Highlighting HL2 Episode One's Commentary Track 44
Via GameSetWatch, an article on Waxy.org highlighting the great audio commentary for Half-Life 2: Episode One. The article includes a few excerpts from the experience, via flash movies. From the article: "Most of the game's 115 nodes are audio only, pointing out interesting tidbits about the scene you're currently in, such as the visual design, character dialogue, or gameplay. Some of the best examples discuss the iterations a stage or puzzle went through, why original versions didn't live up to expectations, and how they reached their final design. It's a fascinating glimpse into the minds of the developers, very much like sitting next to them as you play through at your own pace. But a few commentary nodes do much more, taking over the player's view to show them something hidden or entirely new. I've captured video from some of my favorites." Completely worth it to play through a second time to experience.
Do you have to install this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do you have to install this? (Score:5, Informative)
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The Source engine core is probably another 2.5 GB. All told, my SteamApps folder, which includes Valve's ENTIRE catalog (19 games, including the entire HL and CS series) + 2 3rd party games is 15.2 GB.
Direct answer to your question: as others have said, no. This is included with the game.
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Re:Do you have to install this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Developers sure didn't care to remove development, testing and obsolete files.
There's LOTS of quite lengthy sequences including at least two versions of every single sentence said by most major characters, including something that was scrapped from the game (secret shrine with Breen's busts collection anyone?), plethora of random sentences to be said by your squad (you get a squad of 1 or 2 for a really short piece of the game), and lots of other sounds you're never going to hear.
I really wonder if the situation is similar with the rest of the game data. Seems likely.
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It needed it. (Score:2, Insightful)
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No, really. I found it to be an altogether enjoyable experience. It was much more fun to work with others (namely Alyx) throughout the duration of the game. Speaking of, I clocked in at just under 4 Hours, including a 30 minute dinner break. The length was kinda disappointing, but such is life. as a side note, I am an avid FPSer, and it will likely take most people much more time, such as the 6 hours the parent po
Commentary (Score:1)
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http://jooh.no/clips.html [jooh.no]
Just add this
bind "g" "host_timescale 1.0"
bind "q" "host_timescale 0.3"
to
Steam\SteamApps\username\half-life 2 episode one\episodic\cfg\config.cfg
You may need to enable cheats, add a sv_cheats "1" line too.
If this is software then I'm really excited about what a PPU like Ageia PhysX can do. Wreak havoc with explosive projectiles and bullet-time ability among hordes of monsters with no dip in
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User Created Commentary (Score:2, Interesting)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-77919923
Unpleasant truth. (Score:2, Interesting)
The story is not a result of a talent. Talent makes the story feel real, be believable because it fe
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Sometimes I think game designers shouldn't listen to the focus groups. Like Dilbert said, "What users wan
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There is nothing wrong with a bunch of triggers, the throuble that I had with Half Life 2 (or better the Ravenholm Demo, since I haven't played the full game) however was that the triggers where all to obvious. It looked and feld like a tour in a theme park, you visit some interesting places, have some fun, but you aren't allowed to leave the trolley. There simply w
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When you write a book or a story, you may lay out the plot schedule on paper, plan every piece of action and interaction, apply plot devices at strategical points, then wear it nicely in words and you most likely get a horrible, boring, unreadable pulp. Or you write a
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Yeah, but.
Good books require good writers. Games, generally, don't have good writers. A number of years ago, I played a few games and I was impressed with a number of technical things that were beyond my comprehension. "There's some mighty clever programming, there" I thought to myself. I also thought to myself "but some complete idiot wrote this script. I could do better myself."
I could have done better myself. Though all my paid writing had been nonfiction, the cra
Re:Unpleasant truth. (Score:4, Insightful)
For a short run-down: Dialog needs to be very, very short in games. It needs to be visual. You need to define characters in ways that don't conflict with player initiated actions. You need to integrate real gameplay sequences (which would normally be terrible writing). You need to establish and stick to a palette of expressive animations. You need to write your plot for all of the possible ways that the player can traverse through that plot, and ensure that conflicting information and worldstate is never achieved. It needs to be paced for 20 - 40 hours. It needs to be technically possible to implement on a budget, which means paradoxically that flying through space is OK but fabric falling to the floor is not. It needs to be modular enough that when you cut two sections for time from the final game, the plot still makes sense. And it needs to "feel" right when you've moved your sequence from ten lines on a page to eight months later when you have a character running and jumping and dying.
A friend of mine just finished a project which had hired a big-name and well skilled author to write scripts for his game, and the results were functionally unusable. He just didn't get the structure of gaming, the non-linearity of it, and the types of things which can be effectively communicated or done in the digital realm.
Game writers need to have strong backgrounds in game design, and more than a little programming, art knowledge, and production. Oh, and they have to be amazing writers. That's a pretty rare overlap of skills. They had to dump him, hire a lesser known hollywood writer, dump him, then hire a game designer with a writing background to finish up.
Most gaming companies that I've seen "get" that they need writers. They just have a terrible time finding the right ones.
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sanctimonially ignorant game critiques:
- critiques of sanctimonial and ignorant game
- sanctimonial and ignorant critiques of game
- sanctimonial critiques of ignorant game
especially considering how sanctimonial the commentary track is, and pieces of real ignorance show through. (Alyx, with her piss-poor AI, leading the player through half the game and nagging him to hurry up continuously?!)
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You complain about the commentary system breaking immersion. Fine - turn it off. It's like complaining because DVDs ship with a director's commentary as an optional extra - you don't like it, don't listen to it.
The whole point of these kinds of commentaries is to give the playter an insight into the "behind the scenes" processes that went into making up the game - developer motivations, how and why the action is paced, things they did to tighten up the plo
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It was truly, insanely, ridiculously profitable in the way that only a very few games have managed. The mechanics did not hinder sales numbers.
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how are movies better? (Score:1)
Movies are shown to test-viewers and scripts are changed according to their suggestions
so: no di
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Maybe this would be more interesting (Score:1)
Instability (Score:1)
Gaming and Film/TV overlap (Score:2)