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Valve has 'hl3.txt' in Dota patch w/ procedural gen, NPC recruitment, zipline, quests

D

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
u5M6l9f.gif
 
M

MassiveNights

Banned
People are saying without following up that they've released files like this before.

Please remind me when and in what ways its comparable. Did it contain stuff exactly like this?
 
H

Hydrus

Member
So I open up steam and it went straight to my library and Half Life 2. Then a pop up opened up about a survey for hardware. Lol probably nothing just thought it was a crazy coincidence after reading this thread.
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
I feel like, given Valve's focus on VR, HL3 could be the big VR game. Not to say it won't be playable without, but VR is where the business value of a single player experience is right now, and for the foreseeable future.

However, that also gates the release date. There's no point in releasing your revolutionary single player experience on an incomplete, unfinished platform.

(it also would mean it's still really early in development, presumably. aka plenty of time to be re-re-re-canceled)
 
N

nintendoman58

Member
Well 2015 is the year of super big reveals like Shenmue 3, maybe Valve doesn't want to feel left out?

Yeah this is probably going to end up being nothing. :(
 
B

BlackRock

Member
Coffee Dog said:
I don't really think so. Half Life 1 and 2 end fairly well. Sure, they both end with time stopping and the g-man pulling gordon out, but the rest of the narrative is wrapped up. In Half Life 1, the aliens are dead and the main threat is dealt with, in HL2 Breen is gone, the resistance has triumphed, and once again the main threat is dealt with.

The episodes end with the main plot threads incomplete, because well, they're the first 2/3 of a single story.
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I disagree that the narrative was ever ended in a satisfying way. There's always been far too many dangling threads for my tastes. Spoiler tags just in case anyone hasn't played the series already (why haven't you?). It's been a while since I played these last, so this is just from memory too.

At the end of HL1 we have no idea what happens to Black Mesa or the survivors. We have no idea what the fate of Gordon is other than death or servitude to the G-man - pretty unsatisfying. We have no idea who the G-man is. We have no idea what becomes of Xen after the Nihilanth.

At the end of HL2 we have no idea what becomes of Alyx or how she could survive. We have no idea what becomes of City 17 or the resistance. We still have no idea who the G-man is (and don't begin to until Ep 2). Besides Alyx, we have no idea about any of the other characters. We don't know much of anything about who the Combine really are, where they come from, or the advisors.

At the end of Ep 1 we still know nothing about the G-man. We obviously have no idea what happens to Alyx and Gordon. We have no idea what the fate of the survivors of City 17 is. We know only a tiny little more about the advisors, and virtually nothing more about the Combine itself.

At the end of Ep 2 we don't know what happens to Eli (dead?), Alyx, or Gordon. We do know more than we ever have about the advisors and the G-man (Ep 2 has the most storytelling of the series), but we still have lots of unanswered questions. We have no idea about Judith and the ship. We have no idea why the ship cargo is so important or really what it is.

Those are just the ones off the top of my head. I really like the series and I love the setting and how it never breaks character from Gordon's POV, but Valve has been awful at tying up threads and reaching any sort of closure.
 
P

PnCIa

Member
They are working on something Half-Life related, that is not surprising. Whats important is if more than 10 people are working on it or if they are just prototyping around.
 
Darkangel

Darkangel

Member
Machina said:
People have short memories. The gap between Half Life 1 and 2 was massive as well, with an entirely different game developed, cancelled then started from scratch again in that same window.

Valve beat to nobodies drum but their own. Nobody saw Portal coming either and surprise, it's considered one of the greatest franchises ever.
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Half-life 2 only took 6 years and was fully revealed to the public after 5.

Episode 3/Half-life 3 hasn't been openly discussed in 8 YEARS!

Valve has treated their original fanbase like shit.
 
Stiler

Stiler

Member
Oh God, I can't handle this again, should I get my hopes up only to have Valve come out and crush them yet again?
 
O

OnionPowder

Member
Darkangel said:
Half-life 2 only took 6 years and was fully revealed to the public after 5.

Episode 3/Half-life 3 hasn't been openly discussed in 8 YEARS!

Valve has treated their original fanbase like shit.
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Video games take longer to develop now? ¯\(°_o)/¯

Just take the expanding dev cycle for most devs and double it for Valve
 
C

ChaosXVI

Member
I've been let down far too many times to get excited about this now...and I've only been waiting since 2010, so I can't even imagine how incredibly done the rest of you are by now.

I'm sure it'll come out at some point...but this endless breadcrumb game hasn't been fun for awhile now.
 
D

Doctor Ironic

Member
MayMay said:
People have all rights to be entitled/angry/annoyed after the shitshow that was the whole episodes thing, starting from HL2EP2s ending up to them announcing HL2EP3 for release and then never actually delivering it.

They can be happy that happened back then and not nowadays, imagine them releasing a HL2 Season Pass and just not delivering half of it.
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You never gave Valve any money for Half-Life Episode 3.

Wowfunhappy said:
Perhaps not, but they do kind of owe people an ending to HL2's story.

Call me entitled, but when I buy an episodic game, I do it under the assumption that all of the episodes will eventually be released.
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They don't, at all.

Assumptions make an ass out of u and me. If you are buying individual episodes, you should be aware that the rest of the episodes are still in flux. If you are buying a season pass, then you have a right to be pissed, but there was never a season pass for HL2 Episodes. You never gave Valve any money for Half-Life Episode 3. They do not owe it to you.
 
A

a very cute dog

Member
God, this hurts. I think whatever it is will be interesting, but I don't think (or want to let myself think) it has anything to do with Half-Life 3.
 
L

LDAF

Member
The Half Life subreddit is on fire looking over all this stuff. One thing that I found particularly interesting was someone saying they found references to a day/night cycle, pointing back to the rumor that HL3 will be open world. I try to not get myself hyped in these situations, but hey, it's fun every once in a while.
 
A

Adam802

Banned
BlackRock said:
I disagree that the narrative was ever ended in a satisfying way. There's always been far too many dangling threads for my tastes. Spoiler tags just in case anyone hasn't played the series already (why haven't you?). It's been a while since I played these last, so this is just from memory too.

At the end of HL1 we have no idea what happens to Black Mesa or the survivors. We have no idea what the fate of Gordon is other than death or servitude to the G-man - pretty unsatisfying. We have no idea who the G-man is. We have no idea what becomes of Xen after the Nihilanth.

At the end of HL2 we have no idea what becomes of Alyx or how she could survive. We have no idea what becomes of City 17 or the resistance. We still have no idea who the G-man is (and don't begin to until Ep 2). Besides Alyx, we have no idea about any of the other characters. We don't know much of anything about who the Combine really are, where they come from, or the advisors.

At the end of Ep 1 we still know nothing about the G-man. We obviously have no idea what happens to Alyx and Gordon. We have no idea what the fate of the survivors of City 17 is. We know only a tiny little more about the advisors, and virtually nothing more about the Combine itself.

At the end of Ep 2 we don't know what happens to Eli (dead?), Alyx, or Gordon. We do know more than we ever have about the advisors and the G-man (Ep 2 has the most storytelling of the series), but we still have lots of unanswered questions. We have no idea about Judith and the ship. We have no idea why the ship cargo is so important or really what it is.

Those are just the ones off the top of my head. I really like the series and I love the setting and how it never breaks character from Gordon's POV, but Valve has been awful at tying up threads and reaching any sort of closure.
Click to expand...

In all honesty though, most of those questions get answered in the subsequent game. Its just that its been 8 f*cking years since Ep2 lol.....
 
D

DigtialT

Member
Why is this a .txt file? Those don't really do anything, so it would be kinda pointless.
Why is it called hl3? What developer just names a file after the game without any naming structure to explain even a little what is stored within it? Is everything just gonna be in this one file?
Why is a supposed file for Half Life 3 anywhere near the files for Dota? Are the same people working on Dota working on HL3 as well?
They are clearly just fucking with us.
 
A

alexandros

Banned
I think this would be a great direction for the game after Half-Life 2 as I posted multiple times in the past that HL2 and the episodes felt more like road movies than traditional single-player rollercoasters. They contained a lot of movement between locations and frequent pockets of action. Apply the same logic to a fully open world and you have an HL3 where Gordon Freeman liberates earth from the combine forces, building up the resistance while continuing his main quest for the final victory. If Valve's procedural generation system is robust and the engine is up to it, it would be an amazing platform for user generated content, paid or free.
 
T

tbd

Member
Procedural generation? Let's not hope this is an indicator for open world. If there is one thing that made Half Life better than cinematic shooters or those games with their generic open worlds, it was the well structured level design.
 
D

Deleted member 102362

Unconfirmed Member
DigtialT said:
Why is this a .txt file? Those don't really do anything, so it would be kinda pointless.
Why is it called hl3? What developer just names a file after the game without any naming structure to explain even a little what is stored within it? Is everything just gonna be in this one file?
Why is a supposed file for Half Life 3 anywhere near the files for Dota? Are the same people working on Dota working on HL3 as well?
They are clearly just fucking with us.
Click to expand...

I think it's related to this.
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
I can't believe this, I have developed immunity for this news! I am not excited! Excellent. Dammit, Valve, just kill the game already. BTW, there are some new definitions according to the ValveTime article:

But, there’s obviously some completely new things that are defined.

There’s some type of “quest” system which we don’t think was in Valve’s dictionary in Half-Life 2/Source 1. Quest dialogue, quest goals, and quest NPCs, such as hunters, citizens, and ceiling turrets, are all found in hl3.txt. Quest citizen is a quest member that’s “neutral to Combine, and don’t take damage from their weapons.” “Quest” and “Combine” in the same attribute - is this suggesting that Half-Life 3 is or at one point was a shooter with role playing elements? There’s also some definitions for VR involving the Chaperone system (only patented March 2015) and a movement system. Ziplines, too!
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EatChildren said:
Time moves forward, nothing changes.
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I thought you hated that game!

Jeremy said:
what the hell is a guest account?

kittens
Guest
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It's when you fucked up so badly, you're not even allowed to have the right to be remembered in the forum. The thread in which that happened was pretty bad, you simply cannot insult people in their faces and expect nothing to happen.
 
M

MayMay

Banned
Spirited said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/3nwdfe/its_probably_nothing_but_tomorrow_is_109_which/

This guy seems to have figured it out yesterday that this would comes today.
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banefirelord said:
Oh fuck. That...that actually makes me somewhat believe this stuff.

It's also 8 years to the day since Episode 2 came out (10/10/2004).
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Oh damn..

it does make sense.

But sadly that does not mean that it's not just a coincidence... Never losing hope though!
 
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