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Latest Comments by Mountain Man
Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
7 Mar 2020 at 5:36 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Brisse
Quoting: kuhpunkt
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: kuhpunktDude, what are you even talking about? XD
Since you're typing in English, I assume you understand English, so you're going to have to be a bit more specific as to what you're confused about.
Everything.

VR isn't that expensive anymore. SteamVR is a standard. And then you start talking about communism.
For some of us it is expensive. I certainly couldn't afford it.
I can afford it. I have the means to go out today and buy a state of the art VR system and the computer needed to run it, but I simply don't see any compelling reason to invest in the technology. Like I said, the technology is neat, but it didn't add anything that I would consider essential to the gameplay experience. And from what I've seen, Alyx looks to be a standard VR game but with Valve polish. I think people expecting it to revolutionize the VR market are going to be disappointed.

Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
7 Mar 2020 at 5:32 pm UTC

Quoting: kuhpunkt
Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: kuhpunktWhy do you keep saying that it's a gimmick?
Because in my opinion, it is. I've tried VR, and my impression was the same I had with 3D television: neat but not essential and certainly not worth the additional expense and hassle to set it up.
3DTV doesn't allow anything that 2DTV doesn't offer. VR does. And you set it up once. There's hardly any hassle.
I'm not comparing VR to 3D television. I'm saying that my reaction when I had the opportunity to try VR was the same.

Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
7 Mar 2020 at 3:53 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: kuhpunktWhy do you keep saying that it's a gimmick?
Because in my opinion, it is. I've tried VR, and my impression was the same I had with 3D television: neat but not essential and certainly not worth the additional expense and hassle to set it up.

Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
7 Mar 2020 at 3:36 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Comandante Ñoñardo
Quoting: Mountain ManMeanwhile, Valve is giving us some gimmicky VR bullshit...
Hopefully, modders will find the way to adapt HL:ALYX it for regular Keyboard & mouse users.
It could be easier than you think because Valve has an eye toward making Alyx more accessible to players with limited mobility, including one-handed play. And from what I've seen in gameplay videos, the player carries out actions, including combat, while rooted in place, so you don't even have to worry about shoot-and-move. The only thing you'd really be missing is the "immersion" factor.

Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
7 Mar 2020 at 2:46 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: stuff
Quoting: Mountain ManMeanwhile, Valve is giving us some gimmicky VR bullshit...
Meanwhile Valve is making a potentially revolutionary new game...
Others studios would be fine making something like Black Mesa and selling it as an HD remake. Don't tell me you would prefer an "official" Black Mesa (=remake) over a totally new Half Life experience. I'd rather see 10 failed games that a least try something new then the 100th remake or reboot. I hope you are not one of those people who complains about Call of Duty being the same game over and over again.
A totally new Half-Life experience, yes; a totally new Half-Life experience exclusively for a niche audience that has bought an overpriced hardware gimmick, no.

And Black Mesa is more than just an HD remaster. There are some similarities to the original Half-Life but a lot of differences, too, enough to make it feel like a new experience.

Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
7 Mar 2020 at 12:44 pm UTC

Quoting: 14Did this come with the Orange Box many years ago? I was surprised to see that I already owned it.
This is not to be confused with Half-Life Source which is simply the original Half-Life ported to the Source engine and has been included by Valve in various bundles as well as being available standalone.

Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
7 Mar 2020 at 12:29 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: M@GOidI would advise anyone on Linux to avoid buying it right now. not only it has disabled Multi-core Rendering (a big performance enhancer), but it crashes after you change options on the Video advance menu. These problems were there since early betas and none were corrected, so do not give your money to developers who treat us like this.
I changed settings on the advanced graphics menu without any problems, and overall performance is good with the occasional stutter.

Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
7 Mar 2020 at 3:45 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: M@GOidMulticore Rendering is disabled on the video settings? What is this, 2004? My performance is crap for a game in such ancient engine. Other Valve games play way better than this.
Yeah, performance is a little janky in places even on a good computer, and it doesn't quite have the polish you'd see from a professional development team, but it's still very good and maintains the spirit of the original game.

Ambitious Half-Life remake Black Mesa is now officially available and it's a beauty
6 Mar 2020 at 8:47 pm UTC Likes: 1

Meanwhile, Valve is giving us some gimmicky VR bullshit...

Intel chipsets have another security issue, this time it's 'unfixable'
6 Mar 2020 at 8:19 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI don't really like Intel, but this doesn't really worry me. I mean,
they would need some sort of physical and local access
Why are we even expecting any kind of compute-y thing to be secure when someone has physical and local access? That was never a thing when I was young, and I'm fairly convinced that if we think it's a thing now it's mainly wishful thinking.
Local and physical access tends to decrease the effectiveness of and defeat many security measures. For that matter, if someone has physical access to your machine, they could simply walk off with it and crack it at their leisure.