Half-Life 2: DEMO AVI
the Handy Vandal's ALMANAC 2 for HALF-LIFE 2 - Home Page -

CAUTION - SPOILERS AHEAD

Half-Life 2 notes and screenshots from this Half-Life 2 demo avi

Note: The avi itself is big -- over 500 megabytes.

The Source Engine

For Half-Life 2, Valve wrote an entirely new game engine: Source.

The Source engine advances game technology in four key areas:

• Believable realistic human beings
• Materials and physics systems - unprecedented level of interactivity
• Graphics previously impossible outside Hollywood
• Artificial Intelligence that welds all these things together

Valve has announced that they will release an SDK for mod-makers. The new SDK will be in C++ ... different from the original SDK, but familar to anyone who has worked with the original. Furthermore, Valve states that the new mod-making tools -- new SDK, new Hammer, etc. -- will be much improved with mod-making in mind.

"We've been rather busy in your absence, Mister Freeman ...!"

Realistic Characters
... for example, our old friend, the G-Man:

• Eyes glint based on radiosity calculation of local illumination
• Eyes self-shadow, blink occasionally, and follow you as you move
• Forty separate muscles in his face
• Emotions based on taxonomy of facial expressions created by a research psychiatrist
• Simplified mapping of lip sync to audio files -- easy to make him speak in any language

World physics: "a wide variety of new gameplay mechanics."
Any surface map can have its placement altered dynamically, along with its collision hull. Below: the ground is flat.

Below: when the player advances, the ground bulges and rises up, with appropriate shaking and noise.

Materials:

In Source, the world is composed of objects built from materials: wood, metal, brick, etc.

Materials have physics such as gravity, rebound, sparks, etc.

Objects cast shadows.

Narrator: "If it looks like wood, then it sounds like wood, scrapes like wood, floats like it, and if you shoot it it'll fragment like wood."

Demonstration:

Player shoots out wooden support beams, causing the platform to tilt ... causing barrels to roll off platform ... and setting in motion a gigantic pachinko machine.

Mappers take note: you define an object's material by applying "material textures" to the object.

Below: Player shoots a watermelon, which splits in half, one half falling to the floor. The falling chunk of watermelon casts a shadow as it moves.

The Manipulator: an energy-beam tool which grabs and manipulates objects.
The physics are very persuasive.

Flexible "rag doll" models interact with complex surfaces.

Above: player uses the Manipulator to pick up a body and move a body.

The body flops around like a real body.

Player drags body against a table -- the table, and the items on the table, are scattered. Notice that the body casts a shadow.

Graphics based on shaders - e.g. "Toy Story".

Walls are "bump map subdivision surfaces."

Water looks much more like real water: ripples that interact with ambient light and diffract underwater surfaces.

Source uses a "Frenell term to modulate surface reflectivity."

Narrator:

"There aren't any restrictions in Source on how you can use the effects.
You can ... apply them to a human character, effectively building them out of water."

Player moves ahead to the next room. Narrator: "Source also gives complete control over outputs and inputs of the system."

Demonstration:

A video camera stands on a tripod, pointed at the G-Man: the video image we saw in the previous room. Several more screens are mounted on the walls of this room, showing different views -- size, cropping, resolution -- of the camera image.

A headcrab approaches. The camera makes a whirring noise, tracks the headcrab. The headcrab leaps at the camera. Camera and tripod break apart, and both fall to the floor. The screens continue to show what the camera sees.

Player uses Manipulator to pick up the camera ... points camera at a screen, we see the hall-of-mirrors effect ... points camera at G-Man, we see G-Man's face upside down (and indeed the camera is upside-down).

Player points camera at a large video screen, and uses the Manipulator to throw the camera directly at the screen. The screen bursts and goes dark; the camera bounces to the floor.

Half-Life 2, the Game

Large, complex, realistic sets. Outdoor spaces are much larger and more detailed than in original Half-Life 1.

City-17 looks great -- very complex maps, lots of attention to persuasive details. Buildings look like real buildings. Overhead wires sway gently in the breeze. The streetcar moves like a streetcar. Citizens and soldiers go about their business. There's a tall statue in the town square. It looks ... real.

Wide open outdoor areas.

The player climbs aboard a dune buggy, and goes for a wild ride across beaches and mud flats, up ramps, through warehouses.

Runs down a hostile soldier.

Dodges alien helicopter gunfire.

A machinegun attached to the dune buggy can be fired while the vehicle is in motion.

A laboratory. Two allies. They have complex facial expressions, and much-improved rendering and movement.

Lots of cool lighting and gadgets.

A small but stunning visual effect: a large magnifying glass, mounted on a jointed arm at the workbench ... the magnifying glass realistically magnifies the view ... as the player moves, the magnified image shifts accordingly.

The player looks at a switched-off computer monitor: the room is reflected in the glass. The player knocks over the monitor; the scientist makes an angry gesture and admonishes the player to "be careful".

"Remember when we thought Black Mesa was as bad as it could get?"

Demonstration: an old part of City-17.

Firefights. The player uses the Manipulator, moves a table to barricade a door. Gunfire from outside. The door holds up a few moments -- then an explosion blasts open the door, throwing aside the table.

The player runs upstairs -- uses the Manipulator to pick up a radiator -- uses the radiator as a shield to deflect gunfire -- and throws the radiator at a bad guy, who goes down hard.

Further demonstrations of the physics engine:

Large traps -- deadfalls, swinging cranes -- of wood and metal which the player uses to take out multiple enemies at a time.

Again the physics are startling: objects crash and thump and roll, bodies and barrels go flying.

The player, Barney, and other allies engage in a house-to-house firefight.

Barney looks much, much more realistic than his HL1 counterpart -- and he's much smarter as well.

AI is greatly improved. Allies make intelligent decisions based on rapidly evolving situations: seek cover, call for suppressing fire, advance upon eliminating enemies, and so on.

A new bioweapon: "pheromone grenades" which summon alien "ant lions" to fight your enemies ....

The players fights a wave of zombies. A zombie that is crippled but not killed pulls itself along the ground, face down. Another zombie picks up and throws a metal barrel.

An explosion sets several zombies on fire: they struggle to advance on the player, each zombie a blazing torch ....

Above: Strider ...

Citadel of the Combine ... an alien fortress which is slowly
eating its way through City-17 ....