TNT2 rocks. Can’t wait to see what all the fuss about Halo was about.
Too bad about the delay. To be honest, the delay rumors seemed a bit too credible, but it was fun fooling myself!
weeps openly
I know, man, I know. I wanna shove glass shards into my eye, too.
But in the bright side, HALO for PC tomorrow. WooHoo!!!
Well, Sept. 30th came and went and we don’t even have a benchmark test for HL2.
On the other hand, Halo PC looks fantastic. I don’t care about HL2 anymore.
Yeah, I really don’t think HL2 will live up to the insane hype.
What’re you talking about? There’s a million of 'em floating around the web (most of 'em say that Nvidia cards are gonna have a bitch of a time running the game, though). See this Tom’s Hardware article.
Ah, I mistyped. I should have said ‘benchmark program’. See, I’m not planning on getting a new video card to run HL2, and in fact I’m more interested in the physics. So I want to be able to run the engine on my video card to see if it works, what features I need to disable to get it running well, etc. That was promised for Sept 30.
As SPOOFE said, one of the big problems is that our pals at nVidia have royally screwed up their implementation of DX9 and therefore nVidia cards run the game like utter shite–see the benchmarks on the next page of that article. The problem appears to be part software (which isn’t normally much of a problem since nV is usually awesome about driver support), and part hardware, which is potentially a Matrox G400-sized #@^&-up.*
There is compelling evidence which suggests that the problem lies with nVidia cards and all DX9 games. I suspect, but cannot prove, that the HL2 delay is actually a wait-and-see period so nVidia can cobble together some sort of fix for the game. This would also explain why the HL2 benchmarking utility is absent. If it’s true, nVidia owes Valve–and you–quite an apology.
- The Matrox G400 was hyped as an OpenGL-compatible card which utilized 32-bit resolution and 2X AGP. In fact, the G400’s implementation of OGL was totally wrecked. By the time Matrox finally “fixed” the product over a year after its release, the card was obsolete. As the first kid on the block to have a G400 and the last guy in the country to get acceptable framerates in Quake ]|[, I will never touch a Matrox again.
(By the way, I should add that nothing touches the G400 in the 2D arena–not even the 9600 Pro which graces Lamont, Son of the Sanford Box. The remains of the original Sanford Box will so be reconstituted into something my girlfriend can use, and the G400 will be able to display Internet pop-ups and puppy-dog wallpaper with crystal clarity. It’s a shame those jerks at Matrox had to manipulate the public into thinking they were selling a 3D card instead of the best desktop VGA money can buy.)
You may have a point about nVidia problems being a part of the delay, Sofa King. After all, they will be alienating a large segment of the market if nVidia owners (like me – GeForce 4400) take a wait-and-see attitude before buying.
Note, however, that ATI has teamed up with the HL2 producers for this release, according to several reports. There supposedly was a bidding war between ATI and nVidia for a promotional position in the game. ATI is set to release a scaled down version of the game in a bundle with its latest graphics boards. Gotta figure ATI is rather pleased with nVidia’s plight at the moment. I’m now looking for a deal on a Radeon 9600 myself.
Heh. Just ran across a new interview with Valve’s Gabe Newell over at Gamespot. Not much new here, though the lead points out that Newell “attended ATI’s graphics card launch event…to endorse ATI’s cards and talk about why DirectX 9 is such an important standard for PC game developers.”
Looks like ATI is getting a nice return on their investment.
Which is strange, considering that the last tests I saw said that Nvidia’s FX line of cards beat the pants off of ATI in a Doom 3 test. Perhaps that article I saw was outdated…?
Ignorant question here: If someone did have the source code what can they actually do with it? Do they have the actual game that they can play? Create mods? What?
Well, thanks to the source code leak it seems that Half Life 2 is being delayed until April 2004. Thanks a lot you crackers.
Oh, sure, blame the white people! 