DescentBB

http://www.hl3forums.com/

Is this real?

Don't know about the web site - but if they're NOT working on HL3 somewhere then I'm a pickled pig's booty.

Ep3? Yes.

HL3? Don't hold your breath. Ep1-3 were originally going to be HL3 but they didn't want such a long wait.

Episode 1-3 is Half Life 3.

http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2007/0 ... e-date.htm

Mmmm that is a bit of a bummer though.... I mean I know the source engine is amazing, and it shows in hl2 and ep1 and ep2. I would have though that for a Half life 3 release they would have redesigned- created a new engine for it. I mean the advancement for the Goldsource engine, (hl) to the source engine was incredible. And what was the time difference? 5-6 years? I would happily wait until 2009-2010. For a brand new engine to carry on the amazing series.

But hey I'm just nit-picking now, half life is my favourite game (minus descent)

The engine and pretty graphics do not make the game fun. A fun game makes a game fun.

I wish other companies would actually follow suit and just continue their game franchise on the same game engine and maybe pretty it up a little along the way. If it aint broke... don't fix it.


So many games are now screwed up because the game company keeps fixing things after release or in each new release something major is changed.

Two examples:

Unreal 3: People loved to ride around on the wings of the hovercraft so in 3, they set it up so that it kills you if you do this, reducing gameplay. The only 3 man ground vehicle (the hellbender) was transformed into a 1 seat vehicle with really crappy armor (the old one, with really good team work could take down a tank).

Halo 3: First they added in battle rifles, now it is fine to make a separate play list but sticking it in EVERYWHERE now that we are used to the new and BALANCED gameplay? Then in addition to that, they set it up so that you can knock over a warthog by shooting it with a battle rifle or regular machine gun.

[]V[]essenjah wrote:The engine and pretty graphics do not make the game fun. A fun game makes a game fun.

i.e. Team Fortress 2

[]V[]essenjah wrote:If it aint broke... don't fix it.

How do you know that it isn't?

Im not saying i think the source engine is bad. But the way half life as a game franchise developes is that, each new generation of half life is a completely new game with new engine. Im sure valve can do it again. They dont have to, im sure they can get even more out of the amazng source engine if they tried.

I've never got tired of the near limitless gameplay in the half life series either, i don't think they are going to suffer with gameplay issues anytime soon.

Sirius wrote:

[]V[]essenjah wrote:If it aint broke... don't fix it.

How do you know that it isn't?

Uuuh, because the game looks and plays fine and is still a rather good selling point as it is. Apparently someone is buying the episodes that apparently are feeding them so to speak.

If the engine looks fine and plays fine, there isn't any reason to keep going on the same game engine.

If your trying to point out a grammatical error, that is an old saying in my neck of the woods which I am quoting.

No, I'm not referring to a grammatical error. I'm just pointing out that quite often the things that people complain about developers revisiting and changing... are because the developers looked critically at it and thought \"no, that has some problems\" or \"we can do that better\". You don't see that much change just for the sake of change, although I'd expect a little bit to keep the game fresh.

Quite simply put, just because you think it's fine doesn't mean the developers will.

True, devs sometimes make the game worse though by fixing too many things. For instance, I half-understand Bungie's decision to add the battle rifle into the game as there were a lot of complaints, I just felt like they should leave it in a separate play list and keep stock Halo 3 gameplay in another list. The change in the Warthog physics was retarded though. Honestly, it is one of the easiest things you can kill in the first place. Only someone with skill and enough team work can drive it well. Otherwise, you can just sticky it, hit it with one of those homing rocket launchers, or shoot it with the laser. Bouncing it around with a machine gun though?

Also, if Epic was concerned about people riding around on the wing tips of the hovercraft, why didn't they just make a vehicle that served the same purpose without additional guns (IE: Halo 3's Mongoose).

However, with a game like Half Life or Mass Effect, I would just leave it alone and make a sequel with the same game engine if there aren't any bugs. All I care about is gameplay. I would still easily buy any game made on one of the current game engines a couple of years from now. Unless there is some huge advancement to improve developer work flow on the next generation of game engines.

These days, you end up with a lot of games that are on fancy new game engines but provide very little actual content. They look pretty and are sometimes fun to play but that fun may only last for about 5 hours.

*cough* Crysis? *cough*

I was reading a theory if hl3 is made that Gordon Freeman grows older and becomes the g-man and travels back in time to FIX things.

Theftbot wrote:I was reading a theory if hl3 is made that Gordon Freeman grows older and becomes the g-man and travels back in time to FIX things.

Really? where did you read that?!

Theftbot wrote:I was reading a theory if hl3 is made that Gordon Freeman grows older and becomes the g-man and travels back in time to FIX things.

Hmm, is that why gordon freeman won't talk? Hmm. Yeah ive heard of that gman GF stuff before.

Also, that image looks sort of like fan art to me. Who knows. it could be ep3 or something.

I don't think the proper Half-Life 3 would necessarily need a new engine. One of the selling points of the Source Engine is that it is an iterative process. The engine has been upgraded since Half-Life 2, with better support for large areas, cinematic physics, HDR and bloom, postprocess effects and so on. All of this trickles down to the mods as well.

Personally, I still think it can more than hold its own against more powerful engines like Unreal Engine 3 due mainly to the skill of Valve's art direction. It's not how many polygons you can spam onto the screen, it's what you do with them.