Half Life 3… Confirmed? Maybe? Probably? ▉

Kyle Orland writing for Ars Technica:

The more than two decades since Half-Life 2’s release have been filled with plenty of rumors and hints about Half-Life 3, ranging from the official–ish to the thin to the downright misleading. As we head into 2025, though, we’re approaching something close to a critical mass of rumors and leaks suggesting that Half-Life 3 is really in the works this time, and could be officially announced in the coming months.

The latest tease came just before the end of 2024 via a New Year’s Eve social media video from G-Man voice actor Mike Shapiro. In the voice of the mysterious in-game bureaucrat, Shapiro expresses hopes that “the next quarter century [will] deliver as many unexpected surprises as did the

[…]

On its own, a single in-character post from a voice actor would probably be a bit too cryptic to excite Half-Life fans who have seen their sequel hopes dashed so often over the last two decades. But the unexpected tease comes amid a wave of leaks and rumors surrounding “HLX,” an internal Valve project that has been referenced in a number of other Source 2 engine game files recently.

Kyle’s right in that any other voice actor dropping an in character social media post is really not a big deal. Even if one suddenly showed up from, say, Joe DiMaggio, the voice of Marcus Fenix from the Gears Of War series, it would be notable but not “what the actual fuck” notable.

It’s very rare that we get any Half Life news, and Valve is a famously secretive company. They also famously tend to move at their own pace and I had heard that while Half Life 3 was not in development for quite some time, it was more that they were waiting for the time, but more likely the technology, to be right.

Those HLX references got a lot more attention about five months ago when noted Valve watcher Tyler McVicker posted a video analyzing the Valve code and concluding that the HLX project is “a fully-fledged non-VR Half-Life game.” In subsequent videos, McVicker has gone into more detail on datamined code for everything from voxel-based deformation systems to zero-g and underwater navigation systems to “so much flammability stuff,” all seemingly in service of “HLX.”

“It’s obvious that Valve wants to be able to push the envelope in the same way that Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 did in their day,” McVicker said in November in a video bluntly entitled “Valve Isn’t Trying to Hide HL3 Anymore.” McVicker now believes that “instead of pushing graphical fidelity like everybody else, it seems like Valve is pushing for physical fidelity” with its in-game systems and objects.

As McVicker states in the second linked video from the article, Valve is a bit notorious for pushing technical boundaries. While the original game mostly pushed boundaries in terms of level design and storytelling, the second blew our fragile minds with physics. Between the Gravity Gun and the ability to wreck a level according to the actual laws of physics, Half Life 2 was something we had never seen before and I would argue really haven’t seen since. But Valve is also really big on things like AI. Remember Left 4 Dead? Remember what made that game special? The AI “Director”. The “Director” would dynamically spawn enemies and items based on each player’s stauts, situation, and skill. This would make each play through dynamic. The version in Left 4 Dead 2 can also affect the levels.

Let’s also not forget something that was small, but very impressive when Valve revealed Counter Strike 2: the volumetric smoke effect.

Valve isn’t just looking to make a game that looks and plays good. They’re looking to give us a game that plays as if we’re in it. They initially made their mark with the immersion of the original Half Life, upped the anti with the physics of Half Life 2, and now they’re looking to take everything up a notch and do it all again with Half Life 3.

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Get Your COD Skill Ranking ▉

XclusiveAce once again doing the lord’s work in sharing how to get your skill ranking in Call of Duty. As noted in the video, this is all matches played since Vanguard though when I requested my data I had everything in the list from Modern Warfare forward. That could just be for Warzone though they were listed separately.

So what’s the over/under on how long this is available before Activision decides this is something we aren’t supposed to see? I say less than a week.

Grab it here

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From The #Finally Department: XclusiveAce Makes a “COD Is In Trouble” Video ▉

Let me preface this by saying I absolutely appreciate what Ace does not just for the community but that he generally takes the scientific approach to either figureing out how something works or just generally, as he even mentions in this video, proving or disproving a conspiracy theory. His “Gun Guide” weapon stat videos and his videos on perks and other things are quite literally the lord’s work. I know I wouldn’t have the patience to sit and do what he does to help make the community better players. It’s just that most of the time lately he comes across more like an shill apologist evangalist for COD rather than a player. I honestly don’t mean to pick on Ace but that’s how his videos on just about any contraversial topic regadring Call of Duty have felt like these last few years. The most recent video that comes to mind was the first Double XP event in Black Ops 6 where he basically admits the way it works is misleading but is still fine with the idea so that people don’t crash Nuketown 24/7. Double XP should always just be as simple as XP for a given thing… doubled. It shouldn’t even be a discussion let alone Ace having to figure out why people are complaining.

All this to say that you know its bad if Ace is willng to talk about it. It’s really bad if Ace thinks there’s a problem.

He mentions a few things in the video that I really want to touch on as well. The first one being the whitepapers and blog posts.

One of the whitepapers they published was on matchmaking and how it’s done. In that whitepaper they proclaim that “ping is king”. But eveyone knows this ins’t true. Anyone with any experieince playing COD sees their ping fluctuate from game to game. I live in New York City on the east coast of the United States. It’s fine for me to be put in matches in Atlanta or Chicago, or anywhere near those areas. My ping will generally be anywhere from 7ms if I get something local (and I own a Netduma R3 so I always get something local) to ~30ms if I’m put in one of those cities. Whithout the Netduma router I can be placed in games in Dallas or even Los Angeles. I mean shit, I’ve been placed in games in Sao Paulo, Brazil even with the R3. I have a symetrical gigabit fiber connection to my home and live in one of, if not the most, populated areas of the world and you can’t find me a match locally during peak hours? Bullshit.

The second thing, and argueably the more important thing, is the conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories live in the abscence of information. Much like how power abhores a vaccum, information does too. Last year’s conspiracy was boits in the multiplayer. That was mostly debunked. This year’s conspiracy is “skill based damage”. Here’s the problem that I have: Somewhere, I’m sure, Activision has a patent that does adjust damage basked on your skill vs your oppoenent’s and vice versa. Do I think it’s in the game? No. Would I belive that Activision would do something scummy like this to make them more money? Absolutely. The problem here? We don’t know because Activision won’t talk about it. Ace even says he’s tried to test and if he can’t find it, and I believe him. I mean it was a joint venture between him and Drift0r that proved the existance of skill based matachmaking. This is a problem that’s only going to get worse the longer it’s ignored.

But to answer his question at the end of his video, am I happy with the current state of Call Of Duty? Fuck no.

Jim Kjellin and Andreas Larsson from Machine Games discuss Indiana Jones’s Hardware Ray Tracing with Digital Foundry’s Alex Battalglia ▉

Alex Battalglia from Digital Foundry does a fantastic sit down with Jim Kjellin and Andreas Larsson from Machine Games as well as Jacob Freeman from Nvidia. Alex does all the PC technical videos on the channel and is very good at explaining things so that everyone can understand what’s going on and why it matters.

This interview is no exception. Its technical but I don’t think it’s difficult to follow. It’s also a great example of why this is going to matter to single player, story driven games going forward.

It also goes to show that even in 2024, developers are still squeezing every ounce they can out of the hardware. I know that’s an unpopular take but anyone saying developers are lazy and intentionally not optimizing things doesn’t understand software development at all.

I love that when asked about being one of the first games to require 12GB of VRAM as well as bing the first major title shipping requiring hardware Ray Tracing, they took me down memory lane with Quake 3 Arena breaking new ground by requiring hardware Raster. As you can see in the video when it comes up, it looks crude but that was also 1999.

I keep saying it but only because I’m firmly of the belief that 2024 has been a year of a sort of line of demarcation in technology if you will. There are firm breaks happening and Indiana Jones is one example in that 8GB graphics cards are no longer in spec for modern games. I would push that to include 10GB cards as well and Nvidia’s silicon chops are only going to carry it so far. You can’t make up a lack of physical RAM in silicon. While for a completely different reason, Apple now requiring 8GB of RAM on all iPhones going forward and 16GB on all Macs underscores this. Microsoft doesn’t even offer a Surface with less than 16GB of RAM either, most likely for the same reason Apple bumped their specs (AI).

What’s fun is that it feels like the late 90’s all over again where game developers are putting their foot down and pushing new technologies forward, available hardware be damned. The even more impressive thing is that it’s still coming from the same place: idTech and id Software. Indiana Jones may not be an id Software title but it’s using idTech underneath.

I really truly cannot wait to see what’s in store for Doom: The Dark Ages.

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XDefiant Season 3 Is The Last And Best Update ▉

This update is incredibly bittersweet. The Season 3 update bringing in the Assassins faction is amazing and looks like it wil be really fun to play. New modes and a classic COD style prestige mode.

But alas, this is also the last update as the game shuts down in June. It’s crazy to see where this game was headed as we also got all the upcoming content from seasons 4 through 8 both finished and unfinished.

With Black Ops 6, and arguably Call Of Duty as a whole, in a downward spiral, it’s a shame this game is shutting down.

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Digital Foundry’s PC Tech Review For Indiana Jones Shows Exactly Why 8GB Cards Are Done ▉

Alex for Digital Foundry getting into the VRAM issue I wrote about yesterday. But also you should check out Digital Foundry’s Tech Review for Xbox Series Consoles. It can be hard to understand why this isn’t an optimization problem and is indeed a VRAM issue and I think Alex describes the problem well. It really comes down to not just pure frames per second and frame times as the game and id Tech in general has always done that really well. It really is a texture loading issue and frankly the size of the textures in the game and in December of 2024 going into 2025 is just simply too big to achieve the visual detail the team wanted with such a small memory pool. As Alex points out, you can work around it but it’s still a problem in some places and as textures load in.

The original teams that made the engines any not be there anymore but if it is one thing id Tech engines are known for its raw performance.

The era of 8 GB cards is over. I would even warn against a 10 or 12 GB card. Going forward 16 GB should be the minimum anyone should be buying whether they’re using frame generation technologies like FSR or DLSS or not. There really is no excuse anymore.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Is A Beautiful Game But Also Signals The End Of Viability For Graphics Cards With Less Than 16GB Of VRAM ▉

Wolfgang Andermahr writing at German Tech site ComputerBase.de, translated through Safari’s translation system:

However, it is unfortunately virtually impossible to say how much VRAM the game really needs. The game allocates around 14 GB with the Hyper preset in the benchmark, with Giga it is 13 GB and with Ultra slightly more than 12 GB – so the differences are small. With a 16 GB graphics card, there were no problems with the Hyper-Preset in Ultra HD even after longer playing time. Whether this also applies to a 12 GB graphics card is unclear.

8 GB is clearly not enough for the hyper textures already in Full HD, there is no more than a jerking orgy. And also the Giga textures are still too much for an 8 GB graphics card, which runs much better than Hyper, but still stalls strongly. And also the ultra textures are still too much, even if the average frame rate is right, the game still stalls significantly. Only from the setting medium do 8 GB accelerators no longer have problems – yes, even high textures are still too much.

With a 12 GB VRAM, WQHD can be played well with the hyper textures and even in higher resolutions, corresponding graphics cards are stable, at least with short playing times – and experience has shown that the memory consumption of games with the id-Tech engine does not grow further.

However, the maximum performance is not yet available with 12 GB in Ultra HD. Only from a 16 GB graphics card does the frame rate increase to the maximum, even if the frame pacing is no longer confused with 12 GB.

The warning lights have been flashing for quite some time that this was imminent. It started with games like Hogwarts Legacy and The Last Of Us Part 1 not being able to keep up frame wise and suffering from stuttering and low frame rates. The option of course was to turn the resolution down to acclimate the card and get the games to perform. Reviewers like Steve at Hardware Unboxed and leakers like Tom at Moore’s Law Is Dead have been warning about this for the better part of, I believe it to be, two years now. Everyone just continued to cry that these games were unoptimized and to some extent they were. Patches did improve performance for existing cards. I’m sure there are other games that I can’t recall where this was the case as well.

The problem is all these people warned that buying anything less than a 16GB graphics card in 2023/24 was, well, stupid, if you wanted to continue to play the big AAA titles at any kind of resolution. With Indiana Jones it seems that time has arrived.

Apparently the game isn’t even playable on these cards at anything above Full HD:

The benchmarks for Indiana Jones and the Big Circle look strange at first in WQHD, as some graphics cards deliver very poor results and suddenly there is a very big jump – which is simply because on graphics cards with less than 12 GB of memory the VRAM is too small for the maximum texture details.

All graphics cards with 8 GB and 10 GB do not get playable results in WQHD, this applies to the Radeon RX 7600 as well as to the GeForce RTX 4060 (Ti) and the GeForce RTX 3080. Only from the GeForce RTX 4070, Radeon RX 7700 XT or similar graphics cards does this suddenly change, then more than 60 FPS are easily achieved, only the Radeon RX 6700 XT does not quite reach the goal, but comes into a playable range.

For UWQHD, i.e. 3,440 × 1,440 in 21:9 format, it only needs partially faster hardware, from a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, GeForce RTX 4070, Radeon RX 6800 XT or a Radeon RX 7800 XT you are on the safe side. Only for Ultra HD it has to be really fast, 60 FPS is only available from a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti or a Radeon RX 7900 XT. Nvidia users should activate DLSS apart from HDR anyway, but Radeon owners, on the other hand, have no real alternative – only the dynamic resolution could at least half remedy a lack of performance.

Even though Indiana Jones and the Big Circle consistently use hardware ray tracing, AMD graphics cards are doing well. Especially the two fastest Radeons are well on the road. In WQHD and UWQHD GeForce RTX 4080 Super and Radeon RX 7900 XTX work absolutely the same fast, only in Ultra HD can the Nvidia graphics card stand out by 9 percent. Since all Radeons fall behind in Ultra HD, it is conceivable that the additional pixels are a bit too much for the ray tracing capabilities of the AMD GPUs, which then have to struggle accordingly. Don’t be fooled by the Radeon RX 7800 XT, which suddenly approaches the GeForce RTX 4070 in Ultra HD. The latter simply run out of only 12 GB of memory, correspondingly the FPS drops.

Even in Full HD there is quickly a lack of VRAM, even if the textures are reduced by two levels to the Ultra setting. Graphics cards with only 8 GB run slightly faster than with “Hyper”, but are still slow: GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600 only come to barely playable 30 FPS. And the GeForce RTX 3080 with 10 GB is hardly better either, the former high-end graphics card does not reach more than 36 FPS even with the textures reduced by two levels.

Graphics cards with at least 12 GB achieve their normal performance, the Radeon RX 6700 XT reaches 60 FPS in Full HD without any problems, while the actual competing product, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, is limpsing around at 30 FPS. The Arc A770 is also a problem despite a 16 GB VRAM – so there is no limitation in this regard. The Radeon RX 6700 XT is a whopping 61 percent faster, the 60 FPS mark remains far away despite sufficient memory.

Given that this was developed by Machine Games, runs on id Tech 7, and seemed to run incredibly well on Xbox Series X and S, I’m going to go ahead and say this is not an “optimization problem” and more a “you were warned to to buy a graphics card with less than 16GB of VRAM” problem.

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Strange Things Are Afoot At Morning Joe ▉

John Marshall, Talking Points Memo, writing about David Frum’s article in The Atlantic:

Let’s focus specifically on what David said. He was talking about drinking.

Defamation law is a curious thing. The ins and outs of it aren’t as predictable as you might think. There is pretty clear case law, for instance, which holds that calling someone a “Nazi” cannot be defamatory. It’s like calling someone a “big dummy head.” It’s just an opinion. By definition it can’t be defamatory.

Needless to say, I’m not a lawyer. And I’m definitely not YOUR lawyer. But I’m not pulling this stuff out of my hat. In my job I’ve had to work closely with very experienced First Amendment lawyers for many years. Accusing someone of being a drunk isn’t just different in the sense that it is a factual issue — it’s true or it’s not. It’s also something that can be professionally damaging. That elevates it in terms of reputational damage, which is what defamation and libel law are about. Someone with a reputation as an alcoholic might easily not get hired for jobs because they’re viewed as unreliable. It’s not just a matter of hurt feelings. The potential damage is tangible, even quantifiable.

The point is that defamation law isn’t always linear and commonsensical. Some things you’d think would be no-nos are fine and others that seem like locker room banter can be big no-nos.

Needless to say, under Sullivan this shouldn’t matter. Hegseth is a textbook public figure. The speech is in a clearly political context in which the First Amendment protections are strongest. And there’s lots of reporting on which David could base that remark.

I’m not a lawyer either but this tracks to me. If word gets out that someone’s a drunk and unhireable and it’s false that’s a problem. Even if it’s true, it’s still kind of a problem because it may not be apparent. Addicts are very good at hiding these things.

I was about to jump on Marshall until he pointed out that, really, there’s tons of reporting for Frum to base his remark. This isn’t some rumor, there are multiple sources for this. It’s all over cable news.

But it’s what Marshall says next that intrigues me. What I take as pure capitulation to Trump might not be that far off. It’s weird and frankly if those who know better than me say it’s weird, it’s fucking weird.

The point of going into all of this is that Trump specifically and the MAGA world generally has been putting everyone on notice for years that they’re going to flood the zone with lawsuits. So watch out, basically. And now with Trump coming back in, the assumption is that the threat jumps up dramatically.

So on first blush, this seems like hyper-caution over potential lawsuits. But there are a couple problems with that theory. The first is that MSNBC — or its now spun-off parent company — aren’t some tiny operation that could be sunk by a lawsuit. Perhaps Sullivan isn’t long for this world. But for now it’s the law. And it should make any potential suit manageable for a company of that size. But then there’s also the specific apology from Brzezinski. It seemed to be directed not at Hegseth but rather at Fox News. Here’s the relevant part.

The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. We just want to make that comment as well. We want to make that clear. We have differences in coverage with Fox News, and that’s a good debate that we should have often, but right now I just want to say there’s a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we will want to leave it at that.

Is Fox going to sue the show? Are they going to get into a morning ratings war with them? It’s weird isn’t it? You would have expected some comment like saying “we don’t know whether these allegations are true,” etc. But unless I’m missing something, this seems like wanting to keep the peace with Fox News — “a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth.”

I can’t really decode that at all. Not legally, or politically or journalistically.

Marshall raises the best point yet: MSNBC isn’t some low rent cable news channel like Newsmax or OAN. They have plenty of money and can withstand a potential lawsuit or or two. Again, this isn’t some rumor or something baseless that MSNBC is spewing that nobody else is talking about. Everyone is talking about it. We’re talking about someone up for Secretary of Defense and who quite literally, unless Trump pulls some authoritarian bullshit, is about to go through rigorous Senate hearings and all of this is going to come out anyway. So it’s not like this is the aforementioned defamation situation. I mean it’s sort of swipe at Fox in general but does this really rise to the level of defamation? For an entire organization?

Like Marshall, other than fear and capitulation to the Orange One, I got nothin. This is just fucking weird.

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As If It Wasn’t Already Obvious That Morning Joe Is Scared Of Trump ▉

David Frum, writing about his appearance this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

I was invited onto MSNBC’s Morning Joe to talk from a studio in Washington, D.C., about an article I’d written on Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Before getting to the article, I was asked about the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense—specifically about an NBC News report that his heavy drinking worried colleagues at Fox News and at the veterans organizations he’d headed. (A spokesman for the Trump transition told NBC, “These disgusting allegations are completely unfounded and false, and anyone peddling these defamatory lies to score political cheap shots is sickening.”)

I answered by reminding viewers of some history:

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated John Tower, senator from Texas, for secretary of defense. Tower was a very considerable person, a real defense intellectual, someone who deeply understood defense, unlike the current nominee. It emerged that Tower had a drinking problem, and when he was drinking too much he would make himself a nuisance or worse to women around him. And for that reason, his nomination collapsed in 1989. You don’t want to think that our moral standards have declined so much that you can say: Let’s take all the drinking, all the sex-pesting, subtract any knowledge of defense, subtract any leadership, and there is your next secretary of defense for the 21st century.

I told this story in pungent terms. It’s cable TV, after all. And I introduced the discussion with a joke: “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”

At the next ad break, a producer spoke into my ear. He objected to my comments about Fox and warned me not to repeat them. I said something noncommittal and got another round of warning. After the break, I was asked a follow-up question on a different topic, about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son. I did not revert to the earlier discussion, not because I had been warned, but because I had said my piece. I was then told that I was excused from the studio chair. Shortly afterward, co-host Mika Brzezinski read an apology for my remarks.

While I, like Frum, appreciate the show’s attempt to bring a well informed discussion to a national audience as well as the tough spot the show itself is in given Trump’s want to realiate to any media that’s hostile to him, this is simply unacceptable. This is capitulation pure and simple. In a word: cowardice. It is not ok.

As for my own comments: You can decide for yourself whether I overstepped the proper limits of television discussion. But I also note that if I did misstep, well, my face was on the screen, my name was on the chyron, and anyone who took offense knows whom to blame.

First off, those comments are not overstepping. What Frum told was an anecdote to make an analogy between the fact that Hegseth has a drinking problem (to put it mildly) and what our standards should be and that someone who gets out of line when drinking should be below the standards of the position. It’s that simple.

Second, Frum actually has a spine to stand up for what’s right, unlike Joe and Mika. As he says, his face and name were on the screen, let the heat be on him.

It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.

None of this is good. It’s ominous in the sense that at any moment Trump can just decide to shut down MSNBC so he’s already intimidated them into getting in line, lest they be persecuted. But this is also part of the way authoritarians take and maintain control. We were warned.

I’ll leave you with Frum’s closing words:

I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all.

The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.

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