Half Life 2: Episode 3 - Not Anytime Soon

Unfourtunately for Half Life fans, you won’t be seeing EP3 for a long time. Valve’s Doug Lombardi confirms the release distance will be much larger than it was with Half Life 2 to Episode 1 and Episode 1 to Episode 2. However, Valve may show you a piece of Episode 3 later this year.

Lombardi: Yeah, the next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between HL2 to Ep1, and Ep1 to Ep2.

Garry’s Mod - Update Abound

Another update for GMod10.

Garry’s Mod

• Fixed crash when prop’s physics object couldn’t be created
• Fixed Team Fortress 2 blood overriding Half-Life 2 blood
• Fixed shotgun having wildly reduced damage
• Changed default jump height so you can jump on a crouched player
• Fixed not being able to override materials on clientside entities
• Fixed not seeing hunter blood in MP

Half Life 2: Episode 3 First Concept Art

The first piece of Half Life 2: Episode 3 concept art, created by Ted Backman, Jeremy Bennett, and Tristan Redford of Valve Software.

Half Life 2: Episode 1 Updated

Valve has released a source engine update for Half Life: Episode 1. This particular update adds surround sound (5.1ch, 7.1ch) under Windows Vista for CS: Source, HL2: DM and Episode One.  As always, it’s available from Steam.

Episode 1 Source Engine

• Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch customers running under Windows Vista can now take advantage of 5.1 and 7.1 speaker configurations

Half Life 2: Episode 3 to No Show E3

Sadly, the next installment of Half Life franchise won’t be making an appearance at E3. According to Doug Lombardi, instead of Half Life 2: Episode 3, Valve will be hosting a playable version of Left 4 Dead in their private suite.

Portal And Half-life 2: Episode 2 Update Released

This update adds the ability to tweak FOV as well as tweaks the particle rendering system.

Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2

• Added a new advanced video option that allows the user to easily change the field of view to any value they wish between 75 degrees and 90 degrees
• Updated the particle rendering code and particle data files to make them compatible with the particle editor included in the Source SDK

Valve’s Steam to get New Features, Dubbed Steam Cloud

At the recent press event, Valve has revealed plans to add lots of new and exciting features to Steam over the upcoming months. One of the most striking features is dubbed Steam Cloud; A feature that lets users access their save games/game generated data from anywhere using Steam.

All of the data will be transferred to Steam’s back-end once users connect to the service.

Steam Cloud will be rolled out first in existing Valve titles Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Counter-Strike will soon support the feature, and the upcoming Left4Dead will ship with it.

More additions include:

• Deathcam Screenshots for Team Fortress 2
• Recorded Demo files

Near future additions:

• Auto-updating
• System Requirements checker
• Community Calender function
• Official game communities
• Localized game pricing
• Shopping Cart
• More payment methods
• and more.

Full Steam ahead, indeed.

Valve’s Doug Lombardi talks Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and future plans

At the recent EA games showcase in london, CVG sat down with Valve’s Dough Lombardi to discuss Valve’s upcoming game Left 4 Dead. Lombardi also talked about Portal 2, Source engine and Valve’s expansion into new genres. Here’s a snip:

How much has the Source engine been updated for L4D since Half-Life 2?

Lombardi: I would say that almost half the code has been developed since Half-Life 2 was released. We introduced new lighting effects, we did a lot of character animation work for HL2: Episode 2, added support for multi-core PCs, we worked on the physics for Portal and new AI added for L4D.

We look at Source as a set of tools, not necessarily as an engine that we’ve built that we’ll use until it expires and throw away. We see it as this organic thing that we’re constantly tweaking and building. It’s more of a toolkit than a set engine.

Garry’s Mod Update Released

Updates to Garry’s Mod have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Garry’s Mod

• Fixed sound issues for people without Half-Life 2
• Fixed not being able to load saved games on startup due to maxplayers > 1
• Fixed some player models being invisible (Nova)

Team Fortress 2 - Huge Update coming Next Month!

After all the delays, Team Fortress 2 will finally get unlockable weapons set as well as a brand new map (well, sort of) Goldrush alongside Meet the scout video! IGN did a QnA with Valve’s Robin Walker. Here’s a snip:

IGN: When might we start seeing the unlockable item updates mentioned a while back? What classes are being focused on right now? Is the Medic still planned as the first update to roll out?

Robin Walker: We’re almost done. The Medic is still planned as the first update, but we’ll be pushing into the other classes pretty quickly. Much of the time we’ve been taking has been on the backend work, so we won’t have to do that work again.

New Details:

• The unlockable medigun will switches out the 10 second invulnerability effect for 10 seconds of 100% chance of critical hits.
  
• You unlock the first Medic unlockable when you complete 12 of the 36 Medic achievements, the second at 24, and the third at 36.
  
• Goldrush is coming along with the Medic achievements and unlockable weaponry.
  
• The cart in Goldrush moves faster the more Blu players are near it, and contains a handy dispenser to heal and resupply them as they escort it. The Red team wins if they can keep the cart from reaching their base.
  
• Goldrush is the first map to use the cinematic physics technology from Half-Life 2: Episode 2 in a multiplayer environment

For more details, check out the extensive IGN QnA

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