toblix

Half-Life 3

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Valve just posted a file called hl3.txt onto the Dota 2 git repository. Here's a link and Here's a pastebin copy. I'm normally the last person to pay any attention to Half Life 3 theories but this text file makes alot of references to friendly NPCs, citizens, dialogue and linear levels.

Of course this could just be an old file from Half-Life 2 that slipped into the new revision of the source engine. But if it isn't? Holy crap!

 

 

That Happening Bunker is gold.

 

 

 

O:

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The hl3.txt stuff contains stuff that's from HL2 but also clearly-new stuff.

It is also probably recent for it to find its way into a Dota 2 update that it wasn't already in before.


Not much solid info in the file, but here's all you can kinda deduce

-it has stuff for procedurally spawning groups of NPCs based on stuff like whether the player is nearby or not, what's visible to player, etc
-it has "quest citizens" who have different behaviors from other citizens. If a quest citizen is a "quest member" it's "neutral to combine" and doesn't take damage. My first thought is "neutral to combine" means this citizen won't open fire on combine on sight but might still do so if attacked by combine, which is probably a useful thing for a lot of types of quests? This is supposition (though I do have knowledge of HL's relationship systems, etc etc).
-quest citizen has "beckon player when player is close enough" functionality but I'm not sure if this is just inherited from npc_citizen and was present in hl2/episodic
-"prop_zipline" exists so that's a level-placeable zipline of some sort, which doesn't really tell anyone anything
-there are a number of quest-specific info entities and vars. Of particular interest is "height of marker beam", "radius of bottom disc", "trace up to place top of beam", etc. Sounds like vertical-beam quest markers in an open-ish world map.
-"Combine Pulse Ceiling Turret"? Were those a thing in earlier games?
-there's an npc_hunter_invincible which is interesting. I'd have thought you could just make a hunter invincible rather than making a new class called invincible hunter. So that's a thing
-generic pickup has a "prevents respawning" var and a "associated playercounter name" var which are both marked as "HL3 only". The respawning thing only really makes sense to me in the context of an open world game

JUST SPECULATIN'.



edit: some of this stuff could also have slipped in there from other projects/games, or it could be references to shit from years ago

 

 

Yes, I was going to bring that junk up, but opted not to.

 

The, uh, "up to 93%" stuff on TF2 items is bunk, though. Major bunk.

 

...Though I've seen some screencapped conversations that seem to suggest that's the fault of the butt-faced people who organized that community update, and less so the fault of Valve themselves. It's all hearsay to me, though, so I don't really want to take sides. 

 

Regardless, I still think Valve takes maybe too much money on that stuff. But then they did MAKE THE GAME, so I don't knooooow.

 

They for sure take way too much money off Compendium sales for The International...

It's not bunk at all. They take 93% of key sales, with the remaining 7% split between whoever potentially had an item in a crate, which can be as many as like 10-20 people. Keys are the only way to get new items now since they aren't being put on the store anymore.

 

There is a whole separate dispute about the butt-faced people who organised the current community update, but yeah, separate issue.

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No I mean it's bullshit that they do. I'm well aware of how it works.

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I'm probably using it wrong. I always thought it meant both, like "bullshit", hah.

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There is a whole separate dispute about the butt-faced people who organised the current community update, but yeah, separate issue.

 

Please, go on. Valve community drama is always so esoteric and interesting and weird and I love it.

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Please, go on. Valve community drama is always so esoteric and interesting and weird and I love it.

I'm not directly involved so my scoops aren't especially hot, but I think it's what I think of as the kind of typical Mod Team Leader Bullshit I thought had died out long ago, but in a new context where it's able to cost people money. I think some do-nothing jerks appointed themselves as Project Leads (which is a very back-in-the-day-mod-community thing) and got to be Valve's only contact point for the update/its contributors, they mismanaged a bunch of crap and then they decided on a new revenue split where they get most of the money, and nobody else is in a position to do anything about it. 

 

Hearing about this, plus dealing with a bad client recently who seemed straight out of a 2005 mod community, has somewhat diluted my nostalgia for my modding days.

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I'm probably using it wrong. I always thought it meant both, like "bullshit", hah.

 

Yeah, I've never heard of 'bunk' being used in any sense other than 'untruth'.

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Yeah, I've never heard of 'bunk' being used in any sense other than 'untruth'.

I definitely have, before, but maybe they were wrong.

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I bet they will just put the Christmas lights up in Steam and call it a Christmas sale and there in the middle of it, Half Life 3 just launches to Steam without any pre-hype trailers etc.

 

And the internet dies after that. Just completely grinds to a halt.

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It's almost certainly Half-Life 2: Episode 0.

What's the worst name they could give a new Half-Lie game/chapter? (remembering, of course that Kingdom Hearts HD II.8 Final Chapter Prologue is the name of a thing soon to exist.)

Edit. 'Half-Lie' was a typo. But AMIRITE?!?! Ha! But no. Typo.

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I'd like to think that every time someone comes up with a credible leak of Half-Life 3's existence, it gets delayed another 6 months.

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I'd like to think that every time someone comes up with a credible leak of Half-Life 3's existence, it gets delayed another 6 months.

 

That's fine by me! The game of "Is Half-Life 3?" is worth more to me than the code for it on my computer at the moment.

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Valve is happy to announce Half Life: 3 Questions!  The only Half Life trivia game officially sanctioned by Gabe Newell! 

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