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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21811 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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The variability in the level design surprised me though. It became more apparent to my more experienced eyes that a few of the levels in the second half of the game are pretty sloppily, borderline amateurishly put together, IMO. Maybe they ran out of time for polish before the deadline. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I think I heard Xen suffered from that (Black Mesa tried to "fix" this and utterly ruined it by packing way too much content there - I quit after 2+ hours in Xen, likely only a few hours away from the ending, having grown fatigued of that area). It's kinda crazy to think that HL2 (correction: HL) came out just 2 years after Quake, the game whose engine it was partially built off of (I believe id gave Valve access to some Quake 2 engine material too). In 24 months, they had to put all of that together, enough levels to fill 15-20 hours. Compare that to the amount of content that games with 5+ year development times have today, when building using far more mature engines and tools, as well as well-established blueprints for game design.

HL2? You mean, HL (1998) came out two years after Quake (1996). I heard the same thing; HL was built on a mix of Q and Q2 engines.

Too many cooks in the kitchen these days, maybe. It's a little odd how much more time everything is taking. Implementing a set of ideas shouldn't take 3x longer just because you need more advanced graphics. More hires should be able to get that task done in a set amount of time, and they do hire tons of people these days.

More hires should be able to get that task done in a set amount of time,

Similarly to how more women should be able to birth a child in a set amount of time.

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