You know, since we're supposed to be an editing community and all; This pace is pure gold:
http://www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/ 

Who is editing for Half-Life 2? I'm working on a test map currently to play around with stuff and get some solid ideas for my mod's direction. I'd be interested to see what people are coming up with. 

i'm still trying to get used to this hammer thing. no hope of GTKRHL2 i guess... 

...is there any similarity between the map files created by Hammer for HL2 and the files created by a Quake1 edtior. Anyone that far down the road yet? Conversion possible?

Having just read some of the Hammer Documentation, it looks very interesting. In particular, Displacement Surfaces seems to be a far better way to get my terrains laid out than the method I currently use :-)

It also has some visual similarities with BspEditor, which was created by Yahn Bernier for Quake1, who then went to work on HL2.

Just a thought... 

You can convert from q1 to source pretty nicely I think, just open .map in old worldcraft, save as .rmf and open that in new hammer.
I believe it would be very hard to convert from source to any other game, because hammer and the compilers use ONLY their own .vmf format, (yes, the compilers read the .vmf files directly) so there is no way to export to .map as there was in previous worldcraft/hammer.

(... 1 minute later...)

Actually, I just opened up a .vmf file in textpad now, and I was expecting to just see a binary mess like the .rmf files were, but these are very nice and clean text files, very much more readable than the q1 .map files. I think a skilled programmer (hello aguirRe!) could convert these to quake1 fairly easy, maybe even perhaps the displacement surfaces too.
And frankly, the displacement surfaces here would be the only thing making hammer for q1 even vaguely interesting. 

It also has some visual similarities with BspEditor, which was created by Yahn Bernier for Quake1, who then went to work on HL2.

Ben morris, author of Worldcraft, was hired by Valve for HL1. Which is why WC2 was for HL, not Q1; it's what Valve themselves used to make HL1.

Yahn Bernier was hired I-don't-know-when, but presumably for similar reasons.

I tried both WC and BSP when I started, and prefered WC by a long way. Dario Casali, otoh, used BSP to build Prodigy SE.
One wonders who polishes whose ego now they all share the same office space :P 

i think it would be more complex than converting q3 to q1 format or whatever. while some syntax is sort of the same (classname, angle, etc) the actual layout of the brushes looks wierder than before... each face has settings and things like that... 

04:17:11 Zombie : ydnar: if you were to do anything in the way of a HL2 bsp compiler
04:17:22 Zombie : start with the vis tool it's shocking
04:17:48 Zombie : I've got really basic geometry which would normaly take lik 5 seconds in q3map2
04:17:58 Zombie : takes about 2mins in HL2's vis tool
04:22:08 Mr : hmm maybe that explains my 5+ hour compile that I had to stop because it was taking so god damn fucking long.
04:22:19 Mr : It was on 2.. for about 3 hours straight. 

http://www.zhlt.tk/

beta source engine compilers for those interrested, but I didn't look at the details... 

http://www.student.itn.liu.se/~troja881/cookie/ 

Here's my impressions. It starts out rather rhetorical but I wrote this to be posted at a non-gaming forum anyway...

http://www.phait-accompli.com/crap/hl2/hl2.php 

That's a short essay. I'm just not willing to read through so much junk I already know. Can't you just sum it up in a few controvertial sentences people can fight over or something? 

The physics and lighting are more impressive with this game but I still got the feeling of been-here-done-that with even just the demo gameplay. 

How dare you say such things about the second coming of christ? You've made me really mad.

Fight me if you dare. I'll be waiting for you on the corner of 5th Avenue NY* Feb 01st 2005 11:00pm for a proper bare fists to the death fight.

*if such a location exists, and if you want to pay for my flight. 

writing a review on a demo of a game thats been out for a month is like writing a story about this mornings bowel movement

it's viscocity
it's texture
it's aroma
the angle it went down the bowl
the tas... you get it 

Go get them Than! 

Aren't demos supposed to be meant for people who can't be bothered to read reviews, and want to try the games themselves instead? That's what I thought anyways... So yeah, kinda pointless writing a review about it since the full game was out before. 

Good:

- Atmosphere is great, almost all locations are very convincing.

- Eastern European / Big Brother flavour for the city and stuff is very cool and quite refreshing for a A-list game.

- Water is amazing, first water I've seen that looks properly wet.

- Lots of nice locations. Favourite bits including the dam, the bridge (awesome), the ride through the combine tower.

- Art direction is generally great.

- Physics is great. Lots of fun to play around with.

- Feel of the game and controls are good, surprisingly solid.

- Facial animation shizznit is top notch. The expressions when Alyx is handing you the gravity gun made me replay it just to see it again.

Bad:

- Totally linear.

- Barely relenting real-life theme. The tower was cool but I'd like some more outlandish stuff.

- Lack of variety in enemy. 90% of the gameplay is against soldiers or headcrabs / zombies. Stalkers were great, but where's the rest?? Cool monsters, exciting combine constructs??

- Different sorts of gameplay (boat, jeep, zombie town, team stuff) were spoonfed to you in specific sections, made them seem artificially set-up and lacked organic gameplay.

- Some areas, i.e. the team gameplay in the urban enviroments was a blatant and shameless promotion for the style and feel of CSS - if I wanted to play that, I'd play CSS.

- Other gameplay aspects obviously derivative from HL itself. Gameplay ended up being a "Best of HL remixed with detatched vehicle sections and sponsored by heavy CSS advertising".

- AI didn't seem to be particularly exciting.

Ugly:

- Shadows are cheap hacks and show their b0rkage easily.

- Lighting from the sky also shows it's cheapness on occasion.

- A few other effects are weak. 

I did like it, a lot. A lot of it was very impressive, and most of what it was p1mped on (stylish locations, great physics, very effective art design) it succeeded on. However the gameplay did get wearing after a while, as did the non-linearity. I kept waiting to see some COOL enemy or to feel I had some choice in how I played the game. But for all of that, I still had a great time playing it.

Better than HL? Fo sho, w3rd. Now games have the technology to pull off what HL wanted to with enough style and convinction. And despite being a sequel, HL2 feels like it's pushing gaming further for the time than HL did.

Better than Doom3? Not sure. I think I prefered playing Doom3, in a different way. I found Doom3 gripped me more, made me feel I was part of something. HL2 made me feel more like I was being shown something. D3 was "woah", HL2 was "wow". Hard to compare. I like the style of D3 more. I think given the technology and atmosphere in both games, it's quite a personal choice.

Best game of the year? Quite possibly. Yeah why the hell not.

Best game ever? Not in my view.

But it's a damn good one. I don't feel assraped by the hype and vaguely blahhed about the game like I did about HL, I feel Valve have released a proper flagship game with this one. 

I'm not going to tell again what many people has said, the same problems as anybody.
The game has a Big Brother feel and in real life, Steam system itself is another Big Brother.

The game... without Big Brother, is excellent. 

hm, i just played like 3 -5 hours at a friends, always different bits throughout the game and watched like 3or 4 more - sorry, didnt like it.

- the art wasnt that good at all imo - go play myst: uru to see how good art looks. granted, the engine may be slower ( but thats a technique thing), but what the designers do with their given poly count and their textures is amazing (from the 4 levels ive seen :))

-models look shitty in hl2. yes, even barney, he wasnt sexy at all. combines look better tho. of course that may be influenced by seeing d3 and all..

- scripted sequences feel way too scripted for me - sorry, in hl1 i felt like the action was going on around me independently - in hl2 its action arranged for me

- no story feeling whatsoever for me - but everyone i spoke to couldnt tell me what the story was at all (besides aliens attacking earth or sth) also i felt reminded to elite force - same stupid story shit to justify stupid gameplay sequences

- gameplay. gameplay? yeah, guess there was some; not interesting or tense for me tho. worst sniper scene ever seen in a game.

-physics. i dont care that the physics are convincing if the world im running in is sooo unconvincing by being absolutely linear. didnt add a single thing for me. grav gun was fun for the first minutes, felt way too gimmicky to be convincing. inconstistencies with it broke the game world (no humans/bodies ? wtf. i need an upgrade to do it, yeah, right).

-soap opera feeling (e.g. stupid headcrab thing)

-water looked good yeah, but far cry's looked equally good, every game using pixel shaders has nice water. radioactive slime looked horrible tho, wasnt even moving.

-weapons /weapon balance felt totally broken from hl1. no fun weapons. that might be because i always was dropped in the game with like everything already picked up/discovered tho.

-ending had the worst gameplay ever. use healing, have everything full, take out enemies, be full again, repeat. also - they have these nice laser walls i cant walk trough - why don'\t they just block the one way thats always open with em ? bad. very bad. 

Evil like a hitler tsunami! 

You are wrong about:

- the art wasnt that good at all imo

-models look shitty in hl2.

-physics.

-water looked good yeah, but far cry's looked equally good, every game using pixel shaders has nice water.

-weapons /weapon balance felt totally broken from hl1.

The other points are fair, though. 

shambler: k :) 

everyone i spoke to couldnt tell me what the story was at all

I liked that no character came out and spoon fed the story to you. That would have been contrived. After all, they don't know you've been away so it's easy to assume you would have noticed the Earth being attacked. If you pay attention to what's said and look at the cork boards you can easily piece the events together. You get back what you put into it, so if you don't understand the story you probably don't care so it's just as well.