Half-life
<div class="IPBDescription">Source going Quake-style?</div> I want to know if there's any knews regarding Half-Life's rendering source code. Do they plan on releasing as they have Doom, Quake, and Quake II? I mean, if Valve ports CS to HL2, then I don't see why not... It's supposed to be portable, so multiplayer MODs can just go to a new rendering engine, and single player MODs like Poke646 can release their mods as standalones, if the developers follow the GPL license. Maybe like, 2 months after HL2 comes out? Anything at all?
I <b>do</b> realize that 3DRealms just released the Duke Nukem 3D source within the previous year, so it's possible to do that sort of source-nazi thing, I guess, but come on. Do they plan on doing anything? :X
I <b>do</b> realize that 3DRealms just released the Duke Nukem 3D source within the previous year, so it's possible to do that sort of source-nazi thing, I guess, but come on. Do they plan on doing anything? :X
Comments
And last I heard the BUILD engine source has been out for more than a year, I thought it came out right after the DOOM & Hexen source came out?
I can't really see any huge advantage it'd grant the community by releasing HL's engine code, myself.
Modders would probably have much more flexibility and stuff they could do if they had the source code.
If I was Valve I wouldn't do it. Half Life is still immensely popular and if hackers got their hands on the source code online player could become a bit of a pain.
But that's a few years off. Bet we'll see the Q3 engine source code first. :P
sorry about my ignorance, but what is a source nazi?
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anyway, I don't really care if they fully release the source engine. The engine is ageing and what can be done on the engine has, more or less, already been reached to its limits (NS for one, other mods who breached the weapon number limits)
Sure, we could have more flexibility, but it isn't worth the fact that you could slightly fine tune it while other engines will most certainly offer more.
Everyone already has Half Life, so making a retail version of a mod is more or less useless (want DoD? buy hl and dld the mod. Want CS? ditto. Want HL? you gotta get HL)
Then again, I don't code myself, so I might have everything wrong <!--emo&::nerdy::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/nerd.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='nerd.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Half-Life is aging, yes, which is why I'd love to see the source code released sometime within... Forever...
I mean, it'd be free games for the five single player total conversions in exsistence, but then the HL engine could be upgraded to use the latest optomization algorithims and OpenGL extensions. Do you know what Quake: Tenebrae is? It's a modification of the Quake engine, not the game, that gives it the same lighting Doom III will have (granted, not at the same quality, but still the same core idea). It also gives bump-mapping and 32-bit texture support to the game. Now, Quake isn't really that popular, but Half-Life is beyond all imagination, which means that there's a high chance of an engine-coder willing to tweak it out and do stuff to it, and game MODders will have control over absoloutely everything... GUI, how the game handles the camera, how polygons are rendered... So, if they wanted to, they could release their mod as a standalone game with bump-mapping and water shaders and a bunch of advanced stuff the HL engine doesn't have... But, I guess it won't happen soon. I forgot about CS:CZ, and now that I think about it, with Steam, it seems unlikely... Oh well, so much for playing HL singleplayer again :\
That's the point of why having the source code would rock. These limits could be shattered as people can modify the engine itself to suit their needs. Look at Tenebrae for Quake and imagine someone doing the exact same with HL. Besides the system resources hog part that is. :P
Suddenly, the Source engien for HL2 would be out and free, but for old HL. It would perform better than HL2's source engine, look better, and be easier to mod. And best of all, it'd be totally free. Bad thing though- HL2 and VALVe would be ruined, and doomed to never release a game again.
It would take a team probably at least a year and a half to bring the HL1 engine anywhere near hl2 standards, and probably even longer to tweak everything and get it performing right...
Though Im a huge open source advocate, im thinking only about the smacktards. Half Life has a lot of them, and making it open source would only lead to more vicious cheats. Though it would be great for modders.
And NS does have an option to run in 32 bit color. Though it may not be "true" 32 bit. I honestly dont know much about it. Its irrelevant anyway, I cant tell any sort of difference between 16 and 32 bit =D
And DOOM: Think about it. 12000 people play HALF-LIFE(no mods included) at any given time, during any given time. Now, lets think...lets say for every...oh, 5,000 people, 1 of them is a coder. Now, that menas 2 coders play HL. Now, lets add the mods.
That means we would have upwards of 3,000 to 20,000 coders working on this. Now, lets cut the number in 1/10ths, so we could factor out those who don't want to.
We still have a minimum of 300- bigger than all of even the big BIG dev companies. They could get it up there fast, I'm sure. I'd say...6 months, tops. A year if they want to include Virtual Reality helmets.
Anyway, couldn't you just see the Xen aliens with DX8 shaders? Oooooh, slimey.
[EDIT] Quaunaut: First off, you're implying that each one of those coders is a modder, and not someone just playing after work out to have fun. Second, you're assuming that they're all co-operative. Third, you're assuming they'd all have the nessecary mathematics schooling to pull off some of the more intricate coding. Fifth, you're assuming that they've all got a knowledge of the new OpenGL extensions. There's a long list, and it filters out a lot of coders... I'd say, in all, there'd be around 200 that could actually pull it off, and 20 or less that have the energy, 5 or less that have the time. [/EDIT]
P.S. Woah, my mom just got rushed to the hospital...
And for the other thing you said:
Did you notice that was 1 out of every 5 thousand is a coder? There are a LOT more than you think, my friend.
And I realize there are more coders than imagineable, but how many of them know how to program in 3D with OpenGL and want to spend their free time doing it (they'd probably have an intensive job as it is, knowing what they do). But what I'm saying is that if they release it and successfully port CS to the HL2 engine, along with other MODs (I think you were able to play CS on the alpha leak), there'd be less risk of hackers gaining more knowledge of what to do. With Steam, it'd be possible to update the HLDM. I dunno if this'd work, just throwing ideas around.
If I were to throw a idea around, it'd be a NS/TS/S&I merger with RPG elements.
NS, the way it is now, with a more intricate RTS system(maybe a 3 tier, instead of just the 2 it is now).
Combined with slo-mo(that is begot by kills. Each kill gets 1 second of slo-mo), and kung fu(that knife...hoo boy).
Then, for certain things on the alien side, there would be a S&I style voting thing for which way the whole alien team wants to focus(if they wanna be speed demons, stealthy assasins, balls-to-the-wall killers, etc.).
And for the RPG elements- As a 'rine, maybe having accuracy get better with the guns over time, and for aliens maybe more energy, but not just those, several things, that would be easy to pick.
Heaven.