Valve love Red Dwarf!

[Jonathan Capps]

There’s a lovely interview with Valve’s Marc Laidlaw about sci-fi and stories and what not: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=168624

The quote of interest:

If you’re specifically talking about the broad comedy aspect of science fiction in some games, then I have nothing to say against it. Satire is where many a genre has reached its peak. For consistently original and inventive use of classic sci-fi ideas, it doesn’t get much better than Red Dwarf.

Topic

[Tarka Dal]

Who are Valve?

[Austin Ross]

They made Half-Life and Half-Life 2. And Marc Laidlaw (aka God) wrote the stories for both of those fine games.

I would seriously love it if Valve were to make a Red Dwarf game. It could be awful if done poorly, but it could also very well be the best thing ever.

[Tonguetied]

Not surprising they have taste. Excellent games I must say, very innovative and gripping, a sheer delight. What we need is Half Life 3 to arrive sooner, instead of the pretty insubstancial extension games. None le less, it is nice to see that the Dwarf is being lime lighted by Valve like this. Bravo!

[Seb Patrick]

You know that the three HL2 sequels are officially now existing in lieu of HL3, though? They are, taken together, for all intents and purposes the full sequel. And it’s hard to judge them as insubstantial when only one of the three has actually been released so far…

[Tonguetied]

That’s annoying, I would have prefered a fully fledged sequel, rather than tit bits.

[Jonathan Capps]

You’ll get that with Half-Life 4, I guess.

[Anonymous]

>I would seriously love it if Valve were to make a Red Dwarf game. It could be awful if done poorly, but it could also very well be the best thing ever.

We wrote it, completed several 3D models for it and even coded a 3rd person camera system for the source engine, but then emails to GNP and RD.co.uk about the release of the game (as a totally free half-life 2 mod) were either dismissed or ignored.
Consequently we would have had to drop too many elements of the game so everyone went their seperate ways to work on other projects.
Parts of the game do still exist, several character models, a test level and the 3rd person code all developed using Valve’s source engine as used for Half-Life 2.

[Andrew]

> We wrote it, completed several 3D models for it and even coded a 3rd person camera system for the source engine, but then emails to GNP and RD.co.uk about the release of the game (as a totally free half-life 2 mod) were either dismissed or ignored.

Mick, you might want to email me on this via webboard@reddwarf.co.uk – not sure what you’re saying GNP have done wrong, but if you’d like to break it down I’ll take a look.

Certainly I don’t recall any commission being given, or writing/development work being requested. Also not sure why GNP would want to endorse a free mod rather than continuing to develop its own Dwarf games. I have no recollection of emails to the website from yourself or Valve, either, so by all mean get in touch and job my memory.

[Anonymous]

Im not blaming GNP for anything Andrew, basically last year as a side project four games design students and two graduates set about making a 3rd person Resident Evil style Red Dwarf adventure game, about 10% of the way in we decided it was pointless continuing if we get raped by GNP after releasing it for download because of copyright infringement.
So we sent a couple of emails, then sent a few via TOS to see if someone would relay them, then as there were no replies we all drifted on to other projects and/or got jobs.

Theres no question of it happening now, half the models and code we had complete are in the hands of people I know longer I have any contact with.

It would have been just a fan made game modification for half-life 2, but it looked pretty promising for a while.

I wasnt blaming GNP for anything inparticular, and anyone can make a half-life modification without special permission or contact with valve, all that they ask is you upload it to their Steam servers for download.

Apologies for any misunderstanding, i think we missed the boat on this, if there ever was a boat, or infact even a raft ;)

[Andrew]

Wow, yeah, misunderstanding! When Asutin said he’d love a Dwarf game by Valve, you replied with “We wrote it”!

We do have a semi-approved plot outline document, for a game which never came to fruition a few years ago. If a decent company came to us with a distributor, though, we’d be more than happy to resurrect it. (Spread the word!)

No reply seems odd, and I can’t find the emails in my Privacy or Webboard inbox, but you said “dismissed or ignored”, so I don’t know which actually happened. Still, if the request was to get a free mod endorsed, I can see why, business-wise, it would have been turned down.

As for being ‘raped by GNP’, I’m hoping that’s a typo. They’ve never been anything other than tender with me… :-)

[mick]

This is what happens when you’re at work and writing replies to quickly.

[Tonguetied]

”You?ll get that with Half-Life 4, I guess” – touch wood.

[Jonathan Capps]

> ?You?ll get that with Half-Life 4, I guess? – touch wood.

As much as I adore Valve and the Half-Life games, they do have a habit of winding me up when it comes to release schedules. There always seems to be some sort of excuse for everything being a year late (Half-Life 1 has a big engine rewrite and Half-Life 2 was stolen so the security had to be beefed up) which could well be valid, but still. I guess once you’re sta down playing the latest release, you couldn’t give a shit about how late it is, cos it’s just so damn good.

But these episodes are annoying me. the fact that they’re acting as ‘Half-Life 3’ might be believable if they weren’t fucking called Half-Life 2: Episode 1 etc. It’s clearly a massive trackback, when they realised that creating extra HL2 content as well as a new game was going to be too much for the slowest developers outside of 3D Realms.

[Author]

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