Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
- Platform: PC
- Published by: Valve
- Developed by: Valve
- Release Date: Fall 2005
- Genre: Action
- Multiplayer: No
- Online: No
Warning: include(/web/shugashack/include/advertising/articles_ads.x) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /data/www/www.shacknews.com/htdocs/extras/2005/091505_valvehdr_3.x on line 30
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/web/shugashack/include/advertising/articles_ads.x' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/share/php5:/usr/share/php') in /data/www/www.shacknews.com/htdocs/extras/2005/091505_valvehdr_3.x on line 30
A Day at Valve Continued..
-- September 15, 2005 by: Chris Remo
Valve on the Mod Community
When Lost Coast is made available for download, Valve plans to update Half-Life 2's SDK to include HDR documentation. It will explain how to create maps that contain both LDR and HDR lighting, to accomodate players that do not have video cards capable of HDR. The SDK will also contain the skybox Valve used in Lost Coast, because it is apparently a considerable feat to create images supporting HDR data using the current tools such as Photoshop. Adobe has apparently been a bit slow in updating their software in this regard, so Valve ended up hand-authoring the skybox completely, a task with which they don't expect everybody will want to bother. The SDK will also explain how to adjust exposure levels, the brightness range that the auto-exposure feature will cover, the amount of bloom to use, and so on. There are key things to take into account; for example, just as in real life, when looking from a very dark area into a very light area, it is actually more difficult to make out details due to objects being so heavily shadowed.
Though Valve has yet to fully explore the gameplay ramifications of HDR, they are clearly visibly excited to get the tools into the hands of the resourceful mod community to see what kind of ideas will come to fruition. Essentially, they hope to see the Counter-Strike or Garry's Mod of HDR, and they're confident somebody will come up with it.
Valve's Content Strategy
Episodic content seems to be picking up steam (ha! ha!) in the industry lately, with the first episode of Telltale's Bone adventure series just released, Ritual's SiN Episodes on the way, and Valve getting ready to ship Aftermath. Gabe Newell was very firm about Valve's devotion to delivering more content to players by way of a tighter development cycle than Half-Life 2's epic five-year journey. He explained how demotivating it can be to ship an enormously ambitious project, only to start right up again on another. It was much easier to get team members excited about smaller projects such as Lost Coast, Day of Defeat: Source, and Aftermath that it would have been to say, "Well, let's get started on Half-Life 3." The teams are smaller, the development cycles are shorter, it's easier to implement feedback, there's lower risk to the developer--essentially, Valve thinks it's the way to go.
As Newell put it, "Breaking a five-year project into five one-year projects gives better efficiency, better value, better quality control." As projects get longer and longer, the inefficiency and potential obscure bugs that can occur grows exponentially. One benefit of this method is that Valve can continue developing noteworthy pieces of technology which they will be able to get into the hands of customers as they are perfected rather than years after they are done or before they are really ready. Lost Coast is one example of that. HDR was going to be implemented into Half-Life 2, but proved to be not worth delaying the game even more. The current version of HDR is in fact the fourth discrete iteration of the technology Valve has developed due to prior methods not giving a desirable enough compromise of performance and payoff.
As always, Newell invites feedback via email.
Aftermath
Aftermath will be the first big test of that philosophy. The game will ship over Steam this year, most likely in November, and will have an incredibly reasonable purchase price of $12.95. Valve hopes to analyze customer feedback (of which there is always plenty, they note) and incorporate that feedback into their design decisions in the next piece of episodic content, which will clearly come out much sooner than Another Half-Life Game would.
Newell also revealed that, for those who were curious, the voice at the end of the end of the Aftermath trailer is in fact that of the G-Man. No further details were divulged.
Newell on Physics Cards
Gabe Newell offered his own opinions on standalone physics processors. He is by no means against them, but he doesn't think they will succeed without a definitive killer app. Though Valve is currently not developing any such game, he invites the mod community to create something that will demand the kind of physics processing power that a standalone card would provide. Were this to occur, Valve would be happy to cooperative in the endeavor and add support to their products. So get to it, modders.
Half-Life 2 Still Stuttering?
If you're still experiencing unintended audio stuttering problems in Half-Life 2, Erik at Valve invites users to email him personally, and he will do his best to get you all fixed up. He notes that the problem has been found to occur due to a very wide variety of causes, so it's more effective to help on a one-on-one basis than through generic troubleshooting.
Gabe Newell Behind a Valve, Near a Golden Crowbar
