Part of my Half-Life Fact Files series: • Half-Life Fact Files An in-depth look at the Houndeye's nappy time behavior. Music: Half-Life (Kelly Bailey) - Steam In The Pipes
Yeah. Too bad they don't care to make HL3, making money off of other developers making and releasing games has killed every monetary reason to make another good game.
The houndeyes were meant to actually be friendly to the player, but the game testers from Valve would kill them anyway, so they changed them to be hostile. I honestly never felt so much hate towards anybody orher than the testers, I mean... imagine! A friendly houndeye! It's like it would be a helping dog on your journey!
So many people are saying "Ew, their eyelid looks like an anus." I can live with that. The actual eyes freak me out way more, and I don't eben really know why.
Hey, mr one year late here The likely answer is humans are psychologically conditioned to be afraid of those kinds of patterns. Leftover instincts from the cave days. Chances are if something has that pattern it's either a bug nest or a nasty skin condition, both of which are hazardous to your survival.
Something always lost on people I think is the idea that the alien invasion is less an "invasion" and more like someone took a swatch of alien eco system and dumped it into Black Mesa. All of the creatures were intended to be like real animals. With a full behavior set and different "social" structures. Some were scavengers, others are pack hunters, some are organized and intelligent, others are more like parasites. It truly is a shame that it is more evident in the game. Thanks for posting the video Marphitimus, it's always a treat to see your analysis.
It started off with random teleportation, but became an invasion later on in the game as the Nihilanth saw that the rift could be used to give his people (the intelligent species: vortigaunts, grunts, controllers) an escape from the borderworld. That's why the aliens are making a coordinated assault on the military in Forget About Freeman, with alien grunts being airdropped from living plane creatures and everything.
***** Nihilanth itself was a former slave of the Combine; escape was in everyone's best interests. According to Marc Laidlaw: "What we saw in HL 1 was the very end of a long struggle between the Combine and the last of the Nihilanth's race...although it's a bit different than the word "prompted" implies. The Nihilanth's "world" (if it could be said to have) was long since in the past as far as the Nihilanth was concerned; Xen was their final retreat, and they had their back to the wall, as it were, when the fissure appeared that let them spill into our dimension." "The Resonance Cascade was not harnessed by aliens; it was an opportunity they exploited. First the Nihilanth and its kind came through, under desperate pressure of pursuit by the Combine; and eventually, more leisurely, the Combine tracked them and followed them through. So the poor Nihilanth was squeezed by enemies on both sides. In general, hunamity's experiments with technologywere noticed and attracted unwelcome attention...like a fly suddenly twitching on a spider's web."
***** no, the nhilianth is the slave. he/she controls the aliens (not houndeyes and other animal-like aliens) the combine enslaved the nhilianth. it found the earth to be a good place to escape the combine further. so, it holds the portal open to allow the aliens to run free.
y'know the one thing i really love about this after coming back to it after a while is just what the pack leader behavior implies. it gives the group the feeling of a natural family unit with the leader taking the role of a primary parent, which kinda has the unfortunate implications that you're likely killing a mother and her pups in a lot of these group encounters. 'course, social animals on _our_ planet don't exactly stick to one pack dynamic exclusively, so it could also be litter led by the eldest sibling, a pride of a breeding "male" with its harem of "females" ( y'know, assuming houndeyes even have distinct sexes, though it could also come about if they were hermaphroditic yet still had a pride-like structure ), or even just a bunch of unrelated houndeyes that formed a bond of mutual trust, possibly meaning that the "leader" is just the one taking its turn of guard duty, and we just don't get to be around 'em long enough to see a shift change ... probably makes the "killing" part worse. we out here destroying _all_ types of families, even found ones!
+DarkeTribute, pareidolia. And actually, animals with compound eyes do not have eyelids. So it's more likely a cool "human" (or rather, canine.) touch by Ted Backman.
Makes me think of a world where the Humans and Xenians were friends, where if a Houndeye falls asleep with Humans present instead of fellow Houndeyes, it's a sign of trust and companionship between the two species. They feel safe enough around humans to let their guard down and trust them to keep them safe while sleeping as if they were part of the pack.
***** Hi BigMacDavis, it's Matt, one of your biggest subscribers. I've Been a fan since you've first started doing videos back in 2012. it's been a long time since you've been online. I hope everything is okay. You have some of the best walkthrough videos I've ever seen. You have a remarkable voice. Great personality. Just an all around good person you are. I look forward to more videos.
***** Are you alright man? Your Half Life 1 playthrough is really helping me out right now and on here you haven't posted for a bit under a year. On other social networking accounts of yours you haven't posted since 2013. Your videos are awesome and seem to help out people a lot. Hope everything is good with you. You're a great youtuber.
You know your game is good when NPC AI was better back in 98’ than it normally is currently EDIT: Not to be that guy but holy shit where did y’all come from and why tf you arguing over what does and doesn’t classify as AI?
+Corporal Xander This is not ai, this is pre-programmed non combat related behaviour it shows that the devs were passionate enough to add extrea subtlety to make them look lively not just finish at the marginal deadline
Just imagine that - 2017: A student built from scrap his own City scanner drone from HL 2071: A sudent built from biological scrap his own Houndeye from HL
I don't know if this is accidental or intended behavior, but I am noticing in the last example how the squad leader runs at the threat to attack while the rest of the pack run away. Not sure if that's just a consequence of the terrain or not, but if it isn't, that's truly impressive behavior.
***** Meh, the zombies were maybe a little creepy at first, but for the most part I just view them as dimwitted. They're slow, they're stupid, and they're easy to kill.
I would love to see, in a future Half-Life game, a human being a Houndeye pack leader, taking care of them and in return, Houndeyes protecting the human. It can be Gordon, Alyx, maybe a totally different character, playable or not. These alien doggos are just so cute and it's a shame ValvE had to make them aggressive. Edit : Father Grigori could be a badass candidate imo : in his fight to purify Ravenholm and possibly other places, he would become a Houndeye pack master, which would be quite a powerful one. Grigori's convictions and madness, combined with the Houndeyes' volatility and cuteness, would make quite a good duo.
These videos are very cool and informative! The subtitles are easy to read and the content matter is interesting, and it tells about things that aren't usually noticed on the surface. I love this! :3 :)
This is actually something you can find in a lot of games. Half Life was basically made twice. After a year in development they reworked the whole game using the first version as a base. When this kind of thing happens to a project it's not unusual to find remnants of obsolete or disabled code
Would be really cool, if someone could inform the Black Mesa developers about all those subtle features (if they don't already know about them), Probably make Black Mesa even more cooler than before and will also bring a nostalgia feeling to it.
It's simply amazing how many parameters this all must require in order to work, the attention to detail and effort to truly re-invent the way we look at entertainment that went into it, in 1998 mind you when no other game existed with this level of narrative, is just a testament of how creative we can be, what humans can think of and make when they're not too busy being negative and petty and actually try and make something for everyone's joy.
Who would be interested in stuff like this? Well, I can tell you one thing: I LOVE IT! Relaxing, relevant, and rewarding! Many thanks for making these!
even by today standards these behaviors are pretty advanced, most games would just have them standing still in place until you're in their view then they start attacking
Much better. The thing is that these AI only have just a few more lines of code than average. but yet they still have better AI than most modern games.
The Abominable GMan I know. Its just sad how modern games could have the potential to have AI as good as this if they gave the game literally 5 more minutes of work.
I dont think there there will be any houndeyes because it makes no sense. Theres no portal storm and the only xen wild life creautures are the headcrabs used by the Combine to bomb cities.
Why is the AI in this 23-year-old game so damn good that people are making wild-life documentaries on it 16 years later? I wasn’t alive when this game came out, and some how it is still so impressive that we continue to play it and discuss its intriciacies to this day. God bless Half-Life.
Your videos make me wish there was an open-world Half-Life game based on the original one where alien wildlife roam free attack each other and procreate. Like Far-Cry but around the Black Mesa facility and the nearby desert and more on survival than action like Alien Isolation. The protagonist does not have to be Freeman just some random scientist or guard trying to survive.
I dreampt I was petting a tame houndeye and everything was good and then all of a sudden it started making the most demonic sound I've ever heard. Turns out my girlfriend's snoring was fucking with my dream.
They are like adorable dogs especially when they shuffle their front two legs, it's cute, I wish I could adopt them but only when they are not hostile ofc
