Is huge fun -- played some tonight on an Atlanta server, and it kicked ass. It was so funny, watching everyone wandering around with a big chunk of junk at the ready.

Back to mapping, tho -- anyone know of any tutes for working with displacement meshes? All that I've seen mainly has to do with creating terrain, and I want pipes, dammit. 

actually, it's starting to piss me off quite a lot now.

Does anyone know how to make steam just fucking get updates as they become available AND THEN FUCKING VALIDATE THEM, RATHER THAN WAITING FOR THE TIME I WANT TO PLAY THE GAME?

It seems that Steam is only updating files when I try and run the game, which, as you can imagine, is a bit annoying. When I want to play a game, I don't want to wait 5-10 minutes for fucking updates to be applied... especially not at the rate they are releasing them atm. It seems that EVERY time I try to play, I have to wait for an update. FFS.

And why is it that all the update news is FUCKING OUT OF DATE ALL THE TIME?

There have been about 3 updates since HL2DM was released, and I don't see any updates listed on Steam since the 30th of November. WTF is that about?

I hope Valve get all this shit sorted out soon.

Or maybe I'm just not doing something right... anyone got any ideas? 

and some fucking piece of shit has already registed MY LEGIT Half-life 1 key, so it's either buy another copy of HL from the shops (at the risk that the cd key is also already registered) or UPGRADE to HL2 Silver... but this doesn't seem to be possible at the moment.

Oh, the other option is to mail my HL1 CD and CD key to Valve, at god knows what cost for postage, then also pay a $10 administration charge and then wait for my HL CD to be mailed back to me.

It's a fucking disgrace. 

wtf with the HL1 CD key? You have got to be fucking kidding me. What you're saying is that Steam has made it possible for some twat to stop you playing your own 6 year old game? WTF? 

I can no longer play HL1 online as far as I am aware. Besides, when HL1 is registered on steam, it should unlock some of the other old HL related content, such as Opposing Forces, which I never played.

Whether or not you were taking the piss with your post, Kell, I don't know, but it's a shitty siuation nonetheless. 

I wasn't taking the piss ( hence the icon ). You can still play through the SP game though? If it's only HL1DM that's locked that's no sad loss really :/ But I do think Valve has taken something of a liberty if, because of Steam, gameplay that people paid for, six years ago is now inaccessbile. 

Taking the piss? 

kell: you don't need steam to play HL normally. only over the steam network. you can still play HL over lan and whatnot without needing steam -- HL is still the quake engine at heart, so you can just write "connect #.#.#.#" in the console if worse comes to worse.

the thing is, steam tries to incorporate HL into steam by itself if it detects it. it copies the whole game over from the original install folder into the steam folder, so you actually end up with two copies of hl... 

i bought hl2 yesterday. 

eh? eh? EH!?

Kell: It's kind of because of Steam, and kind of because of FUCKWITS WHO REGISTER COPIES OF HALF-LIFE USING A CD KEY GENERATED BY A KEYGEN, BECAUSE EITHER THEY HAVEN'T PAID FOR THE GAME, OR THEY LOST THEIR CD KEY.

Fucking SCUM.

Of course, I could be mistaken, and it's entirely Valve's fault. 

Send me your email address to quake.terminus (*) virgin.net, and I will send you a totally legit CD key for HL1. It's actually my key which I have never used, and never intend to use to play online (being too busy, old, usually drunk, shit at counter strike, etc etc...)

P.S. The key has obviously never been tested in Steam. 

I got your email address from http://www.planetquake.com/cesspit/

Check your email. 

Anybody seen this yet:

http://www.planetquake.com/sda/other/HalfLife2.html

I went ahead and got the big .avi -- it's hilarious, the guy shakes and nods the camera fro Gordon's responses, and the scarecrow and Alyx-skating is funny as hell, too. Obvious spoilers to anyone who hasn't finished, tho. 

Your Planetquake email address doesn't work. Email me.

P.S.
Not sure if it's just me Than, but your map links don't work either.

I suggest changing them from h**p://www.planetquake.com/dl/..ect
to
h**p://www.fileplanet.com/dl/..ect 

I always nod and shake my head when I'm playing HL 1&2. I thought I was normal ... 

So where is the high-quality movie?

I have downloaded the 677M file but there is supposed to be 1.5G file somewhere. The 677M is not too good quality-wise but still fun to watch. 

but the link should be on the bottom of the list. (High Quality Version - 14xxMB) 

spoilers eh? so i could watch the movie rather than playing the game and then know wtf people are talking about? 

not really, there aren't "spoilers" regarding steam being a piece of shit.

Just in case anyone who hasn't played HL2 is wondering, HL2 > Doom 3 :) 

I've been playing HL2 a bit, and I have to agree with than, HL2 >> D3... =)
Its just so much more fun, and the gameplay is rarely repetitif from what I've seen for now (I'm in Nova Prospect), which definatly isn't the case for Doom3.

What I quite like is the sense of location some of the maps have, it just feels right, and very atmospheric. Like when you're climbing around on the large bridge, or just driving the buggy around (you really feel like ur traveling, first time I felt that while playing an FPS). 

Bal: I read in the Raising the Bar book (which yes, I went ahead and bought this weekend) that they had to tweak the car/boat physics severely, since it would induce motion sickness the way they first had it ;D

Anyways,*SPOILERS to anyone who hasn't finished the game (and why the hell haven't you yet?)*

Saw a way to go back through the whole game with the blue gravity gun you find in the Citadel (which can pick up practically anything, as opposed to the one earlier on): just start your game, bring down the console and type changelevel d3_citadel_03, which is right where you get the blue GG. Then type changelevel d1_trainstation_01, which puts you at the beginning of the game, and then give_weapon_physcannon to re-give you the gun. Now, head out there and get physical! 

Hehe, I nod and shake now -- I used to only try to get some nice buttshots of Alyx... 

Barney is the sexy one, foo!
http://www.planetquake.com/greyvoid/erotica.jpg 

just finished hl2... interesting endgame 'battle'. thank god it wasn't some stupid clich�d boss fight. :P
don't know what to say about the ending though... the lack of finality bothers me, but i like happy endings so i guess i deserved that. ;)

this game actually makes me want to map for it. i think a horror oriented map would be amazing in there. maybe better than d3's horror handling. ... maybe ;) 

and the beginning sequence is pure genious. it was really cool and set the mood perfectly when you are trying to escape for your life, not to mention all the little touches that are scripted into the guards ("pick up the can" :P)