Marc Laidlaw, script and story writer for Valve has recorded a video interview on the AI used in Half-Life. According to Laidlaw, the AI developed for Half-Life is advanced enough that NPC reactions will be different each time you play the game. Valve has committed itself to providing single-player games with dynamic AI to keep each play through fresh and extend the shelf life of your game.

Take a look at the gameplay footage provided to get an idea of the variances the AI interaction can have.

via FileFront

Every so often, a new mod for some popular game or another crops up that offers improved visuals, and I usually glance at the new look and then forget about it. But then I came across some screenshots from the Fakefactory Cinematic Mod 7 for Half-Life 2 and that all changed. Mostly because the first image I saw was the screenshot comparison at the right, and the first thing I thought was, “What in the God-damned Hell did they do to Alyx?” As you can see, yes this new mod offers some more high-quality visuals, but it also offers a revised (i.e. skankier) companion for Gordon Freeman’s travels. Why is Alyx suddenly slutting it up in this post-apocalyptic world? And why has all trace of her multi-ethnic heritage been erased in favor of a stereotypical supermodel look? And why does every single person in this new version just seem to have an angry expression on their faces at all times? I don’t know, but man does this just make me appreciate the original game a whole lot more. You can check out more odd screenshots here. 

Game designer Adam Maxwell, who has worked on Auto Assault and Dirty Harry, recently reworked a blog post for Gamasutra which is entitled “The Case Against Writers In The Games Industry.” With an intriguing enough title, I read through his piece and walked away thinking that a writer must have stole Maxwell’s girlfriend at some point; I couldn’t possibly disagree with him anymore than I do.

His main points are that a writer takes time away from development of a game’s core mechanics, his or her contributions won’t make a game good, and a writer’s linear work is at odds with a designer’s non-linear work.

Maxwell also claims that a designer who also has the ability to write is much more valuable than a writer, which is true to an extent. I completely can understand why you would want a multi-talented individual on your staff; someone versatile is always an asset. (Just ask Ron why he hired me. I do wonderful papier-mâchés.) But, that argument doesn’t take into account two things. Read the full article »

Sometimes things slips under the radar a bit in the world of gaming news. An example of such a situation is the news of Electronic Arts issuing a patch for the PS3 version of The Orange Box. The patch was issued yesterday and if you signed in via PSN yesterday you may have noticed it and you may have not noticed it. Either way, it is there, and here are the gory details for it:

• Fixed a graphical issue whereby a player would have the explosion effect left on the end of their Rocket Launcher when attempting to Rocket Jump
• Fixed a memory leak to improve single player stability
• Fixed an issue whereby the players name would not appear on the Stats comparison screen
• Fixed an issue that would cause the vote tallies to disappear when you viewed the scoreboard between rounds
• Fixed an online server issue
• Fixed an issue that caused a crash when a player that wasn’t in Division 1 entered ‘Your Leaderboards
• Fixed an issue with players not always being added to the ‘Players Met’ menu on the XMB
• Fixed a bug where a player viewing a friend without an EA account would have an empty entry in the friend’s Leaderboard
• Fixed an issue where it was not possible to connect to the EA servers if you had more than 30 friends

Via: Press Release

Back in January, Valve revealed that it was toying with new unlockable weapons for the various classes. The only particular one they spoke about, though, was the Overhealer which was naturally for healers. Using it, medics would be able to heal teammates up to 200% their normal health permanently (rather than 150% and having that figure slowly fall back to 100% when not being healed). There had to be some drawback, and that was the concept of having either a modified Ubercharge or not having one at all.

But through the rigorous testing Valve puts things through, they’ve determined that the feature just doesn’t work and won’t make its way into the game. In an email reply sent to a concerned TF2 player (who also complained about feeling like the Pyro is underpowered), Valve’s Robin Walker wrote:

Thanks a bunch for the long & detailed feedback. It’s always great to get feedback with this amount of time & thought put into it. We’re still thinking about the relationship between the Pyro & the core combat classes, in particular that of the Pyro & the Soldier. We’ve tried a couple of things in our internal playtests, but haven’t found anything we like enough to ship yet. The recent update to the flamethrower with the audio cue played when you’re hitting an enemy seems to have been a good step.

No details on the Pyro’s unlockable weapons yet, sorry. We’re still focusing on the Medic, and the underlying system. Your fire axe will be happy to hear that the Overhealer didn’t work out as well as we wanted it to, and won’t be making an appearance.

I was pretty interested to see how this mechanic would work in game, but I can see how it could potentially break down.

Steam forums via Evil Avatar

Hardcore Counter-Strike fans are really nuts for their game. This much we know. Refusing to play Counter-Strike: Source, many stuck with an older version of the game so as to keep their precious view of the game intact. (Yes, I’m somewhat mocking you, but only so much as someone that would like to believe the ninth season of The X-Files never happened can.) So, as you can imagine, the pressure would really be on Valve should they ever make a sequel to Counter-Strike, which Gabe Newell called “an incredibly important product to this company.”

Eurogamer transcribed part of what Valve’s VP of Marketing, Doug Lombardi, recently had to say in an interview with GameTrailers. While he didn’t announce any sort of sequel, he posed several hypothetical points about where Valve could potentially go with the game, nothing that it would fit in well in an Orange Box-style package.

“Do we go start over from scratch and build this whole new game, do we do something that looks more like Team Fortress 2 that is rooted in the old game but has a ton of new stuff, or do we just sort of take everything that’s new that we’ve released and whatnot and put that out in a new box?”

“I think we’re leaning more towards the two more radical places than just sort of rolling up the new box and re-skinning the box and putting out all the new stuff.”

I’ve never really been into CS, just because the barrier of entry is absurdly high for someone that isn’t going to devote a lot of time to it so long after it was first released. I mean, I get killed sitting in the menus. But if Valve somehow redid the game with a slightly more simplified fashion (like they did with Team Fortress 2), I’d definitely be willing to give it a shot.

Winter seems to just be settling in and with it comes the doldrums of a season with little sunshine, cold winds, and the obligatory ice and snow. While we are cooped up in our houses in a state of semi-hibernation it would be nice to have something new to try out while we wait for GTA IV and Condemned 2 to hit stores. Thankfully, this week we received more demos than last week and the usual barrage of patches came through. Whatever happened to the good ole days of games with zero issues? Or did they even every exist? I can’t remember anymore.

Along with The Sims 2: Bon Voyage and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, here are some other patches you may be in need of that hit FileFront this week:

• Loki: Cyanide Studios has released a patch updating Loki to v1.0.8.2.
• World in Conflict: This v1.006 patch fixes balancing issues, additions to the various communications tools in the game, adds new features, including enhanced server filters, improved “Play Now” functions and measures against clan smurfing.
• GRAW 2: Ubisoft has released a patch updating Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 from v1.0 to v1.05.

Besides Shadowgrounds Survivor, and Sam and Max: Night of the Raving Dead, FileFront also received the following demos:

• Need for Speed: ProStreet Porche: EA has released a second demo- this one 2 Porsche cars (911 GT2 / 911 GT3RS) drivable on the Porsche Leipzig testing track.
• Half-Life: Day One: This was the first official demo of Half-Life, including “The first day” playing time.
• The Club: SEGA has released a multilanguage demo for The Club, a 3rd person action shooter focused on addictive and rewarding gameplay. You must go through an age gate for this one.
• Tomb Raider Anniversary for Mac Users: A new playable Mac demo of Tomb Raider: Anniversary has been released, this time giving you the chance to try out one level from Peru

For the full list of demos and patches click on the respective links.

Science fiction has been the instrument of man envisioning his future. While many of these hopes and fears remain fantastical, some of them have crossed the boundaries of reality to become science fact. The Escapist explores science fiction versus science fact of outer space in it’s latest offering, issue 136: “Lost In Space.”

“Future Tech Today” explores the science fiction that is our present by The Escapist’s Associate Editor Joe Blancato and Editorial Assistant Jordan Deam; Thomas Wilburn probes Half-Life’s science aptitude in “Anomalous Materials;” “My Own Private Outer Space” is a bumpy ride pitting science fiction vs. science fact,by The Escapist’s Associate Editor Russ Pitts; in “Adjacent Data” Joel Kelly looks at the science fiction future of the past and Howard Wen charts the decline and fall of the space sim shooter in “What Happened to the Last Starfighters?”

via Press Release

I don’t know many people that didn’t enjoy Portal; the only complaint I really heard was that it caused certain people to get motion sickness, and others felt it was too short. (I disagree, but nevertheless.) Barring those that get sick, the rest of us will be excited to know that Valve is planning to add more to the game than just “a bunch of new puzzles,” as Valve’s Doug Lombardi put it.

“There’ll be more Portal, for sure. But the details of that, to be honest, we’re still working out,” he said.

“The only smart thing we did for Portal was to hire those seven kids and give them the support they needed to make the game.”

Another great piece of news was that Valve aims to ensure that all of its downloadable content will be free of charge. Lombardi also spoke vaguely about Episode Three, saying “Gordon is our number one guy.”

“In Episode One I think we left people with some big questions. After Episode Two people saw it was going somewhere.

“With Episode Three we want to live up to the promise of where we are taking things to; there’s a lot of work being done to make sure we deliver on that promise.”

He added, “Exact details on what’s next for Gordon are a way off; probably months not weeks.”

Honestly, I have no idea how they could possibly wrap up all of the storylines in Episode Three (what is G-Man!?!), but I’m cautiously optimistic that it will all work out.

via Eurogamer

Awhile back, someone going by the name of “squirrelking” decided to learn English and that the best way to practice was to write video game fan fiction. One of these practice sessions became a story titled “Half-Life: Full Life Consequences,” which was recently adapted into the video short above using Garry’s Mod. The result is one of the funniest Half-Life 2 parodies in recent memory as you follow the adventures of John Freeman, Gordon Freeman’s brother, who rides to his brother’s rescue on a motorcycle made out of a bathtub and two big tires. Along the way, he encounters headcrab zombie police, zombie “goasts, and of course “full life consequences.”