New HL2 E3 Bink Video

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Bumrush

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 23, 2004
Messages
307
OMG, I think I just drooled all over myself. The character animations look phenomenal as do the menacing striders. Gotta love the physics as well, I can't wait!

VE3D Linkage
 
So when exactly will this game hit the streets now? It's been a while since i have hear anything on it. The game will rock though.
 
sweet movie, most of the footage I've already seen though, but not in high-res.
 
I think the gameplay will be better than D3 and I will like the large open maps more, however, the graphics in Doom 3 are amazing especially if you can crank up the settings.
 
Yeah, I just beat D3. It's nice, very atmospheric, but, I'll probably never play it again. I guess if nothing else the engine will make some wonderful stuff in the very near future though. From what I've seen so far, it seems like HL2 might have the sort of freedom and all we saw in Deus Ex 2, but with all the gameplay of the original Half-life. All I can say for sure is I just can't wait to get behind the wheel of that buggy type vehicle. I'm quite certain HL2 will blow Doom3 out of the water. (I'm sorry ID, not to belittle your work, but, Doom3 isn't THAT great.) Now, what I want to see is someone porting the original Doom levels to Doom 3's engine. That would be quite entertaining indeed.

As for release date, officially early September (I believe I read the second.) However, I saw something somewhere claiming that the date has just been pushed up again to November. I haven't been able to verify this yet. All I can say is that they've been pushing the date up for so fricking long we are all getting tired of this. It's things like that that causes illegal alpha copies to circulate around... (No, I'm not referring to the first copy that made such a big deal and first pushed back the release dates, I'm saying that they risk someone trying something again with all this waiting. Nor have I ever even so much as seen a copy of that alpha, so don't ask.) Hype and anticipation are one thing, but, this has gone too far. It was supposed to be released last year, at this rate, we'll be lucky to get it this year... *sigh*

EDIT: Just started the download on that video. Nice, only 63MB. I got that CD sized video one time that looks and sounds like crap and still wonder why it was ~700MB for such poor quality. This may be smaller and worse perhaps (not done downloading,) but at least it's more reasonable.

BTW. Is there ONE single HL2 video ANYWHERE AT ALL that isn't on a server requiring you to register (yes, they all allow free registration) just to get one fricking file? Thank goodness someone pointed me to bugmenot...
 
that is some awesome quality. its like better than dvd, how do they do that? id like to find out how to record game footage to a bink with that quality.
 
They probably saved parts of it at a time through either their own custom output utility or at the very least with a lossless codec (like maybe Huffyuv,) then, after editing and everything, encoded to Bink later. I'm more inclined to believe the possibility that they had something built into there.

Better than DVD though? Well, it was high resolution, but not so high framerate. And Bink is NOT the best quality encoder out there. It sort of has a color lessening effect (assuming it doesn't actually just simply directly go to 16-bit, but, if it does, it has a good downsampler for the most part.) Not to mention the jumps and that kind of thing. MPEG2 can do high resolution as well, but the bitrates are bad for online. MPEG4 however, if set properly, would come up with a higher quality video at the same total bitrate.

At least it's a heck of a lot better than that horrible encode of a tape recording of the demonstrations. Too bad they don't have a full version like that.
 
I was gunna say "that video was pretty boring" but then I got reading how the video was DVD quality and figured I must not have watched the right one, sure enough I didn't....

Downloading now....
 
Okay just watched it and it brings back so many memories of the first one.... Haven't played it in so long that I totally forgot about the guided rockets, I was like "What the hell did he shoot at?" "Oh yeah the red dot!"
Anyway I have to watch it again, that thing that killed him was awesome, and if they show your deaths ala' Tribes it will be cool (especially with the updated graphics)
 
I loved the battle scene with the Strider, I think that will wind up being scarier than anything D3 can throw at us... How about the part where the grunts kicked in the door??? Incredible, to tell you the truth I don't care if the graphics aren't as pretty as Far Cry or as insanse an D3, rememeber gameplay is KING!! HL1 proved it, and I finally think Hl1 will be dethroned by HL2. How many games have we played over the years that simply could not match the scripted sequences, the enemy AI, the fear of being in a vent, the storyline and the multiplayer of the original HL???? IMHO, nothing has come close, and I have played so many FPS games since HL. The only game that I had as much fun in was Shogo, but that was short lived since the MP was too laggy.
 
I'm just looking forward to throwing things around with the Grav Gun... especially when people throw grenades :)
 
Bumrush said:
I loved the battle scene with the Strider, I think that will wind up being scarier than anything D3 can throw at us... How about the part where the grunts kicked in the door??? Incredible, to tell you the truth I don't care if the graphics aren't as pretty as Far Cry or as insanse an D3, rememeber gameplay is KING!! HL1 proved it, and I finally think Hl1 will be dethroned by HL2. How many games have we played over the years that simply could not match the scripted sequences, the enemy AI, the fear of being in a vent, the storyline and the multiplayer of the original HL???? IMHO, nothing has come close, and I have played so many FPS games since HL. The only game that I had as much fun in was Shogo, but that was short lived since the MP was too laggy.
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remember at E3 where Valve said none of that was scripted (the grunts kicking in the door)

then it got leaked and the people proved to the public that it was INDEED scripted.

sigh, !!!!!!s.

don't hype this game up too much and ruin it for yourself now. :eek:
 
Hold on a sec, will this game take place on earth or in the alien world? Im kinda lost since I played the first Half Life many years ago. Please enlighten me :)
 
It will all take place on Earth, no visit to Xen or any other alien places. You start off in City 17, an eastern european sort of place.
 
From what I saw in the long demo, it appears that HL2 takes place quite a few years in the future after the first event ended (when the lawyer guy -- that's what I always thought of him as for some reason -- flies you away saying you will be needed for something else soon.) The world is at war with the aliens and it's not a winning battle, so one person decides to create a "safe" city where people could more or less relax. This city, however is under military law by the look of it, and not a good military law either. It looks like the people you join up with are effectively rebels trying to get out of this militant rule.

This is all guesswork. Don't kill me if I'm wrong. d-:

Oh, and even the crappy poorly encoded video of the tape recording showed me very clearly that this game has INSANE graphics. It's easily on par with Doom 3 -- except that you can actually see things more than two feet in front of you. ^_^ It's easy to miss, but, watch the long demo, just after the guards are kicking the door in and he enters the room to the right. Just the way the wood and room looks for a split second before the horrible encoding ruins the effect made me say wow outloud. And that's just the wood...

As for the scripting, well, let's just let their previous work speak for itself. These people know what to do with scripts, believe me... Don't worry, this game won't dissapoint -- if they get around to releasing it in OUR lifetimes......



Oh yeah, and I thought the beam attack that the strider shot off was pretty neat too. It had this cool sort of distortive effect to it like space itself was being warped. Really nice effect. The first time I saw it, I didn't realize the person was being shot at by a second strider. I thought that they were sniped out by some kind of alien ultra-sniper rifle from the building they were looking at.
 
I can't understand what people hate about scripted events. Scripts that are done in the correct manner can be as exciting as shooting something. Remember the scripted scene in HL1 when you were in the vents and the grunts starting shooting at the vent and all you saw were bullet holes and the light flowing through them??

What about in D3, one of the levels where your in the Alpha Labs and finally reach some help only to watch them get smoked by zombies? Scripted sequences can really add to a game.
 
Yeah, the one and only downside to scripted events is they happen almost exactly the same (when not actually exactly) every time. In other words, it hurts replayability. That said, remember, HL1 didn't win all those best single player game awards for it's looks... I swear that there was a new scripted event every 5 seconds it felt like. There was always some little thing like machines spontaneously exploding just as you pass by or an angry giant monster stomping around and making the ceiling fall in, even one point I had trouble with where the pipe you are in just spontaneously breaks, taking you down with it (problem here is that it HURTS and killed me until I figured out how to cheat the event.)

When done correctly, it has a wonderful effect. Surely you remember the first time in Doom 3 when it went all dark, you hear the whispers around you and suddenly a pentagram flares up and enemies jump out at you? Or how about the ghost that whispers for you to follow it, leaving bloody footprints. When you get to the door it leads you to, in that moment of terror, it has an effect where you can hardly move and you hear your heart pumping. All this is scripted.

I think HL2 won't be half as bad as Doom 3 when it comes to replayability though. It will have a lot more to it than that original effect Doom 3 relied on that made D3 boring the moment it wore off for me. I will admit to you, there was actually one whole point in D3 where I actually literally jumped when an enemy I hadn't known was there suddenly surprised me. I haven't done that for a game probably since the original Doom back in 93... Eventually one tends to get used to such things, you know?
 
I checked the vid earlier and like others have already stated its the same footage just with high res. I'm excited for HL 2 and I think that it will be more complex\raise the genre then Doom 3 was. Especially when it comes to physics and AI. Its also cool that they are including CS:Source as well.
 
I just watched it, for some reason I thought the graphics were much better than they are in the video. They still kick ass but back when i saw the vids 6 months ago i thought that the graphics looked much better for some reason, maybe it is due to it being so delayed taht a bunch of new games coming out look just as good, if not better. Still looks cool though, cool outdoor settings that is for sure. I'm liking it, looks like another good title this year(or next, or whenever).
 
IxGOxSOLO said:
I just watched it, for some reason I thought the graphics were much better than they are in the video. They still kick ass but back when i saw the vids 6 months ago i thought that the graphics looked much better for some reason, maybe it is due to it being so delayed taht a bunch of new games coming out look just as good, if not better. Still looks cool though, cool outdoor settings that is for sure. I'm liking it, looks like another good title this year(or next, or whenever).
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I agree, just watched the video, and it didnt look nearly as good as the 700mb+ Quicktime vid back from E3, and they both had the same parts in them, but the Bink version made the graphics looks kind of cheesy, compared to the quicktime version ?
I hope it truly looks as good as the E3 quicktime movie
 
bah you cant really rely on these videos to show the true graphics of this game... just a "sample"
 
The problem is that bink was NOT made for truecolor. It was made way back in the earlier days. In fact, bink and smack are much the same thing, smack existed back in the dos days. I remember playing a game that used it extensively. For 256 colors, it couldn't be beat. It still did pretty well in 16-bit. But, it just wasn't meant for true color. I believe that basically they explicitely made it with game videos in mind, which would explain it as only much more recently have games managed to get graphics good enough to start making such videos look to be lower quality due to the color issues. CG can still look good in this though, so that's part of why it's not yet extinct (though I still say MPEG4 could probably do better now if done properly.)

In other words, the resolution is wonderful, but the color loss is terrible. Hence the reason it might seem worse in the high resolution bink video than the god-awful quicktime video. Quicktime was meant for real video (especially since it now just uses MPEG4 like everyone else.)

Oh, and Morazl, check out the original long video and say that again. You can easily tell what kind of quality we will be getting out of HL2, and it's not bad at all. If you can see how great it will be in a crappy video like that, I say that makes a pretty good point.

I just hope I can upgrade by then. I can tell my current card will have to use severely decreased quality settings compared to what they were using when they made that video.
 
To answer some questions and correct some "facts":

1. The reason valve releases their videos in bink format is because the company that does it is down the street from them.

2. Valve never claimed that the scene was unscripted. They claimed the AI was unscripted, and they weren't lying.

3. HL2 has taken so long to come out for a variety of reasons, the biggest being the source leak, the second is that they are packaging CS:Source with HL2, and CS:S is still in beta. I would guess that HL2 is done at this point. Valve very intelligently made this decision to a) have frickin awesome multi right out of the box, and b) to one up Doom3. Or at least those are my best guesses.

all you people hating on scripted events should go back and play Doom3 again.
"Oooh, a cache of ammo, let me pick tha----CLICK! *out go the lights* *15 demons spawn*"
or, the ever popular alternative:
"Hmmm, a doorway into a completely new area. If I go through here, nothing bad can happen!".

don't get me wrong, Doom3 has great graphics. They might even be better than HL2's. I can't judge: I play it in 640x480 and get about 20fps. I played CS:S at a lan center on a considerably better computer than mine and was astounded. What I do know is that Doom3's gameplay is dismal compared to CS:S, and I have a sneaking suspicion that HL2's single player will blow Doom's out of the water.

I'm sure that in a few months, Doom3 will have a good mod. That, or a great game that licenses the engine will come out. But right now, in my eyes, Doom3 is nothing more than a tech demo with a few trite gimmicks thrown in (ie, BOO). I know its harsh, and I also know that alot of my bias is because I haven't been able to play Doom3 in all its glory. But that's what I think as of now.
 
dudewth said:
He said that it has awesome graphics and that it looks better than doom 3.
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has he played doom3?
edit: OMG YAWSOME GRAPHIXXXXX GUYSZZZ
 
when you guys say "better graphics" - I take it you are only going by ultra high res textures and large open maps ???? cause i'm quite lost how a unified lighting engine is somehow played down to lightmaps. :rolleyes: :)

i just can't wait for a few upcoming games based from doom3 code to push the limits on the polygons and textures.....then we'll start to see some real action.
 
"Now, what I want to see is someone porting the original Doom levels to Doom 3's engine. That would be quite entertaining indeed."

I was thinking the same thing.

pez
 
SYN ACK said:
when you guys say "better graphics" - I take it you are only going by ultra high res textures and large open maps ???? cause i'm quite lost how a unified lighting engine is somehow played down to lightmaps. :rolleyes: :)

i just can't wait for a few upcoming games based from doom3 code to push the limits on the polygons and textures.....then we'll start to see some real action.
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'better graphics' can mean a lot of things. to a lot of people, halflife2 can be more graphically pleasing beacause of the really well done texture work, or the believable environments or high poly models. a game doesn't have to have cutting edge technology to look better than another.

and i know you have an instant bias against hl2 knowing that its technology of lighting is not up to par with doom3, but you should really look at the latest screenshots and think about it logically. hl2 looks impressive, theres no denying it, not to mention a game isn't 100% graphics. the physics are going to play an important role in the gameplay, and not to mention the storytelling is probably going to be top notch just like halflife was. and you know, its possible to be a doom3 fan and not a HL2 basher at the same time.
 
doh-nut said:
its possible to be a doom3 fan and not a HL2 basher at the same time.
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I'd like to agree with you, but the more I read on these forums the less sure I become. It seems like just about everyone wants one game or the other to be king. When new screens from CS:S were being released people said things like "oh, that looks crap compared to doom." Other people then point to HL2 and either say that it looks better or it will have better gameplay.

Why do people care so much whether one game is much better than the other? I plan to play both, and the way I see it my money is better spent on two amazing games than on one amazing game and one mediocre game.
 
Dijonase said:
I'd like to agree with you, but the more I read on these forums the less sure I become. It seems like just about everyone wants one game or the other to be king. When new screens from CS:S were being released people said things like "oh, that looks crap compared to doom." Other people then point to HL2 and either say that it looks better or it will have better gameplay.

Why do people care so much whether one game is much better than the other? I plan to play both, and the way I see it my money is better spent on two amazing games than on one amazing game and one mediocre game.
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durn tootin'. I'm pretty lenient and open minded with my entertainment, whether it's games, movies, whatever. Some small flaw isn't going to ruin my experience, and because two games are in competition doesn't mean I can only like one.
 
gumplunger said:
durn tootin'. I'm pretty lenient and open minded with my entertainment, whether it's games, movies, whatever. Some small flaw isn't going to ruin my experience, and because two games are in competition doesn't mean I can only like one.
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Exactly. I was put off by DOOM3 at first, what with the funky flashlight setup, but I got over that quick. I bought the game to enjoy it, and something so simple as the flashlight gimmick wasn't going to stop me from enjoying it. Now if a game is flat out bad then I'm not going to force myself to like it, but little problems won't ruin a game for me.

There are people arguing in another thread that the tiles in a pic of de_dust from CS:S are too shiny. If that's what ruins the game for you then that's just sad.
 
But I was merely discussing graphics, not gameplay.....you seem to have missed this.
 
SYN ACK said:
But I was merely discussing graphics, not gameplay.....you seem to have missed this.
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I wasn't specifically referring to you, and I'm sorry if you got that idea. I was just making a general comment. When it comes to HL2 and D3 so many people seem to rag on one game and praise the other. Whether it be graphics, gameplay, sound, or physics, people seem to have the following attitude: "the graphics/gameplay/sound/physics in HL2/D3 will be/are better than the graphics/gameplay/sound/physics in D3/HL2, and therefore D3/HL2 sucks/will suck."
 
SYN ACK said:
remember at E3 where Valve said none of that was scripted (the grunts kicking in the door)

then it got leaked and the people proved to the public that it was INDEED scripted.

sigh, !!!!!!s.

don't hype this game up too much and ruin it for yourself now. :eek:
Click to expand...

actually they never said "none of this is scripted".

during the barricade section of the demo, where you're working with allies, they said that the allies are unscripted and they're using their ai to figure out where to go.

why do people keep spreading this bullshit about valve saying nothing was scripted? thats fucking ridiculous, games need scripts, otherwise you would wander around aimlessly and there would be no story to follow.
 
there were actually quite a few talks on the subject on the whole "e3 madness"

ill try diggin em up,
 
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