• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Half-Life Alpha Preview Disc (1997) leaked online

Synopsis:

HALF-LIFE

Synopsis

The Portal Device is a dimension-spanning gate of unpredictable power, constructed in a decommissioned missile silo. So far no one has ventured through the Portal, but there has been a steady flow of odd creatures coming to our world. You are a weapons research scientist who has never touched a weapon—until now.

An accident in the Threshold’s power core fractures the local fabric of spacetime, and hordes of creatures begin spewing into our world through the fissures. Monsters are everywhere, and your co-workers are dropping like flies. You head for the surface but the usual routes are unpassable—damaged by the disaster and infested with monsters. The silo security guards are in a state of primal terror and looking for someone to blame. The obvious scapegoats are the scientists. Namely, you.

In your flight to the surface, you acquire a device which means the difference between victory and annihilation—but you don’t realize whose victory, until too late. As the Portal experiment’s first human subject, you are cast into the alien world to confront the ultimate horror…to cut off the invasion at its source. In Half-Life, you won’t just go head-to-head with an alien boss—you will fight it from the inside out.

Now you are thinking with Portals :p

And what was that device, presumably cut from the final game??
 

eot

Banned
If nothing else this preview build should demonstrate to people how god damn amazing the final Half-Life was a year later
 

epmode

Member
I feel like a lot of devs ignore neat audio echo stuff that's in that demo. I really love that kind of thing.
 
1xk.jpg
 

Sciz

Member
Interesting - so the Barnies are your enemies in this game? Well, it'd explain the constipated expression, I guess.

The entire reason they came up with the idea of friendly NPCs was because a Barney started firing on the aliens during development and everyone in the office loved it.
 
It's been a while, but I don't remember seeing the dancing high-poly robot, the chaingun solider or the red panther thing in the finished HL1. Maybe they are the HL3 clues we are looking for.
 
Also, let me share this hilarious piece of vintage gaming journalist from a popular italian magazine:

halflifegufatahn5.jpg


Just to translate the last few sentences:

"From what I've seen the game doesn't seem too bad, but I'm ready to bet this Half-life will be forgotten in a heartbeat".

instead, that magazine was forgotten in a heartbeat, don't fuck with valve
 
WTF at the Robotech Battle Pod at 2:40

Ha, that is from Robotech....

IyMNv.png

Matchbox-Battlepod-7.jpg


I guess it was just there for tech purposes to show off the skeletal animation and higher polygon models. Also it does the CGI "dancing baby" dance when it gets shot. If anyone remembers what that even is. :p

It is so easy to forget, but skeletal animations were such a big deal at the time. Most game models in PC games were based on the old .MD2 style of key frame animation back then.
 
Ha, that is from Robotech....

IyMNv.png

Matchbox-Battlepod-7.jpg


I guess it was just there for tech purposes to show off the skeletal animation and higher polygon models. Also it does the CGI "dancing baby" dance when it gets shot. If anyone remembers what that even is. :p

It is so easy to forget, but skeletal animations were such a big deal at the time. Most game models in PC games were based on the old .MD2 style of key frame animation back then.

I've seen this robot before the leak: http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Zentraedi_Tactical_Battle_Pod
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPnMl6y_mTo#t=30&hd=1
 

Rapstah

Member
You can get a whole bunch of early maps from the final game to load by using the console command map with any of the files in the valve/maps folder. The very last map (c3a2) is the most interesting because it is practically identical to c3a2 in the final game and ends trying to load a map that doesn't exist, crashing the game. A lot of interesting stuff in there.

You can re-bind a lot of the missing commands with the console too, I couldn't find a +use button so I rebound that to E after changing the controls to WASD. Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a reload command included yet, nor any "give" command, meaning there's no way to see if the suit or any weapons except the pistol have been implemented yet.

I don't think the Barneys are your enemies, despite what the blurb says. If you use them, I think they start trying to follow you, although their pathfinding in the maps where they appear is severely broken so I guess they could be trying to kill you too.
 

Rapstah

Member
The game does in fact have the crowbar and the SMG implemented. You can use them with the console code impulse 1, not 101, but you still have to click a number key and then the fire key to select weapons. All the number keys over 4 seem to play taunts, one plays a rap beat, and one plays a guy rapping.
 

mr_toa

Member
That demo reel gives some good insights into the part from the 2003 "making of" piece in EDGE, where Valve tells how they re-tooled all their ideas into a single fun level, and went from there one year before release.

If only one had the 2003 copy any more for a quick re-read :-/
 
That demo reel gives some good insights into the part from the 2003 "making of" piece in EDGE, where Valve tells how they re-tooled all their ideas into a single fun level, and went from there one year before release.

If only one had the 2003 copy any more for a quick re-read :-/

Somebody needs to post this!
 

Bad7667

Member
That demo reel gives some good insights into the part from the 2003 "making of" piece in EDGE, where Valve tells how they re-tooled all their ideas into a single fun level, and went from there one year before release.

If only one had the 2003 copy any more for a quick re-read :-/

I can't find the Edge piece but Gamasutra has a similar article about the single fun level.

Article.
 
Top Bottom