It's funny that this whole thread turned into a graphics versus community/fun debate.
When I posted the question I was thinking that Half-life's age affects it in a lot of ways, and graphics was third on my list.
First of all, Half-life doesn't multi-task at all. If you alt-tab out everyone I know loses sound, if they can come back at all. On my particular machine, every time I run halflife my taskbar and the top of my windows desktop are forever displayed as a border to my game. Nothing I do gets rid of them. It's nice because I can see the system clock while I'm playing, but it's mostly annoying. This shows its age more than anything. This game was built for Windows 95-98, we need programs that support our operating systems better.
Second, Halflife came out in 1998, that's more than four years ago. While it has been incredibly well supported over the years, better than any game, it can't have but a couple more years left in it. There's a couple of reasons I say this:
a) It's slowly losing its player base to new, "fancier" games. While it may be king of the hill now, it's not growing like it used to be. I'd venture to say it's losing people, losing them to newer games. No matter what you feel about player base though, you have to remember that most of the people still play Counter-strike. Counter-strike is your direct competitor for man hours. You might have a lot more people with potential to play NS, but chances are they're going to just keep playing CS.
b) Certain games stand the test of time; someone mentioned Mule and some other "classic" games and while those are still fun they are only played by hardcore gamers and really only for their nostalgic value. In truth, most great games phase out in under 5 years. Halflife will be an exception, no doubt, because it's been supported more than any game that comes to mind, but that doesn't mean that it won't die out. It'll just last a bit longer than normal.
Third, we finally get to graphics. It's graphics are dated. I don't mind the graphics at all but I'm in the group of people who would play a game with ASCII characters if the gameplay was there. But I am not an average individual. Most people like games with hyper-realistic scenery and dramatic animations and special effects. That's why every box touts the realistic graphics in this latest game. People like pretty pictures. Even if you'll still play a game with fugly graphics, a game with good graphics is always better. A game that looked and felt like you were really on a space ship, fighting off an alien swarm would go a long way towards attracting people to natural selection. Still, of all the problems *I* have with NS, graphics is the least.
Anyway, interesting thoughts. Thanks people for your responses. I'm not sure I agree that Half-life was the right choice, but I definately see the reasons now.
Half-Life has several advantages, but these two seem the most important:
1) This has been said over and over: market penetration 2) Valve support. Valve has always been supportive and responsive to the modding community. Mod-makers get a name for themselves, Valves sells more Half-life, and I get a free new game.
Half-life was built off the Quake 2 engine, I believe. I think they've done an amazing job of extending the legs of the game. I love the fact that my computer doesn't have to be top-of-the-line to run a great game, and the fact that Valve hasn't abandoned it yet. Sure, they mess up on some patches (anyone remember the file version reversion problem?) but their hearts are in the right place.
And I think it's a beautiful engine. It has its limitations, but I've yet to see a better game that just uses crappy and frenetic lights and calls it "good".
NS and HL aren't about glamorous screenshots with pretty effects (though there are plenty of both!), but rather about actual gameplay.
Good post Fraqh, and some good points. However, (isn't there always a however? =) I think there are a couple counterpoints to the statements in your last post.
1) First of all, Half-life doesn't multi-task at all.
True, it does have problems now. However, the next patch to Half-Life is making some sweeping changes to the program, and this one of them. they are supposedly fixing the sound bug, and I believe are going to make it play nicely with other programs. Hopefully this will soon be a dead issue.
2) It's slowly losing its player base to new, "fancier" games.
Yes and no. The march of time does mean people will move on other new games, but I have noticed that myself as well as many of the folks I hang out with keep coming back to Half-Life and it's mods. CS, DoD, NS, and TFC are still wonderfully entertaining games which in many cases have not been beaten by many of the commercial releases over the past couple years. They are great, entertaining games. There's also the fact that many people cannot afford to upgrade their computers to play BF 1942 and UT 23k. I've stopped playing both b/c even on my butch system they fall down into a heap when more then 3 people are on the screen. With NS, I can a be in a huge 9 player brawl with turrets firing madly, and not drop a frame.
3) Halflife will be an exception, no doubt, because it's been supported more than any game that comes to mind, but that doesn't mean that it won't die out.
True; nothing lasts forever. However, I believe they will continue to upgrade the Half-Life engine until they can replace with something new and wonderful, and hopefully if they are smart, they will provide an easy upgrade path for their modders. There's no reason they couldn't come up with a compatabilty layer so that HL1 mods could work with HL2. No matter what, I believe the engine still has a fair amount of time left.
4) Graphics are dated.
Yup. I keep hoping they'll slip a graphics engine update into one of these patches, but they haven't yet. =( I think for a lot of gamers though, as long as the game play is good and the latency is good will stick with Half-Life based games. It's not as schamncy as some of the more recent engines, but it's well behaved and feature rich. I think we'll all be here quite a bit longer. =)
Comments
When I posted the question I was thinking that Half-life's age affects it in a lot of ways, and graphics was third on my list.
First of all, Half-life doesn't multi-task at all. If you alt-tab out everyone I know loses sound, if they can come back at all. On my particular machine, every time I run halflife my taskbar and the top of my windows desktop are forever displayed as a border to my game. Nothing I do gets rid of them. It's nice because I can see the system clock while I'm playing, but it's mostly annoying. This shows its age more than anything. This game was built for Windows 95-98, we need programs that support our operating systems better.
Second, Halflife came out in 1998, that's more than four years ago. While it has been incredibly well supported over the years, better than any game, it can't have but a couple more years left in it. There's a couple of reasons I say this:
a) It's slowly losing its player base to new, "fancier" games. While it may be king of the hill now, it's not growing like it used to be. I'd venture to say it's losing people, losing them to newer games. No matter what you feel about player base though, you have to remember that most of the people still play Counter-strike. Counter-strike is your direct competitor for man hours. You might have a lot more people with potential to play NS, but chances are they're going to just keep playing CS.
b) Certain games stand the test of time; someone mentioned Mule and some other "classic" games and while those are still fun they are only played by hardcore gamers and really only for their nostalgic value. In truth, most great games phase out in under 5 years. Halflife will be an exception, no doubt, because it's been supported more than any game that comes to mind, but that doesn't mean that it won't die out. It'll just last a bit longer than normal.
Third, we finally get to graphics. It's graphics are dated. I don't mind the graphics at all but I'm in the group of people who would play a game with ASCII characters if the gameplay was there. But I am not an average individual. Most people like games with hyper-realistic scenery and dramatic animations and special effects. That's why every box touts the realistic graphics in this latest game. People like pretty pictures. Even if you'll still play a game with fugly graphics, a game with good graphics is always better. A game that looked and felt like you were really on a space ship, fighting off an alien swarm would go a long way towards attracting people to natural selection. Still, of all the problems *I* have with NS, graphics is the least.
Anyway, interesting thoughts. Thanks people for your responses. I'm not sure I agree that Half-life was the right choice, but I definately see the reasons now.
--Frahg
1) This has been said over and over: market penetration
2) Valve support. Valve has always been supportive and responsive to the modding community. Mod-makers get a name for themselves, Valves sells more Half-life, and I get a free new game.
Half-life was built off the Quake 2 engine, I believe. I think they've done an amazing job of extending the legs of the game. I love the fact that my computer doesn't have to be top-of-the-line to run a great game, and the fact that Valve hasn't abandoned it yet. Sure, they mess up on some patches (anyone remember the file version reversion problem?) but their hearts are in the right place.
And I think it's a beautiful engine. It has its limitations, but I've yet to see a better game that just uses crappy and frenetic lights and calls it "good".
NS and HL aren't about glamorous screenshots with pretty effects (though there are plenty of both!), but rather about actual gameplay.
1) First of all, Half-life doesn't multi-task at all.
True, it does have problems now. However, the next patch to Half-Life is making some sweeping changes to the program, and this one of them. they are supposedly fixing the sound bug, and I believe are going to make it play nicely with other programs. Hopefully this will soon be a dead issue.
2) It's slowly losing its player base to new, "fancier" games.
Yes and no. The march of time does mean people will move on other new games, but I have noticed that myself as well as many of the folks I hang out with keep coming back to Half-Life and it's mods. CS, DoD, NS, and TFC are still wonderfully entertaining games which in many cases have not been beaten by many of the commercial releases over the past couple years. They are great, entertaining games.
There's also the fact that many people cannot afford to upgrade their computers to play BF 1942 and UT 23k. I've stopped playing both b/c even on my butch system they fall down into a heap when more then 3 people are on the screen. With NS, I can a be in a huge 9 player brawl with turrets firing madly, and not drop a frame.
3) Halflife will be an exception, no doubt, because it's been supported more than any game that comes to mind, but that doesn't mean that it won't die out.
True; nothing lasts forever. However, I believe they will continue to upgrade the Half-Life engine until they can replace with something new and wonderful, and hopefully if they are smart, they will provide an easy upgrade path for their modders. There's no reason they couldn't come up with a compatabilty layer so that HL1 mods could work with HL2. No matter what, I believe the engine still has a fair amount of time left.
4) Graphics are dated.
Yup. I keep hoping they'll slip a graphics engine update into one of these patches, but they haven't yet. =( I think for a lot of gamers though, as long as the game play is good and the latency is good will stick with Half-Life based games. It's not as schamncy as some of the more recent engines, but it's well behaved and feature rich. I think we'll all be here quite a bit longer. =)
Prospero