5punk

<a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/showing/nft/nti/c ... our%20Face" target="_blank">This</a> looks really interesting.

I might in fact pop down and see it*, a few other interesting lectures/events at the NFT on too.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/showing/nft/nti/c ... /index.php

"A unique and dynamic weekend of events, talks and activities includes exclusive previews of forthcoming titles, live cinematic-sized gameplay, machinima screenings, discussions with industry leaders, and a 'video arcade' with both 'retro' and contemporary arcade machines and home platforms. NTI is accessible to anyone interested in seeing where these two forms are going. Think, talk and - most importantly - play."

*One of the benefits of living in London, although not entirely offset by the cost of rent/booze/crack/whores

Ooo, looks very interesting. Bring us an exclusive! :D

That 'The Pitch' sounds like rip off of 'Dragon's Den'.

I did in fact go and see Bill Van Buren (choreography director of Half-Life 2) yesterday, and it was fascinating!

I'll try and remember some of the stuff he talked about:

A single character model in HL2 has twice as many pixels than an entire level from HL1

They deliberately 'stylised' the characters to look less photo-realistic because they thought that in trying to make them look as real as possible they would fail and the characters would have a creepy/not-quite-right feel about them.

Valve are more conservative about producing games for older PC's then ID are, he said they try and make the game run on a 3 year old, not bleeding edge at the time, machine.

Xbox is the only console that could possibly run HL2, it's coming out this Autumn.

Half Life 3 will probably be built using the software and tools they created to make HL2

The lip synching data is included in the audio WAV file, not the charachter model animation sequence, so they can drop a new bit of dialogue in and not have to re-animate it.

Erm... if I remember any other interesting stuff i'll put it in.

Ooooh sounds quite clever, especially the lip synching bit

All nice to know, and indeed the lip syncing bit is interesting.

mrbobbins wrote:A single character model in HL2 has twice as many pixels than an entire level from HL1

Do you mean on polygons, or verticies? Pixels are 2D and it doesn't sound quite right. But apart from that, that is really quite amazing....*thinks*

I was playing HL2 again the other day after seeing War of the Worlds and realising how fucking scarey it would be if you were actually there, an atmosphere Valve didn't really promote. I just took those striders down with a few rockets without thinking, but really, people getting vapourised in front of me? I'd be pooing my pants

And also at the begining when you get chased by the cops onto the roof, the loft with the shafts of light coming through looks really amazing, I recomend people go through and play that again.

Thanks for getting some info, Stuk =)

2 more things I remembered:

They have just hired the guy who animated Gollum.

He said they're desperate for talented Animators, so if any of you think you are, give Valve a call!