McVicker had a stream tonight and infodumped hard because paypigs hit his donation goal of $300. Take the information as you will but also be aware that the fat fuck completely leaked HLA and several major mechanics/story beats/etc two years before it was even announced and has actual sources inside Valve. Here's pretty much all of what he said:
>L4D3 was in MAJOR development from 2015-2017, had an entire floor at Valve and was nearly finished before being cancelled over internal disputes about whether it should be on Source 2 or unity >a singleplayer VR L4D title was in development and shelved, a lot of assets (and even complete map sections, literally copy + pasted) from this project are recycled in HLA >HL3 and its previous incarnations are also heavily recycled in HLA, namely almost all of the character models >Half-Life: Barney is in development and intended as a standalone VR title or expansion to HLA to further fill the gap left in AAA VR titles and keep people interested while other developers work on their own projects >it's internally agreed at Valve that playing as Gordon/major story advancing Half Life titles should only be in traditional formats aka no VR >TF2 is being worked on in some capacity, "probably" a trust system update similar to CSGO >CSGO to source 2 in the next few months >Valve is scrambling to revive old projects in VR and see what sticks such as the aforementioned L4D title and an unspecified project called "Citadel" (because it used HLA assets) >Valve expected HLA to flop hard and is so invigorated by the reception you can expect the above VR push to strengthen within the next few years
>>Half-Life: Barney is in development and intended as a standalone VR title or expansion to HLA to further fill the gap left in AAA VR titles and keep people interested while other developers work on their own projects I'd be down for this if it's set in Black Mesa, like a prequel to the Resonance Cascade that fleshes out Barney's character more. HL:A already gave us a good look back on City 17, it'd be nice to revisit HL1 instead
Nicholas Gonzalez
didn't valve say recently they aren't currently working on anything left 4 dead related
Gabriel King
According to him that's an outright lie. They even contradicted themselves, Dario talked about it by accident in one of the HLA interviews
Charles Mitchell
>currently There's the key word there bucko. They said a while back that they aren't *currently* working on L4D stuff since it was shelved in 2017. Now that HLA did well they're reviving the L4D VR game idea.
Anthony Clark
Literally Half-Life Blue Shift.
Jose Sanchez
>>TF2 is being worked on lol
Ethan Wilson
>like a prequel to the Resonance Cascade what the hell would you do in that setting? shoot scientists who don't have their passports?
Aiden Wilson
Jungle Inferno was a massive disappointment for Valve. They spent two years of development time and it did nothing long term for the game. Almost everyone on the TF2 team jumped to HLA after JI shipped and now that HLA is done they're back.
Gabriel Gomez
does anyone else not like L4D versus mode? the games are twice as long since you play both sides, and I don't find playing as a zombie to be that fun desu
it really needs to have a queue that lets you pick a team and stick to it
Jaxson Martin
>L4D3 had major development >internal disputes about whether it should be on Source 2 or Unity Are you retarded? How can a game have major development if the devs haven't even picked an engine yet?
Easton Kelly
They had it on Source 2 but the engine was heavily unfinished and basically ran on Source 1 and duct tape. It's a miracle HLA works as well as it does.
Ryder Bell
Tyler's story has also changed, previously he said it was between Source2 and UE youtu.be/66TBG6LsieI?t=75
Brandon Rivera
Imagine using the engine of your competition
Leo Torres
The thing to take away from all of this is that Valve STILL can't count to three.
Nicholas Garcia
who cares though? Why does this matter if we still won't see games for 2~ years? Leak whatever you want, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's cool, but yippee until we can see it in some fashion. Valve has lost most goodwill, even after HLA, due to the last decade. Cancelling L4D3 is the biggest piece of info here, and it's bad
Cameron Scott
>>Half-Life: Barney is in development and intended as a standalone VR title or expansion to HLA to further fill the gap left in AAA VR titles and keep people interested while other developers work on their own projects This would make sense considering what Barney/G-Man's voice actor said.
Josiah King
I never understood why valve didn't have faith in half-life Alyx? I mean they put tons of investment into VR i'd assume they'd have faith in both their hardware and software.
It was a passion project through and through. They're sitting on literally infinite cash and a best-in-class headset with no killer app, so they figured they'd do something with it, regardless of public opinion.
James Morris
Once the peripherals reach a viable mass market price point VR will dominate AAA games.
Nicholas Gray
VR is still niche as fuck and this was, besides like Boneworks, one of the first actual attempts at a full AAA VR game. It apparently worked out pretty well so now they're gonna autistically double down on VR because they'll think its an untapped goldmine.
Gabriel Morales
>>Valve expected HLA to flop hard and is so invigorated by the reception you can expect the above VR push to strengthen within the next few years Yas Forums BTFO
Nathaniel Smith
>infodumped hard because paypigs hit his donation goal of $300 lmao is he really paywalling his information? god I hate leakers so much
Liam Wood
Okay, when the fuck is that going to be?
Chase Taylor
I don't care. It will likely suffer from monetization taking up most developing resources until it is a soulless shell of its former self. Much like 90% of all games released in the past 15 years.
Unlikely. They still haven't figured out how to make people not throw up without teleport based movement mechanics. There is also zero point to using VR outside of first person style games. Every other type of game, non-VR is more natural and less strenuous. VR is a meme.
>l4d being dumped into VRShit >STILL putting resources into tf2 and not making a fucking tf3 already
Lame
Liam Campbell
>internal disputes about whether it should be on Source 2 or unity
I'm calling bullshit, no one in their right mind would suggest using Unity for a Valve game, especially one of their big titles.
Jason Robinson
nah, should be during the 7 Hour War, first trying to fight the invading Combine, then realizing they're unbelievably overpowering, then just running away for survival you'd see the G-man nudging things to favor the Combine, and he doesn't care about about Barney at all
Dylan Carter
That's precisely what happened. You're overestimating Valve-- Source 2 was effectively unusable at that point and they couldn't get anyone to develop it far along enough (thank their "do what you want :)" policies) so they were left between delaying the game to rebuild the engine or do a full conversion to a different engine, either way requiring years of work. Even now Source 2 is almost entirely Source 1 with random shit slapped on. Is it really that unbelievable when Bethesda has been using Gamebyro for 20 years and just calls it the creation engine now?
>no one in their right mind would suggest using Unity for a Valve game The Lab would beg to differ.
Eli Richardson
Even Respawn, the guys that basically made their entire career all the way from 2015 to Infinity Ward and finally Respawn games on different variants of Quake engine decided to pick UE4 for that Star Wars game. I'm pretty sure it's more about the game ideas, both HL1 and HL2 were completely rebuilt within like a year from release.
William Murphy
>L4D3 was in MAJOR development from 2015-2017, had an entire floor at Valve and was nearly finished before being cancelled over internal disputes about whether it should be on Source 2 or unity >a singleplayer VR L4D title was in development and shelved, a lot of assets (and even complete map sections, literally copy + pasted) from this project are recycled in HLA >HL3 and its previous incarnations are also heavily recycled in HLA, namely almost all of the character models >Half-Life: Barney is in development and intended as a standalone VR title or expansion to HLA to further fill the gap left in AAA VR titles and keep people interested while other developers work on their own projects >it's internally agreed at Valve that playing as Gordon/major story advancing Half Life titles should only be in traditional formats aka no VR >TF2 is being worked on in some capacity, "probably" a trust system update similar to CSGO >CSGO to source 2 in the next few months >Valve is scrambling to revive old projects in VR and see what sticks such as the aforementioned L4D title and an unspecified project called "Citadel" (because it used HLA assets) >Valve expected HLA to flop hard and is so invigorated by the reception you can expect the above VR push to strengthen within the next few years A lot of this is consistent with what I've known and learned over the years. Maybe there's some substance to this "leak".
Hudson Watson
>Half-Life: Barney is in development Looks like Adrian's shit outta luck
Nicholas Wright
I don't know about VR being only good for FPS games, I can imagine some unique ideas for a VR RTS game.
Matthew Gonzalez
There's differing opinions at Valve, some do indeed think VR is a meme
Henry Watson
What's the appeal of Adrian? He's literally the most generic 2000s muhreen ever.
Carter Bell
Nostalgia, back then tacticool shit in vidya was a breath of fresh air. Hard to believe.
Lucas Russell
>>it's internally agreed at Valve that playing as Gordon/major story advancing Half Life titles should only be in traditional formats aka no VR vrcucks on suicide watch
Jayden Martinez
>was nearly finished before being cancelled over internal disputes about whether it should be on Source 2 or unity sounds like a pretty big decision to be left for the final stages of a game's development
Ryan Murphy
>was nearly finished before being cancelled over internal disputes about whether it should be on Source 2 or unity pime taradox driven development
I will tell you this, the L4D series' success was very notable to Valve, and 3 was well on its way till they begin to question how different it should be from its predecessors for whatever reason. Even so far as to entertain it as a VR release due to VR being the next step in gaming. I will for sure say that L4D3 will be VR only. Hell the zombies in HL:A use the same animations as the zombies in L4D3, though I wonder if they'll change it now since it'd be obvious due to HL:A's success. By the way, everything on this board is a work of fiction and I'm just a roleplayer.
Michael Ramirez
I'd rather it be the L4D comic backstories for each character as levels.
Caleb Jackson
>Hell the zombies in HL:A use the same animations as the zombies in L4D3 what? l4d's zombies are supposed to be romero-like in that they're fast as fuck while half life's have always been super clumsy
Jackson Ward
>romero-like in that they're fast as fuck nigger what
Robert Cox
What about the skinned fast zombies? Those aren't clumsy.
Charles Brooks
fake and gay
Daniel Rodriguez
yeah, i'm actually retarded. the "romero-like" adjective actually references the half life's headcrab zombies
Michael Taylor
The thing is fast as fuck zombies don't work for VR games. This is where difficulties arose in L4D3's development, and hence why it seems like it was dead during the past few years. They've been at a loss in terms of what to do with L4D3 so that it would be innovative like HL1's jump to HL2. They just decided to make HL:A the test of the VR jump since it's much easier to adapt HL to the unique play of VR games than L4D's fast, multiplayer focus.
Owen Baker
are those in alyx? i don't know
Anthony Cooper
>fast as fuck zombies don't work for VR games Why?
Elijah Butler
Retards will panic and break shit
Mason Gray
lost me at >Half Life: Barney what the fuck
Levi Walker
The most common counter against fast enemies is being mobile yourself, while the biggest problem of VR is general problem with motion sickness.
Logan Turner
God i hate tyler. His disgusting face, always complaining about his life, looking tired as shit while drinking soda.
Last time i saw his "datamining" stream and it was laughable. He can't even datamine correctly he skipped half of the animation of gordon and alyx, barely let us view a whole fucking animation.
Sometime he legit choke on a phrase and keep repeating himself 5 time in a row while laughing like a maniac, is he autistic or something?
The only thing he got is his sources. Even his interviews are awkard af, he was talking to merle like she killed someone it was horrible to watch.
Aiden Ross
I mean, they MAY work in VR, but it certainly wouldn't pass Valve's "could a paste-eating quadruple amputee play this" playtesting checks.
Matthew Torres
Blue Shift is during the Resonance Cascade, not before
Anthony Hughes
Have you ever played a VR game? They have to be slower due to the restrictions VR impose on skill and reaction versus M+KB. Sure in L4D you can headshot mobs of zombies no problem, even on expert, but imagine having to orient your body, head, and arms to do such a thing. You have to compensate for that large difference, especially when it comes to your typical VR player who are usually casual players. You pretty much have to rework the fundamental mechanics of L4D for a VR title, which most didn't like the thought of.
