1/3, pros/cons, hackers exploiting us all, guide, & your life wasted.
So the beta's out there, and from experience, it's got a lot of things going for it. I'd like to hear someone who knows anything about programming's take on the '1/3 source code' deal. As far as I know, if you leave out 2/3 of a program, wouldn't it not work at all?
On top of that, it's a huge plus for Valve that this got out, because everyone can see the incredible physics involved. I mean, they're godly. Find the techdemo that has the physgun- that's amazing. But it's a huge minus because it has the specific maps that Valve put into the e3 movies with their explicit "this is not scripted" crap, when it obviously was, as we can see the actions get triggered by time, not by the players movements. So it looks to me like it did more harm than good, although it's a very strong testament that it runs very well on my computer, with a very decent framerate at a 1080x7something resolution, which the doom iii alpha really didn't at times. HL2 seems like it's optomized code already. It's already less buggy than CS.
Also an important thing to remember is that the source code was stolen- not the executable files that are all over the net, along with the billions of data files which go along with it. Makes you wonder, if some random hacker stole it, and then compiled it for us, he did a neat job of compiling it along with all those map, texture, etc. files, and what else could he have arbitrarily put into the code? If some keylogger or such is buried in the source code, then no virus protection software would pick it up, as far as I know. And if you're such a good hacker that you could steal it in the first place, could you pass up that kind of opportunity? back door to half the half-life players in the world's computers. Even if I didn't exploit it, I would definately code something simple in there so I could if I wanted to.
And finally I'd also like to bring your attention to doomiii.tv. This is a pro doom III website that yes, admits there is a leak out there, no, does not povide links to the alpha, but yes, does help those foolish enough to test the game themselves with making it work through some compiled texts on how to tweak your doom iii alpha to work right. Is there anything anyone has yet found like thta for hl2? I'm looking or a guide, but have found nothing. No, I'm not looking for a site that has the leak. If you can't find the leak, you don't deserve to access the internet. I am, however, looking for guides from people who know more about half life than I do (modders, even casual cs players who know how to read the configuration files better than I do) on the beta that has slipped into the open.
I think that's enough of your time wasted. No, you can't have it back.
...cheekiness
