13 ms·

Writing for Half-Life

216 points by douche 10y ago

kowdermeister 10y ago
Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9rY5vbr3xqAJ:www.marclaidlaw.com/writing/half-life/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=hu http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9rY5vbr...
- AceJohnny2 10y ago
  That doesn't seem to be the actual linked page. Confusingly, there's both /writing-half-life/ (original link) and /writing/half-life/ (your cached link) on the server. I can't get google to give me a cache of the actual article. Edit: server's fixed
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- sparky_z 10y ago
  No, that's a cache of the wrong page. There's a one-character difference between the urls. Google may not actually have a cache of the correct page, since it's so new.
- Splines 10y ago
  Correct cached link (although original loaded for me): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VR6mfqYilJ4J:www.marclaidlaw.com/writing-half-life/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VR6mfqY...
  - lewiscollard 10y ago
    Text only link works better because then it doesn't hang trying to load the stylesheets: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VR6mfqYilJ4J:www.marclaidlaw.com/writing-half-life/&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VR6mfqY... :)
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
This echoes what Yahtzee said about the game years later, and it still rings true: Half-Life is such a powerful experience precisely because you never leave the shoes of Freeman. Its story interleaves with its gameplay, and the pieces are all there to see, but if you just want to shoot some aliens, that's okay too. It's a collection of innovations and feelings that few other games have been able to capture. On an unrelated side-note, if you've played Half-Life, Freeman's Mind is a must-watch: it's an astoundingly funny bit of comedy that is just so brilliant. Yahtzee Crowshaw's (yes, the very same guy I mentioned above) LP of the game (Let's Drown Out All Of Half-Life), while by no means a must-watch, is also reccomended.
- rodgerd 10y ago
  > Half-Life is such a powerful experience precisely because you never leave the shoes of Freeman. I felt much the same way about Marathon, which ended up being under-appreciated by virtue of being Mac-only. A shame.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Many said that Marathon delivered on the story promise before Half-Life. I tried it out recently. Unfortunately, due to a warped perspective and a positively abysmal FOV, I can't actually play it without feeling sick, and as a result the whole thing feels like a slog. It may be good, but for me, it's totally unplayable.
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      I remember playing Marathon when it first came out, and... frankly had the same reaction. I managed to play Spectre on a Mac LC, but Marathon broke me. Lots of potential, but as seen through the bottom of a beer glass.
    - dietrichepp 10y ago
      Ehh, wondering if you played Marathon or Marathon 2. Either way, older games are often lacking in usability compared to newer ones. That's especially true of FPSs prior to, say, 2000.
patrickmn 10y ago
Working link: http://web.archive.org/web/20161003094237/http://www.marclaidlaw.com/writing-half-life/ http://web.archive.org/web/20161003094237/http://www.marclai...
douche 10y ago
I would encourage anyone who finds this interesting or just loves Half-Life in general to also read the preceding entry Mathoms from the Lamda Files[1]. Half-Life was just such an experience. Even almost 20 years later, it might be the best game I have ever played. [1] http://www.marclaidlaw.com/mathoms-lambda-files-c-1998/ http://www.marclaidlaw.com/mathoms-lambda-files-c-1998/
- pietromenna 10y ago
  I am unable to access at all the sites. Really curious to read the main article
AceJohnny2 10y ago
> Before beginning work on Half-Life, I encountered a lot of comments to the effect that a first person shooter didn’t need a story—that hardcore gamers didn’t want one, and that anything more complicated than a bunch of moving targets and some buttons to push would be lost on them. I remember reading a long time ago that John Carmack insisted that Doom and Quake needed nothing more than one interact button and the depth of level design of finding keycards to unlock doors. Considering how ID Games have been received after Half-Life, i.e. criticized for their lowbrow gameplay and story, I wonder if he ever really understood how wrong he was.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  Indeed Carmack was wrong. And the game that proved it was Quake, not HL. Wolfenstein and Doom were both great, eye-opening games because their rendering gave us a visual experience we hadn't seen before. Nobody cared if they were the gaming equivalent of dumb, loud rock. Besides Doom's art had a terrifying -- if brainless -- grandeur. Quake also delivered a step up in rendering, a great feat that I admire as a software engineer. But as a game, it was dull. It was no more brainless than Doom, but we had already seen that particular kind of dumb-horror before, and the full 3d really just felt like an incremental improvement.
  - mrob 10y ago
    >as a game, it was dull My guess is that you only played single player. Single player Quake is indeed less exciting than Doom, largely because of lower enemy counts. The people correctly praising Quake as a classic played multiplayer. In multiplayer the 3D environments really matter. It's more than just an incremental improvement because full 3D gives you so many options for movement. Quake has very high skill ceiling and mastering movement is a big part of it.
    - adrianratnapala 10y ago
      You are right that I am thinking only about single-player. Which is a big limitation on my thinking. However, in terms of an argument between story-driven vs. just-shoot-em-up, I think single-player is the most relevant.
jakebasile 10y ago
Since HL3 is probably never going to be released, I'd love it if Valve released any script or story notes they had for it. I want to see what would/could have happened.
- manachar 10y ago
  Assuming it never gets released (never is a VERY long time), I'd rather get a documentary on how it failed to get made.
  - DasIch 10y ago
    The failure would be to create Half Life 3. No matter how good an actual game called Half Life 3 could be, it would never live up to the fantasy. The No Man's Sky disaster would be nothing in comparison. The fact that Half Life 3 isn't released and there is no sign of it is almost certainly not due to some failure to produce it but due to a decision not to.
    - waiseristy 10y ago
      I still find it hard to believe that a games company would drop an IP just because people wanted it too much. But maybe that's exactly what they did
      - sotojuan 10y ago
        My theory is that since HL2 was "revolutionary" because of its physics engine (and HL1 before was "revolutionary" because of the story telling and no cutscenes), it makes sense that HL3 should combine the series excellent storytelling and level design with something that is also considered new for its time. The problem is that the only "new" thing since HL2 that could take off is VR which isn't quite there yet.
      - DasIch 10y ago
        It's indeed hard to believe, in fact it would be ridiculous. The reason though why it isn't hard to believe that Valve would do this is because Valve isn't a games company. At this point games are to Valve what email is to Google. An important product to be sure but not what they make their money with. Valve makes their money with Steam, their games are side projects. Steam is popular, the games Valve makes are popular and Valve is popular. HL3 is a massive investment, a huge risk to all of that and for what? If Valve were a games company, the money would be the answer but Valve is the Steam company, that money is not all that much to them.
van_gaal 10y ago
Hug of death?
Jaruzel 10y ago
Site is down, and I can't get the archive.org copy to render the top of the article... If anyone else has this problem I've managed to scrape the article text into a pastebin: http://pastebin.com/MMTDBTr3 http://pastebin.com/MMTDBTr3
laktak 10y ago
Anyone remember http://www.hlcomic.com http://www.hlcomic.com?

216 points by douche 10y ago

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9rY5vbr3xqAJ:www.marclaidlaw.com/writing/half-life/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=hu http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9rY5vbr...

AceJohnny2 10y ago
That doesn't seem to be the actual linked page. Confusingly, there's both /writing-half-life/ (original link) and /writing/half-life/ (your cached link) on the server. I can't get google to give me a cache of the actual article. Edit: server's fixed
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
sparky_z 10y ago
No, that's a cache of the wrong page. There's a one-character difference between the urls. Google may not actually have a cache of the correct page, since it's so new.
Splines 10y ago
Correct cached link (although original loaded for me): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VR6mfqYilJ4J:www.marclaidlaw.com/writing-half-life/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VR6mfqY...
- lewiscollard 10y ago
  Text only link works better because then it doesn't hang trying to load the stylesheets: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VR6mfqYilJ4J:www.marclaidlaw.com/writing-half-life/&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VR6mfqY... :)

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

This echoes what Yahtzee said about the game years later, and it still rings true: Half-Life is such a powerful experience precisely because you never leave the shoes of Freeman. Its story interleaves with its gameplay, and the pieces are all there to see, but if you just want to shoot some aliens, that's okay too. It's a collection of innovations and feelings that few other games have been able to capture. On an unrelated side-note, if you've played Half-Life, Freeman's Mind is a must-watch: it's an astoundingly funny bit of comedy that is just so brilliant. Yahtzee Crowshaw's (yes, the very same guy I mentioned above) LP of the game (Let's Drown Out All Of Half-Life), while by no means a must-watch, is also reccomended.

rodgerd 10y ago
> Half-Life is such a powerful experience precisely because you never leave the shoes of Freeman. I felt much the same way about Marathon, which ended up being under-appreciated by virtue of being Mac-only. A shame.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Many said that Marathon delivered on the story promise before Half-Life. I tried it out recently. Unfortunately, due to a warped perspective and a positively abysmal FOV, I can't actually play it without feeling sick, and as a result the whole thing feels like a slog. It may be good, but for me, it's totally unplayable.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    I remember playing Marathon when it first came out, and... frankly had the same reaction. I managed to play Spectre on a Mac LC, but Marathon broke me. Lots of potential, but as seen through the bottom of a beer glass.
  - dietrichepp 10y ago
    Ehh, wondering if you played Marathon or Marathon 2. Either way, older games are often lacking in usability compared to newer ones. That's especially true of FPSs prior to, say, 2000.

patrickmn 10y ago

Working link: http://web.archive.org/web/20161003094237/http://www.marclaidlaw.com/writing-half-life/ http://web.archive.org/web/20161003094237/http://www.marclai...

douche 10y ago

I would encourage anyone who finds this interesting or just loves Half-Life in general to also read the preceding entry Mathoms from the Lamda Files[1]. Half-Life was just such an experience. Even almost 20 years later, it might be the best game I have ever played. [1] http://www.marclaidlaw.com/mathoms-lambda-files-c-1998/ http://www.marclaidlaw.com/mathoms-lambda-files-c-1998/

pietromenna 10y ago
I am unable to access at all the sites. Really curious to read the main article

AceJohnny2 10y ago

> Before beginning work on Half-Life, I encountered a lot of comments to the effect that a first person shooter didn’t need a story—that hardcore gamers didn’t want one, and that anything more complicated than a bunch of moving targets and some buttons to push would be lost on them. I remember reading a long time ago that John Carmack insisted that Doom and Quake needed nothing more than one interact button and the depth of level design of finding keycards to unlock doors. Considering how ID Games have been received after Half-Life, i.e. criticized for their lowbrow gameplay and story, I wonder if he ever really understood how wrong he was.

adrianratnapala 10y ago
Indeed Carmack was wrong. And the game that proved it was Quake, not HL. Wolfenstein and Doom were both great, eye-opening games because their rendering gave us a visual experience we hadn't seen before. Nobody cared if they were the gaming equivalent of dumb, loud rock. Besides Doom's art had a terrifying -- if brainless -- grandeur. Quake also delivered a step up in rendering, a great feat that I admire as a software engineer. But as a game, it was dull. It was no more brainless than Doom, but we had already seen that particular kind of dumb-horror before, and the full 3d really just felt like an incremental improvement.
- mrob 10y ago
  >as a game, it was dull My guess is that you only played single player. Single player Quake is indeed less exciting than Doom, largely because of lower enemy counts. The people correctly praising Quake as a classic played multiplayer. In multiplayer the 3D environments really matter. It's more than just an incremental improvement because full 3D gives you so many options for movement. Quake has very high skill ceiling and mastering movement is a big part of it.
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    You are right that I am thinking only about single-player. Which is a big limitation on my thinking. However, in terms of an argument between story-driven vs. just-shoot-em-up, I think single-player is the most relevant.

jakebasile 10y ago

Since HL3 is probably never going to be released, I'd love it if Valve released any script or story notes they had for it. I want to see what would/could have happened.

manachar 10y ago
Assuming it never gets released (never is a VERY long time), I'd rather get a documentary on how it failed to get made.
- DasIch 10y ago
  The failure would be to create Half Life 3. No matter how good an actual game called Half Life 3 could be, it would never live up to the fantasy. The No Man's Sky disaster would be nothing in comparison. The fact that Half Life 3 isn't released and there is no sign of it is almost certainly not due to some failure to produce it but due to a decision not to.
  - waiseristy 10y ago
    I still find it hard to believe that a games company would drop an IP just because people wanted it too much. But maybe that's exactly what they did
    - sotojuan 10y ago
      My theory is that since HL2 was "revolutionary" because of its physics engine (and HL1 before was "revolutionary" because of the story telling and no cutscenes), it makes sense that HL3 should combine the series excellent storytelling and level design with something that is also considered new for its time. The problem is that the only "new" thing since HL2 that could take off is VR which isn't quite there yet.
    - DasIch 10y ago
      It's indeed hard to believe, in fact it would be ridiculous. The reason though why it isn't hard to believe that Valve would do this is because Valve isn't a games company. At this point games are to Valve what email is to Google. An important product to be sure but not what they make their money with. Valve makes their money with Steam, their games are side projects. Steam is popular, the games Valve makes are popular and Valve is popular. HL3 is a massive investment, a huge risk to all of that and for what? If Valve were a games company, the money would be the answer but Valve is the Steam company, that money is not all that much to them.

van_gaal 10y ago

Hug of death?

Jaruzel 10y ago

Site is down, and I can't get the archive.org copy to render the top of the article... If anyone else has this problem I've managed to scrape the article text into a pastebin: http://pastebin.com/MMTDBTr3 http://pastebin.com/MMTDBTr3

laktak 10y ago

Anyone remember http://www.hlcomic.com http://www.hlcomic.com?