Half-Life 3 is the most anticipated video game of all time. The Episode 2 cliffhanger left everyone at the edge of their seats clamoring for more. Valve did confirm that the next installment was in development back in 2008 after Episode 2 was released. But since then there has been no news from Valve about a Half-Life 3 release date. Rumors and speculations haven’t stopped there, however. We do know that Valve is working on the game as we explained in this article. In this article, we’ve decided to compile a list of 5 things rumored to be in Half-life 3.
Half-Life 3 will have a better and more advanced Source engine
The Source engine is very effective at running decent and different games at high frame rates. Valve has another step to go before too long in our opinion. Computers are getting more powerful so we think a real-time lighting and cube maps will be the first thing to add to the new Source engine for Half-Life 3. Other stuff like a very high polygon count, detailed texture, and parallax mapping will also be added. We also expect the engine to add rays of lights, some graphical mods have already achieved most of what we mentioned here. So, these new graphical features are bound to be in the next Source engine for Half-Life 3.
Digital Molecular Matter
Another new technology that they could add would be DMM. Valve made a big thing about the physics in Half-Life 2 and rightfully so. DMM examples are few and far between. It allows you to alter the terrain. Say, you fire a shot at a door in Half-life 2, the door will break into exactly five pieces of wood as was hard-coded into the engine. This is unrealistic and unlikely for a door in real life, so to bring the physics damage model closer to realism Valve would want to add DMM. Some players might take advantage of this like in Red Faction and try to break their way to the end of the level. However, that can easily be fixed by adding invisible walls to keep the player from straying off the intended path.
New water physics (and fancy fish AI?)
PhysX Ageia is the closest thing you have to fluid dynamics implemented in-game. Since they were bought by Nvidia the new GPUs are optimized to handle fluid physics. Water is horribly difficult to render with thousands of polygons and millions of simulations needed per second to render a tub of this stuff to a convincing degree of realism. Valve can definitely make use of realistic water Physics for the upcoming Half-Life 3. There could be open maps with a dam nearby and if player damages and destroys the dam, water could flood the open map and force the player and enemies to rethink tactics.
Half-Life 3 release date is delayed because Valve is waiting for VR to become more common
Valve is always looking to break new ground. All their games have set new standards for their respective genre on release. So it won’t be surprising that Gabe is waiting for VR headsets to become common in every gamer’s household so that he can use the new technology in the upcoming Half-Life 3.
Half-Life 3 is also rumored to be 4K
This should be a no-brainer for any AAA game developer. In many years time, 4K will become the new industry standard as 4K monitors continue to sell and their prices continue to drop for them to be accessible to the average gamer. We won’t be surprised if the new Half-Life 3 will also follow this trend. Even upcoming game consoles like the Xbox Scorpio and PlayStation Neo promise 4K.
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