PC Half-Life: Alyx

Cannibalpinhead schrieb:

Mal ganz grob und allgemein... wie kann man denn die VR-Leistung von meinen Rechner einordnen:

Ryzen 5 2600
Radeon RX 56 Vega
16 GB DDR-4-3000

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mushaaleste schrieb:

mittelklasse.

die rx56 entspricht einer gtx 1070, der ryzen ist gut die 16 gb ausreichend. dürftest alles in vr spielen können, vieles sogar mit etwas supersampling. kommt auch auf dein headset an, die rift s ist recht genügsam da das panel nicht so eine hohe auflösung hat, wie die spitzenbrillen und mit nur 80 hz läuft. dennoch ist die bildqualität der rift s hervorragend.

falls es dir dann doch nicht reicht, vega raus, rtx 2080 oder höher rein, die cpu sollte hier nicht im weg stehen.

sehr wichtig ist noch eine ssd, nichts nervt soviel wie ladezeiten in vr.

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therealspider schrieb:

Hat Phil nicht schon bestätigt das VR nicht von der neuen Konsole unterstützt wird? Hat er nicht gesagt das VR niemanden interessiert?

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When Half-Life: Alyx releases, will we be getting the full Source 2 SDK, or will we be getting a more limited authoring tools-type deal which only allows us to make content for Half-Life: Alyx's workshop?

We're not currently planning on shipping a full SDK. We'd really like to release one at some point, but it's a ton of work because Source 2 is a new toolset, much of which hasn't been previously released. Any time we spend on it now is also time we could be spending on polishing the game itself, which we think is more important. As a result, we thought it wasn't appropriate to promise anything before release.

Generally, this is how we've done SDKs in our previous Source 1 titles as well - making the game takes precedence, and after that's done, we start looking at what's next.

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You seem confident in releasing the game on time. How much, would you say, of the game is done?

With the exception of some tweaks to the absolute final scene, the game is done. Lots of us at Valve, as well as playtesters, have played through the entire game multiple times.

Right now we're primarily polishing and fixing bugs, which is where we'd hope to be at this point in the development cycle. We're confident we'll hit our intended release. (We let the Valve Time happen before we announced the game.)

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If Alyx's voice actor was recast, will we ever know why?

We worked with Merle at the beginning of HL:A development, but in the end, felt we wanted to go in a different direction. We love Merle, her work in Half-Life 2 was instrumental in bringing Alyx to life, and we hope to work with her again in the future.

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Are we gonna get a gameplay reveal anytime soon?

Yes, it's our plan to release gameplay videos in the leadup to launch. Our intention is to use these to showcase not just gameplay elements, but also VR-specific elements like different movement options.

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Do you feel Half-Life: Alyx has changed tonally from the original Half-Life games (more light-hearted, more humorous)? Additionally, does a speaking player-character fundamentally change the way the game is written and designed in any significant ways?

This is Wolpaw: I don't think it's changed dramatically. Honestly, though, I think the half life games are closer in tone to the portal games than they are to, say, The Last of Us. I spent a part of every day for 13 years talking to Laidlaw about writing. And the authors that inspired him like Frederic Brown and Robert Sheckley and crime writer Charles Willeford are all known for darkly comedic takes on genre fiction. Hell, he even named a character in ep2 after Sheckley.

Having the viewpoint character speak is mostly liberating. It certainly makes writing scenes easier when you don't have to write around the fact that the main character is mute. It's also easier to have the player feel they're actually an active participant in the scene. In portal we got around it a little by actually acknowledging the main character is mute. I think it's a lot more tricky when you have to maintain a fragile fiction that the player character can talk but simply isn't for some reason. Anyway, I was and still am happy that the main character speaks.

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Will Half-Life: Alyx be dubbed in other languages ?

We will be doing subtitles at launch for ten total languages: English, French, German, Spanish-Spain, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish-Latin America, and Traditional Chinese. VO in other languages is something we're still considering.

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How many people are working on Half-Life Alyx?

Right now it's around 80 people, which puts it as the largest single team we've ever had at Valve.

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What is the most exciting mechanic you can talk about without spoiling anything?

We don't want to spoil too much of the game, but my personal favorite mechanic is being able to grab and manipulate so many different things with my hands

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Did Kelly Bailey return to do the music?

Dave here (Sound Designer) - Music on HL:A is being done by Mike Morasky (Portal 2, TF2, more!), and I know he's talked with Kelly quite a bit about his approach to the music of Half-Life. So you'll probably hear some of that come through but in Mike's unique style.

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What percentage are your announced locomotion & comfort features at? How will the team be implementing a seated mode if the game has not been designed for such a mode? Where is Smooth Locomotion at, and what is left for it?

Our locomotion and comfort features are all done, including things like Seated, Left-Handed mode, etc. We have almost all our accessibility work done as well, but there's a little bit more we'd like to do there (support for one armed play, for instance).

We'll be talking about and showing more of our various locomotion options in some upcoming videos.

If you have questions about specific accessibility features you need, then feel free to reply here or send Gabe an email.

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Will there be A train ride In Half-Life: Alyx?

It's actually illegal to ship a Half-Life game if you don't spend at least a little time riding in a train.

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Does Half-Life: Alyx use a dynamic soundtrack?

Dave here (Sound Designer) - I'm unsure what you mean by 'dynamic soundtrack'. If you mean "Do the music and sound effects react or change in some way in regards to what's going on in-game?" then the answer is absolutely yes.

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Will the game feature a developer commentary similar to that seen in previous titles?

We are huge fans of commentary and definitely plan on producing it for HL:A, but it’s unlikely that will have it in for launch day.

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How are Barnacles a threat in VR? Do they pull the player upwards or do they kill you instantly to avoid player discomfort?

Yes, Barnacles are a threat in VR. They don’t kill you instantly. You'll deal with them in familiar ways, but the opportunities afforded by VR also give you new methods to use against them. We experimented with moving the player, but moving the player without their input in VR didn't work very well. As with many aspects of working on this game, we’ve had to find new ways to take well-worn mechanics and other Half-Life staples into the specific framework of VR.

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Will there be any call backs to original Combine Soldier and CP officer designs from HL2?

Combine soldiers definitely return, both in the form you’ve previously seen them as well as with new variations to keep players busy and take advantage of VR.

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Do creatures react to audio that the player creates? As seen in the trailer with the mysterious new creature that scurries away after hearing Alyx move a bucket.

Some creatures respond to audio more than others. We don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s an example of this we’re particularly excited about.

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Is a limb dismemberment/body damage system in the game? Similar to systems used in L4D2.

As with audio, limb dismemberment is not a factor in most combat encounters—but there is a very notable exception.

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For the smooth locomotion option, will it also support VR jumping?

Because the game includes the ability to mantle in continuous motion, you don’t need often need to jump. For instance, if you need to get past an obstacle like a crate, you mantle up rather than jump up. The only time you need to jump is to traverse a short gap, which happens very rarely. We tried a few iterations of jumping, but ultimately found that even in continuous motion, players preferred dealing with those jumps with a teleport-style movement.

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Among the testers, did any of them ever have to remove the headset, out of fear or disgust for the zombies / horror atmosphere?

Tristan here, I admit I cannot deal with headcrabs in general, and definitely not in VR. If I'm testing the game, and I'm in an area where I know one of those things is around, I'll remove the head set and hold it off my face as I attempt navigate on the 2d monitor screen, to lessen the impact of headcrab discovery. Disappointingly for me, it seems that I'm the only one on the team who can't deal, we handle the scarier parts pretty well in terms of making the game accessible.

Horror is part of the franchise, and through playtesting, we feel like we've gained some confidence about where to draw this line. Some of our gorier visuals tend to evoke a grim fascination rather than revulsion or panic, and apart from myself, we've hardly ever seen anyone nope out of a playtest, even during the creepier sections. So among testers I still seem to be the outlier on horror tolerance.

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In HL: Alyx, what aspects of the previous Half-Life games did you make sure to include, and what are some things you felt the need to change? (Apart from VR obviously)

Hey Boldhams… We did include many of our favorite creatures from the previous games with some interesting twists, but we don’t want to spoil too much of what you will be experiencing in HL:A.

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How much did Half Life 1 influence the VR title? Obviously there is a Half Life 2 feel to this game, but there are plenty of us who miss some of the HL1 feel.

Several of the HL:A team members worked on HL1. There are some things we think we did better in HL1 than HL2, so we did go back to look at it again. As an example of that, the soldier AI in HL1 was something we looked at carefully during the development of the Combine Soldiers in HL:A.

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How involved was Marc Laidlaw with HLA? Rumour has it that there was a bit of a falling out internally. Has he consulted on the story for HLA recently?

We've never been able to figure out where the rumors of us falling out with Marc came from, because there's no truth to it. He's been super generous with his time throughout the development of HL:A, answering many questions from Erik, Jay, and Sean as they hammered away on the story. As is always the case with Marc, we send him an email, and he sends us a response, and then roughly 40 more replies to his own email.

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The trailer implies that the player character will be voiced for the first time in a Half-Life game. Is that the case and, if so, did it affect the way you approached narrative design, dialogue and npc interactions?

This is Wolpaw: I personally prefer writing games where the viewpoint character speaks. We made the silence of the protagonist into a joke in the Portals, but you only get to pull that gag once. I had a lot fun writing for the left 4 deads where the characters were all little chatterboxes, so if I had my way we wouldn't do any more silent protagonists. That said, the I don't get my way as often as I deserve so who knows what's going to happen.

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Is HL:A using the Steam Audio HRTF?

We're using Steam Audio HRTF, DSP, and occlusion in HL:A. Having the SA development team in the same building has been really beneficial to the audio team since we've been able quickly iterate with them on feature requests and performance issues.

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Will we be seeing any familiar faces that we haven't already seen in the trailer?

Yes.

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What changed within the culture of Valve that suddenly you not only mention Half-Life but artists start putting out art, Valve gets and becomes active on Twitter, and you announce a new game.
What turned Valve from an essentially allergic-to-Half-Life company that's quiet and doesn't talk directly to us fans about the IP into someone hosting an AMA right here?

Half-Life isn't like Fight Club- there was never a first rule of "we must never speak of it!" over the last decade or so. The real answer is super simple: We didn't talk about Half-Life for a long time because we weren't actively working on a Half-Life game. Once Half-Life: Alyx became a reality internally, it was already clear to us that this was something we wanted to involve the community in. We're going to be doing more of this in the next few weeks as we prepare to launch it!

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Why did you decide to have boring, flat and simple ceilings like for example in the apartments hallway?
Did the boring ceilings got any better since the last time we saw them from the trailer?

func_boring_ceiling is a hallmark of the Half-Life series. We did significant playtesting and iteration to make them more boring than ever, which was a particular challenge in VR, where even the most boring surface takes on the sheen of novelty and delight.

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The Half-Life: Alyx website states that Hammer will be updated with VR tools and components. What other features, if any, will be added to improve Hammer?

This is Corey, a level designer here. Hammer in Source 2 has been overhauled from the ground up. Everything from how geometry is built and textured to how asset creation is done has been improved to increase the speed and ease at which we can build and iterate on levels.

One big feature for us on HL:A was the addition of a system similar to layers, where individual map files from multiple level designers, environment artists, and sound designers are combined into a single map. This had a huge impact on how many disciplines could get their hands into each map, which resulted in a much denser level of content throughout the game.

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What is the ending?

We can't tell you, even though we definitely have one, because it would be a huge spoiler.

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In the announcement trailer you can see Alyx use a cool jury rigged one-handed shotgun. I love it, but the choice to make the games shotgun weapon one handed seems like a strange choice unless all guns are one handed. Will there be 2 handed weapons in game? Possibly multiple weapons that take the same ammo? like the classic half life spaz with the new handheld shotgun already seen?

Our weapons all require only one hand, but they can be optionally grabbed and steadied by your offhand. We really wanted to focus on simultaneous two handed play throughout the game, so we needed the player to always be able to easily have a free hand. We keep that hand pretty busy with gravity gloves, movement, world interactions, flashlight, and so on.

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How will inventory management of weapons/ammo work? Games like H3VR, Boneworks, and Pavlov VR all use similar systems where items can go into different slots on your body depending on their size, but with the large amount of different weapons one picks up throughout half life campaigns these might not be adequate. How will our Alyx carry all her guns and switch between them?

We have a few systems for inventory and weapon selection, all designed with the goal of keeping the players eyes on the environment as much as possible. We have an 'over the shoulder' contextual inventory system for ammo on your off hand, Your weapon hand has a quick weapon select feature, and we have a couple of wrist bags for some of the other items.

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How much fidelity have been added to the engine to make the in-VR experience feels closer to real life than previously? I mean things like texture resolution, materials definition, soundscapes and sound propagation/processing, maybe cues and hints in object and prop definition e.g. door/box/mug handles. Also things like animation adaptation to collisions with the world/environment and cloth simulation.

Dave here (Sound Designer) - A short and incomplete list of audio features we've added or improved for HL:A -

*Soundscape system improved to be more fully integrated with the audio system as a whole.
*Our music system is new.
*Numerous Steam Audio improvements. *Huge amount of work on the lower level audio systems. *New tools for mixing and implementing sounds.

From a Sound Design perspective we've had to change how we think about the sounds we make and implement. A lot of things are the same as making a traditional game, good art/sound is good in VR as well, but there are new factors as well. A main one for me was figuring out ways of making environments sonically interesting for players who want to take their time and explore, which happens much more frequently in VR.

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Can you catch a headcrab in a bucket, or put a bucket on a headcrab for it to cluelessly wander around?

You can put a bucket on a headcrab, and it'll move the bucket as it crawls around. Playtesters all keep reporting it as a bug.

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How did you create some of the more gruesome sounds of the game?

Most of the gore is based on meat and vegetable recordings, with some condiment recordings as well.
We've also killed a lot of Zombies.

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Will there be gameplay enhancements for the finger tracking on the Index controllers?

Index controller finger-tracking allows for greater player expression and more opportunities for fine-grained engagement with the world. But the game was tested with all major VR solutions throughout development to ensure full compatibility for all required interactions.

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Has the Alyx team experimented with using an Inverse Kinematics for showing full player arm/bodies in game? If so, why did you decide not to include this in the game (or at least in the trailers)?

We don't render arms due to our experiences with playtesting - briefly, we found that players themselves don't notice them missing (spectators do, obviously), and they don't like them obscuring their view.

We actually simulate invisible arms though, which connect from your hands back up to your HMD, and we use those to detect impossible things, like completely closing a drawer over your wrist.

We're planning on releasing a video going into the tech behind our VR hands / interactions / etc, so there'll be more on this soon.

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Does the combine make use of Dyson Spheres (or related star-absorbing) technology? And how do the citadels arrive? Are they dropped from space, or teleported in?

For the Citadel, The fiction we went with involved the citadel's full height core being teleported in place, like a giant spear in the ground. The combine then build around this core fleshing it out from gathered resources, which is how you see it in the trailer. An under construction citadel was useful visual cliche that helped establish an earlier timeline than HL2.

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With this being the first big return to the series in over 12 years how has this endeavour impacted the team overall? Will you guys be comfortable developing more Half-Life games within the future if Alyx goes well?

Jamaal here… It’s been great to work on these classic characters and seeing them in VR has really excited everyone on the team. The HL:A trailer gave you a taste of what is coming, but we are avoiding spoiling too much at this point.

When it comes to the work the community does around the HL Series, we are humbled by the affinity and creativity that people have for the story and characters. We hope everyone will be as excited with Alyx’s journey in HL:A. Returning to HL has been extremely motivating. We have a lot of affection for the universe and characters, and personally I am proud to be helping build on something so iconic. The team has many of the original HL developers and a lot of new creative people who have made some integral additions to HL:A and the overall HALF LIFE storyline.

I don’t know what we will do next with HL, but I’m looking forward to what you all think of HL:A.

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How much content and replayability is there?

Playtesters have taken a similar amount of time to complete Half-Life: Alyx as they did to complete Half-Life 2. The games are comparable in terms of total amount of content.

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Can we get some new physical merch?

Physical merch is something we want to do more of. We plan to have some of it available before release.

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How much were you able to tell your family/friends about what you were actually doing at work during development of the game?

Working on HL:A before we announced it was pretty worrisome. I have a teenage son, and for 4 years I've refused to tell him what game I was working on, because I knew he wouldn't be able to keep it to himself. On the team we joked that releasing the game was much less scary than announcing it. But in the end, we are very happy with how it's been received, and we're really excited to get it finished and into your hands.

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Do you guys have a soundtrack planned for release with the game or will it be released at a later date? Always loved half-life music.

Its on our radar

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In the Labs; one of the orb room was stripe out before it was released on Steam. According to the datamining, it laid the foundation of what we think is HL:A. What was the element that cause the team to remove it? Was it the Grabvity gun?

Yep, one of the various internal prototypes that led to HL:A was a slice of HL-style gunplay in The Lab. Geoff has told us he wants to cover some of those prototypes more in his Final Hours of HL:A.

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Hi guys! Huge fan here! I was wondering if you were able to tell us what design changes from the previous Half-Life games you made. We see that there are different looks for the Combine soldiers and some different enemies.

Were there any drastic changes to the look of the Half-Life universe?

There was a process of upresing some familiar assets from HL2. During this process, we were always looking for opportunities to add more detail and leverage VR interactions, and pack as much world building into those new detail as possible. The health charger you see in the trailer is a good example of this, we tried to do this wherever possible, whilst honoring the original designs.

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Robin Walker, Jamaal Bradley, David Feise, Greg Coomer, Corey Peters, Erik Wolpaw, Tristan Reidford, Chris Remo, Jake Rodkin, and Kaci Aitchison Boyle. We are a mix of designers, programmers, animators, sound designers, and artists on the game.

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Thanks everyone! The team is heading back to our desks to work towards shipping the game but we've really enjoyed this and hope you did as well.

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This video demonstrates the Teleportation locomotion style.

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This video demonstrates the Shift locomotion style.

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This video demonstrates the Continuous locomotion style.

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Things get weird in this gameplay clip from Half-Life: Alyx's campaign, in which Xen begins to infest the entire area, and you get your first look at a grenade in action.

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Take a look at nine minutes of true direct-feed gameplay of Half-Life: Alyx, the first new Half-Life game in over 12 years. See how Half-Life looks and feels in VR, and note that we intentionally switch from Blink movement mode to Continuous at the 6:06 mark so you can see the different locomotion settings in action.

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Valve's Robin Walker and Corey Peters walk us through an extended look at one of Half-Life: Alyx's earlier levels, including fighting zombies, upgrading your pistol, and the terror that is being stalked by headcrabs in VR.

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.:Cosmo:. schrieb:

Ich, als neuer quest link Nutzer, konnte im Netz nichts finden, ob hl alyx auch im oculus store erhältlich sein wird.

Deshalb habe ich jetzt steam vr zum laufen gebracht und mir dort das hl alyx gekauft.

Oder gibt es andere bzw. Alternativen?

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In a rare half-hour conversation, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell talks about the studio's past with Half-Life, the surprising answer to what his favorite Half-Life game is, mistakes that Valve has made, what keeps a man worth billions of dollars coming to work every day, how he spends his days, what the next decade looks like for Valve (hint: it involves a brain-AI interface), and more!

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