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To: JR who wrote (9155)	11/21/1998 5:43:00 PM
From: Chip Anderson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Some Half-Life thoughts (after ~24 hours): Instead of the mindless praise of the game which has been stated before (by me and others), I thought I'd share some of the interesting things I've discovered so far about the game itself. Everything here is just my HUMBLE opinion (dammit!): 1.) Multiplayer has the ability for you to spray paint a pre-selected "graffiti" symbol on walls. You can only do this once though, then you have to frag someone before you can do it again. The end-result is a _huge_ incentive to frag people and then "mark your territory" by spray-painting the wall beside the corpse. Very cool! 2.) While good, the weapons don't live up to their hype. Don't get me wrong - the weapons are pretty good, but the hype about their coolness was tremendous. I need a few more days of deathmatching to see if the weapon balance works well or not. 3.) The immersiveness of the single-player game is very good. I'm through about 12 levels now (hard to know exactly because level-transition is almost seamless) and the plot is interesting and compelling. The friendly characters that I've interacted with have done very well. So far, no really tough monsters though... 4.) Graphically, the game is very good. Personally, I think Sin's level are slightly more colorful though. So the "Graphic Quality Ranking" is: Unreal, Sin, Half-Life, Shogo, Quake 2. 5.) I now have a Half-Life server up and running on the net: 209.20.237.88 I'm noticing that the "ping" reported by Half-Life is about 3x bigger than a similar Quake2 "ping". For instance, I get a HL Ping of ~50(!) when connecting over my 100MB LAN. Quake2 reports a ping of ~15 over the same connection. The fastest Internet HL Server I can find has a ping of ~100. But HL servers with a ping of 300 are about as playable as Quake2 servers with a ping of 100 (make sense?). 6.) Half-Life uses a TON of bandwidth and server CPU! _Much_ more than Quake2 does, easily by an order of magnitude. Valve needs to fix this pronto. 7.) My sound system is still kinda flakey and the stupid game menus are done is some kind of DirectX manner that screws up the video mode switching fairly frequently. So, I'm having to CTRL-ALT-DEL and "End Task" it a bunch. 8.) Valve appears to have changed the names of many of the Quake2 console commands "for the hell of it". This is frustrating as my Quake2 config needs to be completely redone. 9.) Voodoo2 people need to be sure to select the "OpenGL" video option, not the "DirectX" one. The "DirectX" option is totally broken on my V2s but, fortunately under the OpenGL tab is the 3Dfx mini-driver which works great. 10.) Valve has added some new moves to the player's arsenal. Unfortunately, they require 3 keys to be pressed at the same time. My Microsoft Keyboard just beeps at me when I try it. I have to release one key a split second before pressing the other - very hard and annoying. 11.) WHY CAN'T I CLIMB UP ANYTHING OTHER THAN A LADDER!?!?! This problem is compounded by the fact that you can't jump very high at all in HL. Leads to some stupid situations. Sin has the exact same problem. Heretic 2 added climbing to the player's moves - hopefully others will follow soon. 12.) Skeletal animation is over-hyped. So far I haven't noticed huge differences in other characters' moves. Chip "Back to the SlicerCave(tm)" Anderson 209.20.237.88

To: JR who wrote (9155)	11/21/1998 5:56:00 PM
From: Chip Anderson	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16960

BTW, I also got some Sin-time in last night. I gotta say that Sin has the most novel deathmatch levels BY FAR! Get this - last night I found myself blasting people while running around on a moving, open air, underground train. Jumping from flatcar to boxcar to flatcar with the tunnel walls mere inches away is fun enough - try doing it was someone trying to fire a rocket into your rib cage! You can climb to the top of several box cars and shoot down on people but there are overhead, stationary signs(!) in the tunnel that will knock you flat if you're not careful. This from the same game that makes you the size of a mouse inside a library room. Great stuff - just wish the weapons were more powerful... Chip "Sign stain" Anderson