HL2 coming near completion?

[Sicron]

Half-Life 2 preloads a week away?

Forum posts from Valve head Gabe Newell say the first phase of releasing the long-delayed shooter will begin on August 17.
With rumors flying that Half-Life 2 will go gold by the end of the month, impatient PC gamers are scouring the Web for any clues on the game's status. Late yesterday, all it took was a single line of information on the Half-Life 2 Fallout forums to get the public worked up.

In a series of posts, Valve founder Gabe Newell discussed plans to release the Counter-Strike: Source beta code via the developer's online delivery service. He outlined the dates the beta would be released to participating cybercafes, owners of CS: Condition Zero, and those who got Half-Life 2 CD-Keys as part of the 2003 ATI promotion. "Just got out of a review meeting," read the post. "8/11 the Cafe's turn on (tomorrow). 8/16 CZ/ATI users preload. 8/18 CZ/ATI turns on." Then Newell dropped this line, "8/17 HL-2 preload starts (textures, audio, and other stuff that doesn't change)."

If true, the preloading would mean that the final debugging of Half-Life 2 was nearing its end, as was rumored last month. However, since nothing has been made official--Valve's PR department responded to inquires with characteristic silence--the date could not be confirmed as of press time.

By Tor Thorsen -- GameSpot
POSTED: 08/11/04 01:48 PM PST

as far as i can read this, its not gonna take long before HL2 will be in the shops , i wonder if HL2 will use a similar system for online playing..like won or steam, if it would be steam >.< that would suck

 

[Rock Lee]

yes hl2 will use steam

 

[Prozac]

I won't believe it's out until I am actually holding the game in my hands

 

[jgeorgeuk]

here

thsi the uk date this date has not changed for time it still goes dowm with no change so i hope its correct

 

[SaiyanPrideXIX]

Hmm...I dunno. They had to redo like 50% of their graphics processing because of the Nvidia issue. Otherwise it probably would have come out months ago. I sure hope there wasn't anything they actually had to REMOVE from the game because they couldn't get it working right (I doubt it either way though).

Personally, I'm with the others on this--until it's actually gone gold, I'm not gonna go and believe anything. Personally, I'm kind of worried. I wouldn't put it past the guys at Valve--who have Steam, which is ideally a contained free-form content distribution engine (when it works)--to put out the game and drop massive amounts of minor patching. I bet every time we start HL2 for the first month or so it will download minimal patches...for every little thing that gets changed, you know? That's what they talked about doing early on, "dynamically updating content streams" and such.

I don't know. Part of me thinks that they're just going to pump it out ASAP to try and take some of the market back. Gotta hand it to Valve. They have a company that's got really only one successful product that basically has marketed itself. Pretty lucky break, I think, cause if the original Half-Life's requirements were higher and not so many people with dated machines continued to play it, they might have been up ****'s creek.

 

[Sicron]

well it wont take to long i know it for sure, since the counter strike: source, beta test have begun, and begin of next month all players who own counter strike condition zero will be able to participate in the beta test, so that must mean half life 2 will go gold soon

 

[.Maze]

yes hl2 will use steam

hmm but what about if Valve creates their Own Gaming system like WON ??

i know thats off topic but thats just my only question

 

[Tassadar]

I can't believe people still have a beef with Steam, there is NOTHING wrong with it, and it is the best thing to happen to Half Life since the thing came out. I was getting tired of 640x480 menus.
And Valve is not going to create another system, it will be Steam, and I am very grateful for that. Even the alpha had Steam with it.

 

[Sonic the Vampire]

hmm but what about if Valve creates their Own Gaming system like WON ??

i know thats off topic but thats just my only question

Valve did create their own gaming system. It's called Steam.

 

[.Maze]

I dont got any thing against STEAM @ Tassadar, im using it too, i just asked if they make that.

@ Sonic Boyster, thx i didnt know they createt STEAM i thought they made WON so SIERRA made WON, so thx for da answer

but what i meant was if they make an INGAME Server list liek WON, that was what i was asking for even if nobody could read it out my swollen lines :tired:

 

[Tassadar]

You can look at servers in game with Half Life 1. Hit Escape, then click find server. Now your looking at an ingame-server list. If that's what you mean.

 

[.Maze]

I think im going really off topic so this is my last post in this threat, cause o got No other questions.

What i mean is when you went on Internet games there was a list of Servers where you could create your servers and search for them, ye good olde WON.
That was what i meant if they making such an WON thing again and Not using STEAM, but i think my question was answered where Sonic said that VALVE made STEAM.

 

[-JLN-]

I'm just hoping that I don't have to use steam to play HL2 on single player. I don't want to be downloading a new patch for 10 minutes every time I want to play the damn game.

 

[DragonDude]

Of course it's coming near completion. It's getting closer every day.

 

[DBZFever]

Half-Life 2 is set for september.

 

[Hibiki]

What i mean is when you went on Internet games there was a list of Servers where you could create your servers and search for them, ye good olde WON.

thats exactly what steam does!


infact it does it even better than won cause u can do into it from the game with out losing track of whats going on ingame and u do searchs and stuff when ur still playing unlike with won

the whole thing is streamlined way better than it was before

 

[opensource]

I'm fairly sure you are going to end up using steam for single player too, if it works like Half-Life and OpFor do now. And the entire point of releasing steam was to provide a platform for HL2, so obviously they are going to end up using it, not WON... -_-

As for the release, its gonna take a bit more to convince me, just like everyone else. Until I can go grab the box myself, I'm not going to believe them

 

[Tassadar]

I find it VERY hard to believe that the UK release date is September 24th according to that website when there isn't even a confirmed U.S. release date.

 

[Hibiki]

I'm fairly sure you are going to end up using steam for single player too, if it works like Half-Life and OpFor do now. And the entire point of releasing steam was to provide a platform for HL2, so obviously they are going to end up using it, not WON... -_-

well besides hl2 is going to be built for steam so its not like hl1 where people were used to the old way and hl was just inserted into steam

gonna be easier to use hl2 with steam cause thats how its ment to be used

 

[opensource]

my point exactly, and apparently, they are set for the beta releases for sure now. They've announced it multiple times (not that Valve hasnt done that before)