The HL2DB forums have a recap of a recent Half-Life 2 IRC chat event. Among the many things mentioned (and there's some good stuff), one of the Valve guys mentions the anti-aliasing problem which had so many people's panties in a twist, is now fixed. On all cards. So look forward to AA goodness. Thanks jd.

<valve|gary> Anti-aliasing has been fixed for all cards

German game site GameStar is reporting that their next issue of their print game magazine mentions that Half-Life 2 is being bundled with the new ATI Radeon 9900 Pro videocard. There's certainly no confirmation from ATI or Valve, but an OEM version of Half-Life was included with several pieces of hardware before release in 1998. Another thing mentioned is that Half-Life 2 has a September 13 gold date. Thanks HomeLAN Fed.

We've got another new Half-Life 2 video this afternoon to check out, Bugbait is the title and this one shows off some pretty good action with Gordon showing off his ability to manipulate alien bugs with some bait. Plus there is that big bull spider thingie that I mentioned in my Half-Life 2 preview. Grab up the video from FileShack or of course Steam

- Half-Life 2 Bugbait Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Tunnels Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Trap Town Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Kleiner's Lab Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Docks Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 G-Man Bink Video

Well now isnt this just an interesting turn of events. As I'm sure many of you recall a couple other places were reporting that Half-Life 2 had been delayed and we had this silly idea that it wasnt even though the reports were coming from Vivendi themselves. But guess what, after what can only be called just a tad of confusion it seems Vivendi has a new stance, here's the quote from lead PR at Vivendi working on Half-Life 2 thanks to Evil Avatar:

Valve is still working toward the Sept.30 ship date.

Given Valve's uncharacteristic quietness on this, I can think of only one thing. Valve is working hard on hitting that shipping date and they still feel they can hit it, but perhaps they shared with Vivendi that there is a possibility of them missing that date, and things got misintepreted from there. There is always the possibility of missing a ship date though, but if Vivendi is going back on earlier statements then there must be at least some confidence that Valve can still hit that target date. If we ever get any kind of on the record statement from Valve we'll be sure to let you guys know.

We've got another new Half-Life 2 video this afternoon to check out, Tunnels is the title and I havent had a chance to check it out yet but if the rumors are true you can probably expect to see something resembling tunnels in the video. The video is about 100megs and is also of course available via Steam. Thanks AllYourBase for the heads-up

- Half-Life 2 Tunnels Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Trap Town Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Kleiner's Lab Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Docks Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 G-Man Bink Video

A number of gaming sites out there are carrying word of an alleged Half-Life 2 delay according to some folks at Vivendi Universal who are publishing the title retail for Valve Software. However word doesnt seem to have traveled down to Valve according to an email pulled from the Steam forums. (We havent been able to directly confirm or deny with anyone at Valve yet) who might know a thing or two about that. timm of Shacknews comments fame already pointed out this Gabe Newell response:

First time I've heard about this.

So there you go, dont panic just yet as Valve Software decides when they ship, not Vivendi. Valve says there is no delay (that they are aware of, and well.. if anyone is aware of a delay it would be Valve), then there is no delay. Things are still on target for Sept 30th until/unless Valve says otherwise. This is of course assuming the email is legit. The bit about something like this coming down from Vivendi is a bit far fetched too given Valve's situation so what the hell. We'll have word here for you guys as soon as we hear from Valve.

A little late night video action for you guys, the latest Half-Life 2 video has been released by Valve Software and it's a big one. You can grab it from FileShack tonight while the lines are short. It's 180megs and called Trap Town. The latest video shows off a bunch of the physics as part of gameplay aspects of Half-Life 2 which are pretty fun to watch. Here's the latest list:

- Half-Life 2 Trap Town Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Kleiner's Lab Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 Docks Bink Video
- Half-Life 2 G-Man Bink Video

The guys at PcGamingNetworks have announced an IRC chat with Valve Software and several mod teams, during which the technical aspects of the Source engine will be discussed. The chat will be held August 4, more info can be found here.

A follow-up story for those of you freaking out over this huge huge HUGE scandal with Half-Life 2 and AA support. Here's a bit from Gabe Newell of Valve Software giving even more details:

There's a different trick you can use with hardware, such as NVIDIA's, that doesn't support centroid sampling. Basically you trade off some pixel shader bandwidth to clamp the texture coordinates so that you don't sample texels outside of that polygon's lightmap sub-rect.Between these two approaches, multi-sample anti-aliasing artifacts should be a non-issue for any DX9-level hardware running Pixel Shader 2.0.

3) How will this look?
We'll release one of the demo movies with the anti-aliasing artifacts in and one with the anti-aliasing changes.

It seems that although this story broke a little while ago its just now making the second rounds with a few more details that has people up in arms. Basically Half-Life 2 and anti-aliasing doesnt get along with the latest NVidia cards on the market but does get along with the ATI cards. It's not an easy driver fix either to get around things, here's a quote from Gary McTaggart (Hi Gary!):

Drivers aren't likely to fix the problem, with the exception of the ATI 9500-9800. There's hope there for being able to use FSAA properly. You are out of luck on NVidia unless either NVidia or us come up with some clever way of solving this problem.
...
The problem is specifically with multisample antialiasing on any card that uses multisample antialiasing. If you use supersampling you should be fine. Actually, this problem has existed for any game that uses light maps that are packed into a subrect (like Quake 3, etc). You will be able to turn FSAA if you like (in the control panel for your video card), but it's likely to have artifacts on triangle boundaries. We don't recommend turning multisample antialiasing on for cards that don't have centroid sampling. . .your mileage may vary.

Shout outs to XBit , Tiscali, Blues (for the quote), and this forum thread

UK online game store GAME has posted their own Half-Life 2 Q&A (near the bottom), asking Gabe Newell of Valve a few questions about the game, topics include anti-cheat technology and support for alternative server browsers such as ASE. Thanks VE3D.

Both HomeLAN Fed and HalfLife-Mods.com have posted a Sven Co-op Half-Life 2 Q&A, trying to get some more info about this Half-Life 2 co-op mod which is in pre-production stages.

GameDaily is the latest site with a Half-Life 2 Q&A. In the article format Q&A (which doesn't have much in the way of new info) Valve's Gabe Newell talks about the game's announcement just a few months ago, lacking deadlines because of self funding, if the possible sale of Vivendi Universal games affects them at all, the Source engine, the E3 presentation and Steam.

More hot Half-Life 2 video action for you ladies today. The latest video available on FileShack shows off some nifty characters stuff which gives you a good look at how well all those facial animations fit together to convey emotions. Have a look at Kleiner's Lab. The movies so far:

- Facial animations
- Docks
- Kleiner's Lab

GameSpy has posted a Half-Life 2 interview, asking Valve's Doug Lombardi a few questions about the game. Topics include object detail, environment destruction, AI, weapons, audio and more.

The second Half-Life 2 direct-feed video has been released via Steam and of course available on our trusty FileShack as well. The latest video shows off that nifty water effect that so many viewers at E3 swooned over. You can also have a look at the character animations video which came out a couple of days ago in case you missed that one. We're expecting more videos over the next couple of weeks. Once all of the footage that was shown at E3 this year is made public we're anticipating some new footage to follow.

The Half-Life 2 release date is just 10 weeks away.

The first of a series of Half-Life 2 videos to be released over the Steam platform is now available. You can grab the Steam client from or you can just download directly the BINK encoded video from FileShack. This first video is the shortest of the bunch and just includes a demonstration of the facial animation system to be included in Half-Life 2. The videos to be released in the coming weeks will include in-game scenes and action.

This video is a direct-feed high resolution video. Not the shaky-cam stuff you saw around E3 time.

The latest Gabe Newell Q&A is up at HL2Central, offering very brief answers to questions about Team Fortress 2, disabling bunny hopping, the possibility of aircrafts in HL2, music, bullet ballistics and a few other things. Thanks HomeLAN Fed.

Trepid is the latest site with a Half-Life 2 Q&A, asking Valve's Gabe Newell about the game. Questions are about competing with games like DOOM 3, features in the game that Gabe is proud of, converting Half-Life 1 levels to Half-Life 2, mod support and plenty of other things. One interesting thing that's mentioned is that we're probably not going to see a playable demo released before the game comes out.

What was the most difficult challenge to overcome when developing Half-Life 2?

The length of the project. We've been working on Half-Life 2 for five years, and it's been a huge amount of work the whole time. It's just hard to maintain your focus over that length of time. We've had some of our long-time playtesters going from being seniors in high school to being college graduates during Half-Life 2 development. We're going to recharge a bit on short fun projects once HL-2 goes out the door.

Sharky Extreme has posted a Half-Life 2 roundtable discussion, offering an interview with Valve's Ken Birdwell and Josh Weier about the game. There isn't really a whole bunch of new information in here, but it's still a good read about the engine features and such.