Hey, new here -

I'd be interested in doing a long-play of the Half-Life series of games. Does anyone else have these on their list?

Brontos

Not me though I would like to see runs done on them.

I'd like to get a couple more responses before I try it out, but before that, I'd like to know the community's position on High Definition Packs. I'd be using Half Life Source (I'm more familiar with with source engine recording system).

A quick google search shows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoSbsKc0esY
http://www.fpsbanana.com/skins/15204
and perhaps some of these:
http://www.fpsbanana.com/skins/games/312

If you guys want I can do a level with/without the better textures to see which you prefer.

Hi and welcome!
I was planning to record Half-Life (although I was about to create my list later tonight :oops: ), but I haven't looked into a potential problem yet:
My original version is in french, and I certainly wouldn't like to record that one ^^

Maybe the only alternative nowadays is to buy the Source version from Steam?
As for the high definition pack, my opinion is that it would be best to avoid it if possible. But again, in the Source version I don't know if this can be avoided at all. Anyway, I can't speak for the admins here, but in my opinion this is a minor enhancement, and thus acceptable.

The important thing is to get the game done in any case, so if you're really eager to record it, be my guest ;-)

Actually, Half-Life: Source comes without the HD pack, and there are in fact quite a few mods to make the game much, much better. I think I'll record about 10 mins of both the original game and the new "enhanced" version that can be obtained through all the texture packs out there.

Oh you mean fan-made packs? I thought you meant the official high definition pack with new weapons and characters.

No, I really don't think you should use non-official add-ons. The goal here is to look as close to the original as possible, not to look as good as possible.

But anyway, I'd like to see what it looks like with all enhancements on! :-p

As JonL said, we want to keep the games as close to the original as possible, no fan made addons to make it look smoother or anything, the offical source version will be fine, as it is pretty much the only version available now^^ But other than that keep it original! And if you need help with anything feel free to join the irc: irc.abime.net #longplays

Do you plan on doing the expansions such as Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Decay though I don't know if they would allow the unofficial port mod.

If you plan on doing Half-Life 2 episodes which is Half-Life 3 then you should wait until the final episode is out.

Tell you what Jon.
You can get the Half-Life 1 series done, and I'll do the Half-Life 2 series (which are the games that truly hold a place in my heart.)

Sound good?

Sure, no problem. :-)
I really look forward to watching your Half-Life 2 longplay! Especially Episode 2, as I wanted to see it again, but didn't feel like playing it anymore.

Okay, well I've just finished my finals in college, so I should be able to start the longplay pretty soon.

Out of curiosity, what resolution do you guys want it recorded at? 1920x1200 (which is my monitors resolution) 1920x1080 (otherwise known as 1080p) or something lower?

720p, higher just makes the file size bigger, and will you really notice a significant difference? So my vote is for 720p (1280x720) 60 fps ^_^

No kidding! I just did a 48 second test video. 2.65 GB. Seriously?

EDIT: Is there a point of doing 60 fps?

Don't forget that when Half-Life went on sales, it was still using a software rendering engine. I remember playing it on my Pentium with a Matrox Mystique. That means 320x256 (320x200 in the States, I guess).
At the same time, it featured an OpenGL engine with drivers for the first generation 3dfx, the resolution of which was 640x480.

So for me, the maximum resolution would be 1024x768. In any case, the game textures are not precise enough to take advantage of higher resolutions. In any resolution higher than that, they simply will look blurry.

And your movie will get bigger with no visible profit.

The 16:10 screen format appeared much, much later, by the way.


EDIT: Oh sorry, you mean Half-Life 2? Yeah, probably.
1280x720 would be nice, I think. That's what I was planning at first.

Don't forget that FRAPS creates uncompressed files. Compressing them with h264 afterwards will give you much smaller files.

JonL, I was under the impression you were doing the Half Life 1 Series. Perhaps you could PM me your Steam username so we can talk further?
Regardless, I'm uploading the "enhanced" Half-Life:Source that I talked about earlier - only about 5 mins of it. I've recorded it all in FRAPS, and although it 5mins was 9 GB from fraps, once compressed with H.264 it went down to around 300 MBs.

With your longplay of the Half-Life series, I'd strongly argue a higher resolution rather than a lower one, as not only did the developer implement the support for a higher resolution, the lower resolution was a property of the time it was created, not a stylistic choice on the part of the designer.

Indeed, I am planning to record Half-Life 1 after Hexen, but as you had just said that you were about to start recording it right now, I didn't want to bitch about it and remind you.

But that's our agreement, yes. You do H-L 2 and I do H-L 1 ;-)
Never heard of Decay though. If that's an unofficial mod, than there are several mods I'd like to record first, like They Hunger or Poke 646, for instance. But this website is not really about mods if I'm not mistaken.

Anyway, about that resolution choice. Yeah it was a limitation back then, but that's the whole point of longplays, in my opinion: show people what the game looked like back then, not how good it could look with lots of modifications.

Then again, I recorded Doom and co. in 640x480 although the game could only run in 320x256 back then. I thought a lot about it and maybe I should have sticked with the original resolution. :-?
What influenced me is that I've been playing ZDoom for so long now I couldn't even see the difference with the original. I even forgot to disable blood splatter. Oh well.

I really think you should go with the highest possible resolution.

With regards to Decay, Decay was an extra mode in Half-Life 1 for the Playstation 2, never officially ported to the PC. A couple years ago, a group of dedicated modders created a PC version of Decay (see http://decay.half-lifecreations.com/ ) nearly identical to the PS2 game.

Also, you expressed interest in seeing how Half-Life: Source looked when prettyfied with some new textures, sounds. Here's a youtube movie in 1080p I just uploaded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK2e2qukDk8

Last of all, if at all possible, contact me, I'd like to see if I could get some kind of IM contact with you.

Thanks for that Youtube video. Actually I'm kind of disappointed. :-/
Adding some concrete grain to old low-res textures does not look that good in my opinion and certainly does not justify me including this in the longplay.

I was expecting something like Black Mesa Source but I guess I was just daydreaming ;-)

I sent you a PM

One thing, more than really large files, that you have to think about is that there for people to watch. If your computer's not up to par you cant eaven watch a 720p without desyncing sound and jittry picture, so 1080p for quite a few will not be a possibility in the world to watch.
Now i have no idea if there is anything to gain from that high resolution in HL2, may be it could be some reason for it when downscaleing the movie. But for my part it's no probs. I will pick it up even if in the end the file size will be 30 GB. But i will probably not archive the file, just watch it and then delete it.
You could do a 1080p, and then downscale it to 720p, and 480p, and upload those versions to. Then guys can chose what version they prefer, or maybe can run ^_^

I agree with Paisan!