Thanks to Valve, we now have a new major lead on Half-Life 3. And it appears to be related to an easter egg in another Valve game. But before that, let’s recap all the clues and hidden pointers that have been revealed regarding Half-Life 3 so far. We’ll go over information as old as months before arriving to the latest reveal.
All the Half-Life 3 related clues so far
By far the most important leak regarding the game came from the SteamVR Performance Test a few months ago. Following the reveal of the initial price point for the HTC Vive, Valve jump the gun by releasing the “SteamVR Performance Test” a little too early. The application is used to analyse a system’s CPU, GPU, and OS performance over the course of two minutes before providing the user with a report regarding how each component fared when compared to the recommended Vive technical specifications released yesterday.
The program was only publicly available for a short time on the Steam Store before being removed. As shown below, the test, running on Source 2, takes place in a cutdown and shortened version of the Aperture Robot Repair demo with lower visual fidelity, fixed camera angles, no interactivity, no sound effects, and very few of the “core” animated sequences, including the opening of the drawers and GLaDOS’ arrival.
While it certainly isn’t all that exciting to look at, this short demo hides a lot of interesting secrets. As with most modern Valve leaks, these builds of Aperture Robot Repair also feature numerous code strings directly referencing “HL3”, “RPG”, “L4D3”, and more. Unfortunately, most of the code strings found in these particular leaks are similar, if not identical, to those previously discussed. Here is an example:
c:\buildslave\vrgdc2015_staging_win64\build\src\game\server\hl3\partial_entity_manager.cpp
c:\buildslave\vrgdc2015_staging_win64\build\src\game\server\hl3\procedural_spawn_constraint.cpp
The latest leak comes from GamenGuide and they point to hidden stuff in the code that reference the game. You can check out their piece for more details, stay tuned to MobiPicker for more news and updates.