Post by
MinisterofDOOM »
https://forums.nicoclub.com/ministerofdoom-u16506.html
Thu Nov 25, 2004 9:18 pm
As far as the Hydra is concerned, it is the latter.
"The hydra was my pet feature, a monster I wanted in from the starte. We designed whole areas of the game around it. I personally spent about six months on and off getting all the movement algorithms and physics to a working state. Everyone was pretty skeptical it was even possible when I started, so I kept a pretty low profile, but oneceI got some of the early fought AU drafts up and running people would sneak one into a map and check it out and get all excited and start pushing me to hurry up and finish it. However, the closer it got to being done, the more its fatal flaw was becomeing clear: it was amazingly cool to watch it fight other characters, but it was zero fun to play against it in first person. When it attacked others, as the player you could see this great big glowing giant worm snaking through the map, knowcking stuff over and putting on a great show, but when it attacked you, the player, you'd just see this non-descript blob doing something vague, then you'd be dead. Cutting it was personally very painful, but I had to do it: when a design just isn't working, it just isn't working. I'd still like to see this in the Half-Life universe somehwere, maybe rething its AI more along the lines of an Antlion."
-Ken Birdwell
From "Half Life 2: Raising the Bar"
As for the car, there were some other designs that were being considered for player use, but they were either discarded or changed to Combine use because of gameplay issues and storyline changes. The APC you see driving around was initially going to be a player controllable vehicle, but it didn't work out. Plus, it makes more sense to have the player restricted to a home-made buggy when he is part of an underground resistance. The APC and other Combine vehicles respond only to Combine armor, so at least a valid explanation is offered story-wise as to why you can't commandeer one.
The creature I am most disappointed about not seeing in the game is the Bullsquid. I mean, it was promised to return in HL2, and it was always one of my favorite monsters from Half Life, so I was excited to see the new Source version, and see what the new AI would be like. But there's never a Bullsquid in the game.
There were a lot of changes to the story in the last little bit of development due to parts of the game being built around a single item, and then having the item not work well in gameplay, a la the Hydra. It sounds like we'll be seeing Hydras in HL3, though, unless they are abosolutely un-workable.
As for an expansion coming soon, I would bet money it's through the eyes of Alyx, and will be out in less than a year. I gather that you haven't finished the game yet, but I'll just say that after that incredible ending, the biggest question in my mind is, "What happens to Alyx?"
See, this is why I feel like a nerd when it comes to this game. I have yet to be asked a question about Half Life 2 that I could not answer right away. Makes me proud!
Oh, and...No. I do not have ANY problems running Half Life 2 on my PC. I can even run it and then shut it down and run other games and then go BACK to HL2 without the system getting sluggish. There is a tiny bit of choppiness after loading for about three seconds, and that's it! It runs BEAUTIFULLY with FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering enabled at 800x600. Not the highest res, but low res with FSAA and AF looks much better than high res without. I'm not sure what the mobo is (its actually my roommate's computer) but I know its a 2.4 ghz Athlon 64 with a 128 mb Radeon 9600 Pro and 512mb RAM. That's an awful low-end system to be running a game like this so well...I think Valve did a very good job making the game backward-scalable. I can't wait to see what it looks like on my parent's computer when I stay with them over Christmas!
