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November 13, 2004

Half-Life 2 and the Source engine

After waiting around 5 years, Valve Software is ready to release the sequel to its hit game, Half-Life. Many people, including myself, have been waiting for this moment since the day that they beat the original game. Who knew it would take so damn long for them to come out with it?

Let me give you a brief history of Half-Life:

Over the years, there has been some great modifications released for the original Half-Life game that has renewed interest and kept it popular over all these years. The first mod release was a remake of a very popular Quake mod called Team Fortress. Valve hired the mod designers and had them port it to Half-Life. It was released as a free add-on game (called a MOD) from Valve, and was called Team Fortress Classic.

TFC was such a huge hit that Valve decided that it was worthy of making a sequel to. It was hyped by every game magazine and by Valve themselves ... publishing photos of what the next TF would look like. No one knows exactly what happened to it, but TF2 was pushed back so many times and promises made were never kept, thus interest in the game deminished.

Around this time, another Half-Life MOD took center stage. Called Counter-Strike, it surpassed the popularity of TFC almost immediately. Valve ended up purchasing the rights to the mod and hired the designers of the game. Since that time, Valve has released several versions and updates to Counter-Strike on both the PC and on console platforms.

As the popularity of Counter-Strike increased, other multiplayer FP shooters suffered, such as Quake 3 (which coincidentially is the engine the original Half-Life is based on) and Unreal Tournament. Even after the updates and re-releases to those games, and despite the aging technology behind the game, Counter-Strike continued to remain a strong player in the multiplayer FP genre. So much, in fact, that on an average day you could find at least 10x more people playing CS than any other multiplayer FS shooter.

Over the years, Valve has continued to make improvements on its original game and the way that players connect to servers. Additionally, they have worked to improve the way they distribute content to consumers. Recently, Valve released a 600K program they call Steam, which is a content distrubtion system unlike anything seen in the market today.

Users who have older Half-Life and its following releases, can use their game keys to unlock game content on Steam. No longer does a gamer have to keep track of their media. Instead, by creating a user account on Steam, your license follows you no matter where you go. So now you can visit a friends house, install Steam, login with your Steam account, and download games like TFC in a matter of minutes and begin playing.

Now, Valve had recently announced in October that HL2 had gone gold, and was ready for shipping and distribution. As steam is now their primary content distribution and authentication system, users are able to purchase and pre-load any new games by Valve. This includes Half-Life 2 and the modifications based on the new Half-Life 2 engine called Source.

Valve is planning on releasing a vast majority of it's existing content based around the new Source engine. So, you will be seeing Half-Life: Source, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, and possibly even Team Fortress: Source (this may even be TF2). Last night, I finally was able to purchase my Silver license of HL2. And while HL2 may not be out yet, Valve has released the Source version of Counter-Strike, and man is there ever a difference. The physics in the game are stunning, as are the graphic improvements. The game has alot of the same boards that classic Counter-Strike has, but they have been brought 5 years up to date.

Here's a picture I took while hanging around one of the CS: Source servers:

Pretty impressive, isn't it? Of course, a picture just doesn't do this game justice. What's really nice is that despite the fact that I don't have the latest and greatest hardware (it's over 2 years old), the game still looks great and has a rather decent frame-rate at 50fps @ 1240x1080 with AA X4 and high level and character mapping.

I can't wait for Tuesday, which is the official release date of HL2. I thoroughly enjoyed the first game, and I'm hoping that the second will be just as good. I may even play the first game, based on the Source engine, first so I can remember the storyline exactly.

EDIT: I found the following story, and thought it was a fantastic read about the ups and downs of Valve and the development of Half-Life 2. Definately worth a read.

~out...

Posted by ed at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)