**OFFICIAL HALF LIFE 2 THREAD** - KEEP ALL THE HALF LIFE CHATTER IN HERE GUYS!!

[knyghtbyte]

cheers Vian for the link......went there, painstakingly filled everything in during a quick 5 min break from the phones (i work in an inbound phone office for a classified advertising paper) only for it to tell me i encountered a server error....doh..lol

i'll sort me rig details out at home, in the meantime, feel free to peruse my specs listed below....heh

 

[bamacre]

Well I didn't stay up last night to play, but put in about 30 minutes or so this morning before going to work.

I was impressed, graphics were a little better than I thought, and the physics look great, too. I spent five minutes throwing inanimate objects at the guards, laughing my ass off as they yelled "Hey!" and chased me.

I got to a spot with two guards at a door that seemed to be locked, and couldn't get anywhere, and it was time to go to work, so I guess I'll figure that out when I get home.

Getting 35 to 75 fps on my system (in sig), at 16x12 with 4xAA and 8xAF (I turned off the ingame AA).

:thumbsup::thumbsup: to Valve on a job-well done.

 

[jpeyton]

Question, how does the surround sound on this game work? Does it output a digital signal or only an analog one? Decoding or encoding options? I want to know what sound card I should use for this game.

 

[Maetryx]

I stayed up late to pay but I only played for about 15 minutes or so... just enough to feel like I was in the zone. Ha ha. Yeah, the guards are kind of serious. I pantsed one and gave one a noogie and they shocked me.

 

The Combine are the coolest thing since Stormtroopers (SW, not Nazis).

I like how the game respects your intelligence in regards to solving puzzles. There's no obvious "DO THIS" handholding, while at the same time you don't get lost or backtrack when faced with an obstacle.

 

[gizbug]

Originally posted by: warcrow

Originally posted by: gizbug
Buddy of mine was playing the game.
Said the game is very Linear. The online play isn't all that great. Single player is very cool, but the online play is very linear and with no Team Fortress of CS2 out anytime soon, not much excitment over Multi play.

wtf are you talking about?

SIGH. Linear.............aka no real plot/ploy on MP play, and i head no a lot of co-op.
This true?

 

[gizbug]

Half-Life 2 is, simply put, the best single-player shooter ever released for the PC. It does so many things right in so many ways that it might be possible to write a thesis on the topic of Half-Life 2 compared to other single player shooters. according to IGN. What i posted above, main focus is single play, not multi.

 

[mb]

Does anyone know if there is a way to make the main menu just plain, and not have the fancy scenery crap? It's nice at first, but it takes too long to load..

 

[knyghtbyte]

right, this is getting desperate now, anyone wanna lend me a credit card so i can pay for HL2?...hehe

im a trustworthy, respectable british guy, go on, you know you want to......*smiles winningly*

no?.....*sighs*.....oh well, hopefully have some space on my own card within 2 days.......not sure im gonna make it tho *cries pathetically in a last ditch attempt to garner sympathy*

*peeks thru his fingers as he cries* . o 0 (for some reason, i dont think they falling for it)

 

[Glavinsolo]

what would you say its overall "return to play again" factor is? or playability? Will it get old quick? All are the same question so just answer one.

Trying to decide as many are which to get HL2 or WOW

...side note. i am hooked on WOW OB

 

[obeseotron]

Valve's activiation project has already failed, almost as fast as Microsoft's for XP. It's been less than 12 hours and anyone that knows what a torrent is can get HL2 for free. These are real ones, not the fakes and viruses that circulated prior to today. STOP wasting money on copy protection that does nothing to reduce piracy. If someone can point out a single copy protection scheme that hasn't been cirumvented I'll admit I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure it's never happened. Online CD checks are probably the best bet, but even then anyone moderately determined to play for free can figure it out. I'm going to go buy HL2 from EB now anyway, out of respect for valve and because I don't like dealing with the BS that comes with a cracked game, but it just goes to show, protection pisses off people who pay and doesn't even slow down warez types.

 

But it did work. Was it leaked in advance like Doom3 and Halo2? No. Everyone knew that once the app was unlocked by Steam the crack would follow in a few hours.

I would go as far to say it passed in that I didn't have to dodge spoilers all weekend from people with the leaked copy.

 

[igowerf]

Originally posted by: gizbug

Originally posted by: warcrow

Originally posted by: gizbug
Buddy of mine was playing the game.
Said the game is very Linear. The online play isn't all that great. Single player is very cool, but the online play is very linear and with no Team Fortress of CS2 out anytime soon, not much excitment over Multi play.

wtf are you talking about?

SIGH. Linear.............aka no real plot/ploy on MP play, and i head no a lot of co-op.
This true?

There is no online version of Half-Life 2. Your buddy might be talking about Counterstrike: Source.

 

[obeseotron]

You're right that it did manage to keep it under wraps until now. If that was the only goal I guess it worked, seems like overkill to stop it from leaking a few days early though. At this point though, it no longer makes a difference and its pointless to require activation on steam.

 

[Maximus96]

can somebody tell me how to show FPS count? i get about 90's in the video stress test under CS and would like to know how many FPS i get in HL2. also in CS:S, how do i show FPS in-game?

 

[BlueWeasel]

Try "cl_showfps 1" at the console

 

[knyghtbyte]

Originally posted by: obeseotron
Valve's activiation project has already failed, almost as fast as Microsoft's for XP. It's been less than 12 hours and anyone that knows what a torrent is can get HL2 for free. These are real ones, not the fakes and viruses that circulated prior to today. STOP wasting money on copy protection that does nothing to reduce piracy. If someone can point out a single copy protection scheme that hasn't been cirumvented I'll admit I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure it's never happened. Online CD checks are probably the best bet, but even then anyone moderately determined to play for free can figure it out. I'm going to go buy HL2 from EB now anyway, out of respect for valve and because I don't like dealing with the BS that comes with a cracked game, but it just goes to show, protection pisses off people who pay and doesn't even slow down warez types.

In regards to the CPS, only way you could possible prevent piracy would be to use a one time cipher system, which means encoding all the data with a different coding program on each individual copy of the game, and then release the key thats unique to that one copy of the game to the person who owns the game, (in other words barring huge brute force Cray computer running for 10 years and getting lucky you cannot break it)but it must run the decoding process each time you play........
the downside is your computer would need to be on a Cray level to be able to run the decoding for entire gamecode and play the game at the same time......hehe

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: obeseotron
Valve's activiation project has already failed, almost as fast as Microsoft's for XP. It's been less than 12 hours and anyone that knows what a torrent is can get HL2 for free. These are real ones, not the fakes and viruses that circulated prior to today. STOP wasting money on copy protection that does nothing to reduce piracy. If someone can point out a single copy protection scheme that hasn't been cirumvented I'll admit I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure it's never happened. Online CD checks are probably the best bet, but even then anyone moderately determined to play for free can figure it out. I'm going to go buy HL2 from EB now anyway, out of respect for valve and because I don't like dealing with the BS that comes with a cracked game, but it just goes to show, protection pisses off people who pay and doesn't even slow down warez types.

It's better than Doom3, which was cracked and available to the public about three days before launch. Plus they got tons of sales by preselling it on Steam.

 

[Schrodinger]

Question: is HL2 multiplayer enabled or just single player? I mean, right out of the box can you play online with other peeps or what?

 

[Viper96720]

No such thing as HL2 multiplayer.

 

[IAteYourMother]

nvm. Just through mods. Do the pirated copies on bittorrent actually work?? Or are they just CD images without a proper crack for the internet activation? Or is it like a HL2 directory?

 

[Schrodinger]

Originally posted by: Viper96720
No such thing as HL2 multiplayer.

Oh well that means one less distraction from my college work :thumbsup:

Does the engine even have the network code so that other mods can use multiplayer or what?

Is that what CS: Source is? And wtf is the "Source" ? I've seen DoD: Source etc

 

[warcrow]

Well, I've played about 3-4 hours of the game...I'll throw up the first impression later tonight.

 

[VIAN]

Glavinsolo: I feel that it is very very easy to pick up and play again. You go through so many different obstacles and they have a decent length of time to enjoy them, and doesn't feel prolonged. I wanna know what's next!

obeseotron: Bottom line, if it's a software issue, it can be cracked. There is no way. Even a hardware issue can be cracked, but it's much harder. They are trying to do the impossible, but at least they pissed people off and stopped all or many from playing the game before it's release.

IAteYourMother: GO BUY THE GAME! Trust me, you don't need a demo, the game rules and the game is worth the money.

 

[HostVisions]

Originally posted by: Glavinsolo
what would you say its overall "return to play again" factor is? or playability? Will it get old quick? All are the same question so just answer one.

Trying to decide as many are which to get HL2 or WOW

...side note. i am hooked on WOW OB

I've only played an hour and already I'm going to start over just to enjoy it all over again and make sure I didn't miss anything. The levels are amazing.