Trippy look @ HL2 thievery from the INQ

[micron]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12062

Source, Sauce, Beta and Leaks
The compiled Source doesn't contain viruses. It doesn't contain much, really, since there are no art assets. It's not as recent; most of the stuff is from late august from the timestamps.
The "beta" leak isn't really a beta. It is branded Sept. 26, as shown in the attached screencaps. [Not used, Ed.] It's obvious VALVe was trying to make their Sept. 30 deadline, but given the state of the game, there's no chance they ever could've succeeded. A great deal of textures and models are present, but I would guess it's still about 65-75% from the whole. Most of the maps exist as well, but nearly all of them are still unfinished and untextured.

It will be most interesting to see if they work nose to grindstone to hit a holiday release, or piddle more time away playing detective.

The "Pre-Gold" thing was a hoax from someone pretending to be the infamous anonymous hacker. While he's no doubt biased against VALVe, everything he stated in his .nfo files has been true. From what I gather, the whole thing went something like this:

1. The Source code is released.

2. Vivendi claims it is "only 1/3rd, however, we will release late so we can fix it."

3. Hacker denounces that statement as false and releases the "beta", to show that VALVe was nowhere near finished with the game. Additionally, he wanted to show that the slip in the release date was not affected by the leak. He then demands VALVe set the record straight or he'll release more.

4. Hacker releases broken patch unintentionally.

5. Rumor spread of "pre-gold."

6. Hacker releases two more packages, with a pre-gold (but fully functional) CS:CZ, as well as a Half-Life and Counter-Strike port for the Source engine (the intended patch).

Quite a mess, as you can see. It was most interesting to follow this drama, as many of us wondered what more he could possibly have beyond the Source and their current HL2 build.

I suppose I could also understand the IT department missing some extra bandwidth for a while, but the combined total of this stuff COMPRESSED is around 4 gigs of information. I'd like to think he wasn't audacious enough to compress it on their computers, and uncompressed the grand total is an even more hefty ~10 gigs. That it went totally unnoticed is somewhat amazing, in my eyes.

Anyhow, I know I'm not VALVe, but off-the-record (or on the record, it hardly matters), I thought I'd share what I've been able to find out these past few interesting days.

 

[bloodbob]

Umm delete this post its talking about how many leaks?

 

[micron]

you wanna run that by me again?

 

[bloodbob]

1. this should be in games
2. You haven't been on in the latest fews days that much when I chucked my spack at having most post that hl2 beta was leaked deleted have you?

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8368 ( CORRECTED THE DAMN URL :/ )

Frankly personally I haven't got anything against this post (other then wrong forum ) because this is a 3d site and its talking about something that is gonna effect the game that probably is biggest break through in gaming graphics in the last couple years? but since your talking about illegal warez this is ruining the site's reputation.

 

[micron]

No....surely you are mistaken.
You see, I started a thread about an Inquirer article. Threads pertaining to other web sites go into this forum right here
It's not so much the fact that I'm trying to discuss whats going on with the stolen HL2 source code, but more of the fact that I'm discussing a rumor that is on the pages of the Inquirer.
If the Inquirer claimed to have, or be extorting the HL2 source code, then you would be correct in your assessment of my post's potential ruination of Beyond3D's reputation.

Sillieness

 

[micron]

You haven't been on in the latest fews days that much when I chucked my spack at having most post that hl2 beta was leaked deleted have you?

Who did you chuck your spack at

 

[bloodbob]

Whoever was deleting it I dunno who they of course weren't nice enough to pm me what exactly was wrong with my post my original assumption was people didn't believe me ( like ppl weren't over on nvnews and telling me it was gay porn ) and since they flat out deleted threading didn't lock it and say its not to be disccused. Although going and looking at some of the posts in doom 3 some of the mods don't mind discussion of leaks( preferable about the technology of the leak and of course any information on how to get is a no no or content from the leak ) dave has sided with another mod offical and any post or topic that advertises that illegal material is avaible( any where at all even if is say the material simple exists ) is to be deleted. If the post gets to 15 pages they give up though.

It's not about "pretending" it never happened - it's about simply discussing it. It is equal to advertising and publicizing a leaked software.

 

[AlphaWolf]

bloodbob I believe you posted a link to a warez site, the only link micron has posted was to the inquirer which is a news/editorial site. They have no illegal files there to download to the best of my knowledge.

Get over it, your post deserved deletion.

 

[micron]

Ok, I think I'm following what your saying and I'm sorry if I was being an ass about the language barrier we've got going on.
Dave and Co. here @ B3D do not want forum members to participate in the exploitation of the HL2 source code here in their forums. Web sites claiming to have, distribute, and or are using the source code are frowned apon by everyone here for obvious reasons. The Inquirer page I brought up doesnt fall into the catagory of that which I've described above(IMHO)
Of course I could be wrong and actually end up pissing off somebody here(wouldnt be the first time)
Someone will surely tell me if my post is inappropriate.

 

[bloodbob]

If your name here was bloodbob then yes it is "inappropriate" since its not I can't say. If they treat everyone fairly then it was wrong. I guess its up to dave and mods to comment.

 

[bloodbob]

bloodbob I believe you posted a link to a warez site, the only link micron has posted was to the inquirer which is a news/editorial site. They have no illegal files there to download to the best of my knowledge.

Get over it, your post deserved deletion.

Gotta love how people are making up a whole bunch of @#@#. Further more if it wasn't for people like AlphaWolf spread a bunch of lies with no basis then I wouldn't of had to post the file size.


I didn't post a single link the problem is everyone thinks all I posted was a rough file size showing that it wasn't the 1.30 gig porn file that was the only details. I never said were to get it I never said what the file was called I never posted a screen shot never posted a hash. If the moderator had simply deleted the filesize reference I wouldn't have complained all it was there was to show it was different to the hoaxes. The file size was useless to everyone at that point in time because it was not avaible on peer to peer yet even though it was being downloaded by thousands of people and it was several hours after the inital release and had already been reported to valve.

PS

Nor was it avaible on any website or public advertised ftp ( ppl were sharing ftp links in private messages but not in the open) it was only avaible on 1 irc server.

 

[micron]

Ok....what started out as a mediocre thread at best has now degraded into a personal problem that you have with the staff here.
Do me a favor, when you feel like playing moderator or insist on telling people how things work around here(which you obviously have no idea of yourself) please find another forum to do it in. M'kay?

 

[micron]

This should have been posted in the already running HL2 thread in the games forum. My apologies.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Bloodbob - as I said before, something that we expect on these forums is for people to act in a mature and adult manner, something that appears you are incapable of. Either sort it out or stop posting.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12062

The "beta" leak isn't really a beta. It is branded Sept. 26, as shown in the attached screencaps. [Not used, Ed.] It's obvious VALVe was trying to make their Sept. 30 deadline, but given the state of the game, there's no chance they ever could've succeeded. A great deal of textures and models are present, but I would guess it's still about 65-75% from the whole. Most of the maps exist as well, but nearly all of them are still unfinished and untextured.

Why is he assuming that the 'beta' contains up-to-date assets? As far as we've heard, it has only E3 maps and it still misses some of the stuff shown there (effects, AI, art pieces). This is absolutely not sufficient to make any assumptions about the state of the game.

No responsible editor should allow to post such rampant speculation.

Edit: messed it up a bit for first

 

[jb]

No responsible editor should allow to post such rampant speculation.

Yea but its the Inq...sooo anything goes..much like those 3 headed babies with alien fathers that slept with transexuals which seem to be all of the rage on the super market tabloids

 

[CorwinB]

No responsible editor should allow to post such rampant speculation.

I think the whole Inquirer staff will gladly agree with you on this one.

 

[Slides]

It's a letter to the Inq.