from Hacker News

Half-Life: 25th Anniversary Documentary [video]

by marconey on 11/28/23, 11:40 AM with 155 comments

  • by epolanski on 11/28/23, 12:51 PM

    One thing I have found extremely interesting was how Valve hit the jackpot with many early hires.

    It was literally people that often didn't even have a CS or let alone gaming background and yet so many of them proved to be relentlessly resourceful, creative and hard working.

    The guy who wrote most of the HL code wasn't even a developer and at the time was studying to become a lawyer or accountant iirc.

    I can't but think that timing, founders but also straight up luck played an absolutely crucial factor.

  • by kar1181 on 11/28/23, 4:19 PM

    I was heavily involved with the australian team fortress (quake 1 version) community in the late 90s and 'bro' (Robin Walker) and John Cook were gods to us, regularly involved in the RMIT/Melbourne Lan scene and online even when back then mostly it was 28.8/33.6k modems with a few LPBS on East coast uni isdns.

    The struggle for them to move on from qwtf to 'tf2' was probably for the best as a lot of the lessons they learned in the wilderness there helped when they were taken on by value and worked on HL2.

    Also find it somewhat amusing was that TF2 was originally going to be a much more 'realistic' modern miltary shooter before the scope creep killed it.

  • by austin-cheney on 11/28/23, 5:25 PM

    So, this begs a rather obvious question. What makes that team different? Is it the talent, the leadership, the focus on product?

    As a long time JavaScript developer I honestly believe, and I really mean this, that maybe 4% of the people employed primarily doing JavaScript work actually know what they are doing. Just 4%.

    It seems at the beginning many of the early Valve team had a lot of passion but almost no real experience in that kind of code or product. They got a massive springboard with the Quake code and then figured out the rest. They didn't stagnate on the Quake code, but wildly modified it to fit their needs. Most JavaScript people are not capable of this. They just stagnate at their favorite framework and then just spin around code style and process.

    What differentiates that early Valve team from all these various JavaScript teams? It clearly isn't education or professional maturity.

  • by paulryanrogers on 11/28/23, 1:50 PM

    Sad reminder of the crunch, even when the result turns out to be a success. Hours like that pushed me out of modding and into boring old business software.

  • by evilpie on 11/28/23, 1:21 PM

    See also Dario Casali's Half Life 25yr anniversary playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk5gaNp4x_AVIJviyHueH...

  • by h1fra on 11/28/23, 1:44 PM

    Watched it yesterday, game development is so wild. Especially this one, basically everybody were just amateur and passionate with little to no background in programming or even gaming.

    Also demystify how it's done, almost none of the HL goodness where there at the beginning: the intro, gman, xen, crabs, music, etc. And were just made up along the way.

  • by physicles on 11/28/23, 4:42 PM

    Loved the documentary. I played the hell out of that game back in the day. There’s a renaissance of Half-Life Deathmatch too (short-lived, no doubt) if anyone wants a hit of nostalgia. Valve even released a couple of the concept art character models, some gameplay tweaks, and some new maps. New content for a 25 year old game.

    Also FYI, Half-Life and HL2 are currently both very playable in VR. Half-Life even runs natively on the Quest 2.

  • by Hikikomori on 11/28/23, 12:52 PM

    Valve however did not acknowledge the 17th anniversary of the Half Life 2 episode 3 announcement.

  • by dkdbejwi383 on 11/28/23, 1:45 PM

    “Lateness is a for a little while, suck is forever” is a good quote

  • by trash_cat on 11/28/23, 2:56 PM

    Excellent documentary. I suggest looking into the first part of Black Mesa [1] as well after the anniversary documentary, which is the remake of the original Half Life in source engine. The modders pick talk a lot about the stuff that the original developers talked about, and what challenges they faced in re-creating it.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_TcAxAKCAI

  • by echelon_musk on 11/28/23, 2:20 PM

    This finally resolves my unanswered question of why the music file in Blue Shift was called "prospero01.mp3" !

  • by gattr on 11/28/23, 4:54 PM

    I hope we'll get a screen adaptation of HL/HL:OpFor/HL2, at least as good as HBO's "The Last Of Us" (I loved it, and haven't even played that game).

  • by 0dayz on 11/28/23, 1:12 PM

    It was a really cool documentary with that they actually got the other co-founder of valve on it.

  • by sovietmudkipz on 11/28/23, 1:38 PM

    Game Dev in the 90s into the 00s seems absolutely wild.

  • by dang on 11/28/23, 6:55 PM

    Recent and related:

    Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38307889 - Nov 2023 (258 comments)

  • by butz on 11/28/23, 4:25 PM

    Valve has video distribution service on Steam, why put up this documentary on Youtube, of all the places?

  • by billfruit on 11/28/23, 3:00 PM

    Recently tried to re-play HL2. Found it was highly motion sickness inducing, possibly due to unnaturally fast change in perspective when turning. Had to give up very soon. Newer games tend to fare better in that respect.