Half-Life 3 | Cheerful Ghost

Will The Steam Deck Be Valve’s Next Big Thing?

Steam Deck is Valve’s latest hardware announcement that looks to put a PC in everyone’s hands. Similar to the Switch, Valve is building a handheld that runs Steam + Linux and looks to allow users the ability to play their Steam library and install whatever else they want including Windows. Steam Deck comes in three SKU’s and is available for pre-order right now with a $5 initial deposit.

I’m not quite sure if I’ll buy one in the end, but I’ve already pre-ordered the 3rd option (faster storage and anti-glare screen). For quite some time I’ve been very interested in Valve consoles and for someone to make a big play in the PC space with a handheld and this seems like it... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 07/20/2021 at 06:37pm

The work on Proton makes a lot of sense now. And they say they’re working to have every game on Steam playable in Linux via Proton by the launch. If they can pull that off, I will ditch Windows.

I’m not sure I have a use case for this, I want it because “ooh new toy” but I don’t know that I’d really use it. I’m just glad it exists because the Proton work has made Linux gaming so much better in a very short time.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 07/20/2021 at 10:03pm

Huh. You know, if Proton does do that maybe I will too. I really keep Windows around for gaming and general web surfing. Heading back to a Linux Desktop would be killer.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 07/21/2021 at 06:16pm

Wait and see for me. Valve doesn't have the history of supporting their hardware for long.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 07/22/2021 at 12:50am

I recognize the game on the screen in that screenshot! It's Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, which I'm playing now and think I'm about to finish, so I may have my review written and posted soon.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 07/22/2021 at 01:29am

I loved Fallen Order, despite it being sluggish on my launch xbox one.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 07/22/2021 at 01:31am

One thing that's impressed me about this is the use of NVMe, which I think is great! I haven't experienced NVME vs. SSD yet, but I expect I'll be able to do so next month. I think I can imagine a day when HDDs are phased out and SSDs become more widely used, and I think the newest generation of consoles shows that. But, I can also imagine the day when NVME is used instead. From my understanding, this will greatly improve loading times and performance. From there, it's kind of difficult to imagine what would come next. Maybe they some how find a way to improve on NVME technology. (Yes, I see these are listed as NVMe SSDs and I've separated the two, because in my mind they're different, though my knowledge of the tech is a bit limited as I've begun to learn about both technologies in the last two years.)

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 07/22/2021 at 01:38am

I had a problem with two cinematics, but I learned that people with RTX 30 series GPUs and the game on an SSD have had the same experience. Other than that, I've only seen sluggishness maybe twice so far and I think I'm near the end of the game. Hopefully since they're showing it, it means that the system is powerful enough to play it, which will be impressive. What they should do is put it to the real test, play Ark: Survival Evolved on it. LOL!!!

Travis Admin wrote on 07/22/2021 at 02:57pm

Yeah my new PC has an nvme SSD and the difference is really that it isn’t slowed down by SATA standards as far as I can tell. They can keep making the drives themselves faster but they’re limited by SATA cable throughput. The nvme drive just slots right into the motherboard

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 07/22/2021 at 07:57pm

Awesome that you have one and yeah, I know that they go straight into the mobo. I had to look at a list of compatible ones for mine and I finally found one I'm planning to buy soon. I'm planning to clone my SATA SSD to it, but then I won't know what to do with m SATA SSD. I have an old HDD in there for files like documents. I wish my Alienware's 2TB HDD didn't die, that was a lot of storage. My SSD and the NVMe I'm getting are both 1TB, while the old HDD I'm using is 320GB.

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This Is My Final Episode: Former Valve Writer Marc Laidlaw Finishes Half-Life 3

Half-Life 3 may never be released by Valve but former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw has posted some fan fiction that he is calling Epistle 3 that wraps things up. It's a short and very touching story of Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance after the events of Half-Life Episode 2. Does it wrap up the story? Yep. Does it feel like a genuinely epic and proper ending to Half-Life 3? Absolutely. Does it answer every question and tie up every loose end? Nope.

Marc's site is getting crushed right now so check out a GitHub version below. Marc's version changed names and gender swapped the characters and this version fixes that:

... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2017 at 01:04pm

Wow that's very well written. I am happy to have some closure on the story but that just makes me want more.

I'd read a novel or a comic series that explains things more in-depth.

And if there's another game and this text is taken as backstory, perhaps because of that one event in the text (don't want to spoil it for people who read comments before reading the article), we could have a different protagonist.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2017 at 01:20pm

It's also worth noting, dear readers, that the pastebin is way easier to read than the official one on his site. To get around infringing on Valve's IP, he changed the names of everyone. Someone was kind enough to fix those in the pastebin

scrypt Supporter wrote on 08/25/2017 at 01:58pm

I don't know. That was pretty weak sauce. A few paragraphs of roughly written non-canonical events. I didn't understand the pronoun juggling of the Breen-grub. The whole "story" feels like listening to a friend spoil the latest episode of *insert fav show*, only giving certain highlights. Any dramatic effect falls flat. I don't really understand why this was written.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2017 at 02:11pm

The grub was probably biologically female but had Breen's consciousness, that's what I assumed anyway.

But it's certainly not a fleshed out story.

scrypt Supporter wrote on 08/25/2017 at 02:53pm

I had only read the pastebin version. Apparently, whoever did the translation to pastebin did a sloppy job. Regarding the Breen-grub, they were all supposed to transfer over as the same pronoun. Also, another thing that threw me was the reference to Episode 2 as a "game." This is another change from the original that was entirely unnecessary, and I thought was a weird attempt to break the 4th wall. Recommend reading both versions, as hard as the original is to follow, what with the naming conventions.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2017 at 04:45pm

Wow yeah you're right. Those are some odd choices.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/26/2017 at 01:19pm

Updated my post so h this version, which corrects the names MUCH better than the pastebin version:

https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/master/Epistle3_Corrected.md

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Gabe Newell Talks About Half-Life 3 Over A Decade

"Compilation of interviews / events in chronological order where Gabe Newell first talks about Half Life 2 Episode 3 then suddenly becomes silent about it. I tried to get the best possible quality from internet archives. Some of this footage is from websites that are now inactive. The GTTV ones from February 2008 and September 2009 were not reuploaded to this day."

You know, i'm going to be honest here in that I don't think Half-Life 3 is going to happen. Even if it does it would be best that we all sort of just let it go to help make peace with it taking even longer or it not happening at all. It's obviously taken much longer to make than Valve anticipated, which is a... Read All

Today Valve announced the Team Fortress 2 update: Mann VS

Today Valve announced the Team Fortress 2 update: Mann VS Machine in a Left 4 Dead blog post:

http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=8648

There is a link at the bottom you might find interesting. When you click it, it takes you to the Team Fortress 2 update page but if you typed in the ACTUAL url it took you to a special Steam profile of someone called "Chase."

Here is the clickable secret URL in question:

www.teamf6rtress.com/mvm/

The interesting part about Chase? He is playing Half-life 3: Indev. Is this the start of a new ARG or Valve having a bit of fun with players?

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http://www.dorkly.com/comic/39783/releasing-the-valve?yes-its-a-repost

hardeyez wrote on 08/16/2012 at 02:55pm

Nice! I love it when the devs mess around like this. But it could just be a joke...

Travis Admin wrote on 08/16/2012 at 04:05pm

Looks like that url is now broken. People have flooded it!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/16/2012 at 04:08pm

I was able to click it and got this now:

http://sybolt.com/mvm//mvm

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/16/2012 at 04:08pm

Same Steam page.

Chowda wrote on 08/16/2012 at 04:11pm

Ha! That's great. I bet sometimes he really wishes he could do this.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 08/16/2012 at 06:03pm

Did anyone notice that the top comment on the profile for "Chase" says "Thank's for that hat you traded! Gordon looks good with a beret."

Seems like Steam trading coming to Half life 3, not that that's very surprising. Does this also mean there will be an item shop for HL3?

Travis Admin wrote on 08/16/2012 at 06:46pm

I don't know how much of that is a joke and how much of it is real. I just found that on the profile page for Chase, if you click on the HL3 dev, all the screen elements fall apart. So it's obviously not a real page, but Valve loves mixing hints with jokes.

Tungsten wrote on 08/16/2012 at 09:43pm

Hey, speaking of which, anybody else up for some Left 4 TF2? Kill some zom... robots or whatever. Sure would be a change of pace from terraria.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/17/2012 at 01:20am

Yes. I want to try my hand at it tonight I hope. Heard threre are lines for servers though :)

geoffreyk wrote on 08/21/2012 at 03:16pm

They appear to have "fixed" the L4D post. 2 possibilities: A. Valve really meant for this to be a thing. B. Someone made a typo, and an opportunist took advantage of it to register the broken URL and send it somewhere fun.

On the "URL Not Found" error page that I see now for that link above, it mentions "black-aperture.com" in the Apache server/port 80 reference. This is a site that has been previously identified (not via this particular page), and which people have been claiming is a fake/hoax for months. For some reason, my cynic brain is telling me to go with Option B, even though the rest of me so-very-much wishes it was Option A.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/21/2012 at 03:20pm

Hmmmm, yeah that makes sense. I am still holding out for option A but... Yeah I guess we will see.

I want HL3 but I'm not crazy about it. If I had to wager, I'd say they are working on it now. Especially since Valve employees can work on whatever they want. Unless there is a 100% company wide "no HL3 policy."

Travis Admin wrote on 08/21/2012 at 04:21pm

Dammit Geoffrey, you ruined my fun. But you're probably right, this does seem to be hoaxy.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/22/2012 at 01:03am

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

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