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Half-Life Alyx |OT| The right woman in the right place
- Thread starter MRORANGE
- Start date
Hypothetically, if I were to buy an Oculus Quest and link it to my crappy laptop, would I be able to play Alyx? Does the Quest do all the legwork, or am I totally misguided?
When I play the game I'm piling all dead headcrabs in a crate and defying Gabe to stop me.
No, with Oculus Link, it basically functions as any other VR headset. It will be completely powered by your laptop.
Glad I'm not the only one who felt the comparison lol, G-mans prison even looked like the Polaris thing or whatever it was.
If Valve released the Source 2 SDK, within a week there'd be a sweet basketball mod, and a virtual classroom whiteboard mod.
Yep, it's what I've been doing. Makes a huge difference in big firefights to have a ton of grenades.
See:
As an aside, don't forget that during combat you have complete freedom to use the jump / warp option to get around quickly; I find that helps keep the combat fast-moving and fair since you need flanking options and the enemies have a pretty good aim on them.
The thing about locomotion in Alyx is that, like most things in the game, it's been implemented in a way that prioritizes the player's comfort more than anything else -- yes, even at the expense of presentation. When you fall, for instance, you're not falling quite as fast as you'd expect to; they appear to have purposefully slowed your descent down to keep falling from inducing any discomfort. Likewise, when you're mantling, that operation is very smooth -- again, not trying to rock the boat. This is extended to other operations too: climbing ladders is a funny one, because you can hold on to the ladder with just your left hand for instance and by rotating your left hand around effectively rotate your body around. It's not realistic; presentation here is sacrificed to keep climbing ladders about as easy as possible and will no accidental upsets. Likewise, large falls result in deaths. When you're at the top of a ladder, they game once again decides to prioritize comfort; smoothly interpolating the player's current position to the "top" of the ladder without any input needed you from you. I realize you said you didn't need or want Bonework's style physics here, but a lot of decisions have been made here to avoid having to deal with the problems that Bonework's welcomes with open arms.
I do think they could insert a head-bob for people who want a bit more physicality to the movement, and maybe that would help. All of these decisions, though, are just that: decisions. Like, there's nothing stopping Valve from simulating IK so your position could ebb and flow as you walk across uneven surfaces (hell, the two little feet that project out in front of you when you go to warp actually have IK, hilariously, implemented. Go and see!), but vertical movement is a thing that can cause a lot of discomfort. Valve definitely chose a model for locomotion that I think is the common denominator for people and keeping peoples' lunch firmly planted in their stomachs. Even with that said, there are times that the game can make even hardened VR people feel a bit uneasy, and the game's smooth turning I find surprisingly difficult on me.
I see them adding even more options as we move forward, but I do want to be clear here: even the surprisingly simple approach to locomotion here is very clearly done with the intent of prioritizing player comfort. I can understand why that might not be the best choice for some players from an immersion standpoint, but it's not a shoddy implementation or anything, just a safe one.
My only issue with movement is not being able to sprint. Having to choose between walking to the next point of cover or teleporting isn't ideal.
I was doing the same thing but with a bucket. My game kept crashing at one point until I emptied it. Probably too much shit bouncing around in a little space for my rig to handle.
I wish this game had a NG+ feature so I could blow through it again with all my upgrades and keep getting more resin to finish them out.
I would also love some kind of arena mode that lets you pick from a few of the encounters in the campaign and replay them or an extended version of them. No other game has felt as good as far as VR combat for me, and I'd love the option to jump back in and fight some combine troops, xen, or antlions (or all 3) casually. That would really give the game some extra staying power for me, because I want to keep playing it but don't want to spend time redoing a lot of the puzzles and stuff. Hopefully they consider adding something like this!
I would also love some kind of arena mode that lets you pick from a few of the encounters in the campaign and replay them or an extended version of them. No other game has felt as good as far as VR combat for me, and I'd love the option to jump back in and fight some combine troops, xen, or antlions (or all 3) casually. That would really give the game some extra staying power for me, because I want to keep playing it but don't want to spend time redoing a lot of the puzzles and stuff. Hopefully they consider adding something like this!
I think they will. I mean it's technically possible it could get delayed and be like what happened after Episode Two again, but this ending really makes me feel optimistic about the series.
I started my second playthrough and I need to make sure to try this this time.
I dunno I was pretty blown away from the get go honestly. The graphical fidelity is like nothing I've seen in other VR games - plus the animation and amount of objects you can mess with. For reference I've only played a lot of: Boneworks, Blade and sorcery (with lightsabers and force stuff) h3, budget cuts, Skyrim VR, Vader Immortal, and the Walking Dead, all of which had their moments but felt nothing like this to me.
I don't understand what you mean. You don't have to stand on those feet, that's just a way for the game to tell you where the middle of your room is. This uses roomscale, you are free to move around the entire room and shift the world around you with analog sticks or teleportation. The game accounts for where you are in your room at all times.
Some good points. That's true about using the teleport for quick shifts during combat while still using the smooth movement setting, I kind of forgot about that. And I definitely don't think it's a bad implementation of smooth locomotion...but I'm admittedly not entirely convinced that Valve found the right balance when it comes to comfort vs. playability here. Based on interviews, they really spent a lot of time with teleport, and I think that and blink are natural solutions to high comfort play. Not saying they should go full Boneworks with smooth movement, but if you look at a game like Pavlov, there's exclusively smooth locomotion with sprinting, and that game is the most popular VR multiplayer game on Steam. The non-sprint base speed is even significantly faster than HL: Alyx. One thing that game does really well is that when you're sprinting, your gun bobs up and down in your hands. It seems like a small deal, but it really adds something. Also, if you sprint and look laterally, it force stops the sprint. Maybe that game's movement also feels better to me because there is less going on in the environment and there are no pacing problems with being able to constantly sprint around the map, whereas with Alyx, you're meant to move through tighter rooms in a much more methodical manner. There's also just far more geometry/objects around in comparison to a game like Pavlov.
But another issue that I mentioned about the smooth movement is how small ground protrusions make you feel like you're on wheels. When you step on a slightly raised object in real life, you step on top of it and you have sort of a smooth height change transition. In Alyx it feels like when you hit something that is say, an inch higher, the camera just suddenly pops up an inch. This is all sort of in retrospect from my play time yesterday (haven't played today) so don't hold me to that, I need to go back in and see if that's really the case. I don't know if other games have found a solution to this besides just keeping the ground flat rather than having minor changes in elevation because of game objects.
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When do the horror elements ramp up in this game? I just got to chapter 4 and it really isn't doing much for me now ( I'm not invested in the Half-Life story at all), but I hear it becomes a horror game which really excites me. The graphics and animations are incredible, just can't wait for the gameplay and atmosphere to excite me the same way. I keep hearing people talk about chapter 7, will that be what I'm looking for?
Chapter 5 is spooky, chapter 7 is definitely on the horror side.
Cool, I'll get to chapter 5 tomorrow and probably finish it through the weekend then. Thanks!
On the other hand, if you're good with firearms handling it's really not needed.
I'd say save those resin for other upgrades if you are proficient.
(The trick is using the sights and not trying to fire from the hip like a video game character)
This is a big one I noticed that no other VR games does. Alyx has a much lower terminal velocity. Prevents that "stomach drop" I get in literally every other VR game, still even with years of VR legs. (I kinda like the drop tho...)
Is it normal that some edges tend to shimmer a lot? Is that just a limitation of the headset (Valve Index) itself?
Also how do I know at which resolution & fps the game is running at? I've got a 1080+3700x, all graphic settings maxed and I have no idea if I'm even hitting 90 let alone 120 fps...
Also how do I know at which resolution & fps the game is running at? I've got a 1080+3700x, all graphic settings maxed and I have no idea if I'm even hitting 90 let alone 120 fps...
Probably for debugging/testing? A quick way to do stuff without having to put a headset on and off multiple times.
So they can walk through it to test scripting and other things. Not actually play the game.
yea I know how to aim a firearm. My first upgrade was the reflex sight and it made things go downhill. Wish I could remove that.
There's a tripwire on chapter 6 that blows up every single time and I can't figure out why.
Does story difficulty make you immune to traps?
Does story difficulty make you immune to traps?
Just finished it, 9h of gametime (which is surprising because I took my damn time with each area and every review said there's 15-17h), after this I don't want to imagine a Half Life game in anything other than VR, this game spoiled my gaming experience for life.
It shouldn't is there something falling over and triggering it?