Half-Life 2

SolKutTeR · May 8, 2021

Das würde die allgemeine Funkstille und meine damalige Spekulation etwas bekräftigen:

Pulverdings · Sep 29, 2021

Mittlerweile soll ja Dr Beef (bekannt von Quest VR Ports von Half-Life 1, RTCW und Doom 3) das Projekt wiederbelebt haben:
https://www.roadtovr.com/half-life-2-vr-mod-new-signs-of-life/

Wobei es natürlich immer noch nicht heißt, dass das jemals raus kommt.
Ich persönlich brauche einfach nur das Basisspiel mit Motion Controller Support in VR und keine weiteren Anpassungen.

In der Zwischenzeit kann man es ja immer noch mit dem GarrysMod in VR spielen, ich bin über dieses Video gestolpert, das HL2 via Garrys Mod in VR zeigt. Sieht schon echt gut aus, aber das Setup ist halt kompliziert und die Experience ist halt nicht die beste. Sieht trotzdem gut aus:

Es wurde wohl diese Mod Liste genutzt: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1871851965

SolKutTeR · Sep 30, 2021

Wobei DrBeef lediglich für Quest Kompilierungen bekannt ist und es sich somit dahingehend eher um ein eigenständiges Projekt handelt. Diverse Arbeiten welche Wormslayer und sein Team für die PCVR Version erarbeiteten sind leider auch nicht auf dem Quest System möglich.

Pulverdings · Sep 30, 2021

Ja, Dr Beef ist bisher nur für Quest ports bekannt. Aber da es keinen offiziellen Android Port von HL2 gibt, wurde bereits gesagt, dass es keinen VR Mod für HL2 für die Quest geben wird. Es bezieht sich hier also tatsächlich auf den alten Wormslayer Mod für PCVR.

A couple weeks ago, @DrBeef and @cabalistic stepped up to see how we could revitalize the project and get it out the door. The goal has been to make sense of the existing work the previous team had done and to polish it enough to get some open source version released as soon as possible in at least an alpha state so that others could contribute to continue to polish it up.

In just the last couple weeks, DrBeef has re-written almost all of the VR code to run a whole lot better and even ported the engine’s VR implementation to use Vulcan instead of DX9 with the help of DXVK! (current VR APIs only work with DX11 and above). He also has fixed a lot of game breaking issues that were in the build. Cabalistic has also done some magic and has gotten MSAA working for textures too.
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und der Kommentar von Wormslayer:

Worm Slayer said:

Yeah I never gave up, but the programming team has waned over the years. Its good to have some fresh blood on the project [/url]
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SolKutTeR · Sep 30, 2021

Okay das sind dann durchaus gute Voraussetzungen. Hoffe echt, dass das Projekt so langsam mal vollendet wird. Damals mit DK2 und Hydra Motion Controller war es ein unglaubliches Erlebnis.

SolKutTeR · Mar 29, 2022

Seit langem mal wieder ein Lebenszeichen von der ambitionierten Half Life 2 VR Mod von Wormslayer.

A quick demo of the current state of HL2VR. The early game is approaching full playability, and all the required systems work to a reasonable degree. Not everything is perfect, and we've made some conscious omissions - for example, as you can see in the video, there are currently no hand poses for held items or weapons.
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This is u/WormSlayer's revived HL2VR project. DrBeef and I joined last year after the project had been abandoned and without developers for a while. A few vital pieces of the project had been lost to time, and the project overall was in a very broken state. DrBeef restored the vital rendering component and made the mod render with Vulkan by integrating dxvk.

Since then, we've been busy with slowly fixing the state of the mod and getting the core gameplay mechanics into a playable and enjoyable state. This has taken quite a bit of time, as Source is not exactly a forgiving engine and takes a while to get used to. Also, DrBeef is unfortunately on a prolonged hiatus due to private life and other projects, so for the last couple of months development work mostly rested on my shoulders.

But anyway, as you can see, we did make progress, and it is now in a state where it is actually enjoyable to play, which was not the case for a good while

As for the future, two big milestones remain: first, we need to get the vehicles properly working (they are partially broken right now) and implement some comfort options that even players without absolute iron stomachs have a chance to use them. Second, the weapons need an overhaul; some of the later weapons are not functioning, and even the early game weapons need some improvements like hand poses. Once these two milestones are done (which is likely still a few months of work), I am hoping that the project will be fully playable. It will still require a lot of polish at that point, but I am not aiming for a perfect initial release, so I am hoping that we will be ready for a public alpha at that point
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SolKutTeR · Mar 30, 2022

Umfangreiches Statement von fholger bezüglich HL2VR Mod Entwicklung.

HL2VR - a reflection on my first year in the project and our plans for the future
Hi everyone,
I know communication hasn't been a strong point for the mod in the past, but I figure it is never too late to change. So I think it is time to explain a bit what we have been doing for the past year and what the future holds for HL2VR.

As you may know, DrBeef and I joined the project in July last year in an attempt to revive it after all previous developers had left and the project had been effectively abandoned for a while. Unfortunately, parts of the previous project iteration were lost to time. We only had a dump of HL2VR's source code without any history (I don't even know if it was the latest iteration of the code), and there was a vital component missing: a "bridge" to get the game's rendering output displayed on a VR HMD.

DrBeef managed to recreate that bridge from scratch based on the interface alone and eventually integrated dxvk into it so that HL2VR now renders fully via Vulkan. Together, we then managed to improve the bridge to improve performance and to get multi-sampling anti-aliasing (MSAA) working, which provides a significant uplift to the game's graphics in the headset.

With the bridge restored and working, we were able to inspect the state of the actual game and figure out where it was at and what we would have to do. And the state we found was *weird*. At first glance, a lot of the core components you'd need for a VR conversion were in place: stereo rendering with head poses worked fine, you could move around with motion controllers, even controller-tracked hands were there. There were custom VR implementations of every weapon seemingly featuring manual reload and all that goodness, and there was even a kind of inventory system in place to let you store and retrieve weapons and place them in holsters around your body.

The problem, though, was that every single one of those components was broken and left unfinished. The input bindings for the controllers were created in the days of the OG Vive and were basically unusable on something like the Index controllers. The hand models were bulky, completely flat and unanimated and placed at a weird spot slightly in front of the controllers. They were also coupled to a partial player body without any IK that behaved weirdly and often got in the way of the camera. Not a single weapon was actually functioning. The inventory was implemented as a weird "Zen portal" that just appeared in front of you, but it was nearly impossible to reliably grab or store weapons in it. An attempt at immersive ladder climbing was present, but it felt off, and worse, it often resulted in the player becoming completely stuck and unable to move. Several showstopping bugs were present right from the start, like not being able to reinsert the plug in Kleiner's lab. All in all, it was not fun to play.

Fairly quickly we decided that we would have to reduce the feature scope significantly and concentrate on getting something playable, first. We would salvage what we could, but throw away anything that was too broken and not strictly needed. Among the first things we did was to update the mod to the modern SteamVR input system to get usable bindings on modern controllers and to correct the hand positions. We threw away the inventory and holster system and the player body and decided we would aim for a simpler Alyx-style weapon management. I know this may disappoint some people, but the effort it would have taken to make that inventory actually usable was simply too high.

I gotta be honest, after our initial victory with the render bridge restoration, our first attempts to work on the actual game were rough. I had no prior experience with the Source engine, and it turns out it is a very particular engine. Its design is arcane, with a lot of moving parts that interact with each other in often surprising ways that are hard to trace. The existing VR game code on top didn't exactly make things better. As a consequence, we spent a lot of time hunting down seemingly simple issues. It was frustrating and slow work.

On top of that, there was an unresolved decision to be made what engine we should base HL2VR on. The initial code dump that we had was based on the public 2013 SDK, but there had been attempts to port the game over to the newer CS:GO Version of Source, which could give us access to newer engine features that could give the game a slight facelift and more performance. Since the CS:GO sources are not publically available, both I and DrBeef submitted an NDA and applied for access to Valve's source code. To this day, we have not heard back from Valve, and that path is most likely closed. It is a shame because WormSlayer had already spent some significant effort on reworking all the maps for HL2VR to make them more VR-friendly and make use of the new engine features; work that now needs to be backported, and that is painful and ongoing work. And before you ask: yes, some of that work is essential to give a good VR experience. Even simple things like walking up or down a staircase feel awkward in the original HL2 maps, as those of you who have played the GMod VRMod should know. The updated maps correct all of that and more.

On the upside, we will now probably be able to release the source code for HL2VR at some point in the future.

I write all this not as a complaint, but simply to give you some perspective on why progress was initially slow and the project may have appeared to be dead again. But thankfully, everything gets easier over time, and we did eventually manage to make some solid progress on most of the issues outlined above, and then some. Around November last year, I made a decision to focus completely on the early game - by which I mean everything from the beginning of HL2 until the end of Route Kanal, when you get on the airboat. The goal was to make that part of the game playable. It didn't need to be perfect, but it needed to be *enjoyable*. I had originally hoped to get this done by Christmas. But as usual, things take a bit longer than anticipated, and real life interferes. DrBeef had to take an ongoing leave from the project to take care of private affairs and other projects, although I do hope he will be back soon But in any case, we have now reached that first milestone. Just a few hours ago, I completed a playthrough from the beginning to the airboat, and while it was not free of bugs or the occasional jankiness, there were no showstoppers, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing.

What did this first milestone, making the early game enjoyable, include?

we fixed up the controller bindings for Index controllers and Oculus Touch

all the basic movement options with head- or controller-oriented direction are present (no teleport or comfort options, though)

smooth or snap turning is available

restored and fixed the immersive ladder climbing, although stick-based traditional climbing is available for those who prefer that

polished roomscale movement and got rid of any pushback. You can now lean over objects (like a particular trash can)

got the crowbar working ok

got the pistol working ok, including Alyx-style manual reload

got the SMG working ... acceptably. It is missing secondary fire (which is not part of the early game), and the weapon sights are useless

made the stationary machine gun usable and control intuitively

made the game menu usable in VR and implemented the beginnings of a custom VR options dialog

implemented basic finger tracking for the hands

fixed a loooot of bugs

It is by no means perfect. There are a couple of visual bugs still, like reflections and some other effects rendering inconsistently between the eyes or some missing water textures. Some objects are highlighted for hand interactions that can't actually be interacted with. The physics engine throwing the player around in awkward ways. Hands do not currently interact with the world physics (picked up objects do, however). There are currently no hand poses for held objects, including weapons. And more. Like I said earlier, we currently want to focus on getting the game *playable* and *enjoyable*, and while some of these issues can be a little distracting, none of them are urgent.

I recorded my entire test playthrough of the early game. If you like, I can upload it. I must warn you, however, I am not a streamer by nature; it would be an hour of unedited, uncommented gameplay. But it will show pretty much all that HL2VR currently is, including the good and the bad parts Or if you prefer, we could invite a few professional content creators to do their own run through the early game. Would probably be more entertaining and might provide us with some useful feedback.

So, what does the future hold and where do we go from here? We are preparing to move on to milestone 2, which will focus on getting the remaining major gameplay elements workable so that the game should *in theory* be completeable from start to finish. Most importantly, these elements contain driving the two vehicles and revamping all of the weapons to get all of them functional and working nicely. Getting the vehicles working well is going to be a bit of a challenge. We don't just want to make them drivable in principle, we also want to give as many players as possible a chance to survive those parts of the game without vomiting. That will probably mean implementing some basic (optional) comfort options and experimenting with ways to stabilize the camera motion during vehicle rides. If we have time, we may even try to add an option to play the vehicle parts in 2D on a projected screen for those who just can't stomach them at all. But we may also move that idea to a later milestone.

We will also focus on getting more of WormSlayer's updated contents working and will probably squash another round of bugs. If and when we have time, we may also try to apply at least some of the polish that's currently missing.

With the completion of milestone 2, we will most likely also be nearing a first public alpha release. I am not going to promise any particular timeline for this (real life would interfere, anyway), but I will try to update you on our progress semi-regularly. Please do not expect a perfect VR experience for this initial release - flat-to-VR ports will always have some jank remaining, and we will still be focussing on the most critical aspects to get the game playable. I've already seen some questions on the gameplay video I posted along the lines of "will it have feature X or Y? can we do Z?" Unless they are things I explicitly mentioned above, the answers to those questions at the end of milestone 2 will most likely be "no" or, at best, "maybe". I hope you can understand that

After milestone 2 and the public release (and an initial round of bug squashing, no doubt), that's when we can concentrate on all of those non-essential features and polish that the game surely deserves.

And with that, I'm going to conclude this wall of text. Until next time
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Hey all, a quick addendum that I forgot in my initial writeup: HL2VR is PCVR only and currently runs on SteamVR. So it will (should) run on any headset that's supported by SteamVR.

yes, we considered OpenXR. But HL2 is a 32bit application, and SteamVR does *not* have support for 32bit applications in their OpenXR runtime. So unfortunately that was not an option for us. On the upside, OpenXR would have taken more time to set up and get working that we could instead spend on the core gameplay instead. And OpenXR support could still be added in milestone 3.

a Quest standalone version is very unlikely to happen. Although I'm sure the Quest 2 could handle HL2 with some massaging, there is no usable Android port of the HL2 engine that we would need for this to happen. NVIDIA's Android port is proprietary, and we do not have access to it.

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SolKutTeR · Apr 1, 2022

Hier nun über eine Stunde ungeschnittenes Material,... ich will das wieder Spielen.

This is my unedited (and uncommented) playthrough of the early game (from the beginning up to the airboat). The purpose of the playthrough was to look for any remaining major issues that would prevent me from finishing this section, and luckily I did not find any

There are a couple of minor issues, though, and you'll see some of them in the video.

Keep in mind I'm a developer, not a content creator. I don't know how entertaining you'll find this video, but it will give you a pretty good idea of the state of the mod at this time.
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dervali · Apr 1, 2022

Nicht nur du... Ich hab auch Bock drauf

Gesendet von meinem LE2123 mit Tapatalk

kellerbach · Apr 1, 2022

Hab sämtliche HL2 Episoden noch nicht mal gezockt, werde es dann in VR nachholen, falls die dann auch spielbar sein werden plus linke Waffenhand implementiert wird. Mit rechts kann ich sowas von garnicht zielen...

Half-Life 2

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