Half-Life: Alyx Announced

Deleted member 21709 · Nov 19, 2019

c0Zm1c said:
I know. I'm simply saying that, despite it being different, the action of reloading a weapon can be done in a non-VR game.

Have you ever played Skyrim? Or other sword fighting games like Bushido Blade?
Those are great. But now watch what sword fighting is like in VR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNdmNfP74Us

Forget about the lousy art direction and low budget look (this is an indie game with a very small budget) - but the experience is incomparable. And it doesn't translate both ways. They are entirely different things. Compare watching a scene on a screen and pushing buttons to initiate canned actions, to actually going to a LARP event and play with physical swords.

c0Zm1c · Nov 19, 2019

inguef said:
I get it. VR is something you can't really wrap your head around until you try it. Hopefully you get a chance to try it out.

I've never really understood the "you have no interest because you haven't experienced it" take.

I don't care for VR for a number of factors. Cost, room, the mess of wires (there's a few wireless ones around now though right?) and not wanting to play my games with a headset on. It's not about not being able to wrap my head around it. I actually really liked motion controls in the early days (Wii) and was excited to see where it went, but that's intrinsically tied to VR now (with fair reasoning, I know). If I could play Alyx just with motion controls and not a VR headset, that might be good as long as the controllers weren't expensive. Maybe that's the possible "hardware" reveal hinted at earlier in the thread. One can hope.

j^aws · Nov 19, 2019

What's still left for non-VR games that just isn't more of the same? Another FPS limited by decades old limitations? No thanks.

Let some creativity flow with more degrees of freedom that VR allows and let Valve make the game they want to make without restrictions.

Deleted member 21709 · Nov 19, 2019

c0Zm1c said:
I've never really understood the "you have no interest because you haven't experienced it" take.

I don't care for VR for a number of factors. Cost, room, the mess of wires (there's a few wireless ones around now though right?) and not wanting to play my games with a headset on. It's not about not being able to wrap my head around it. I actually really liked motion controls in the early days (Wii) and was excited to see where it went, but that's intrinsically tied to VR now (with fair reasoning, I know). If I could play Alyx just with motion controls and not a VR headset, that might be good as long as the controllers weren't expensive. Maybe that's the possible "hardware" reveal hinted at earlier in the thread. One can hope.

You don't know what it is like - that's all I'm saying. It isn't something that I could convince you of or describe accurately. The neat thing about VR is that even though the graphics are relatively crude - or look unrealistic/abstract - your brain perceives it as being real.

It is not something that I can show to you, you have to just see it for yourself. This is not motion controls.

I get VR not being suitable for you. As a VR owner those things are what prevents me from playing it regularly too. But why should that stop you from being open to the idea of developers wanting to explore VR exclusive games? And that VR games can be just that, VR games? It seems selfish/stubborn to me.

Ferrio · Nov 19, 2019

c0Zm1c said:
I've never really understood the "you have no interest because you haven't experienced it" take.

I don't care for VR for a number of factors. Cost, room, the mess of wires (there's a few wireless ones around now though right?) and not wanting to play my games with a headset on. It's not about not being able to wrap my head around it. I actually really liked motion controls in the early days (Wii) and was excited to see where it went, but that's intrinsically tied to VR now (with fair reasoning, I know). If I could play Alyx just with motion controls and not a VR headset, that might be good as long as the controllers weren't expensive. Maybe that's the possible "hardware" reveal hinted at earlier in the thread. One can hope.

The difference between motion controls on a flat screen and VR are pretty damn different. I despised motion controls until VR, that was the missing component to them. I imagine it would be a recipe in frustration because trying to do something physically from your point of view, vs a flat screen is very different. Not to mention in VR your head and hands are decoupled, they wouldn't be in a standard motion control setup. What happens if you need to turn your head around to look behind you but keep your hands facing forward in a flat game?

Mobu · Nov 19, 2019

If Valve truly sees VR as the next step, if they truly believe in it as a format, they have no reason to make a non VR version

Go all in or gtfo

1-D_FE · Nov 19, 2019

Jroc said:
Depends if it's an FPS or not.

The only way I can see this game being unportable to PC is if they go full Wrench and have the user disassembling complex 3D models every 15 minutes. Valve would have to try pretty hard to make the basic act of running around and shooting things impossible to translate to keyboard and mouse.

It's not so much whether it's possible (it obviously is), but whether it'd be fun. You can have very fun interactions happening in VR (that are a part of a larger gameplay loop), and replacing it with a simple button press is going to have people wondering why the game is so dull. I would be very disappointed if there's not lots of grabbing and tossing and just a bunch of physical stuff that makes you feel like a bad ass. All of which is lost when you click a couple button presses.

coldcrush · Nov 19, 2019

you cant backport a true vr game to pancake mode. If valve are making a true all out VR title (which I would be astounded if they weren't) then you cant just make it 2d without fundamentally changing the design, narrative and way the game is built from ground up, People need to stop worrying about this being in VR, its the next logical step for a ground breaking series. Im pretty sure when the transition from books and photos to motion picture happened there was a similar outcry.

Nzyme32 · Nov 19, 2019

Mobu said:
If Valve truly sees VR as the next step, if they truly believe in it as a format, they have no reason to make a non VR version

Go all in or gtfo

Sucks for you I guess - because by definition, that isn't going to be possible in a reasonable way for a game fully utilising and designed for VR - an entire different medium.
Just as if you were to take a TV show and try to transfer it to Radio, no matter how much you remake it, the essence and experience is completely different one and much of the experience is not possible at all.

If Valve "truly see VR" as its own medium - they should design and build a game specifically for that, without compromises.
They went a step further, and designed a higher level fidelity of hardware, Index, simultaneously alongside the game itself.

EVIL · Nov 19, 2019

Mobu said:
If Valve truly sees VR as the next step, if they truly believe in it as a format, they have no reason to make a non VR version

Go all in or gtfo

If they did, they would have called it Half-Life 3. The fact that its a spin off set between the two main titles without Gordon Freeman made me realize they are still very cautious about it, which is fine. The best thing they could have done, if they are serious about pushing VR is make a half-life 3 exclusive to VR and have a bundle with a discounted Valve index.

Half-life: Alyx is still fine offcourse and better than nothing, but this is def not a valve going all in with their main IP for their preferred new platform/medium

c0Zm1c · Nov 19, 2019

inguef said:
I get VR not being suitable for you. As a VR owner those things are what prevents me from playing it regularly too. But why should that stop you from being open to the idea of developers wanting to explore VR exclusive games? And that VR games can be just that, VR games? It seems selfish/stubborn to me.

No offence intended but that does also work the other way around: it seeming selfish/stubborn to me that you would prefer Half-Life fans that don't want VR be left out? For the record, I'm not opposed to advances in VR. Quite the opposite actually; eventually the headsets will be reduced to wireless glasses and further still become very cheap. We'll probably see controllers disappear and something like Kinect's recognition system (but much more advanced) become a thing. That's a long way off yet but I think I might be more inclined to try the tech then rather than now in its current state, if I'm still alive at that point!

Randomly Generated · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
If they did, they would have called it Half-Life 3. The fact that its a spin off set between the two main titles without Gordon Freeman made me realize they are still very cautious about it, which is fine. The best thing they could have done, if they are serious about pushing VR is make a half-life 3 exclusive to VR and have a bundle with a discounted Valve index.

To be fair, if the game is indeed a prequel it would be weird to call it HL3.

I wish they called it HLVR because that title was cool.

EVIL · Nov 19, 2019

Randomly Generated said:
To be fair, if the game is indeed a prequel it would be weird to call it HL3.

I wish they called it HLVR because that title was cool.

well it shouldn't have been a prequel then :P

Nzyme32 · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
If they did, they would have called it Half-Life 3. The fact that its a spin off set between the two main titles without Gordon Freeman made me realize they are still very cautious about it, which is fine. The best thing they could have done, if they are serious about pushing VR is make a half-life 3 exclusive to VR and have a bundle with a discounted Valve index.

Half-life: Alyx is still fine offcourse and better than nothing, but this is def not a valve going all in with their main IP for their preferred new platform/medium

Discounting Index solves nothing, as Valve discussed when Index released. That is meant to be the high end of what VR tech is capable of weighed against even more extreme cost, and that comes at a price only enthusiasts can reach. SteamVR is the platform, so flexibility of hardware is there. How they design the game to scale / adapt to the hardware being used is going to be interesting to see. Boneworks, with similar aspirations, is doing the same with SteamVR.

As for HL3 vs HL:A, without knowledge of the full narrative of HL:A and how it relates (if at all) to the original story, is the only way to answer that question.

Arulan · Nov 19, 2019

Is there a difference between playing Paintball in real-life to a video game FPS equivalent? There is an incredible difference. You can certainly use a lot of scripted interactions and set animations to abstract some of the mechanics, but it's not even remotely close to the same thing. The same is true for VR.

Nostremitus · Nov 19, 2019

But how well will it play on a cheaper headset, like Windows mixed reality? If I do eventually buy a headset it'll have to be a low cost variant.

VN1X · Nov 19, 2019

Just two more days.

Sceptre · Nov 19, 2019

I just finished downloading the collection edition.
iv never played them before.

Nostremitus · Nov 19, 2019

Sceptre said:
I just finished downloading the collection edition.
iv never played them before.

You better post a detailed LTTP.

Randomly Generated · Nov 19, 2019

Sceptre said:
I just finished downloading the collection edition.
iv never played them before.

This reminds me I've never played Blue Shift.

s0l0kill · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
If they did, they would have called it Half-Life 3. The fact that its a spin off set between the two main titles without Gordon Freeman made me realize they are still very cautious about it, which is fine. The best thing they could have done, if they are serious about pushing VR is make a half-life 3 exclusive to VR and have a bundle with a discounted Valve index.

Half-life: Alyx is still fine offcourse and better than nothing, but this is def not a valve going all in with their main IP for their preferred new platform/medium

Hell no, people would say it's a cash grab on their part and imagine the uproar, this game isn't 3 and even this gets a lot of hate just because it's VR, imagine if that was HL3 instead lol, people would be furious.

Cyanity · Nov 19, 2019

Cat Party said:
I can't easily express in words how utterly deflating it is that, after all this time, they make a new HL game and it's a PC VR exclusive.

Let's be honest here: a new HL game was always gonna be a big letdown. Making a full AAA VR title is better than a flatscreen game, imo. Especially if it results in a source 2 sdk.

Peter Ian Staker · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
If they did, they would have called it Half-Life 3. The fact that its a spin off set between the two main titles without Gordon Freeman made me realize they are still very cautious about it, which is fine. The best thing they could have done, if they are serious about pushing VR is make a half-life 3 exclusive to VR and have a bundle with a discounted Valve index.

Half-life: Alyx is still fine offcourse and better than nothing, but this is def not a valve going all in with their main IP for their preferred new platform/medium

If the current response to a VR-only HL spin-off is anything to go by I cant even a imagine what would happen if HL3 was VR only.
Valve likely didn't want to deal with this shit.

VN1X · Nov 19, 2019

Oh god I just realised... this won't be that visually impressive will it? I mean don't get me wrong, it's been 12 years since the last HL game so obviously we'll see great improvements but because of it being VR it can't stack up to more recent 'standard' tech demos can it? Definitely not RDR2 or TLOU2 levels no?

c0Zm1c · Nov 19, 2019

Randomly Generated said:
This reminds me I've never played Blue Shift.

I remember really liking it when not many others did and in one way, that I'm not going to mention because of spoilers, better than the base game of Half-Life.

Cyanity · Nov 19, 2019

c0Zm1c said:
I've never really understood the "you have no interest because you haven't experienced it" take.

I don't care for VR for a number of factors. Cost, room, the mess of wires (there's a few wireless ones around now though right?) and not wanting to play my games with a headset on. It's not about not being able to wrap my head around it. I actually really liked motion controls in the early days (Wii) and was excited to see where it went, but that's intrinsically tied to VR now (with fair reasoning, I know). If I could play Alyx just with motion controls and not a VR headset, that might be good as long as the controllers weren't expensive. Maybe that's the possible "hardware" reveal hinted at earlier in the thread. One can hope.

Regarding your mention of bulky wires - you are correct, there is a wireless VR headset with inside-out tracking: the Oculus Quest. The tech is really promising and fixes a lot of issues people have been having with early VR.

Nzyme32 · Nov 19, 2019

Arulan said:
Is there a difference between playing Paintball in real-life to a video game FPS equivalent? There is an incredible difference. You can certainly use a lot of scripted interactions and set animations to abstract some of the mechanics, but it's not even remotely close to the same thing. The same is true for VR.

I think the big thing with VR is inviting creativity of the player since they can (or rather should) be able to manipulate the world in far more expressive ways, particularly if you are going to make a much more physically based one. This can be in all kinds of flavoured ways.

For example - lets say you need to find a specific bit of info / map / intel in a room and its a bit of a puzzle. Normal game is mostly "press x to thing" on glowing object / press switches / move some boxes in a not very engaging way.

Thinking index controllers, manually sifting through and shifting objects around. Find a book. Physically flip through to read / find a map to pull out. Open up the map. Annotate where you want to go with an inventory physically mapped to you that you created. Pass it off to someone else, etc.
It's a more creative and engaging experience.
Obviously there needs to be design aspects in there so it isn't something laborious - unless that is some sort of difficulty / sim thing you intend.

EVIL · Nov 19, 2019

Cyanity said:
Regarding your mention of bulky wires - you are correct, there is a wireless VR headset with inside-out tracking: the Oculus Quest. The tech is really promising and fixes a lot of issues people have had with early VR.

Don't expect to play HL:Alyx on it tho, Its a very limited device in terms of power.

Vash63 · Nov 19, 2019

VN1X said:
Oh god I just realised... this won't be that visually impressive will it? I mean don't get me wrong, it's been 12 years since the last HL game so obviously we'll see great improvements but because of it being VR it can't stack up to more recent 'standard' tech demos can it? Definitely not RDR2 or TLOU2 levels no?

Considering it needs to run at 90 FPS locked in 3d and framerate drops are a quick way to motion sickness, it's fair to assume that they aren't looking at RDR2 levels of visuals. I'm sure it will still look absolutely stunning though and in VR it will probably feel closer to reality than anything we've experienced to date.

Cyanity · Nov 19, 2019

Peter Ian Staker said:
If the current response to a VR-only HL spin-off is anything to go by I cant even a imagine what would happen if HL3 was VR only.
Valve likely didn't want to deal with this shit.

We have no idea until the reveal.

s0l0kill · Nov 19, 2019

Nostremitus said:
But how well will it play on a cheaper headset, like Windows mixed reality? If I do eventually buy a headset it'll have to be a low cost variant.

It will play, how well is good question, WMR headsets are based around first-gen inside-out tracking, that means that your controllers will track mostly in front of you, but there are a lot of interactions in VR where that is not possible, like drawing a bow, or throwing a grenade, these will be janky af.
The Rift S and Quest are both based on the same technology but has a way better field of view for the controllers so they would work fine.
The best is the Index with the 2 base stations you place around the room, your controller is always being tracked.

The main thing that will be different between all those headsets and the Index, is that the index comes with the knuckles controllers, enabling individual finger movement, right now all of the other headsets have a grab button, a trigger etc etc, the Index's controls will be utilized in the game for sure, but it's not that big of a deal as it's probably not being designed around them (as a side note, you can technically down the road just buy those controllers and the base station and use your existing HMD, but at that point you should just buy the whole thing lol)

Ferrio · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
Don't expect to play HL:Alyx on it tho, Its a very limited device in terms of power.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/oculus-link-beta-out-now-13-recommended-cable.153810/

Nzyme32 · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
Don't expect to play HL:Alyx on it tho, Its a very limited device in terms of power.

Oculus Link exists for this kind of purpose, rather than running natively on the device. Pretty confident Valve will do the leg work to get it supported in SteamVR, as they've done for other devices

dodo · Nov 19, 2019

c0Zm1c said:
I've never really understood the "you have no interest because you haven't experienced it" take.

I don't care for VR for a number of factors. Cost, room, the mess of wires (there's a few wireless ones around now though right?) and not wanting to play my games with a headset on. It's not about not being able to wrap my head around it. I actually really liked motion controls in the early days (Wii) and was excited to see where it went, but that's intrinsically tied to VR now (with fair reasoning, I know). If I could play Alyx just with motion controls and not a VR headset, that might be good as long as the controllers weren't expensive. Maybe that's the possible "hardware" reveal hinted at earlier in the thread. One can hope.

Posts like the one you quoted are so annoying. VR evangelists can be really condescending and it often just feels like elitism. It's really funny that these people who keep telling everyone that no one can wrap their heads around how cool VR is can't wrap their head around why people don't want to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a bespoke setup. But whatever, we're just dumb hicks who like our "pancake" games.

VR is extremely neat and also a huge ask for consumers.

Nostremitus · Nov 19, 2019

tkato said:
It will play, how well is good question, WMR headsets are based around first-gen inside-out tracking, that means that your controllers will track mostly in front of you, but there are a lot of interactions in VR where that is not possible, like drawing a bow, or throwing a grenade, these will be janky af.
The Rift S and Quest are both based on the same technology but has a way better field of view for the controllers so they would work fine.
The best is the Index with the 2 base stations you place around the room, your controller is always being tracked.

The main thing that will be different between all those headsets and the Index, is that the index comes with the knuckles controllers, enabling individual finger movement, right now all of the other headsets have a grab button, a trigger etc etc, the Index's controls will be utilized in the game for sure, but it's not that big of a deal as it's probably not being designed around them (as a side note, you can technically down the road just buy those controllers and the base station and use your existing HMD, but at that point you should just buy the whole thing lol)

Thanks for the explanation. My only VR experience so far has been PSVR at a family member's house and one of those cheap cellphone deals.

EVIL · Nov 19, 2019

Nzyme32 said:
Oculus Link exists for this kind of purpose, rather than running natively on the device. Pretty confident Valve will do the leg work to get it supported in SteamVR, as they've done for other devices

yes, but the guy argued one of his reasons of not being interested in VR is being tethered to a PC, with oculus quest being the answer, to which I say, nope since you wont be able to run HL:alyx with Oculus quest wireless

s0l0kill · Nov 19, 2019

xeecee said:
Posts like the one you quoted are so annoying. VR evangelists can be really condescending and it often just feels like elitism. It's really funny that these people who keep telling everyone that no one can wrap their heads around how cool VR is can't wrap their head around why people don't want to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a bespoke setup. But whatever, we're just dumb hicks who like our "pancake" games.

VR is extremely neat and also a huge ask for consumers.

What is up with your inferiority complex, VR is a different beast than "Pancake" gaming, why is that notion that hard to grasp?, go try it at best buy or something and it will immediately become clear why.

Nzyme32 · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
yes, but the guy argued one of his reasons of not being interested in VR is being tethered to a PC, with oculus quest being the answer, to which I say, nope since you wont be able to run HL:alyx with Oculus quest wireless

Ah, yeah in that case, it's obviously not a good solution. Wireless PC VR is available but expensive for the time being

s0l0kill · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
yes, but the guy argued one of his reasons of not being interested in VR is being tethered to a PC, with oculus quest being the answer, to which I say, nope since you wont be able to run HL:alyx with Oculus quest wireless

You actually can, Virtual Desktop enables wireless VR streaming and is actually quite decent right now, the guy that makes it implemented the same techniques Oculus used for the Link's encoding and it lowered latency greatly, in terms of visuals they actually look remarkably close, but Link's latency is better overall.

wafflebrain · Nov 19, 2019

EVIL said:
yes, but the guy argued one of his reasons of not being interested in VR is being tethered to a PC, with oculus quest being the answer, to which I say, nope since you wont be able to run HL:alyx with Oculus quest wireless

Virtual Desktop says hello. A recent update has made the latency and stream quality almost indistinguishable from a native feed (tethered). It works flawlessly with SteamVR. There are multiple posts in the PCVR thread attesting to this. I've been using it regularly with my own Quest and it works very well with my library of SteamVR (and Oculus over Revive) titles.

Randomly Generated · Nov 19, 2019

I hope they put a countdown to the unveiling on their site. I still remember when they did that for the hardware unveilings.

dodo · Nov 19, 2019

tkato said:
What is up with your inferiority complex, VR is a different beast than "Pancake" gaming, why is that notion that hard to grasp?, go try it at best buy or something and it will immediately become clear why.

I've played plenty of VR, jackass. I didn't have the same come to jesus moment as you did and don't really have any interest in spending the money and space on a setup just yet.

Isee · Nov 19, 2019

Isn't oculus quest supposed to get full finger tracking too. Like not with a controller, but your real hand tracking.

At least I remember it being mentioned somewhere.

zulux21 · Nov 19, 2019

Isee said:
Isn't oculus quest supposed to get full finger tracking too. Like not with a controller, but your real hand tracking.

At least I remember it being mentioned somewhere.

It is getting hand tracking with out a controller. Yes.

KrillinLikeAVillan · Nov 19, 2019

The same fucking year i give up on half-life, vale goes ahead and makes more half-life.
Well fuck yeah, i am so on board the hype train again, i got a vr set last month and i am so fucking ready, bring it valve show us you still got it.

Cyanity · Nov 19, 2019

wafflebrain said:
Virtual Desktop says hello. A recent update has made the latency and stream quality almost indistinguishable from a native feed (tethered). It works flawlessly with SteamVR. There are multiple posts in the PCVR thread attesting to this. I've been using it regularly with my own Quest and it works very well with my library of SteamVR (and Oculus over Revive) titles.

This sounds amazing. So do I just need to buy an oculus quest to get started?

s0l0kill · Nov 19, 2019

xeecee said:
I've played plenty of VR, jackass. I didn't have the same come to jesus moment as you did and don't really have any interest in spending the money and space on a setup just yet.

Great, so why are you here?, to shit on people who do like VR games and are excited?

s0l0kill · Nov 19, 2019

Isee said:
Isn't oculus quest supposed to get full finger tracking too. Like not with a controller, but your real hand tracking.

At least I remember it being mentioned somewhere.

Yes, but mark my words, it's gonna be shit.

dodo · Nov 19, 2019

tkato said:
Great, so why are you here?, to shit on people who do like VR games and are excited?

I wasn't aware we had to be 100% on board for a game to post in its announcement thread! I'll post where I want, thanks.

Randomly Generated · Nov 19, 2019

It's weird how every Valve employee I'm aware of on Twitter simply retweeted that announcement rather than saying they worked on it or something. I'd be all caps freaking out after having to suffer in silence for years.

Half-Life: Alyx Announced

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