Half-Life 2 (PC)

[nips]

No need to pre-load if you are buying a full retail edition of HL2.

[Spatial]

More good news for all you Steam users.

Phase 2 of the preload is now ready to go - encrypted audio this time according to the news post on the Steam forums

[ascender]

Nothing's started yet, but after the first pre-load its showing HL2 as being 52% complete.

Edited to say: that's the second pre-load complete and there's now about 2Gig of compressed data there.

[Ish]

Just been watching all the HL2 videos I have. Very impressive. If it really does 'work' as it looks like it does then its gonna be mind blowing.

But a question: you know the funny grabby gun thing. The one used to attract objects and hurl them. Is it supposed to be magnetic? Or can you grab people?

[nips]

I am not sure whether you are able to attract people, although I think that it is not possible, I do know however that the gun is not magnetic. It has been called the gravity gun, and it able to life things which are not metal such as matresess and such like.

It is not magnetic from my experience and is able to pick up inanimate objects, but not people.

[Spatial]

It a bit of an odd one that Manipulator.
I've seen it lift people in some videos (it might have been the early E3 2K3 demo's ), but it seems they have to be dead before you can do it (unless thats a little feature Valve have kept quite).

Valve have stated in the past that during the game you can `upgrade` the Manipulator and make it more powerful, using it to lift bigger things.

But all this was ages ago and a lot has changed since then.

After seeing the Ravenholm Bink video I was a very happy man when I found out you can pick up things ( within reason ) without the aid of the manipulator. Thats going to be hours of physics packed fun in itself

[Ish]

Shame if not because there could have been hours have fun right there!

But I'm sure someone will release a mod that lets you. It'd be an obvious one to do

[Ciaran]

Last thing I heard about picking up people is that its up to the map maker. He has to flag objects that can be manipulated.

[Ish]

Excellent... so a map hack would be possible and I can have my fun . Though I'll be playing it "the way it was meant to be played" first!

It was watching the striders video that made me want to do it. I wanted to pick the running people up and lob them at the strider.

[Spatial]

Maybe you've just figured out how to actually take a Strider out

[Ciaran]

In Gamespot's latest "rumor control" article it is reported that Half-Life 2 is expected for a November release, with the release candidate only being shipped to Vivendi on September 15th. Here's a quote:
Before asking Vivendi for confirmation, we went to marketing rep Doug Lombardi at Valve. "We're currently planning to send release candidates to Vivendi by September 15th," he told us. The timing's right. "However," he adds before we can get our hopes up, "VUG hasn't given us a ship date yet. Might be best for you to ask them directly. Let me know what you hear."
Whereas this all sounds authentic enough, I still can't help but doubt that quote from Doug Lombardi. If you replaced "release candidates" with "gold masters" I'd have a better time believing the whole thing, especially considering the game was thought to be in RC stage since this time last month.

Our PR guru, Icarus, has e-mailed Doug Lombardi for a statement on this and we'll update you all as soon as we have any new information.

However, if all of this does pan out to be true, and the game is indeed released in November, there still isn't much longer to wait. And it's not as if this was out of the realms of possibility all along, as Doug Lombardi had recently stated that we would see the game in Summer/Autumn (Fall).

and two new shots (from PC Gamer)

http://www.halflife2.net/news//1094401905_newex1.jpg

http://www.halflife2.net/news//1094401983_newex2.jpg

[Concept]

I know I said I'd stay away from all things Half-Life 2, but just in case some of you haven't seen this, it has to be posted. Do you remember Piloux's amazing Half-Life/Black Mesa PC case mod from a while ago?

Well, a couple of months ago he was commissioned officially by Valve to produce a Half-Life 2 case for their offices and show demonstrations. And it's ever so just a bit special.

http://bit-tech.net/feature/49/1

[Concept]

Slightly more immediately accessible shot of the work.

http://bit-tech.net/feature/49/20

[Concept]

Third pre-load started. In-game Models.

Kicked off at 82% of the way through total preload completion. Not far too go after this I'd imagine until the preload finishes.

[demon9k]

You think once its finished the people who have been pre-loading will just get it straight away? I.e. It goes gold and is straight on the net.