aim off, but a ping of 400 in Quake meant that there was a 400ms delay for every single keystroke you made. The term "Ice Skating" was popular back then. Half-Life's multiplayer gameplay was the best damn thing ever in 1998. The deathmatch was great, and SvenCoop was even more fun.

By the way, I don't suppose any of you guys remember an obscure deathmatch mod called Rocket Crowbar?
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Having read this thread, I can now die a happy person.

It's been confirmed, Half-Life is and was the greatest FPS...EVER.
 
This is before my time. The only way I can appreciate this video is by relating it to the HL2 tech demo. After playing and making maps for HL1 then watching the HL2 demo premier gave me goosebumps. I think the giant pachinko machine put it over the edge...
 
starfox 64 ( lylat wars for nintendo europe whores like myself :D ) turok and HL1 still look good IMO

btw goldsrc was built off Quake 1 not Q2 !!!

oh about the security guys, they were supposed to be your enemies back then, so they had to somehow find a way make them look mean-er :D

I did a back-to-back playthrough last year, everytime i finished a chapter in HL1 i loaded up BMS so i could replay the same levels in their full glory, good times :)
 
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