Yeah, they didn't make H-L 2 Ep 3, instead they waited a million years read: Fucked over their entire fanbase...and then released a VR exclusive title...
Not even going to look at this one, even though I am an avid H-L fan, this is just too much of a deal-breaker for me.
VR is still not good enough (it all looks wonky to me), way to expensive (I'll need a new PC to run the thing, I'll need a new house with an extra spare room for the thing, and I need the thing itself.....)
Nah Gaben, you're not luring me back into the H-L universe this way, this is just an elaborate scheme to sell more VR-kits. So I'm sorry, but Alyx will just have to fight her own battles for now, I'm not about to help her in any way.
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I think Valve want to move the game industry forward by releasing this HL game for VR. The game will support Oculus and HTC VR sets as well.
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Yes, there are VR games other than asset flips and tech demos. I must have read this argument like a hundred times, and it rarely ever comes from a VR owner. I assume that you probaby never really looked for VR games and base your claim on just what you saw randomly on the Steam store (and I agree, it's flooded with 1$ VR asset flips). There are of course VR adaptations of regular games, like Fallout 4, Skyrim, Doom or SUPERHOT (the latter being the best VR experience I had so far, it's truly amazing and so much cooler than the non-VR version). But there are also complete AA/AAA games designed just for VR, with decent length and quality. Just have a look at games like Defector, Edge of Nowhere or Asgard's Wrath, for instance. :)
EDIT: I don't know any sales figures, so I can't really say much about the success of those games. But I would assume it can't be that bad, seeing that Asgard's Wrath is one of the highest rated games in 2019. I am sure the positive news about that game sold a few VR headsets. ;)
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To be fair when you're part of the Bundle scene you only mostly get to see the worst of the worst PC has to offer. Both when it comes to games AND to people :D
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True, those VR bundles usually contain nothing but shovelware.
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Yeah, those IndieGala VR bundles are really hilariously bad xD
Edit: By the way if you enjoyed SUPERHOT VR you might enjoy Budget Cuts. They seem to have quite a few things in common.
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Yeah, I saw that one before. But completely forgot about it. Thanks, I'll probably pick it up at some point. :)
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Oh, and there's already a second one coming out in just a few weeks:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092430/Budget_Cuts_2_Mission_Insolvency/
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Oh, cool :D I didn't have that one on my radar yet.
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To be honest, nobody beyond the publishers knows the sale numbers. They never disclosed any sale or income statistics for VR games.
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Depending on how much the game relies on VR, maybe it can be played without VR. Valve may not want to do this if they are trying to push sales of the Index, but maybe it could be done with an unofficial community made mod. I have no idea how much effort that would take though or if it would even be possible.
I know there are some VR games that can be played without VR. Maybe Valve developed the game with the option to disable VR just incase they changed their mind and choose to go that route, but they will disable it at launch to see how the community reaction is to VR only. Maybe someone poking around in the source code could stumble upon it and enable it with a mod. Again, I have no idea how source code or programming works and don't know if it would be possible.
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I don't think anyone knows yet. I would guess it's not suppose to be a full blown HL3 and it's more of a side story game just for VR where you play as Alyx Vance.
I don't think they would make HL3 VR only. I think they would probably lose money doing that. There is such a large audience for HL3 which is a huge potential to make money. I don't think they would get enough people to buy the Valve Index to make up for the sales they would lose from the massive number of people that won't buy VR. They would be better off releasing HL3 for everyone and then in the future releasing a new version of the game for VR. I think they would make a lot more money that way, as long as they do a really good job making the game work with VR.
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Who cares about vr, it won't be any good for a generation or a couple still.
I would disagree here, in my opinion it's already pretty good. There's always room for improvement, sure. But the current-gen headsets are pretty good at what they're doing.
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ppl acting so surprised but wasn't it announced to be a vr game months ago?
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Sorry for hijacking this discussion, but since it's about VR as well, I can't help but wonder: are there any studies yet on how VR gear effects health - eyesight in particular? Sitting in front of a screen too close for too long can be bad for your eyes. There's numerous reports of the mobile phone generation having increased issues with their eyesight because they're staring onto their device screens too long and under bad light conditions. Now with VR, I simply cannot imagine that it's healthy to have a screen literally strapped in front of your eyes for an extended period of time.
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It's fair to worry about things like this, but I doubt that it really effects people much. There are avid VR users & game/tech developers that have been using various VR headsets for 5+ years & none of them are blind. People in general have been sitting in front of screens for dozens of hours on end going all the way back to the 90's & before, & people are still seeing just fine. As long as you remember to blink so your eyes don't dry out & aren't straining your eyes staring cross eyed you should be fine.
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Just because they haven't gone blind doesn't mean their eyesight hasn't gotten worse. There's probably not enough data for large scale studies yet, because so few people actually own VR gear. That's compared to the effects of computer, TV and mobile screens - which all aren't considered to be healthy. I could also imagine that some people are more susceptible than others. Again, my main concern's still that VR requires you to strap a screen directly in front of your eyes. At the very least I would imagine you'd get a headache after prolonged use.
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Some people get headaches very quickly in VR, though this is mostly due to motion sickness that happens when you move in the game but not in real life. If you usually get headaches from prolonged use of normal computer screens, then yes, I'd imagine you could get headaches from prolonged VR use. I've heard that the worst part for your eyes is not properly focusing on something, causing your eyes to 'swim,' which is what I think I get when I stare at my phone for too long. But so long as your VR is set up properly for your face I don't think it happens. I've heard blue light is bad as well, but I believe you can dim the screens in your VR to help I suppose, & most VR headsets can fit glasses if you really wanted to block blue light with Gunnar glasses or something.
I'm sure there are studies being done about it somewhere. There are already groups that study physical fitness in VR with games like Beat Saber, so I'm sure more studies will continue being done.
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Even though screens are just a couple centimeters from your eyes, because of lens your eyes are focused roughly at 1-1.5 meters distance. So no shortsightedness from that. If anything, vr devices make you focus FURTHER than with general usage of phone or pc screens.
Next, about eye fatigue. Due to how MOST lens are designed, you tend to not move eyes a lot when wearing the headset, and keep looking close to the center (relaxed position) instead. this might change in the future, as better lens are used in HMDs.
Last thing, about headaches. There is a big problem of motion sickness, which is analogous to real-life motion sickness, but more prevalent in VR (depending on game-to-game movement method). There are some clever solutions to solving this, from teleporting to tunnel vision, but most interesting thing is that over time if people are subjected to VR motion sickness, they "grow VR legs" (akin to sea legs), and simply DON'T GET MOTION SICK anymore. Not in VR, not in real life. So this is kind of a win in the long run.
Last point, there are lots of VR enthusiasts who have been spending years, even decades using VR headsets, and their eyes are still fine. For example, Jaron Lanier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier) has over 40 years of experience with VR headsets, and still has good vision.
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That is one way to promote the sluggish sales for their valve-VR gear. Actual merchant-"craftsmanship" right there. Gear up boomers,
if you aren't stacked you still have time to sell your firstborn to Moloch and claim your gear at the DNC in Washington.
Won't be surprising if this doesn't do well, even though it can't fail if it wasn't cost-expensive to begin with.
Now excuse me, i'm off, listening to K-Pop on my brand new air-pods.
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While I'm happy to see some new life coming to Half-Life, I don't have a VR set so this one won't be playable for me. Guess I'll have to go back to pretending there's no more Half-Life. :p
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don't care, half-life 3 is the only way I know how :D
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Cool, but whatevs. No VR, no real interest in VR, and enough flat games to play to keep me in mice for the next few generations.
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Ok, this is good, it gives me hopes of seeing a Portal 3 in my lifetime.
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+1
but i fear it will be Portal 3 VR or some card games based on Portal 😓
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I wouldn't necesarily mind it being VR, even if it's probably going to be years untill I buy a VR headset it'll also probably be years untill Valve actually releases the game.
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It's good to know that HL is still alive, but VR? Hope they make a "normal" one after that.
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Gabe stated some things that didn't exactly remained as he envisioned them at that time, but one thing he seemed to stick to, is to only announce a game when it's almost finished and not still years away, the Blizzard.way.
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Such a cool move to give it to all owners. Even to people that only own the controllers. Thank you Valve.
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I think Valve screwed up big time. I bet this is going to be the first game where more people watch the game on Youtube instead of buying and playing it themselves because it's VR only. I really hope Valve thought of this and developed the game with the option to play without VR and just disabled it for now. Then if it doesn't sell well, they can add the option to play without VR. The problem is that so many people are going to decide they aren't buying VR and watch the game to see the story and then if Valve allows the game to be played without VR, those people are going to be upset that they already watched it.
I don't normally watch full gameplays or let's plays of game I have not played, but I know I am not buying VR, so I might for this. I really don't know if I want to though just incase it gets released without a VR requirement. And it also feels kind of wrong to experience the entire game without owning it.
I know nothing about modding games, but would it be possible for someone to mod the game to be played without VR?
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I'm also disappointed it's VR only after waiting for so long for a proper single player game from Valve, but, if you watch the video I also posted above, maybe it will make sense for you too. It did for me.
Also that question about modding, I don't think it works like that, especially with a game built specifically for VR.
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I don't know how mods work. Can people get the source code of a game and change it or it is encrypted or something? I really have no idea.
I was thinking they would have to switch the free look from the head tracking to the mouse and then anything you can do in the game without your 2 hands would have to be changed to a way that can be done on the mouse. You would only have one mouse to interact with instead of 2 hands, so the mechanics would have to change for anything that requires 2 hands. If you need to put a magazine in a gun to reload, you would have to change the game to automate the reload from a button press instead.
This would obviously take a lot of work if it was possible, but I wouldn't be surprised if Valve already has it done, but want to try releasing the game as VR only at first to see how the reception is.
Edit: I watched the video and I don't see any reason why they couldn't make the game work without VR. Yes, you would lose some immersion and mechanics, but at least it would be playable for those that don't want to buy VR.
Their reasons seem to be about the ability to use 2 hands separately while looking around. They talk about the ability to reload a gun with 2 hands and how you can open a door part way, peek through, and throw a grenade. These things can be done without VR, it just won't be as immersive and you will have to automate some of it. I would much rather play the game while losing out on some of that immersion than watch a video of the game on Youtube.
Maybe the story and gameplay aren't good enough on their own without the immersion of the VR mechanics, so they don't want to release it outside of VR. Even if that is the case, I would still prefer to play it that way than not play it at all. They can release it as a separate game so it gets it own reviews to not lower the reviews of the VR version.
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There is the concept of decompiling/disassembling, but it doesn't quite work in the way you would think. You don't get the source code as the developers wrote it. Compilers, in their quest to optimize, heavily alter the program while translating it into instructions. So you will never get back the original source code from the machine instructions in your exe file. That original code simply doesn't exist anymore after the compilation process. I've never tried it, but I doubt you will get something you can actually use by decompiling the executable of a complex modern game.
It actually works way better with certain languages, like C# and the other .NET languages. I actually had that case some months ago. A customer had a really old custom tool, written by an old colleague who left our company like 8 or 10 years ago. This tool was never meant for other customers, and that colleague obviously hadn't saved the source code, as I couldn't find it anywhere on the server. Luckily it was written in C#. So I was able to decompile it, make the change the customer wanted and send it back to him. But that won't work in C++, which is the language most AAA games are written in.
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Thanks for the info. So people can't get all the way back to the source code, but maybe they can still mod the game with what they do have access to. I still have no idea how that works or if it would be possible. Or maybe there will be enough backlash or low sales that Valve will just do it themselves :)
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The whole point of this game's existence is being a flagship VR game. If it wasn't VR, it wouldn't exist at all.
It's not supposed to make money for Valve, it's supposed to expand the VR market.
People bitched, that there are no AAA VR games to get into VR. Valve makes one, now people bitch that it's VR only.
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That's because most people don't have VR and have no plans to get VR, but there is a massive audience that has been waiting for a very long time to play another Half Life game and now it is VR only. By making this VR, even after some people buy VR to play it, they are probably still cutting out over 90% of the audience that wants to play the game. It is possible to release the game without VR, some of the mechanics just need to be changed. Some of the immersion will be lost, but at least everyone would be able to play it.
They took one of the most popular games of all time and released a sequel that almost nobody is going to be able to play. I will wait about a year to see if a non VR version is released so I can play it myself, but if it doesn't happen, I will just watch a video playthrough of the game instead. I don't normally watch gameplay videos of games I haven't played, but I don't really have a choice here. I don't have the money to buy a new computer and a VR setup so I can play this game, but even if I did, it would be a bad investment because I am not really interested in VR.
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It's not supposed to make money for Valve, it's supposed to expand the VR market.
This. It's not about making money off the game so much as it is showing that VR is a viable medium and expanding that market further to get more high end games made for that medium.
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Dat feel when you waited for new Half-Life for so many years, and now can't play it because you don't have VR set...
😿
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The real question is... is it better than that other Half-Life game released to quench fan's thirst... you know, Hunt down the Freeman?
Also 45EUR for a VR game, damn. But it seems people are paying it because of Valve's name. Hope they put their top-people on this and their C-team on Artifact (and their F-team on the Library UI)?
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Guess I'll have to get Index from Winter Sale then.
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0 interest in this and all vr-stuff, but at least it's not -1 interest like artifact and other trash made by valve. ^^
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https://twitter.com/valvesoftware/status/1196566870360387584
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXSYfmjUD6A
its happening, but its a VR thing so... xd
Store Page
The final hours of Half Life Alyx preview
UPDATE 22/01/2020
Official Website
They did a reddit AMA with lots of new info
Also, all the Half-Life games are free to play from now until the release of the game.
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