Half-Life's Tau Cannon: A Quick Look (I haven't been outside in months)

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  • Опубліковано 12 чер 2024
  • This project started November 15, 2023.
    This video's subtitles destroyed my life.
    Much credit to Matherunner's Half-Life Physics Reference www.jwchong.com/hl/weapons.ht...
    Bunnymod XT github.com/YaLTeR/BunnymodXT
    HL1 gauss debug mod by me github.com/Pinsplash/gaussdebug
    Source debug mod by me gist.github.com/Pinsplash/27a...
    Static visualizations done with Inkscape
    Half-Life 1 code github.com/ValveSoftware/half... github.com/ValveSoftware/half...
    Half-Life: Source code github.com/VSES/SourceEngine2...
    Half-Life 2 code github.com/ValveSoftware/sour...
    LORE
    00:00 Intro
    00:26 Name, Firing Mechanisms, Real Life Connections
    03:47 Depleted Uranium??? How?
    04:48 Origins
    WHERE NORMAL PEOPLE WOULD STOP
    05:09 Reflection Summary
    06:00 Penetration Summary, Telegraphing (is that the right word?)
    07:01 Recoil Summary
    OH NO
    07:34 Damage, Rate of Fire, Misc Stats and Behavior
    09:00 DPS, TTK, Tactics
    10:44 Ammo, DPA/APS
    12:16 Ammo Efficiency Comparison of all Weapons that use Depleted Uranium
    13:49 Gauss Boosting
    16:38 Beam Behavior Intro, Line Traces
    19:05 Piercing, Line Trace Prioritization
    20:05 Reflection
    21:06 Reflection Bypass
    21:55 Reflections on the Sky, Reflection Explosions
    22:35 Reflection Boost
    22:59 Doublegauss
    23:18 Reflection Damage Reduction
    23:44 Penetration
    25:02 Penetration Damage Reduction and Explosion
    25:31 Post-Penetration
    26:10 Nuking
    BUGS
    26:59 "It's void trust me bro" Bug (previously undocumented)
    27:29 Negative 1 Ammo Bug (previously undocumented)
    27:52 Selfgauss
    29:43 Selfgaussing and You(r Hitboxes)
    31:00 Selfgauss Misc
    31:43 Inner Bypass (previously undocumented, hate the name, actually several distinct bypasses in a trenchcoat)
    33:04 Func_pushable quirks (previously undocumented)
    34:16 Penetration Backfire (previously undocumented, also secretly a penetration bypass but that's really a footnote)
    35:13 Quickgauss
    36:16 Rapid Fire
    HALF-LIFE: SOURCE
    38:53 Half-Life: Source's Laundry List of Changes
    40:18 Selfgauss in Half-Life: Source
    41:03 Line Traces in Half-Life: Source
    41:49 Displacements
    HALF-LIFE 2
    43:52 Half-Life 2, Name, New Visuals
    44:31 Power Source
    45:09 Penetration Design Still Not Good
    45:53 Cut Content (partially previously undocumented)
    47:34 More Stats and Behavior, DPS & TTK
    49:18 Penetration in Half-Life 2
  • Ігри

КОМЕНТАРІ • 406

  • @Pinsplash
    @Pinsplash  4 місяці тому +506

    Q: It can't be depleted uranium, silly youtuber!
    A: It says "depleted uranium" on the box, so...
    Q: Depleted uranium is used as ammunition
    A: I said this.

    • @Ranch_Oh
      @Ranch_Oh 4 місяці тому +10

      Ok

    • @alt1763
      @alt1763 4 місяці тому +91

      @@jeanbonpompei392 because you think of it as angry, there is no tone in text

    • @belthesheep3550
      @belthesheep3550 4 місяці тому +10

      Those are not questions in the Q&A, truly incredible

    • @T3sl4
      @T3sl4 4 місяці тому +19

      @@alt1763 And because YT comments are so often "ackshooally" type comments, or incompletely thought out, or just flat out wrong. :(

    • @Sonicfoxtrot
      @Sonicfoxtrot 4 місяці тому

      @@hateraccoon5686 what does "sweaty" mean???? I hope it's not too hot for them.

  • @feisty-trog-12345
    @feisty-trog-12345 4 місяці тому +220

    oh wow, valve really labeled their box of magic nuclear ammo both "depleted uranium" AND "U-235".

    • @bekkayya
      @bekkayya 4 місяці тому +13

      maybe the box is a battery that depletes uranium & thats just a materials warning label

    • @soupcangaming662
      @soupcangaming662 4 місяці тому +7

      @@bekkayya but there's already AA/A batteries powering the rotating mechanism and possibly the gun itself

    • @aolson1111
      @aolson1111 4 місяці тому +11

      Valve, please fix.

    • @Pacman009
      @Pacman009 Місяць тому

      It’s depleted uranium 235?

    • @gregoryderpwrld111
      @gregoryderpwrld111 Місяць тому

      @@Pacman009Depleted Uranium by definition isn’t U235, its U234, or whatever molecules are left after the atoms have been split

  • @killpidone
    @killpidone 4 місяці тому +417

    I was always under the impression that the "energy ammo" boxes were just marked as radioactive and was more of a radioactive battery. The tau cannon to me was just a portable particle accelerator that required a ton of juice, usually particle accelerators use extreme magnetic fields to manipulate the particles.
    IRL depleted uranium is used in because of its mass making really heavy projectiles.

    • @swgclips03
      @swgclips03 4 місяці тому +13

      Depleted.

    • @gabeharris926
      @gabeharris926 4 місяці тому +55

      ​@@swgclips03let the man delete his uranium

    • @killpidone
      @killpidone 4 місяці тому +22

      @@swgclips03 departed

    • @U20E0
      @U20E0 4 місяці тому +24

      Deported uranium

    • @erictheepic5019
      @erictheepic5019 4 місяці тому +19

      It's also not actually depleted uranium, as it says U-235 on the box; that's the fissile, very much *not* depleted isotope of uranium. If it *were* depleted, it should say U-238 instead.

  • @slyseal2091
    @slyseal2091 4 місяці тому +249

    My interpretation of the name was that the Valve devs looked up how railguns would work, found a detailed explanation of electrons, which then referred them to information on tau particles. Because tau particles are easiest to explain as heavy electrons, they came to the conclusion that a railgun using tau particles instead of electrons would be stronger/strong enough to work at all, because surely when they looked up railguns they found out that those things were garbage in 1998.
    The idea of being able to arbitrarily manipulate subatomic particles is also represented in what the gluon gun is implied to do. So basically, what if electricity but with Taus.

    • @frndrmn
      @frndrmn 4 місяці тому +4

      Aren't muons heavy electrons? Or do they both do the same thin? (except Taus have a much shorter Half life.)

    • @U20E0
      @U20E0 4 місяці тому +30

      @@frndrmn A tau particle is an even heavier electron

    • @jjl772
      @jjl772 4 місяці тому +18

      you're probably right. I do wonder if they stumbled upon Feynman diagrams and used those as reference too. Gluons are depicted as helixes in Feynman diagrams, which would explain the spiral design of the gluon gun's beam. The diagram of Tau decay, for someone who isn't familiar with Feynman diagrams, might vaguely look like a reflection/bounce of sorts.

    • @arekrekas213
      @arekrekas213 4 місяці тому +6

      a much shorter WHAT? @@frndrmn

    • @hedgehog3180
      @hedgehog3180 4 місяці тому +12

      They probably also just figured that a gun that fires a basic particle fits much better with the general vibe of Black Mesa which is like if you mixed the attitudes of Silicon Valley with the cutting edge science of CERN. And like it does make way more sense for a science facility to have some sort of portable particle accelerator than for them to have a railgun or gauss gun, both of which have no scientific applications.

  • @msaeedazizi
    @msaeedazizi 4 місяці тому +251

    Bro sacrificed 2 months of his life to deliver an hour-long, scientific-class video essay about a gun from two games that are 20+ years old.
    Legend.

  • @Beardqt
    @Beardqt 4 місяці тому +842

    no ones gonna read this but one of my fondest memories of HL is the fact that it took me like a decade after release to get a PC good enough to play past 30 fps and to this day i cannot get use to it, it doesn't make videos hard to watch but it does constantly trigger this "this doesn't look like real HL" thing in my mind kinda like an uncanny valley effect

    • @Silquetoast
      @Silquetoast 4 місяці тому +30

      I started playing ~16 years after release, and now I speedrun it. I upgraded my PC from integrated graphics to a GTX970 in 2016 and now I can't stand anything less than 100fps lmao

    • @golarac6433
      @golarac6433 4 місяці тому +26

      That was my experience but with Half Life 2. I had a geForce mx 440 which is directX 7 only card so all the graphics were very simplified. For example in the intro GMAN never goes transparent or changes colors, so all the moments where he is silent and translucent looked really strange, as if he forgot what to say, lol. Still, I'm pretty sure I did play at around 30 fps. My buddy had an even slower PC, he had pentium3 700mhz or something like that. I remember we played the leaked HL2 beta on lowest settings at ~15 FPS on his computer, that was running a bit faster than the full game.

    • @bazooka93
      @bazooka93 4 місяці тому +16

      Me, an intellectual: Intentionally plays HL in lower settings for years for the proper feeling.

    • @Silquetoast
      @Silquetoast 4 місяці тому +6

      @@bazooka93 the hd models just look so... 🤮

    • @novelezra
      @novelezra 4 місяці тому +6

      A: I read this
      B: I remember as a kid, we had a playstation for myself to play and my parents would play point and clicks. The home PC was not meant for half life and yet I tried so hard to get it to run. It's weird because usually when you see a playstation game, it looks how you remember it because most people aren't showing emulated footage of it online.
      But with PC games, especially Half Life, we have moved so far past how I first experienced it, in all of its 640 x 480 glory that I don't feel much nostalgia for it when I see UA-cam videos on it, just like you said.
      I have the reverse for Half Life 2. I played it on the orange box in HD first so I have no nostalgia for the original look of the game.

  • @inn5268
    @inn5268 4 місяці тому +87

    If i recall correctly, the wiki suggests that it may be a tau particle accelerator, so it is a gauss gun, but instead of conventional projectiles it shoots particles, the gun also has a visible coil which seems to support this

    • @sierra1513
      @sierra1513 4 місяці тому +12

      This seems like the most reasonable explanation to me

    • @U20E0
      @U20E0 4 місяці тому +18

      So it has a built-in nuclear reactor for power, and Valve didn't figure out that depleted uranium is well... depleted.

    • @hedgehog3180
      @hedgehog3180 4 місяці тому +9

      @@U20E0 The depleted uranium thing might be a leftover from when it was a Gauss gun since depleted uranium is actually a great material to use in a conventional projectile weapon. And at the time Half Life was being made the US was just about to introduce DU penetrators in their APFSDS rounds for the Abrams.
      Though I guess you can also use DU as a neutrino source, it's not a great one but it is a use.

    • @Suiseisexy
      @Suiseisexy 4 місяці тому

      I think we're just filling in blanks meant to be blank, if you really fired tau electrons at stuff they would either go right through stuff harmlessly or form exotic particles with the target, so like...the results would depend strongly on what you actually fired at I guess? With water probably being the scary thing to not shoot it at.

    • @U20E0
      @U20E0 4 місяці тому

      @@hedgehog3180 that's probably the case

  • @brokenphilip
    @brokenphilip 4 місяці тому +68

    despite having a faint idea on how the tau cannon worked from over a decade worth of half-life 1 experience (primarily deathmatch), i've spent weeks analyzing the code (keep in mind this was before i even knew about the HL Physics Reference) to better understand how the weapon functioned under the hood. i even went as far as to compile my own version of half-life to better visualize the TraceLines and record them for my own video (similarly to how they were shown during the penetration segment - i recognized all those TraceLines from my own clips lol)
    i wrote up a quick 1000-word draft some time october 2022 (15 months ago!), trying to explain to newer players in the simplest way possible how exactly the tau cannon worked (mostly for deathmatch, but briefly touching upon singleplayer as well). eventually i found out about the HL Physics Reference, realized i've missed out on some key details or was wrong about others (eg. selfgaussing). over the past year or so, i have tried to rewrite the script and re-record the clips in a way i deemed would be the easiest to understand several times with no success - all have been trashed because i felt like i just couldn't find a good way to visualize nor explain what was going on
    even for someone who has studied this weapon to a much-lesser-but-still-insane extent, i honestly had to rewatch some segments a couple times, just to make sure i was understanding them fully. nonetheless, this was an excellent execution and explanation of all the topics mentioned in the video (and thank you for lifting my "work on the gauss video already" curse, lmao)

    • @CallOfCutie69
      @CallOfCutie69 4 місяці тому

      Could you tell us what HL Physics Reference is, and where to find it?

    • @brokenphilip
      @brokenphilip 4 місяці тому +1

      ​@@CallOfCutie69 it's the first link in the description

  • @MegaZeta
    @MegaZeta 5 місяців тому +60

    Magical to see where that check of reflecting the shot into yourself paid off.

  • @hibiku757
    @hibiku757 4 місяці тому +67

    You are the modern age marphitimusblackimus. Incredible how much information the tau cannon really gave us; enough for 50 minutes worth! Love your work, and I can't wait to see what other single weapon documentaries you could make! Perhaps discussing the biological weapons such as the handheld barnacle or the spore launcher would be of interest.

  • @jjl772
    @jjl772 4 місяці тому +14

    The helix-like effect of the gluon gun's beam is most likely a reference to how gluons are depicted in feynman diagrams.

    • @-Zakhiel-
      @-Zakhiel- 4 місяці тому +4

      Or it looks like the Ghostbuster proton pack.

  • @Povilaz
    @Povilaz 4 місяці тому +56

    >A Quick Look
    >50 minutes long
    It's gonna be a fun evening for me.

  • @WDC_OSA
    @WDC_OSA 4 місяці тому +36

    Pinsplash you have no idea how much this means to me. I'm stuck waiting for a flight that's a few hours late, and this is exactly what I needed

    • @WDC_OSA
      @WDC_OSA 4 місяці тому +9

      The flight is now a day late. I still haven't finished this video, but now after a good night's sleep in a hotel provided by the airline, I'm ready for more.

    • @Maxikxng
      @Maxikxng 4 місяці тому +2

      @@WDC_OSA yea his vids are great for that as they are long most of the time and i can even watch em without headphones and volume thanks to the subtitles

  • @nucleus691
    @nucleus691 4 місяці тому +10

    Depleted uranium is, as the name implies, depleted of most of its valuable energy. It does have real applications for firearms in that anti tank munitions like 120x570mm M829A4 APFSDS anti armor rounds are made of depleted uranium simply because depleted uranium has an incredibly high density while being relatively cheap. Its also "self sharpening" in this application. Tungsten penetrators deform at the tip as they enter armor, depleted uranium rounds crack and shatter in a way that keeps them sharp.
    DU particles will also become heated during penetration of heavy armor which can cause them to ignite. This pyrophoric effect is incredibly devastating to whatever is behind the armor youre shooting (usually the inside of an enemy tank)

  • @BrockRogan
    @BrockRogan 5 місяців тому +132

    silly little energy gun was cooking alot more than i thought. superb video my guy, the depth you are going into keeps increasing, excited to see whats next

  • @0mikr0n
    @0mikr0n 4 місяці тому +26

    I was speaking with a friend of mine about this weapon the other day, and he knows a little more about physics than I do. He suggested that the weapon is actually hyperaccelerating a lepton particle down a straight lane. Because it's a particle, it's weaving between the molecules of the matter it touches with very little friction, but it's bringing with it all of the physical effects of displaced matter as it goes, thereby imparting violently destructive energy. It seems like the developers of Black Mesa would agree; careful study of the whiteboard in the lab seems to reveal as such.

    • @hedgehog3180
      @hedgehog3180 4 місяці тому +1

      Tau particles are leptons. And if you do accelerate something to a high fraction of the speed of light it is possible for it to just pass through most matter without interacting. The biggest problem is that Taus have the same charge as electrons but about 3000 times the mass so accelerating them up to this kind of speed would be nearly impossible. I do want to take out my notes and calculate it because I bet the voltage needed to accelerate them up to say 0,9999c in such a small gun would be absolutely absurd.

  • @firelion3487
    @firelion3487 4 місяці тому +22

    Not that it matters because you should upload whatever you want to make, but I'd be really into more super comprehensive breakdowns of half-life weapons. I hardly gave the tau cannon a thought but this was super interesting

    • @racer927
      @racer927 4 місяці тому +2

      I'd like to see him do more in-depth videos like this.

  • @llaniiakea
    @llaniiakea 4 місяці тому +17

    havent finished this yet but i wanna say right out of the gate thanks for the subtitles, they're very helpful for following along

  • @Wapako
    @Wapako 4 місяці тому +4

    The title make me feel that this video shouldn't be real but just a meme on the fact that some video are way too long for no good reason lmao

  • @NoVIcE_Source
    @NoVIcE_Source 4 місяці тому +8

    if the title is real pls go outside, its very nice
    i begin to get sad for 0 reason when i don't for a few days ( i used to spend a TON of time inside during lockdown and the difference is amazing )
    i'll actually watch the whole vid someday, sounds like an interesting thing to have on the background while coding or smth

  • @hughjanes4883
    @hughjanes4883 4 місяці тому +11

    I was killed by the beam that penetrates the wall on my first playthrough, i shot the barrels before the beam did too so it was the beam, not the boxes. I allready knew about the cutscene so i found it halarious

  • @hansonkerman7286
    @hansonkerman7286 4 місяці тому +16

    Really well made video, legitimately fascinating.
    (the reason gargantua take damage from displacer cannon shots is because you're teleporting its organs away 😔)

  • @therealxoc
    @therealxoc 4 місяці тому +9

    This is one of the longest setups for a punchline I've ever heard. Well played

  • @lunondisposable5382
    @lunondisposable5382 4 місяці тому +4

    It's really cool all the research and experimentation you did, but I was really hoping this would all be about the lore and in-universe science behind it

  • @fendtfahrer8117
    @fendtfahrer8117 2 місяці тому +2

    That´s what you call a quick look?
    I call that an analysis!
    Good video, lad.

  • @xinus2286
    @xinus2286 4 місяці тому +8

    I think just about the only thing i'd love to also hear about is how does the Tau Cannon weapon from the 2003 leak function compared to HL1/HLS

  • @killingtimeitself
    @killingtimeitself 4 місяці тому +12

    these videos scratch the itches that the critters under my skin leave.
    Also little side note: depleted uranium is actually used as AP ammo. It has some weird special properties that make it suitable for it. Also you flash up u-235 when talking about depleted uranium (u-238) idk if that was you or valve that did that, but amusing nonetheless.

    • @killingtimeitself
      @killingtimeitself 4 місяці тому +3

      also an additional note: assuming there is u-235 in the tau canon, that would imply it's used for power generation, which would be the logical use case. Unless you wanted to fire amusingly dangerous projectiles i suppose.
      The thing is though, you would want to use basically any other isoptope easily available to you, like pu-238/pu-239, pretty much anything other than uranium is going to be more optimal. The only use case i know of highly enriched uranium being used for is naval reactors. Both the soviets/russians/ and US used/use highly enriched uranium fuel, more so the US.
      Though some new reactors also want more highly enriched fuel as well. There was a recent plant finished/started (something like that dont quote me on it) built for producing uranium fuel with enrichment up to 20% (which is still lower than naval reactors, those are like 70-90%)

    • @Sethorion99
      @Sethorion99 4 місяці тому +2

      Yeah U-235 is the more desirable fissile material. U-238 is the so called "depleted" variety of uranium.

    • @killingtimeitself
      @killingtimeitself 4 місяці тому +1

      yeah, even then i doubt its the preferred material for generating power in a compact form factor. @@Sethorion99

  • @ViKODiN_
    @ViKODiN_ 4 місяці тому +3

    Not even a week ago I was searching high and low for a video detailing the mechanics of the gun (mostly for my interests in learning HLDM and how this gun became so prolific) and I was so disappointed that there was basically one video w no commentary that was very brief and then a random video demoing some wallgauss spots on cross fire. Now here you are making my dreams come true again w lovely HL content. Massive thanks ❤❤

  • @Bouncy_Spy
    @Bouncy_Spy 4 місяці тому +2

    "Gordon doesn't need to hear all this, he's a highly trained professional"

  • @burger1505
    @burger1505 4 місяці тому +9

    I’ve always assumed the reason the Gluon gun has that ring is because of the Feynman diagrams for gluons

    • @-Zakhiel-
      @-Zakhiel- 4 місяці тому

      Proton pack.

    • @burger1505
      @burger1505 4 місяці тому

      @@-Zakhiel- no. gluons.

    • @-Zakhiel-
      @-Zakhiel- 4 місяці тому

      @@burger1505 The gluon gun is the proton pack... I don't know how you can't see it. It's even alled the Egon gun in some files of the game.

    • @burger1505
      @burger1505 4 місяці тому

      @@-Zakhiel-there’s gluon in the name.

    • @SwissestCheese
      @SwissestCheese 3 місяці тому

      @@-Zakhiel-It’s called the Gluon Gun

  • @PixelatedManiac
    @PixelatedManiac 4 місяці тому +17

    I don’t know how you didn’t know that was the tau cannon beam coming through the wall, it’s really recognizable and one of my strongest memories from my first play through. Getting that gun was the best part of the campaign!

    • @danielbedrossian5986
      @danielbedrossian5986 4 місяці тому +4

      The glowparticle also displayed, and the charging sound is a dead give away for the secondarry fire in option.
      Don't don't know, people tend to not listen to details, so I am almost not even effected by that he did not recognise this faster.

    • @PixelatedManiac
      @PixelatedManiac 4 місяці тому +6

      @@danielbedrossian5986 I’m affected, this man is clearly no slouch and a decently intelligent person. But he is human so I was just taken aback when he admitted that. It’s unexpected compared to the rest of the video.

  • @alfasefmi
    @alfasefmi 4 місяці тому +3

    9:40 first time seeing vortigaunt using launch pad

  • @LowLevelLemmy
    @LowLevelLemmy 4 місяці тому +1

    The fact that rail guns are real is news to me.😅Thought it was just from Quake.

  • @lucialambda
    @lucialambda 5 місяців тому +4

    """""quick"""""
    thanks for the new longform vid! great for background videos when doing art etc

  • @Woot100
    @Woot100 4 місяці тому

    spent days watching this on and off because it was so much information to process at one time. your tau cannon knowledge accompanied me through many nights and days, many meals at my desk. thank u youtube man

  • @GGigabiteM
    @GGigabiteM 4 місяці тому +2

    The Tau Cannon/Gauss Gun names were used interchangeably in HL1 multiplayer mods that had it available, everyone knew what you were talking about. Same for the Egon/Gluon gun. Most experienced players knew how to use both, shooting through walls and floors with the tau cannon, gauss jumping or damaging players on the other side of walls or the egon gun damaging through walls and floors/ceilings.
    A good HLDM match was usually pure chaos.

  • @Brightgalrs
    @Brightgalrs 4 місяці тому +8

    Quite incredible how a single weapon has so much to talk about. Name, design, development history, in-universe lore, game mechanics, optimal usage, bugs. So much stuff! I think the only thing missing is a slightly deeper dive into the development of the weapon, like interviews with the OG Valve programmers, artists, etc. Probably another half hour of material there and you'd have a full length documentary... for a single weapon.

  • @pluieuwu
    @pluieuwu 4 місяці тому +3

    bro just made a 50 minute deep dive and called it a "quick look"
    now that's professionalism ❤

  • @PerfectAlibi1
    @PerfectAlibi1 4 місяці тому +2

    12:34 The direct hit of the displacer gun, TELEPORTS the main target, it doesn't kill.
    It makes the enemy someone else's problem.

    • @Ze_eT
      @Ze_eT 4 місяці тому +1

      I mean, it can teleport the enemy to its death, just like the scientist you get the Displacer from and you in one of the crush depth levels (that technically also features another scientist that is about to die due to a Displacer mishap).

    • @PerfectAlibi1
      @PerfectAlibi1 4 місяці тому

      @@Ze_eT
      The alternative fire teleports you, but not to your death, just a random location.
      Though can teleport high up in the air somewhere

    • @rafaelhines1178
      @rafaelhines1178 21 день тому +1

      ​@PerfectAlibi1 he just happened to teleport way too high

    • @PerfectAlibi1
      @PerfectAlibi1 21 день тому

      @@rafaelhines1178
      Ah, yes silly me.
      it can teleport you way up in the air as well XD

  • @theosw6961
    @theosw6961 4 місяці тому

    I just wanna give props to you for all the effort put into this video, incredible job dude. I especially love your work with the graphs to show the damage rampup over time. Great wirj!

  • @GlowingOrangeOoze
    @GlowingOrangeOoze 4 місяці тому +1

    RE: the weapon's introduction setpiece in Questionable Ethics, I'm just commenting to say that "you could plausibly mistake it as having come from the crack in these machines, anyway" was indeed what happened with me. Even though I discovered the penetration feature via deathmatch, I never refactored my original interpretation of that sequence, so I was surprised when you showed it penetrating the wall.

  • @SighFi
    @SighFi 4 місяці тому +1

    the video was already amazing (and fully subbed, too?!? hell yeah) but the very end really did just. multiply my overall enjoyment several times over, wonderful work

  • @sporeman2334
    @sporeman2334 3 місяці тому

    mate i appreciate the devotion you put into this so much

  • @PanickyRedundant
    @PanickyRedundant 4 місяці тому +1

    Really great video !! would love to see a full in-depth deep dive video on this weapon aswell : )

  • @theabarguy
    @theabarguy 4 місяці тому +4

    I played HL DM and one guy was killing me all the time with the tau cannon. At least now I understand how he did that. Thanks!

  • @Zenlore6499
    @Zenlore6499 4 місяці тому

    I’m impressed with how much information can be gleaned from this gun alone! Great video!

  • @GGigabiteM
    @GGigabiteM 4 місяці тому +1

    27:05 - "Encountering void when it shouldn't be possible"
    Entirely depends on how the map is built. "detail" objects like crates can be worldspawn, which is the world itself. They can also be brush based entities like func_wall. So if the brush the crates are made of are not tied to an entity, their volume can be the void. The HL engine is very flexible in this regard, so you can have inconsistency even within the same map where some crates are worldspawn and others are tied to a brush entity.
    Since the engine has no concept of rendering optimization, the mapper has to do it manually, so there are cases where you want worldspawn detail brushes to block rendering visibility to increase in-game performance. If you want to block sections of the map from rendering from certain other points in the map, you have to carefully plan out rooms so that the renderer won't render those certain other points.
    I've been making HL engine maps for 25 years, and it took me years to develop an understanding of the inner workings of the HL engine. After awhile, you can basically predict how the engine will behave in most cases and it becomes so ingrained in your thought process that you no longer have to actively think about map design optimization.

  • @artemiccimo8189
    @artemiccimo8189 4 місяці тому

    the dedication is so impresive
    job well done 😈

  • @pakoti96
    @pakoti96 4 місяці тому

    Bro, you are absolutely insane for making this, thank you.

  • @quote6013
    @quote6013 4 місяці тому +10

    Not to be a nerd but gauss is actually pronounced like how you'd say mouse (gouse) due to it being named after a german scientist named Johann Carl Fredrick Gauss

    • @somecreeep
      @somecreeep 4 місяці тому +2

      The only mathematician more often mispronounced is probably Euler

  • @Der_Arathok
    @Der_Arathok 4 місяці тому +2

    I love how 50 minutes of video (and probably hundreds of research) are considered a "quick look"

  • @512TheWolf512
    @512TheWolf512 4 місяці тому +2

    My biggest gripe with the best weapons in half-life is how small the amount of time you can even use them, is. Thanks to black Mesa team for correcting that problem for me

  • @TheGreenTaco999
    @TheGreenTaco999 2 місяці тому +1

    15:27 "we need to talk about parallel universes"

  • @MrD00Mka
    @MrD00Mka 4 місяці тому

    Great job, thanks for the deep dive

  • @Ribbons0121R121
    @Ribbons0121R121 4 місяці тому +1

    multiple focused lasers are often used to compress micro materials such as air or any other kind of small material that would be too hard to compress using traditional mechanical forces. this could be used in relation to some of the alien life forms tissue samples but any idea of specifics go out the window after that

  • @nfwrambo
    @nfwrambo 4 місяці тому +1

    Missed the opportunity for the guard in the thumbnail to say “what do you mean overanal-“

  • @Banshee523
    @Banshee523 2 місяці тому

    The red glow decal from the Tau Cannon and Stalkers in Half-Life 2 did used to fade away over time in older versions of the engine. That's something that broke with one of the updates.

  • @axderwraith1486
    @axderwraith1486 4 місяці тому

    I appreciate the subtitles. thank you.

  • @Taras195
    @Taras195 4 місяці тому +1

    Fun fact: The tau cannon's sound is used in Rammstein - Moskau

  • @theepicdonut68
    @theepicdonut68 4 місяці тому +2

    I like your funny words, magic man.

  • @AForceGaming
    @AForceGaming 4 місяці тому +2

    Very quick look 👍

  • @Orufj
    @Orufj 4 місяці тому +1

    Very quick look!

  • @EugenijusKrenis
    @EugenijusKrenis 4 місяці тому +2

    Ah, yes, my favourite genre of video, Some Guy talking about a secondary videogame thing for between 50 minutes and 5 hours.

  • @ericsbuds
    @ericsbuds 4 місяці тому

    wow. this is absolutely information i needed :)

  • @oliveoiltears
    @oliveoiltears 4 місяці тому +1

    oh fuck yeah, thank you pinsplash we love you

  • @standardprotocolformat6090
    @standardprotocolformat6090 4 місяці тому

    Luv your work Bro

  • @supersonicbros23
    @supersonicbros23 Місяць тому

    I usually assumed the gauss-tau gun was shooting a laser, probably involving a xen crystal; and for a while before I understood the significance of depleted uranium labels or bothered to look up how both gauss, and tau works, I thought there was some sort of isotope in depleted uranium that was an important catalyst for the reaction in a "hey its top secret experimental tech" kinda way. There are unused (and comically large) isotope boxes that may have been originally used for ammo for either the gauss or gluon, but as you said without any canonical tie in we can't know what they were intended for.

  • @noahsotolongo
    @noahsotolongo 4 місяці тому

    excellent video & great cackle at the end

  • @allsurfnoturf
    @allsurfnoturf 4 місяці тому +1

    brilliant thumbnail design

  • @Electric0eye
    @Electric0eye 4 місяці тому

    I'm surprised I haven't seen this sight gag in a thumbnail before

  • @golarac6433
    @golarac6433 4 місяці тому +10

    I thought I knew everything about Half Life but I never saw anything about the Tau cannon being removable from the buggy. Very interesting ! BTW, The second uranium based weapon in Half Life 1 also has two names. It's either Gluon or Egon. I always called it Egon as a kid, I think that's what it's called in the game files (weapon_egon, right ?) Not sure where the Gluon name comes from. The Egon name is based on the character from Ghostbusters, right ?

    • @U20E0
      @U20E0 4 місяці тому +4

      Gluons are also elementary particles

  • @VisioAuri
    @VisioAuri 4 місяці тому

    Incredible study.

  • @Sloshmael_Sweep
    @Sloshmael_Sweep 4 місяці тому +1

    insane dude

  • @DanielLenskiy
    @DanielLenskiy 4 місяці тому

    Wow, incredibly deep researchment!

  • @williewillikers9631
    @williewillikers9631 4 місяці тому

    depleted uranium is used for armor piercing rounds in the a10 warthog, it sharpens itself after piercing.

  • @potatoboi4578
    @potatoboi4578 4 місяці тому

    Kek at the subtitles comment in the description, was the first thing I checked.

  • @Nacil_54
    @Nacil_54 4 місяці тому +1

    2:13 the cylinder at the front is hollow, so the central metal bar would just act as a catalyser (?) Anyway when there's conflicting lore, I always like to find a way that fits both views, the tau canon launches via electromagnetism tau particles that it gets from the uranium ammo.

  • @walllable
    @walllable 4 місяці тому

    I think the thumbnail for this video is one of the best I've ever seen

  • @Qataclysm
    @Qataclysm 4 місяці тому

    I just love hearing people yap about, literally anything related to Valve or Source games, and now I get 50 minutes straight of that? I feel lucky.

  • @HighwayGamer
    @HighwayGamer 4 місяці тому +1

    I have to sleep early today
    Me at 3 am:

  • @thedimple773
    @thedimple773 4 місяці тому

    My favourite soothing youtube voice.

  • @littlefieryone2825
    @littlefieryone2825 3 місяці тому +1

    Huh. I always thought the spinning-thing on the Tau Cannon and the Displacer Cannon was supposed to be a centrifuge. Those are used in real life to separate uranium-235 from uranium-238, so there's some logic there. I swear I read someone else on the internet call it a centrifuge, so I'm surprised no on in the comments has mentioned it.
    My extremely unscientific theory was that the centrifuge spins and separates molecules that really really want to stay together. So when it stops spinning, the molecules snap back towards each other, creating a large burst of energy that's focused into a beam (or a portal). As for the gluon gun... yeah a centrifuge doesn't apply there, the theory falls apart. It could be a reference to how gluons are (according to the wikipedia article I just read) a subatomic particle that has "a spin of 1" so the spiral could be gluon particles "spinning" around the beam.
    You can trust me, because I am a scientist and Half Life is extremely scientifically accurate, as we all know /s

  • @Ryor97
    @Ryor97 4 місяці тому

    this video was probably the longest buildup for a gauss pun i will ever see

  • @ArnieMcStranglehold
    @ArnieMcStranglehold 4 місяці тому

    i cannot believe that i just watched this entire video, including going back a couple times to listen to something again, only to get to the end and be forced to hear you say what you said with my own ears.
    10/10.

  • @elitewill-fr3dx
    @elitewill-fr3dx 4 місяці тому

    The reason why Gauss guns are named after him is because Gauss did a lot of work with magnetism. So much so that the unit of measurement for magnetism in physics is a Gauss

  • @handgunhousecat177
    @handgunhousecat177 4 місяці тому

    Loved how straightforward and researched this was - no cutaways for lame jokes, no long unrelated tangents - just info. The joke at the end was earned

  • @hansformer9556
    @hansformer9556 4 місяці тому

    Fun fact:
    On the box it says „U-235“ which is in fact the exact opposite of depleted Uranium.
    Depleted uranium is Uranium depleted of U 235, so mostly U 238.
    So it suffice to say, valve didn’t really know about depleted Uranium.

  • @kaitoguy
    @kaitoguy 3 місяці тому +1

    I stopped understanding at around 10 minutes in but still watched the video

  • @KaanTechCrazy
    @KaanTechCrazy 4 місяці тому +1

    Talks about Gauss guns being real, shows a picture of Coilgun from wikipedia.

  • @Febewhitehorn1234
    @Febewhitehorn1234 2 місяці тому

    4:57 based on the fact the weapon is still in testing in the Lamda Labs, likely for use on Zen's hostile creatures, I find it possible it is in biological research for testing on the creatures of Zen, seeing as how they have contained some Zen creatures in the labs

  • @koval3899
    @koval3899 4 місяці тому

    this video cured my insomnia
    I NEED MORE

  • @o80y1
    @o80y1 Місяць тому

    Ryan Gaussling - “I ricochet”

  • @christhefirst
    @christhefirst 4 місяці тому +1

    this video's thumbnail is so creative lol

  • @Addsomehappy
    @Addsomehappy 4 місяці тому +1

    Thank you for your insanity

  • @naturalBait
    @naturalBait 4 місяці тому

    06:30 In my first playtrough I died to that, so I was definitly aware.

  • @blobbem
    @blobbem 4 місяці тому

    42:59 - Between a rock and a thin place.

  • @mantazzo
    @mantazzo 4 місяці тому

    I would have loved a small section into trying the gun out in HL2 MMod (as it can be detached from the vehicle) - as I have played the mod recently, it was a pretty powerful weapon to use in later levels, even though the ammo is limited and cannot be recharged.

  • @alphawolf6708
    @alphawolf6708 4 місяці тому +1

    "A quick look"
    Me, sleep deprived as fuck but is being kept alive from the 10 shots of espresso i have this afternoon : Yeah maybe sleep is for the week.

  • @alejandropulidorodriguez9723
    @alejandropulidorodriguez9723 4 місяці тому

    splendid

  • @criptreal
    @criptreal 4 місяці тому

    this gun is a beast in deathmatch. it is a very cool mobility option and generally one shots people even with full hev charge.