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Later developments
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This article has been tagged since April 2007.
Main articles: Half-Life 2 and Half-Life: Source
The sequel, Half-Life 2, was merely a rumor until it was finally revealed at E3
in May 2003, which ignited a firestorm of hype surrounding the game. The player
again takes the role of Gordon Freeman, this time several years after the Black
Mesa incident in the dystopic Eastern European "City 17" where he must fight as
part of a rebellion against an alien regime. After a series of controversies and
delays Half-Life 2 was released on November 16, 2004.
To experience firsthand the processes mod-makers would have to go through with
the new engine, Valve ported Half-Life (dubbed Half-Life: Source) and
Counter-Strike to their new Source engine. Half-Life: Source is a straight port,
lacking any new content or the Blue Shift High Definition pack. However, it does
take advantage of vertex and pixel shaders for more realistic water effects, as
well as Half-Life 2's realistic physics engine. They also added several other
features from Half-Life 2, including an improved dynamic lightmap, vertex map,
and shadowmap system with cleaner, higher resolution and specular texture and
normal maps, as well as utilization of the render-to-texture soft shadows found
in Half-Life 2's Source engine, along with 3D skybox replacements in place of
the old 16-bit color bitmap skies. Also redesigned was the crossbow that will
pin its targets to a nearby wall if they're close enough. The Half-Life port
possesses many of the Source engine's graphical strengths as well control
weaknesses that have been noted in the Source engine. Half-Life: Source is
available with special editions of Half-Life 2.
Half-Life Source has been criticised for not fully utilizing many of the
features of the Source engine found in Half-Life 2, as it still uses textures
and models from the original game. Due to this, a third-party mod remake called
Black Mesa is also under development. Day of Defeat: Source was released on
September 26, 2005.
On June 10, 2005, Valve announced through their Steam update news service an
upcoming port of Half-Life Deathmatch, the multiplayer portion of the original
game, much in the same fashion as the earlier released Half-Life: Source. No
exact release date was given, simply the words "In the coming weeks..." On July
2, 2006, Half-Life Deathmatch: Source was released.
On June 1, 2006 Half-Life 2: Episode One was released. It is part of a three
episode trilogy, of which the second episode is scheduled to be released in fall
2007.
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