Half-Life set of model and a standard that people wanted to attach to.. But it wasn't the first, although it may have been the most polished in that vein of hyperlinearity.. and like civvie11 is often quoted, I feel like people got the wrong lessons from Half-Life. But it was something that did it so well comparatively. When I first watched my buddy play it over his shoulder when I was like 10 or so.. The thing that stuck out to me the most was just how cool everything was, not that it was anything new in terms of a linear progression of storytelling I mean keep in mind my first video game that I ever owned was Jedi Knight, an accident as my parents had tried to keep me from playing video games.. and honestly everything that Half-Life did, as far as structure went and it's linearity and story progression, so did Jedi Knight, although in all fairness you actually had some mild RPG-esque choices in the storytelling. There's an argument to be made that gaming would be in a better place if Half-Life had not existed simply for the fact of the compulsive need to replicate it without really understanding why it worked, or that it wasn't a rigid formula that couldn't be strayed from necessarily. But it also allowed for set pieces as it's primary driving force and I think that was always going to happen.. But.. who knows. There's an alternate future where they still make PC games, even if it's diminished.. ironically half Life Alex is probably the most recent actual PC game Go figure.. and God bless em for doing that... Cuz there's a spirit to that style of game design in the late '90s early '90s all the way through to the early 2000s of trying to do cool stuff and develop the medium forward in its immersion in its interactivity and what it can offer.. and that just doesn't exist anymore.. and I don't mean just in the AAA, the AA is well the single a, the Indy it really is dead. We've come full circle back to the full motion video lol.. presentation is all that matters and the core audience is so utterly dependent on the game playing for them, it is hilarious and a little encouraging to see some pushback from the the more egregious examples like kalisto or hellblade 2, but that'll be normalized soon. Honestly I think the consoles pushing into the PC space had far more to do with it than half-life did, set pieces under constraints is exactly what those things can do ideally, and you really didn't have to do much with it given the level design of Halo basically being a series of sections copy and pasted with all the enemies and everything exactly the same over and over again and that was acceptable... Kind of like a foretelling of open world design right? Which used to be considered advanced game design because of it's nonlinearity.. somehow we managed to have our cake and have somebody else drop it on the ground and smush it into a flat even smearing of sadness.
This was post quake, post glide technology.. so yeah we're talking orders of magnitude and capability over a N64... Now you could run it on a potato, it had a lot of different modes to do software etc.. But at its maximum using directX, which is the whole point of my half-life exists.. as a proof of concept that you could do cool things with directx... But like bespoke video cards were a thing at that point, RAM hard drive were all a thing.. and the N64 really, it was a really niche device that was designed to do a couple of things really well, but suffered from the rapid advance where there wasn't really a right way to do things, but there was a better way to do it and they didn't always choose the right one. But on the outside, if my understanding is correct the upgraded model of the N64 had four megabytes of video RAM? Which is a lot of video RAM for the time, But that was all the ram that it had.. and not a lot of people had the updated version from what I understand. There's a channel called Pixel pipes, as well as LGR or lazy game reviews.. they often talk about the transition periods of computer hardware throughout the years and that explosion that happened from almost entirely a multimedia focused device, or a industry and professional device regarding anything doing with 3D.. Initially, I couldn't play putt-Putt because I didn't have a multimedia card or a video card.. But I could play Jedi Knight or quake because they were designed to run in software.. that would last not much longer lol.. But is a testament to the early programming skills with how many different ways they had to get the game to run. People talk about it nowadays like oh there's so many configurations and it's like dude they all do the same thing.. they pretty much do the exact same thing, the same way, and really what you're accounting for is different configurations of the same thing.. which they don't lol as anyone that has a slightly older generation video card, even if it's console equivalent to the primary development source nowadays of a console.. when it ports the PC. But you know they wouldn't know how to do it anyways because anybody that could do that goes and gets a real job that pays money and doesn't make them miserable like video game software engineers. Like I'm being nitpicky and I probably written a whole novel at this point Just in the first 7 minutes of what you've been saying lol.. But like.. Don't say things like guesstimation of of hardware equivalents, unless you know or have an understanding because people are going to take that and just run with it and spam it everywhere like regardless you're coming from a place of authority for the most part, even if that's fair or not.. But if you're going to do a deep dive and spend 4 hours talking about a video game, especially an older game I would I would highly recommend looking at the the culture in the tech at the time because that has a lot to do with everything especially back then.. it's just not a thing nowadays in any both consumer facing or Even on the technical end.. and it's sad that it isn't because it's I've watched the industry turn into product.. where there used to be some sort of collaboration between the gamer and the game.. and they play the part accordingly, I mean shit.. The fact that Ubisoft thinks that it was a viable strategy to sell cheat codes to their single player games.. That's how sad things have gotten in terms of how much input the actual consumer has on the medium and industry. Or is willing to give of course.. and it's not even in the zeitgeist or mindset anymore, they just want to take the thing that they're given and that's not how PC games were made, not for another few years anyways.
@@HiddenMachineGaming it's got a vibe that you just don't get anymore.. and it's sad that it didn't really continue that direction, it's like a bespoke little chunk of gaming out of the imagination brought on by the era of the sci-fi novel that kind of ended in that capacity as a mainstream form of entertainment. Like the you know it's it's it.. it's written like it's written by people from epic mega games lol.. But even that is kind of has its adorability to it because it's never trying to justify coolness necessarily, as if it were completely overridden with enthusiasm. That didn't last.
Isn't this a remedy focused or at least heavily admonished channel? And you rarely ever crash? Lol.. doing something right I guess or maybe wrong for everything else? Because lol.. every remedy game that I've ever played has had a massive amount of crashing and weirdness.. and it's been okay because you know they're doing something cool usually.. never played quantum break though and I don't intend to after seeing the contextual automatic crouching feature.. Way to way to ruin what should have actually been more gameplay, by calista protocoling that. I was upset not having it in control, but I didn't realize how it functioned before lol so I guess I lucked out because that would have been a deal breaker. But control oh boy.. does that game like to crash hard.. had to do the pin the task manager to always on top because it would usually require a power button smash if I didn't. But heavily scripted, resource tight games like Max Payne 2, like Half-Life 2.. they crash it's it's just a thing lol.. there's a channel called pine splash that in his OCD and speed running affinities has kind of deep dived into damn near every glitch that Half-Life 2 has ever had, as well as many other source engine titles... And he he does explain the actual or at least a loose explanation of of what's going on behind a lot of it in some cases.. found it very useful for doing source modding my own self. We do live in good times though, at least for that thing of compatibility and whatnot.. most of the games from the early 2000s late '90s etc just would not function in the later 2000s early 2010s.. often you wouldn't know why they were broken.. turns out a lot of the Rockstar games were broken because they never turned off the DRM that would cause it to consistently insane as punishment.. But also they had a lot of multi-core issues and game speed issues.. But we have all these wrappers now and large address awareness executable fixes and and all sorts of fun stuff.. But if you're playing the game and doing things like just bumping up the resolution without adjusting for the aspect ratio in the field of view and view model.. like come on.. The fact that we can even do these things in the first place is nice, it didn't used to be that special.. as access wasn't so hyper restricted but with the advent of injectors and really really really try hard communities, as well as credit where it's due.. a rare twist of Microsoft actually doing something right occasionally, enough of the way to be a feature not a detriment. Raw out of the box would still probably be the most stable way to go with the way Windows 10 and modern wrappers can fix things.. But you're still going to have to do a bunch of stuff like the FOV fixes for 16x9 if you want that, it's just the way it is.. if you're not doing that for these older games.. You're you're really doing yourself a disservice, as well as the game... Although in some cases the fault definitely can lie on the game as well lol depending on how it was constructed. One thing that stands out is how they approached interpolation, which is funny because they write code like carmack, they use like everything is based on quake technology here so you can see the parallels in id tech, and and for some reason they wouldn't actually start utilizing that functionality in a reasonable or logical way until 6.. Even the Wolfenstein games the first one.. needed a bunch of parameters and I think some executable hacks because all of the development console command and CVR functionality had been restricted for retail.. because you know.. somebody might cheat in a single player game trying to get it to work lol.. There was a lot of forward thinking things in gold source and source.. which is ironic because counter strike might as well be a hamster wheel of stagnation as far as actual game design goes.. But hey.. they were on that way before anybody else was it seemed. Not saying they're the only ones but they are definitely the best probably. That being said.. they're obsession with pipeline updates has consistently broken both games over the last two decades.. as well as other games not related that are currently using source like Titanfall and Garry's mod, the closer to the half-life build that you get, the more broken it gets.. and this was during a time when they just wouldn't even respond to their customers with questions, answering like one email a month, one question out of a list maybe.. If you go on the the source engine version of GitHub I guess.. you could find some really frustrated conversations about things that have been changed or broken or trying to find information about things.. and this was out of state when there was more information about source engine then any other time, as opposed to when games like vampire The masquerade bloodlines and dark Messiah were being developed where they just actually didn't have proper documentation at all.. But that it it's it seems that Valve has at least gotten better about that in their reawakening.
Wow, on the day this comes out, I got half life 2, also hope you do half life 2 as well.
We plan to!
Maybe I'll wait until your Half-life Episode 3 "Yeah I've Played" comes out, so then I can marathon all of the videos at once. ;)
lol best of luck to you
@@HiddenMachineGaming Yeah in the end, I couldn't wait, so I watched it. Great discussion. :)
I just caught the "breaking boxes like Wilt Chamberlain" joke. Fuckin masterful 😂
Half-Life set of model and a standard that people wanted to attach to.. But it wasn't the first, although it may have been the most polished in that vein of hyperlinearity.. and like civvie11 is often quoted, I feel like people got the wrong lessons from Half-Life. But it was something that did it so well comparatively.
When I first watched my buddy play it over his shoulder when I was like 10 or so.. The thing that stuck out to me the most was just how cool everything was, not that it was anything new in terms of a linear progression of storytelling I mean keep in mind my first video game that I ever owned was Jedi Knight, an accident as my parents had tried to keep me from playing video games.. and honestly everything that Half-Life did, as far as structure went and it's linearity and story progression, so did Jedi Knight, although in all fairness you actually had some mild RPG-esque choices in the storytelling.
There's an argument to be made that gaming would be in a better place if Half-Life had not existed simply for the fact of the compulsive need to replicate it without really understanding why it worked, or that it wasn't a rigid formula that couldn't be strayed from necessarily. But it also allowed for set pieces as it's primary driving force and I think that was always going to happen.. But.. who knows.
There's an alternate future where they still make PC games, even if it's diminished.. ironically half Life Alex is probably the most recent actual PC game Go figure.. and God bless em for doing that... Cuz there's a spirit to that style of game design in the late '90s early '90s all the way through to the early 2000s of trying to do cool stuff and develop the medium forward in its immersion in its interactivity and what it can offer.. and that just doesn't exist anymore.. and I don't mean just in the AAA, the AA is well the single a, the Indy it really is dead.
We've come full circle back to the full motion video lol.. presentation is all that matters and the core audience is so utterly dependent on the game playing for them, it is hilarious and a little encouraging to see some pushback from the the more egregious examples like kalisto or hellblade 2, but that'll be normalized soon.
Honestly I think the consoles pushing into the PC space had far more to do with it than half-life did, set pieces under constraints is exactly what those things can do ideally, and you really didn't have to do much with it given the level design of Halo basically being a series of sections copy and pasted with all the enemies and everything exactly the same over and over again and that was acceptable... Kind of like a foretelling of open world design right? Which used to be considered advanced game design because of it's nonlinearity.. somehow we managed to have our cake and have somebody else drop it on the ground and smush it into a flat even smearing of sadness.
@14:10 I wonder what Half-life would have played like with the Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight soundtrack in the CD drive?
There’s only one way to find out
This was post quake, post glide technology.. so yeah we're talking orders of magnitude and capability over a N64... Now you could run it on a potato, it had a lot of different modes to do software etc.. But at its maximum using directX, which is the whole point of my half-life exists.. as a proof of concept that you could do cool things with directx... But like bespoke video cards were a thing at that point, RAM hard drive were all a thing.. and the N64 really, it was a really niche device that was designed to do a couple of things really well, but suffered from the rapid advance where there wasn't really a right way to do things, but there was a better way to do it and they didn't always choose the right one.
But on the outside, if my understanding is correct the upgraded model of the N64 had four megabytes of video RAM? Which is a lot of video RAM for the time, But that was all the ram that it had.. and not a lot of people had the updated version from what I understand.
There's a channel called Pixel pipes, as well as LGR or lazy game reviews.. they often talk about the transition periods of computer hardware throughout the years and that explosion that happened from almost entirely a multimedia focused device, or a industry and professional device regarding anything doing with 3D..
Initially, I couldn't play putt-Putt because I didn't have a multimedia card or a video card.. But I could play Jedi Knight or quake because they were designed to run in software.. that would last not much longer lol.. But is a testament to the early programming skills with how many different ways they had to get the game to run.
People talk about it nowadays like oh there's so many configurations and it's like dude they all do the same thing.. they pretty much do the exact same thing, the same way, and really what you're accounting for is different configurations of the same thing.. which they don't lol as anyone that has a slightly older generation video card, even if it's console equivalent to the primary development source nowadays of a console.. when it ports the PC. But you know they wouldn't know how to do it anyways because anybody that could do that goes and gets a real job that pays money and doesn't make them miserable like video game software engineers.
Like I'm being nitpicky and I probably written a whole novel at this point Just in the first 7 minutes of what you've been saying lol.. But like.. Don't say things like guesstimation of of hardware equivalents, unless you know or have an understanding because people are going to take that and just run with it and spam it everywhere like regardless you're coming from a place of authority for the most part, even if that's fair or not..
But if you're going to do a deep dive and spend 4 hours talking about a video game, especially an older game I would I would highly recommend looking at the the culture in the tech at the time because that has a lot to do with everything especially back then.. it's just not a thing nowadays in any both consumer facing or Even on the technical end.. and it's sad that it isn't because it's I've watched the industry turn into product.. where there used to be some sort of collaboration between the gamer and the game.. and they play the part accordingly, I mean shit.. The fact that Ubisoft thinks that it was a viable strategy to sell cheat codes to their single player games..
That's how sad things have gotten in terms of how much input the actual consumer has on the medium and industry. Or is willing to give of course.. and it's not even in the zeitgeist or mindset anymore, they just want to take the thing that they're given and that's not how PC games were made, not for another few years anyways.
unreal1 had some atempt at consistency with the changelevel, not as solid of half-life thought, unreal music is dope and the outdoors area are better
Never played that one, really gotta give it a go
@@HiddenMachineGaming also it has one expansion campaign, its called return to napali because you return to napali
@@HiddenMachineGaming it's got a vibe that you just don't get anymore.. and it's sad that it didn't really continue that direction, it's like a bespoke little chunk of gaming out of the imagination brought on by the era of the sci-fi novel that kind of ended in that capacity as a mainstream form of entertainment.
Like the you know it's it's it.. it's written like it's written by people from epic mega games lol.. But even that is kind of has its adorability to it because it's never trying to justify coolness necessarily, as if it were completely overridden with enthusiasm. That didn't last.
Isn't this a remedy focused or at least heavily admonished channel? And you rarely ever crash? Lol.. doing something right I guess or maybe wrong for everything else? Because lol.. every remedy game that I've ever played has had a massive amount of crashing and weirdness.. and it's been okay because you know they're doing something cool usually.. never played quantum break though and I don't intend to after seeing the contextual automatic crouching feature.. Way to way to ruin what should have actually been more gameplay, by calista protocoling that.
I was upset not having it in control, but I didn't realize how it functioned before lol so I guess I lucked out because that would have been a deal breaker.
But control oh boy.. does that game like to crash hard.. had to do the pin the task manager to always on top because it would usually require a power button smash if I didn't.
But heavily scripted, resource tight games like Max Payne 2, like Half-Life 2.. they crash it's it's just a thing lol.. there's a channel called pine splash that in his OCD and speed running affinities has kind of deep dived into damn near every glitch that Half-Life 2 has ever had, as well as many other source engine titles... And he he does explain the actual or at least a loose explanation of of what's going on behind a lot of it in some cases.. found it very useful for doing source modding my own self.
We do live in good times though, at least for that thing of compatibility and whatnot.. most of the games from the early 2000s late '90s etc just would not function in the later 2000s early 2010s.. often you wouldn't know why they were broken.. turns out a lot of the Rockstar games were broken because they never turned off the DRM that would cause it to consistently insane as punishment.. But also they had a lot of multi-core issues and game speed issues.. But we have all these wrappers now and large address awareness executable fixes and and all sorts of fun stuff..
But if you're playing the game and doing things like just bumping up the resolution without adjusting for the aspect ratio in the field of view and view model.. like come on.. The fact that we can even do these things in the first place is nice, it didn't used to be that special.. as access wasn't so hyper restricted but with the advent of injectors and really really really try hard communities, as well as credit where it's due.. a rare twist of Microsoft actually doing something right occasionally, enough of the way to be a feature not a detriment.
Raw out of the box would still probably be the most stable way to go with the way Windows 10 and modern wrappers can fix things.. But you're still going to have to do a bunch of stuff like the FOV fixes for 16x9 if you want that, it's just the way it is.. if you're not doing that for these older games.. You're you're really doing yourself a disservice, as well as the game... Although in some cases the fault definitely can lie on the game as well lol depending on how it was constructed.
One thing that stands out is how they approached interpolation, which is funny because they write code like carmack, they use like everything is based on quake technology here so you can see the parallels in id tech, and and for some reason they wouldn't actually start utilizing that functionality in a reasonable or logical way until 6.. Even the Wolfenstein games the first one.. needed a bunch of parameters and I think some executable hacks because all of the development console command and CVR functionality had been restricted for retail.. because you know.. somebody might cheat in a single player game trying to get it to work lol..
There was a lot of forward thinking things in gold source and source.. which is ironic because counter strike might as well be a hamster wheel of stagnation as far as actual game design goes.. But hey.. they were on that way before anybody else was it seemed. Not saying they're the only ones but they are definitely the best probably.
That being said.. they're obsession with pipeline updates has consistently broken both games over the last two decades.. as well as other games not related that are currently using source like Titanfall and Garry's mod, the closer to the half-life build that you get, the more broken it gets.. and this was during a time when they just wouldn't even respond to their customers with questions, answering like one email a month, one question out of a list maybe..
If you go on the the source engine version of GitHub I guess.. you could find some really frustrated conversations about things that have been changed or broken or trying to find information about things.. and this was out of state when there was more information about source engine then any other time, as opposed to when games like vampire The masquerade bloodlines and dark Messiah were being developed where they just actually didn't have proper documentation at all.. But that it it's it seems that Valve has at least gotten better about that in their reawakening.