First Half Life 2, Screen Shots enjoy.
Also here is the lastest info on Half Life 2:

Half-Life 2: The Very First Look (PC)
After nearly five years, Gordon Freeman is set to return … along with a few thousand of his headcrab buddies.

Four years, five months, and sixteen days. That's how long it's been since I first finished Half-Life and sent Gordon Freeman into the void for an uncertain future with the mysterious G-Man. At the time, I was running a semi-popular website for Quake 2 modifications and -- against the judgment of one of my buddies at PlanetQuake -- I'd decided to branch out to Half-Life mods as well. His argument: While we both thought Valve Software's trip through the Black Mesa Research Facility was one of the best games we'd ever played, it was still unknown what the future held for the Half-Life community.

Odds are you know what happened next: Half-Life went on to win just about every "Game of the Year" award for 1998, and in its wake also spawned a number of successful expansions such as Opposing Force. More importantly, it also gave birth to a multiplayer community that continues to dominate the Internet today, spinning off retail games such as the mega-successful Counter-Strike and the just-released Day of Defeat. It's been recognized by several pubs as THE greatest game of all time, and has remained at the peak of the PC gaming universe for nearly five years.

But somewhere, lost in this sea of accolades, expansions and modifications, remained an unanswered question: What about Half-Life 2? Since the day we finished the single-player game, Valve had yet to say a single word about the game we all knew they'd get around to making one day; even getting someone to go on record and acknowledge the game's development was a near-impossible task.

Finally, that silence has been broken, and we recently visited the new offices of Valve Software in Bellevue, WA, for our first look and details on the game we've all been waiting for: Half-Life 2. The best news? It's just a few months away, scheduled for release on September 30, 2003.

Straight From The Source

The story of Half-Life 2 starts with its technology. While the original Half-Life was created with Quake technology licensed from id Software, Valve spent most of the last few years developing their own brand-new engine, dubbed "Source." In fact, most of what we got to see while at Valve were proof-of-concept tech demos finished around September 2002 to show off the capabilities of the Source engine; only later did the team start constructing levels for the actual game.

To show off the new engine, Valve's Doug Lombardi took us through a number of tech demos, starting with an impressive physics display. Using a special anti-gravity weapon, Lombardi lifted up a nearby barrel and bounced it off the wall a few times, eventually moving on to smaller cans and bottles. By throwing the objects, we watched them react realistically to walls as well as each other. To create the physics code, Valve started with Havok code (a leading software package used by several current game engines), but have added considerable modifications of their own.

During this demo, Lombardi mentions that instead of the traditional texture set, the Source engine goes a step further with they call a "material set." In other words, not only does every surface have a certain look to it, but specific properties as well, be it metal, wood, tile or brick. In doing so, objects react different when in contact with different surfaces -- we were able to scrape a barrel against a wall (creating some sparks in the process), drop it to the ground with a thud, or bounce it off other barrels for a more metallic sound. The same could be said for the bottles and cans … each item produced a unique sound when dropped to the ground. Wood also reacts in a complex manner, as it splinters into smaller and smaller pieces when shot, and burns when set on fire.

Lombardi next showed us the Source engine's ragdoll physics, picking up inanimate characters at varying points on their body and flopping them around. Perhaps the best compliment we can pay is that the models looked completely soft and pliable as they were dragged around, appearing to carry real weight and mass. To further illustrate the point, we moved to another part of the makeshift level, where a series of wooden planks protruded from the wall, a limp body resting at the top. Shooting and shattering the top plank brought the body falling through the series of planks, flailing around like a body in a life-size pachinko machine.

Still in the demonstration level, Lombardi showed us a 30-foot mechanical contraption with large pistons pumping away. (What is it with these guys and valves and gears, anyway?) Hanging above was a massive metal wrench, which Lombardi released to drop into the works below, subsequently wedging itself in the machinery and bringing everything to a complete halt. Even a gas canister took off when the top was shot off, spinning around on the floor in unpredictable patterns. We've seen shades of this in Half-Life and successive expansions, but with the new physics system it looks like Valve is set to bring the idea of real-world exploration and problem solving to the next level.

We got to see a small snippet of gameplay tying all these aspects together in a more traditional setting. Starting out on a wooden pier, water realistically shimmering all around, our character moved forward to meet a zombie, who picked up a metal barrel and flung it our way. Using the shotgun, we could pick the barrel out of the air (sending it hurtling back at the zombie), as well as shoot out wooden planks on the pier.

With all of these considerable graphical upgrades, we were pleased to hear that the minimum system specs are currently targeted at a 700 MHz PC with 128 MB RAM and a DX6-level video card, meaning you won't need a NASA supercomputer to run Half-Life 2. Of course, you'll want to have something better to fully reap the benefits of the new tech, but gamers who haven't upgraded in a while shouldn't have to worry about breaking their budget.

While the technical wizardry is certainly impressive, we still haven't answered the all-important question: What's Half-Life 2 all about, anyway? Truth be told, there are things we know, but plenty more Valve is keeping under wraps.

First of all, the game is divided into 12 large chapters, split into many smaller chunks (as in the original Half-Life). According to Lombardi, each chapter should take about three or four hours to play through, which means it could actually run a bit longer than Half-Life (which itself was longer than most first-person shooters).

Of course, Gordon Freeman is back, but nothing we've seen so far indicates a trip back to the Black Mesa Research Facility. Instead, most of what we saw focused on an Eastern European locale called City 17. When asked about other locations for the game, Valve Managing Director Gabe Newell wouldn't give out any other specific locations, but he did reveal something of interest, saying "the entire game will be set on Earth," and that gamers won't be visiting the alien world of Xen this time around.

Even so, it's clear this isn't any Earth we're familiar with, at least not with all these aliens running around and such. How much time has passed since the events at Black Mesa? Valve wouldn't tell us for sure, explaining that figuring out what's happened to Earth in the past few years (and what Freeman's been up to) is something you'll learn over the course of the game. True to the game's lineage, you know no more or less than Gordon Freeman: he's just as lost as you, and you'll discover the history of this brave new world right alongside him. You see the entire game through his eyes, there are no third-person scripted sequences, there are no movie-like cinematics, and you never even hear Gordon speak. As Newell states simply, "You are Gordon Freeman."

As in the original game, you'll have some help this time around. One of the key figures is girl named Alyx Vance, who, as it turns out, is the daughter of one of the scientists from Black Mesa. ("A child of this new world," says Lombardi.) You might remember her father, Eli -- he was the only scientist "of color" to appear in the game -- and he returns for Half-Life 2 as well. It turns out Alyx's mother was killed during the incident at Black Mesa, and she's well aware of who Gordon Freeman is … although you may not be entirely sure yourself. Also returning: our buddy, Barney the security guard, who we last saw successfully escaping from Black Mesa at the end of Blue Shift.

Although nothing substantial, we were able to glean a little more info from Valve on a variety of topics. At points, you'll be fighting with aliens from Xen, for reasons that have yet to be revealed. And, just as you fought the military in Half-Life, you'll find yourself in combat against City 17 personnel. Vehicles will be present and play a major role, and they won't just be preprogrammed objects on a rail; you'll be in full control and will need them to get from one area to another quickly.

As for weapons, you'll once again have a mixture of human and alien technology: The crowbar will be back, so you should expect lots more headcrab-bashing action. During our playtime we also saw a shotgun, a pistol, a machinegun (which Valve says is not the MP5), and the aforementioned gravity gun (which at one point we believe was referred to as the "manipulator"). And, as in Half-Life, every weapon will have a secondary fire mode to keep things interesting.

The Eyes Have It

Perhaps the single most impressive thing we saw during these demos was the character musculature system and demonstration of facial expressions. Sound boring? In reality, the facial expressions the characters are capable of are nothing short of amazing. Using Alyx as an example, we watched as her face cycled through a series of emotions, from happy to quizzical to annoyed, in an eerily realistic fashion.

The first thing that jumps out at you is the character's eyes, which are like nothing you've seen before in a video game. In trying to create realistic facial expressions for their characters, Valve says they've been working with research done by Dr. Paul Ekman of UCSF, who's been doing research on autism and facial expressions for quite some time. Most games present eyes as two slits and a very flat look (or at best, perfectly spherical orbs), when in fact eyes are more elliptical and not perfectly centered. The eyes of the characters in Half-Life 2 have a "wet" look that further sells the illusion, with light reflecting off them. When we later saw the newest model of Barney, his eyes remained focused on us as we moved about the room, and the effect was so realistic it was flat-out CREEPY.

The characters also speak in a more realistic manner than before. It's not just that the character models have higher polycounts than before; you can see muscles in their face (especially the jaw area) move around as they speak. These aren't scripted events: Valve has implemented technology to allow characters to lip-synch automatically and realistically to any dialogue they record, and they've also given the characters the ability to make decisions on the fly, depending on their facial expression. We watched as Alyx was made to pucker up and deliver a line, trying to maintain her pose but occasionally breaking out of it to pronounce certain words.

Of course, you can't have a female model without breasts, and you can see the muscles in Alyx's torso move around convincingly as she moves her arms around. Valve wasn't expecting the side characters to draw so much attention the first time around, but now they're guaranteed to be one of the major features of the game with near-lifelike sidekicks running around.

The Zoo

To help give us an idea of all the characters and creatures we'll be meeting in Half-Life 2, we were taken on a tour of "The Zoo," another makeshift level where many of the game's models could be seen on display. The first area contained updated versions of some of the alien lifeforms we met during the first Half-Life, including three varieties of headcrabs, three different types of zombies, and an updated bullsquid. Will the dog-like houndeyes return? They weren't on display, and at the moment it looks like they won't be appearing in Half-Life 2. Another important creature in the zoo: the "ant lion," which was shown off during a number of demos throughout the day, and will actually fight on your side in a few areas.

The second area we went through showed off a few other new enemies, starting with a "turret class" camera bot, a flying headcrab and an assassin reminiscent of the female ninjas from Half-Life. We also got to look at some of the City 17 personnel, referred to as Combine soldiers, as well as the mech-like suits that some of them wear.

Finally, we reached a gallery of human characters, where we got to take another look at Alyx, Barney, Eli, and other characters. The G-Man is back, and has been given a complete overhaul, as has Barney. Taking a close look at Eli, we could see that he wears a prosthetic leg, an unfortunate side effect (we believe) of the events at Black Mesa.

In Half-Life, much of Black Mesa's staff was comprised of generic characters -- it was common to see the same scientists over and over as you ran through the halls of the research facility. For Half-Life 2, Valve has implemented a morphing technology that allows them to take their core set of models and blend them together to create an endless amount of characters. As a result, every NPC you meet will be unique in some way, including a key scientist name Kleiner. Possibly the most interesting character of the bunch: a large robotic sidekick built by Alyx, known only as "Dog."

More Demonstrations of Power

While the first few demos Valve showed us focused on the graphical, physics and expressive capabilities of the Source engine, a few others illustrated various environments and creature AI. The first of these was in an urban setting, with our character starting out in an alleyway. With enemies on the way, our hero ducked into a nearby door and crouched down, but the enemy knocked out the door's small window with a head-mounted camera, looked around, and proceeded to pound through the metal door to get inside.

Newell explained that this wasn't technically a scripted sequence, but instead part of the character AI, checking to see if the player is nearby and then launching into a special attack. As Newell explained, "It checks to see if there's anything cool it can do," … and it certainly did.

Another demonstration featured Freeman running around on a dried-up seabed with a series of ant lions running around. Although the terrain was greatly uneven, the creatures had no problem keeping all their legs on the ground and traversing the terrain effectively. At another point, one of the creatures runs across a human tank and immediately starts butting up against it, rocking it back and forth in an attempt to knock it over. Once again, these aren't scripted sequences, but the creature AI working its way around a level, encountering something and knowing how to react to it.

The success of Half-Life came in handy in the creation of another level, a cargo ship fully modeled on a real-life counterpart. According to Newell, the ship's crewmembers were fans of Half-Life, and extended an invitation to visit and model the ship square foot by square foot. We only got a brief glimpse of the level, but everything seemed to be in place, right down to the pipes running along the ceiling. "Of course, a real ship wouldn't have aliens attacking you," says Newell, referring to the creatures running around below. Newell also pointed out that explosions in the Source engine conform to the area in question, so a grenade launched into a tight corridor will cause more damage to someone the same distance away in an open space.

Perhaps everything we'd seen came together in one incredible display set in City 17, focusing on a 40-foot creature known as the Strider -- an oversized headcrab balancing on three thin, stilted legs. Set outside, the creature caught our attention and quickly blew up a portion of a building overlooking an archway. The strider made its way to the arch, realized it was too tall to get through, crouched and did a limbo to scoot under the archway, straightening back up on the other side. None of this appeared to be scripted: We're told this is all real AI and physics, and the movements are completely believable as the creature scoots under the arch.

For his trouble, we hit the Strider a few times with our shotgun, and you could practically see the life drain out of the creature, as it collapsed to earth in a convincing manner. It was, by far, the most impressive demo we saw during the day, and only hints at the kind of cool stuff we might see in the final game.

One thing that Valve wanted to stress with the development of the Source engine was their continued commitment to mod authors. It's no surprise -- the mod community has helped extend Half-Life's, well, half-life, for years, due in no small part to Valve's support. Since the first game's release, Valve has done all sorts of things to help mod authors, from releasing tools and SDKs, to events like the annual "Half-Life Mod Expo," and even taking a few teams under their wing, resulting in commercial releases like Gunman Chronicles, Day of Defeat, and the mega-successful Counter-Strike (now on its way to the Xbox).

For Half-Life 2, Valve plans to release tools right alongside the game. The new Hammer map editor (an evolution of Half-Life's previous Worldcraft tool) will have built-in lighting previews, one of the things most requested by Half-Life mod authors. "We wanted to make the transition easy," says Lombardi.

We were shown the dynamics of creating a level, which starts with basic geometry in what's called an "orange room" -- all the walls are an untextured orange so that the author can set up the level and make sure it plays correctly. In other words, you need to make sure you don't need to rebuild parts of the set before you paint it. The level featured Freeman fighting a group of City 17 soldiers alongside a group of ant lions, still with the untextured orange walls. After showing us the basic layout and path of the level, we were then shown a completed version of the same level, fully textured and with other small touches added throughout.

Of interest to mod authors is the fact that Valve isn't using the widely used 3DSMax to create the game models -- they're using Softimage|XSI instead. Neither of these products is cheap (and often hard for mod authors to afford), but 3DSMax recently released a free scaled-down version of their product (gMax) for modders to use, and Valve and Softimage are currently looking at whether it might be possible to do the same for potential Half-Life 2 modders.

One concept mod authors may get excited about is the "Warehouse." In the past, each level designer would not only create their own levels, but often their own props for the map as well. The result was that a chair in one area of Half-Life might not always look the same as a chair somewhere else. Not only does this present consistency issues, but also resulted in level designers duplicating work.

This time around, Valve has dedicated people creating props for each level, storing them in what's best described as a virtual-3D Hollywood backlot where every type of texture, piece of world geometry, or object for that part of the world can be found. In doing so, creating a level almost becomes like a version of The Sims -- pop into the warehouse, find what you need, and use it in your level. Best of all, Valve is planning to make these Warehouses available to mod authors, which we expect the community will take to immediately.

One of the biggest changes mod developers will have to get used to is doing bump-mapping for models, which is a far more complex and time consuming process than creating skins for most current engines. As other developers have done on occasion, Valve is tossing around plans for a "mod summit" sometime before the game ships, giving mod authors a chance to look at the engine and spend some time with Valve learning the ins and outs of the various tools. (No date has been set, but we'll obviously have more news as it becomes available.)

Other Questions Answered … Or Not

One major aspect of Half-Life 2 that Valve isn't talking about yet is the multiplayer. They acknowledge that the game will have some sort of multiplayer support, but that's as far as they'll go -- there wasn't a single other nugget we could drag out of them. All we can say is ... expect to hear more about the multiplayer later this summer.

Amazingly, we did get a comment or two on another subject that Valve has been notoriously quiet on -- Team Fortress 2. We didn't even bother asking when the team-based multiplayer game would be out, but instead, when we could expect to hear some news on it. As Lombardi put it, "I would be surprised if you haven't heard an official announcement by the time Half-Life 2 comes out." Newell also acknowledges that the game is being built with the new Source engine, and why they haven't been able to say much. "We're working on a game that's using technology built for another game that hasn't been announced yet … it's kind of hard to talk about it."

Happy Anniversary, Gordon!

So how close is Half-Life 2 to release? As mentioned earlier, Valve isn't giving out some mealy-mouthed "when it's done" crap -- they've drawn a line in the sand and announced a ship date of September 30, 2003. Will they actually make that date? It's hard to say, as we've yet to see any of the actual levels in motion, only the dozen or so technical demonstrations we've seen thus far. According to Newell, they're still building content -- they're not yet at the stage where they can play through the game from start to finish -- but they are playtesting other areas for balancing purposes.

As you might already know, this November marks the fifth anniversary of Half-Life's release, which we've been eyeballing for a possible HL2 launch for some time now. When I mention this, Lombardi just flashes a sly grin and says, "Kinda funny how that works out, huh?" So while we'll be more than happy to play Half-Life 2 come this September, we won't be a bit surprised if the team opts to put an extra month of polish on the game and gives us an anniversary present to remember.

So that's it. We've seen the future of Half-Life 2, and it looks pretty bright. Valve is planning to show the game off at the ATI booth next week at E3, where they'll have a half-hour theater presentation and may be showing some updated scenes from the game. Stay tuned to GameSpy.com, as we'll be sure to have more on Half-Life 2 straight from the E3 show floor next week in Los Angeles. •

I can not be bothed sorry about the spelling`s to only update this thed of mine plz close, it i have other theds of mine to update.

Nice screen shots!

The graphics are MUCH better than in Half-Life and they should be since they are many years apart. (the screen shots are a little hard to see because of the size, and you need to use the left and right to move over to see it..)

Still good pictures!




Closed - See the floated Information thread.

This message was edited by Scarchelli(moderator) on Sep 27 2003.