[7:29:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: Hi

[7:30:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: Hi. Enough for a first impression? I can send you the uncompressed one as soon as my wifi is back.

[7:30:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: although it should be readable

[7:31:07 PM] Tyler McVicker: I'm not sure what that was. Something sreamWorks and something DotA 2

[7:31:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: It really doesn't prove anything to me.

[7:31:32 PM] Tyler McVicker: I couldn't read anything on them either.

[7:32:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: That's the TF room

[7:32:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the notebook is irellevant.

[7:33:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: i just needed something to display a newssite on

[7:33:19 PM] Tyler McVicker: I've never seen the tf2 room

[7:33:23 PM] Tyler McVicker: Lol

[7:34:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm pretty sure I took that picture on the 7th. Zoom in, you can read the headlines. At least I can on my end. Not sure if Protonmail compressed them yet again

[7:35:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that glow sign is a fairly recent addition

[7:36:25 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well, it's not new, one of the TF guys had it. We just didn't put it up until september or so

[7:37:12 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: in case you're wondering what I'm doing in the TF room:

[7:37:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: We did a network test. Thats Matt in the background

[7:38:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: I don't k ow Matt

[7:38:50 PM] Tyler McVicker: So like, is there any other ways you could prove your authenticity?

[7:39:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: He's our network guy. Not matt yukubousky, That's the poor soul who does steamworks support.

[7:40:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: Sure I guess, what more do you want?

[7:41:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: wifi is back, let me upload an uncompressed version

[7:43:18 PM] Tyler McVicker: How long you been at Valve

[7:43:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: not long, it's my second year

[7:44:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah, March 2014

[7:45:15 PM] Tyler McVicker: VR the whole time?

[7:47:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: Kind of, we don't have have as rigid of a hierarchy as most devs. I got hired specifically for VR but I do a bit of everything kind of.

[7:48:07 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: like that figure I wanna talk about but let me upload an uncompressed version of the tf room photo first

[7:49:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: sorry

[7:49:38 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay cool

[7:50:26 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: zoom in, the headlines are legible, at least the lower half

[7:52:02 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: That's from the week we got a network overhall after months of complaining

[7:52:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: matt is aa contractor, not a full time employee

[7:52:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: W here did you find out about VNN

[7:52:50 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: he's just our general support guy for networking issues and mac related stuff.

[7:53:17 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: some of our artists rely heavily on osx or at least pretend they do

[7:54:19 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you did a commentary on that the know video

[7:54:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: more than just a couple people here watched that

[7:54:47 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is this a good thing?

[7:56:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well it's always nice to be defended

[7:56:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I've been watching most of your videos since then

[7:57:36 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: We follow discussions on YT, Facepunch among others

[7:58:06 PM] Tyler McVicker: They were wrong right? The Know later attacked me pretty bad a few times following that.

[7:58:12 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you get the most feedback that way. also the most hurtfull

[7:58:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: They were very adamant about their source being true.

[7:58:52 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: Depends on what your definition of wrong is

[7:59:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they weren't 100% right

[7:59:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but theres some truth in there

[7:59:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: for example

[8:00:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they claimed that fear of negativity is the #1 reason why there hasn't been a new Half-Life installment in a while

[8:00:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's not true

[8:01:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the #1 reason is because it's just not that relevant in the grand scheme of our current gaming "landscape".

[8:04:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm pretty sure Dota 2 has made more money last quarter than all our singleplayer games combined in their respective first years.

[8:06:40 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: If we were to focus on a huge singleplayer game with all the meat a game of that kind needs to have a player retention of more than a week, we would have to focus half the studio on that game.

[8:08:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: And that would mean cutting resources for VR, which is much more important for the future of steam

[8:09:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: money is not the issue here, we're doing pretty well overall, we just don't have the time and people.

[8:09:40 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: valve needs an extension IMO.

[8:10:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if we had a second location, we could dedicate the whole place to a singleplayer game

[8:10:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but then you have to ask yourself: what could that second studio instead of a singleplayer game

[8:10:56 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they could make an MMO

[8:11:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: massive player retention

[8:11:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: overall a much better decision business wise.

[8:13:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the only barrier for an MMO is it's infrastructure

[8:13:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: which is no problem at all for us

[8:13:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: of course all hypothetical, there are no plans to expand sadly

[8:15:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they were working actively on an MMO before I joined

[8:15:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that didn't come to fruition either

[8:17:59 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I saw the last few weeks of that project. That must have been my first demoralizing experience there

[8:19:10 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: It would have been a perfect fit for VR, too. Such a shame.

[8:19:56 PM] Tyler McVicker: Stars of Blood?

[8:20:10 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's out there?

[8:20:13 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea

[8:20:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: It's well known

[8:20:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: There is a lot of Concept Art and Gabe talked about it in an Interview with /v/ back in 2013

[8:20:50 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah that was before my time

[8:21:30 PM] Tyler McVicker: Hey, could I Skype you real quick? You don't have to give me your name, I just need to make sure you are not one of my stalkers scamming

[8:21:41 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we wanted to kind of revive

[8:22:52 PM] *** Call to Cephalon Cephalon, no answer.

Send video message ***

[8:22:53 PM | Edited 8:22:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: nope, no voice whatsoever. sorry but that's way too risky. We can switch back to mail if prefer

[8:23:01 PM] Tyler McVicker: No this is fine

[8:23:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: do you have stalkers that would go though this much trouble?

[8:23:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yep

[8:23:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well that's fucking terrifying

[8:23:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: One in particular told a friend of mine she wanted to eat my girlfriend and take her place

[8:23:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: And that is the one I am worried about here

[8:23:56 PM] Tyler McVicker: She has done things like this

[8:24:02 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: ...what

[8:24:05 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea

[8:24:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: VNN is great, and I love the work I do, but it comes with it's cost

[8:24:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: how do you attract those people by doing harmess opinion videos? they're not even offensive in the slightest

[8:24:50 PM] Tyler McVicker: Are there any other ways you could prove you work for Valve that you can think og?

[8:24:51 PM] Tyler McVicker: of?

[8:25:05 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, maybe tell me something that will happen very soon so I can check what you are telling me?

[8:25:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well the figures, if all goes well

[8:25:50 PM] Tyler McVicker: DOTA 2 figures then?

[8:26:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: That's neat

[8:26:02 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: nah way cooler

[8:26:10 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, what is it?

[8:27:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're codenamed the allstars line and wheÄre definitely not keeping that name.

[8:27:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's actually a bit more complex than just figures

[8:27:59 PM] Tyler McVicker: Valve Amiibo?!

[8:28:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: nah, too easy to spoof

[8:28:22 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we thought about it though

[8:28:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: I like Amiibo

[8:28:52 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is it like some kind of AR thing then?

[8:29:17 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'd post a photo of my collection but It's not THAT impressive

[8:29:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: Lol

[8:29:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: theyre all unboxed and I'm missing most of the ones after the fist AC wave

[8:30:08 PM] Tyler McVicker: I don't do the AC ones, I stick to Smash and Mario

[8:30:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: I bought most of these before moving out of my parents house though, so I really haven't been keeping up

[8:30:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I kept telling myself the same initially

[8:30:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: didn't work

[8:30:44 PM] Tyler McVicker: They are additctive

[8:30:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I know

[8:30:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and they're not even usefull in game

[8:31:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: i have no idea why i like them

[8:31:06 PM] Tyler McVicker: No, I can't even use them

[8:31:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: Even if you are spoofing me, you still seem cool

[8:31:23 PM] Tyler McVicker: I appreciate that

[8:31:25 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no nintendo platform?

[8:31:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: No, you can't use them in the box

[8:31:45 PM] Tyler McVicker: I have every Nintendo console to date.

[8:32:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: do you seriously think I put up a TF2 glowsign up my wall to troll you?

[8:32:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: People have done worse

[8:32:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: Im almost too afraid to ask: like what?

[8:32:55 PM] Tyler McVicker: Not only do I have Stalkers, but I have steep competition with other channels. ValveTime in particular.

[8:33:16 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we like valvetime : <

[8:33:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: i do at least

[8:33:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: beef or just competition?

[8:33:45 PM] Tyler McVicker: There were a few times where VT pretended to be a source of info to trick me into reporting a faulty story just to call me out on it

[8:34:01 PM] Tyler McVicker: When I first got started out, they would allways derate me in comments and reddit and facepunch

[8:34:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: Then, when I got an exclusive on Portal Beta stuff, they did this

[8:34:48 PM] Tyler McVicker: Omnomnick has threatened me a lot

[8:34:56 PM] Tyler McVicker: Then Smash start up with it after Nick calmed down

[8:35:16 PM] Tyler McVicker: I told Glen about all of this, he just told me it was nothing and that I was worrying to much.

[8:36:43 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: what the fuck

[8:36:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea

[8:37:03 PM] Tyler McVicker: This has gone on for over two years now.

[8:37:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they seemed so nice and well researched

[8:37:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well there's stuff that is behid the scenes no one knows about

[8:37:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like their "archive" and Barnz

[8:37:41 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the mega archive?

[8:37:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: VT is sketchy

[8:37:52 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we weren't too happy about that video tbh

[8:38:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we would prefer if there were no full copies of our games in there

[8:38:57 PM] Tyler McVicker: The Portal video

[8:38:59 PM] Tyler McVicker: ?

[8:39:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: artwork is fine, the models and game rips are not. I mean, not that I care but valve in general does

[8:39:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no the one where you linked to a dump of all our leaks

[8:39:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: The public archive?

[8:39:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: including pirated copies, that wasn't very cool tbh. the artworks are fine

[8:39:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah

[8:40:12 PM] Tyler McVicker: That's my buddy Jacks, and it's nothing compared to what is floating around.

[8:40:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: I know a few that have the entire Source dev repo backed up on their PCs

[8:40:52 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the raw models?

[8:40:54 PM] Tyler McVicker: And they always threaten to leak the whole thing to get eyes on their profiles on FP

[8:40:58 PM] Tyler McVicker: The raw everything

[8:41:07 PM] Tyler McVicker: From HL2 to EP3

[8:41:20 PM] Tyler McVicker: FStop, CS2, the different TF2s, everyting

[8:42:01 PM] Tyler McVicker: So the one video where I linked recent links in an archive was a No no then?

[8:42:21 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: compilable builds or just the model files and script examples?

[8:42:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: specifically fstop, that would be bad

[8:42:56 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: because we're trying to bring that back for VR

[8:43:09 PM] Tyler McVicker: I know, but there are some people that are going around talking about what it is

[8:43:19 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well, specifically an aperture science themed puzzle game. no portals though that's a concious decisign

[8:43:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: sorry my typing accuracy is awful today

[8:43:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: what did they say it is?

[8:43:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: And with the files that are in Portal 2, and concept art put out during the Potato arg, it's possible to make a good guess

[8:44:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: I've been working on a big video for months about what my guess is

[8:44:19 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: wanna tell me?

[8:44:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm not going to stop you if you nailed it

[8:44:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I couldn't care less

[8:45:38 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well, I know about the Chickens, Mousetraps, Buttons and Cubes, Mannequins, the fact that you carry a camera, can take 3 pictures, and that it took place in 80s-ish aperture, or at least that is what you are lead to believe.

[8:46:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: I had a feeling that the Manaquins were more for story than gameplay

[8:46:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: And the chickens acted like Striders from HL2

[8:46:59 PM] Tyler McVicker: I also thought that the Manaquins had taken over, and it was actually in the distant future.

[8:47:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, the Manquins attempted to try and live like humans from the time, but didn't do everything completely 100%, so some of the tests were done improperly, so it caused the Chickens to mutate

[8:47:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: Also, Cave was a robot, or a recording

[8:48:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they were androids to be precise

[8:49:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: built to transform aperture into a self sustaining human free organism

[8:49:06 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: like a hivemind if you will

[8:49:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: The different levels were mannequin representations of "Normal Human Life" that you went around taking pictures to solve puzzles, and the pictures actually were video? Like you saw a live feed of the point you took the picture at.

[8:49:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: idk, I have much more, but it's hard to type it all down from memory.

[8:49:48 PM] Tyler McVicker: Did you play F-Stop?

[8:49:56 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the original? no

[8:49:59 PM] Tyler McVicker: Even though you came in like 5 years after

[8:50:08 PM] Tyler McVicker: Couldn't you though?

[8:50:12 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I would imagine it's in the archive

[8:50:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: ours that is :D

[8:50:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, just pull it off the server

[8:50:20 PM] Tyler McVicker: Lol

[8:50:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you underestimate our security

[8:50:50 PM] Tyler McVicker: True, but people end up with a lot of stuff all the time

[8:51:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: Yeah but I can't just log in and grab stuff

[8:51:06 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like the entire dev history of Portal

[8:51:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we keep logs

[8:51:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and have a tiered system

[8:51:36 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: certain employees have deeper access

[8:51:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I can grab artwork no problem

[8:51:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well that sucks

[8:52:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why is VR viewed as the future of Steam?

[8:52:52 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: can I elaborate on the figures first?

[8:52:58 PM] Tyler McVicker: yea sure

[8:53:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're really cool and I've spent the last 3 weeks of my life on the tech

[8:53:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: do you know how figures are made traditionally?

[8:53:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: I do not

[8:53:48 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you start with a 3D sculpt

[8:54:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: which means remodelling in most cases

[8:54:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: especially for older projects

[8:54:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we don't have most of the hi-poly sculpts from HL2

[8:55:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: let's say you want to make a strider figure

[8:55:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you look at the low poly ingame model and aproximate how it would look in higher detail

[8:56:16 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is that where that D.O.G. model came from?

[8:56:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm not the one who posted it to 4chan

[8:57:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but that model was for an older attempt at a first party figure line

[8:57:11 PM] Tyler McVicker: I know who posted it

[8:57:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: in the past we would sell licenses to sideshow collectibles among others

[8:57:13 PM] Tyler McVicker: And it's not Valve

[8:57:19 PM] Tyler McVicker: Ya

[8:58:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yo, once your sculpt is done, you 3d print

[8:58:25 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's how most figure prototyping is done these days

[8:58:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[8:58:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and then you refine, refine, refine until it looks proportional

[8:58:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's already a week worth of work for a single artist

[8:59:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: So that's cool, first party figures.

[8:59:23 PM] Tyler McVicker: I would probably buy a few

[8:59:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: once you're happy with the sculpt you would make a paint master

[9:00:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: paint masters are figures that are hand paintet and used as reference for the painters

[9:00:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: imagine a room with 10 people

[9:00:27 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[9:00:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're painting figures all day, looking at a slightly higher quality reference figure

[9:00:52 PM] Tyler McVicker: That almost sounds like a nightmare

[9:01:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: now what if you could make figures directly from game art?

[9:01:16 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: with only minimal touch up by an artist needed

[9:01:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we're calling it rapid figure design

[9:02:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's essencially a fusion between two technologies

[9:02:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: remeshing and vr

[9:02:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you start off with a low poly game model

[9:02:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: let's say juggernaut

[9:03:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we have an algorithm that can create high poly sculpts from game art

[9:03:40 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's pretty wild computer vision stuff. most of the magic happens in 2D actually

[9:03:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: all the detail is generated from texture maps alone

[9:04:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: my comparing the different maps, diffuse, normal etc. we can recognize detail in the textures and translate it into 3D displacement

[9:04:43 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: like tesselation but using a combination of maps instead of just normals

[9:05:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: This is blowing my mind

[9:05:08 PM] Tyler McVicker: This is from 2D art?

[9:05:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: this allows us to convert a game model into a high poly sculpt, that is then posed by an animator

[9:05:13 PM] Tyler McVicker: Or low poly 3d models/

[9:05:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no you need a low poly model

[9:05:20 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh okay

[9:05:22 PM] Tyler McVicker: Lol

[9:05:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but all the detail is estimated from the models's textures

[9:05:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: And it works well?

[9:05:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well you've seen the first print

[9:05:58 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yes

[9:06:02 PM] Tyler McVicker: dang

[9:06:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that figure was made in a day

[9:06:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can load any game art starting with HL2 into the software

[9:06:38 PM] Tyler McVicker: This whole process? Start to finish?

[9:06:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: start to finish.

[9:07:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: What kind of 3D printers you have up in Washington?

[9:08:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I could just feed in a strider model, it would generate a sculpt, then an artist would take a look at it and fix geometry if needed, then you just print it and done, a finished unpainted figure

[9:08:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I don't know the name from memory, it's the orange resin one

[9:08:38 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh yea

[9:08:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[9:08:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: forma 2

[9:08:50 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well I expect Valve to have the most expensive one of things

[9:09:07 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why was a bit of the picture pixelated?

[9:09:21 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: because it says my name on there

[9:09:26 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: across the arm

[9:09:27 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh okay

[9:10:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: So how long has this been worked on?

[9:10:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: all physical creations are labeled so that someone can be held accountable if something gets out.

[9:10:52 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea that makes sense

[9:11:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we started experimenting with first party toy production in mid 2014

[9:11:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: Does Valve not like the NECA stuff?

[9:12:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: nah, we have a pretty good relationship with them

[9:12:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and will continue working with neca

[9:12:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: I love the Gordon and the TF2 Chess

[9:13:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: I don't have the money for the Portal Guns or anything though

[9:13:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the allstars figures are meant as an inexpensive way for us to release nice figures, that's all

[9:13:58 PM] Tyler McVicker: ETA on those then?

[9:14:12 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: wait, the best part is yet to come

[9:14:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh okay

[9:14:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and please remind me to take a photo of the machine

[9:14:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: I will

[9:14:44 PM] Tyler McVicker: Could you just send the pictures through Skype>

[9:14:45 PM] Tyler McVicker: ?

[9:14:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: what's the worst and most time consuming part of figure production?

[9:14:58 PM] Tyler McVicker: Ummm

[9:15:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I can but I'm at home

[9:15:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: I understand

[9:15:10 PM] Tyler McVicker: Packaging?

[9:15:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: painting

[9:15:19 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh yea

[9:15:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: Lol

[9:15:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there are 3d printers that can print in color but they are very low rez and blurry

[9:16:18 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea

[9:16:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: because they print in colored plastic which tends to melt together woth different colors

[9:16:57 PM] Tyler McVicker: I've heard of Colored sandstone printers

[9:18:17 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: basically, we have CNC machine that moves airbrushes around the model in all axes

[9:18:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and paints them the same every time

[9:18:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: machines*

[9:18:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: 5

[9:18:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and they're not even big

[9:18:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: desktop sized

[9:19:36 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the current ones have 4 brushes

[9:19:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's enough to paint most figures without changing colors

[9:21:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the big problem with this tech is that it requies someone to manually animate the painting process for each of the airbrush arms

[9:22:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's what we're working on right now, a way to let the machine recognize the surface of the model

[9:22:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: our current approach is to use the 3d model generated in the first step of production

[9:23:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: This seems like it would have more applications then just figures

[9:23:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: kind of. the tech is too expensive to be scaled up to car size

[9:23:59 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yet

[9:24:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you would need giant robotic arms with multiple airbrushes on each

[9:24:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the beauty of it all is that it's so inexpensive for figures

[9:26:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: once the painting machines have the ability to adapt to any model, we could theoretically build figures to order

[9:27:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the goal is to release a tool that can be used to customize TF2 characters with items you already own in the main game. you can then order an exact figure of your character

[9:28:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: harmonix had something similiar fpr rock band 3

[9:28:10 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you could upload your band and get them printed

[9:28:26 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but instead of prints, ours will be professional looking figures

[9:28:28 PM] Tyler McVicker: How much would something like this cost?

[9:29:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: BOM on the 10 inch juggernaut is somewhere around $20

[9:29:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if we can get it down to 15, we could possibly sell at 25

[9:30:21 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we haven't done calculations on disctribution yet

[9:31:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but I think $25 at a revenue of 5-7 per figure should be possible

[9:32:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the tech is about a year away from being production ready

[9:33:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the goal is to eliminate human labor completely for figure production. We're not going to market before there are no manual steps involved on our part, from order to arrival.

[9:33:50 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, even shipping and packaging?

[9:35:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's our distributor's job. we work with multiple distributors globally to ship the steam controller

[9:35:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: once there are no manual steps involved in the creation, we can just ship machines to our distributors and they print for the customers of their region.

[9:37:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: Well that sucks

Why is VR viewed as the future of Steam?back to VR. sorry, I'm obsessed with figures

[9:37:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: I understand being obsessed with your work

[9:38:02 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: do you have a vr headset?

[9:38:54 PM] Tyler McVicker: No, I can't afford ti

[9:38:54 PM] Tyler McVicker: it

[9:39:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: If you had one, you wouldn't be asking why we consider VR the future of our platform.

[9:40:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: It's one of few things that you seriously have to try for more than just a quick demo session to fully grasp

[9:41:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the main appeal is that there is no next better thing than VR

[9:41:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's quite literally the final frontier of entertainment

[9:41:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: everything you can imagine can theoretically be simulated in VR

[9:42:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: I haven't even had a demo

[9:43:19 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you know, there just is no next thing. Once you can create convincing realities, there is no next step.

[9:43:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: The problem I see is the idea of cost, the other barriers to entry, such as the pc, the fact that sometimes people don't want to move around when playing games, and that when using controllers it makes people sick. Also wires.

[9:43:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you've been missing out

[9:43:45 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well College does that to you

[9:44:03 PM] Tyler McVicker: I'm also missing out on food that isnt spegettios

[9:44:05 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there are enough chances to get a demo though

[9:44:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: Not around where I live.

[9:44:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: psvr had a tour not that long ago, probably still do

[9:44:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: I'm in middle of nowhere Ohio.

[9:44:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we demo during guided tours if you ask nicely and make an appointment in advance

[9:45:06 PM] Tyler McVicker: I'm not gonna be in Belleville anytime soon.

[9:45:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but there's surely a gamestop near you

[9:45:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: A tiny one in a mall. They don't do VR demos there.

[9:45:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: bummer

[9:46:09 PM] Tyler McVicker: I understand the excitement behind VR, but is Valve working to pull the price down?

[9:46:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: have you seen the oculus keynote?

[9:46:40 PM] Tyler McVicker: Which one?

[9:46:48 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they announced what they're calling spacewarp

[9:46:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's actually pretty cool tbh

[9:47:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the latest one from earlier this month

[9:47:46 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the vive and rift do variants of reprojection (although differently) to keep head rotation fluid even during frame drops

[9:48:10 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: their new tech is kind of like that but in 3D

[9:48:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they compare two frames and reconstruct a third one from the change in geometry

[9:49:05 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's only a matter of time until we adapt this for steam vr

[9:49:55 PM] Tyler McVicker: Cool

[9:49:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's kind of insane, you can play at 45 fps doubled with this tech and it does not look of feel different from real 90

[9:50:07 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no difference in lateny even

[9:50:10 PM] Tyler McVicker: So cheaper hardware.

[9:50:12 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: latency

[9:50:20 PM] Tyler McVicker: On the pc side of things.

[9:50:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah, they lowered the minspecs to a 960 i think

[9:50:34 PM] Tyler McVicker: Dabg

[9:50:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: Danh

[9:50:38 PM] Tyler McVicker: Dang

[9:50:50 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the 1050 is confirmed to be the new entry point once that comes out

[9:50:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's at $150 card

[9:51:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: oculus is selling a VR compatible PC for 500 right now.

[9:51:26 PM] Tyler McVicker: So Valve is justifying the expense of the hardware because of the lowering cost of the PC required?

[9:51:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no, we're justifying it by how profound the experiences you have are in VR

[9:52:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the prive halving is something we didn't even see coming

[9:52:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: That what?

[9:52:35 PM] Tyler McVicker: Of price

[9:52:36 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: price

[9:52:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: sry

[9:52:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea

[9:53:16 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is Valve working to get that big game out then?

[9:53:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, what is Valve working on for VR for software?

[9:53:48 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we're currently seeking new partners (multiple) for the next generation and we're planning to launch some kind of real game around the same timeframe

[9:54:22 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: We're working on a big update to destinations

[9:54:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: That seems to be turning into a social hub

[9:54:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: With the Multiayer stuff that just happened.

[9:54:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: which is probably going to coincide with the launch of Touch

[9:55:07 PM] Tyler McVicker: What will be in the update?

[9:55:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we'll most likely roll it out in chunks instead of one big update

[9:55:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the big one is in-vr creation

[9:56:16 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like Tiltbrush?

[9:56:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the end goal for destinations is kind of what second life was to early social gaming

[9:56:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: just without the furries

[9:57:10 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: tiltbrush is strictly a painting app

[9:57:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: You cant keep away the flurries.

[9:57:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: Furries

[9:57:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: destinations is supposed to become a social network over time

[9:57:40 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: over a loooong time

[9:57:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: Wow, that is not what I expected when it lanched.

[9:58:02 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: where you can build your own places

[9:58:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's actually inspired by wildstar

[9:58:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: Will the photogrammetric stuff still be a focus?

[9:58:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: by the housing of wildstar, of course

[9:59:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: only for real places

[9:59:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: custom ones have to be traditional models

[9:59:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: because with photogrammetry, shadows are baked into the texture

[10:00:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and you can't make modular wall pieces that way

[10:00:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but for real places, absolutely

[10:01:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: So like, what specifically will be in the next few updates then? Will the first signs of this be seen?

[10:02:09 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the first sign was when we announced multiplayer in, I think july?

[10:02:15 PM] Tyler McVicker: Ummm

[10:02:40 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea

[10:02:48 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and that update wasn't that long ago

[10:03:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the next one is probably going to be a reworked avatar system

[10:04:16 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we're also adding more complex interactions soon ish

[10:04:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: Cool

[10:04:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: by that i mean minigames

[10:04:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's an app called altspace

[10:05:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea

[10:05:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they do something similiar but their apps and minigames are all web based

[10:05:41 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[10:05:46 PM] Tyler McVicker: I've seen videos of it

[10:05:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we're aiming for a proper SDK that just integrates into Unity, which you can get for free

[10:06:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's more or less an extension of vscript

[10:06:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why not Source 2?

[10:06:47 PM] Tyler McVicker: Isn't destinations Source 2?

[10:08:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: source 2 is a huge topic. possibly a bigger can of worms than my figure essay from earlier.

[10:09:15 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh boy

[10:09:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: It's highly unlikely that we will use Source 2 for any future projects

[10:09:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: What

[10:09:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why?

[10:09:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: We as in the VR team, or we as in Valve?

[10:10:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's a good question

[10:10:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the vr team is all unity from here on

[10:10:43 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there will be at least one game running on source 2

[10:11:12 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: just because it's too late to port

[10:11:19 PM] Tyler McVicker: L4D3

[10:11:26 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea I figured

[10:11:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is it really that bad of an engine to work with?

[10:12:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: It's rough. Our PBR implementation frankly sucks

[10:12:52 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's physically based rendering, the nice looking metal you see in newer games

[10:12:56 PM] Tyler McVicker: I know

[10:12:57 PM] Tyler McVicker: Lol

[10:13:01 PM] Tyler McVicker: It sucks?!

[10:13:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah, it can't deal with packed textures

[10:13:40 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and the entire rendering core is built upon having a seperate texture for each channel

[10:14:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: in unity and unreal 4, you would just drop in 3 textures that contain all of the maps on different channels

[10:14:30 PM] Tyler McVicker: So Valve will be working on other engines from here on out, after they get out whatever projects are too late to port?

[10:15:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: for example, things like metalness maps, which are monochrome can be bundled into a single texture by using a different color channel for each map

[10:15:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: source 2 can't do that

[10:15:59 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we have to import every single map as its own texture

[10:16:09 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: And it's not just standard PBR

[10:16:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: most of the legacy Source 1 crap needs to be in source 2

[10:16:38 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why?

[10:16:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: because the whole point of the engine was easy next gen ports and easy design tools

[10:17:15 PM] Tyler McVicker: But this failed esentually?

[10:18:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: kind of. it does work but

[10:18:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the trade off is that source 2 is incredibly bloated

[10:19:09 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is this the big reason why the SDK or any games are out?

[10:19:22 PM] Tyler McVicker: Does it just take a long time to dev for?

[10:21:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: not really, it's just not as good as other engines

[10:22:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: Would you say Valve is out of the engine game?

[10:22:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and it has absolutely no unique feature that would be impossible to port to Unity and Unreal

[10:22:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there are 2 cool things in Source 2: Volumetric Physics and strand rendering for hair

[10:23:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: both can be ported no problem

[10:23:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah, I guess. At this point it's just an issue of pride

[10:23:46 PM] Tyler McVicker: That is going to kill certain communities

[10:24:28 PM] Tyler McVicker: So L4D3, and then Valve will let go of S2?

[10:24:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: many here are emotionally attached and just cant let it go

[10:24:46 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well, we have DOTA 2 and Destinations

[10:24:52 PM] Tyler McVicker: And I'm guessing Destinations is getting ported

[10:25:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: probably, if the L4D team doesn't cancel it in favor of an unreal rework.

[10:25:15 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well how far along would you say it is?

[10:25:16 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: destinations is staying on source 2 for the forseeable future

[10:25:25 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but our creation software is based on unity

[10:25:43 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: l4d is playable

[10:26:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's kind of unpredictable though, it's good enough for an early access release, absolutely

[10:26:26 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but you never know

[10:26:30 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is it radically different to be able to incorporate "Games as a Service" ?

[10:26:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if tomorrow they all agree that it should be moved to unity, then it'll be canceled the same day

[10:27:03 PM] Tyler McVicker: Holy shit

[10:27:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well, the l4d team is in the unreal camp

[10:27:16 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and they're wrong

[10:27:30 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is L4D being made in Unreal?

[10:27:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: Or Source 2?

[10:27:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: source 2 atm

[10:27:54 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is there talks to cancel it?

[10:28:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's tension between that group. some REALLY want to keep Source 2 so all the work they put in isn't going to waste

[10:28:52 PM] Tyler McVicker: Any vets on the team, or just new guys?

[10:29:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I think one of the art guys came over from turtle rock after l4d2

[10:29:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: mostly new faces

[10:30:21 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's good though. If they want to keep source 2 they should just release it right now on early access

[10:30:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: I would expect them to want some fanfare around it

[10:30:44 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, E3 or somthing

[10:31:41 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: e3 requires the ability to abide by deadlines, which is why we almost never visit shows.

[10:32:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if there just happens to be an event going on while a team feels comfortable with an announcement, sure.

[10:32:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: Would L4D not be on Xbox or whatever/

[10:32:43 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but we don't plan ahead to meet meaningless dates when we have the biggest marketing machinge on millions of PCs already.

[10:32:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: machine

[10:33:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: not if it's source 2

[10:33:12 PM] Tyler McVicker: Wow

[10:33:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[10:33:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: except if they're really pulling of some coding magic

[10:33:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why is that

[10:33:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well

[10:34:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the dirty secret is that source 2 runs an almost feature complete version of source 1 at all times

[10:34:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: at this point in time

[10:34:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: this was never intended for release but it doesn't look like they're doing anything about that design flaw

[10:35:05 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and now we're at a point where years of development went into this thing

[10:35:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and you have to ask yourself, is it worth the trouble of reversing years of stacking shit on top of the Source 1 frame

[10:36:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: or if you should start over with a modern approach to level design and shading

[10:36:26 PM] Tyler McVicker: So Source 2 is just Source 2016

[10:36:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and then you'll have to ask yourself, why the hell am I not using Unreal 4 which already does all those things and tbh does them a lot better

[10:37:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is the only tradition game in real dev L4D?

[10:37:41 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: source 2 is kind of like cutting a spoon into a fork. it works but why would you, just get a fork.

[10:38:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that depends on your definition of real development

[10:38:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: I mean a group of people, like, more than 5, working on a game on a daily basis

[10:38:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: does a game with a more troubled development history than The Last Guardian count? We got plenty of those

[10:39:08 PM] Tyler McVicker: More than just ep3, sob and hl3?

[10:39:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: sob is dead, completely

[10:39:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I don't see it ever coming back

[10:39:34 PM] Tyler McVicker: I figured

[10:39:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: It was an MMO though?

[10:40:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's kind of like a mix between star citizen and destiny.

[10:40:22 PM] Tyler McVicker: Cool

[10:40:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: What other crap is in dev hell?

[10:40:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and ultimately failed because their ideas were bigger than their time schedule

[10:40:56 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we tried to bring it back as a VR title

[10:41:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and it would have been amazing

[10:41:46 PM] Tyler McVicker: Was it canned before 2014?

[10:41:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: open world questing, dynamic transitions between planetary fps combat and space travel.

[10:42:02 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh boy

[10:42:07 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is that what the QuestCitizens are?

[10:42:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it was never really cancelled, it's one of these things that people stopped working on, then my team picked up their work and dropped it too.

[10:43:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: from the dota 2 leak?

[10:43:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that was intentional

[10:43:30 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh fuck

[10:43:32 PM] Tyler McVicker: Here we go

[10:43:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we haven't had a leak since D0g

[10:43:40 PM] Tyler McVicker: WHat

[10:43:41 PM] Tyler McVicker: WHAT

[10:43:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: You are making me feel like a puppet kind sir

[10:43:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: at least i think so, maybe you remember something?

[10:44:13 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay, so everything left in destinations was intentional?

[10:44:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that I do not know

[10:44:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay, one sec

[10:44:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the hl3.txt leak? come on. do you think were that stupid?

[10:44:55 PM] Tyler McVicker: This stuff

[10:45:18 PM] Tyler McVicker: The HL3 leak I figured was intentional, especially since it was in for like, 2 days

[10:45:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: gordon in front of a mac was kind of an in-joke

[10:46:16 PM] Tyler McVicker: How so?

[10:46:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we used that as the in-engine placeholder for the player spawn when playing seated VR

[10:46:52 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can only see it if you're watching someone play in the source 2 editor.

[10:47:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: hl3.txt and rpg.txt were intentional

[10:47:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay, why though

[10:47:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm not sure about mac gordon, that might have been an accident

[10:48:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: More than Mac Gordon was found

[10:48:09 PM] Tyler McVicker: HLVR stuff along with more RPG stuff was also found

[10:48:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah, eversything else is intentional

[10:48:28 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[10:48:30 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why

[10:48:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: hlvr is the codename for my team's game

[10:48:47 PM] Tyler McVicker: It's not Half-Life VR is it

[10:48:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: what once was fstop

[10:48:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no it's a crossover game

[10:48:55 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is it the Portal VR game

[10:49:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: Crossover from HL and Portal uni?

[10:50:25 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the story jumps between locations in BM East pre-cascade and Aperture after the events of portal 1.

[10:50:43 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's told from two different character's views

[10:51:17 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I won't spoil anything, no worries.

[10:51:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's just the basic premise

[10:51:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: Please not story-wise no

[10:52:40 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the gameplay is focused around perspective puzzles

[10:52:59 PM] Tyler McVicker: Which is what F-Stop is?

[10:53:01 PM] Tyler McVicker: Was

[10:53:03 PM] Tyler McVicker: ?

[10:54:26 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I really don't want to give away too much since this is the most likely game to survive but you can store depth information from different positions in a test chamber and then you jump between them

[10:54:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: for example, you can photograph a switch in one end of the room

[10:55:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and an immovable cube in the other

[10:55:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: then you layer the two photos

[10:55:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and they become one

[10:55:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: then you stick your head through the photo to teleport into that reality

[10:56:08 PM] Tyler McVicker: I was almost right

[10:56:10 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's the basic puzzle mechanic

[10:56:12 PM] Tyler McVicker: I was so close to being right

[10:56:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: I never thought of the photo layering bit

[10:56:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: this is one of those cases where you can pretend like it's your idea. it you sell it right, it might generate a bit of hype around the concept

[10:57:05 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if you*

[10:57:09 PM] Tyler McVicker: I can

[10:57:16 PM] Tyler McVicker: I'll send you the script when it's done

[10:57:28 PM] Tyler McVicker: This isn't until next month

[10:57:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: I'm working on a CSCZ video this month

[10:57:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: And it's killing me

[10:58:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if you want to see artwork for certain project, I miiight be able to help you out

[10:58:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: as long as they stay confidential

[10:58:34 PM] Tyler McVicker: I can keep it just here

[10:58:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: projects*

[10:58:56 PM] Tyler McVicker: If you could help me out with a few pieces of F-Stop art, that would be a huge help with the video

[10:58:57 PM] Tyler McVicker: Just art

[10:58:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I hope so. don't use your inside scoop to impress VT

[10:59:07 PM] Tyler McVicker: I don't talk to them

[10:59:19 PM] Tyler McVicker: They usually message me to threaten, or to get info on projects I'm working in

[10:59:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I have access to some fstop models too

[10:59:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: only a few

[10:59:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: really old programmer art

[11:00:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we recycled them as placeholders for the current reincarnation

[11:00:12 PM] Tyler McVicker: Cool

[11:00:26 PM] Tyler McVicker: Portal 2 has the hud, the texture sheet for the camera

[11:00:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: and a few textures from levels

[11:03:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: may i ask how much peope on the outside know about what happened to Half-Life between Ep2 and today?

[11:03:48 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[11:03:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well

[11:03:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: really curious about that because we keep hinting and no one really picks up on anything

[11:04:01 PM] Tyler McVicker: There are a lot of people that claim to know

[11:04:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: just how much do they know?

[11:04:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: I have been studying this for a big video for Feb/March

[11:04:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: There is one firl

[11:04:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: girl

[11:04:45 PM] Tyler McVicker: Kay

[11:05:02 PM] Tyler McVicker: Who claims to know everything, and she is one of the people that also claims to have the source dev repo

[11:05:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: She is going around telling people that it only recently start up dev again like, a few months ago

[11:05:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: However, the rest of her story is all over the place

[11:05:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: wait

[11:05:50 PM] Tyler McVicker: Also she is one of those stalkers I was telling you about

[11:06:07 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: do you want me to summarize?

[11:06:22 PM] Tyler McVicker: Let me guess first

[11:06:26 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: k

[11:06:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: wait

[11:07:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[11:07:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there were multiple attempts development resets. specifically 2010. 12 and 15

[11:07:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: multiple attempted, geez, spellinh

[11:08:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I give up, you win, keyboard

[11:08:15 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay well, what I thought was

[11:08:45 PM] Tyler McVicker: After Orange Box, Newell, Wolpaw, Falisek, Jeep, Swift and a few others were on this press junket

[11:08:46 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm gonna be real impressed if you can guess the theme ans setting of each iteration

[11:08:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and*

[11:08:57 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh hell no

[11:09:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[11:09:16 PM] Tyler McVicker: Once the junket was over, the science fair started

[11:09:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: And most of Valve's projects were put on hold and this is where F-Stop and Time and 2 Bots 1 Wrech came from

[11:10:02 PM] Tyler McVicker: Ep3 was being dev before this happened, but afterwards was stalled due to everyone wanting to go in and work on Portal 2

[11:10:15 PM] Tyler McVicker: F-Stop stops in like 2009-ish

[11:10:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: And the rest of POrtal 2 takes shape with a big team until 2011

[11:10:54 PM] Tyler McVicker: Ep3 was forgotten in the chaos, and it wasn't until 2010 that dev restarted, however with the bigger scope of HL3 instead of Ep3

[11:11:19 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: so far so good

[11:11:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: Now, Durring the steampipe updates, there was a map that leaked, that involved bringing gas tanks to a helicopter pad in the artic

[11:12:08 PM] Tyler McVicker: This is very unknown in the community, however it points to the idea that the initial HL3 was borrowing many ideas from whatever was being deved for Ep3

[11:12:23 PM] Tyler McVicker: Esentually fleshing out Ep3 into a whole game with a much longer story

[11:12:26 PM] Tyler McVicker: But

[11:12:28 PM] Tyler McVicker: DOTA 2

[11:12:47 PM] Tyler McVicker: I know that Valve got the license way before 12

[11:12:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: but

[11:13:10 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: dota has quite the interesting history too

[11:13:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: It didn't start the public beta around 12

[11:13:44 PM] Tyler McVicker: And I've allways thought that most of the HL people went over to work on the DOTA cash cow

[11:13:55 PM] Tyler McVicker: Then CS:GO became a much better game and that took man power over

[11:14:21 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: funny how you don't mention tf2

[11:14:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: However, CS is dying down, and TF is nowhere near what it was

[11:14:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: TF2 is one of my favorite games of all time

[11:14:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there are like 5 people working on tf2 atm

[11:14:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: I think it's more fun then CS and DOTA

[11:14:44 PM] Tyler McVicker: And I know

[11:14:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: They are not doing the best of jobs right now

[11:15:03 PM] Tyler McVicker: The Halloween update was broken all weekend

[11:15:05 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: can't disagree

[11:15:19 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I should probably explain that one

[11:15:19 PM] Tyler McVicker: Also none of them will answer an E-Mail from me

[11:16:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: in software development, there is what's called a shippable

[11:17:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's a bug not sever enough to warrant a delay

[11:18:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: some people here consider all of valve's OS X support a "shippable"

[11:18:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're not even that wrong, sadly

[11:19:06 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: os x is a tiny fraction of steam usage

[11:19:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and most of the time, actually always as far as i recall, we don't playtest on osx

[11:19:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: all our playtesting is done inhouse except for smaller things

[11:20:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and updates with a certain deadline won't get a dedicated playtest session at all

[11:21:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: usually we would all play tf2 for a day and write bug reports

[11:21:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that doesn't happen with osx at all

[11:21:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: everyone plays on windows

[11:21:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we have 3 macs in the entire building and they're all imacs

[11:21:56 PM] Tyler McVicker: You don't just have one guy with a Mac in the room?

[11:22:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's literally INSIDE the TF2 room. it's infuriating

[11:22:19 PM] Tyler McVicker: Not even like an employees mac laptop?

[11:22:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like the major bug was that Mac would crash on server join

[11:22:41 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: correct

[11:22:54 PM] Tyler McVicker: That went on for hours after the update was pushed

[11:23:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: affected a tiny minority of the total playerbase

[11:23:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm not defending them but it's a business decising on their part

[11:23:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and sadly the correct one

[11:24:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: Alright

[11:24:03 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well I use Windows

[11:24:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the financial dent from loosing a couple hundred players for a day or 2 is nothing compared to missing an important deadline

[11:25:21 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: a whole week worth of playtesting and fixing would mean missing october

[11:25:48 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's all.

[11:26:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: Alright

[11:26:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: back to hl

[11:27:09 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yea

[11:27:15 PM] Tyler McVicker: Just tell me then

[11:27:22 PM] Tyler McVicker: BEcause I told you everything I have figured out so far

[11:27:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: oh k

[11:29:07 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: after ep2, the HL team tried to buy more time for their own final third episode by licensing episodes out to other studios

[11:29:21 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you probably already know that part

[11:29:41 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the planned order of episodes changed too

[11:29:58 PM] Tyler McVicker: I know about return to ravenholm

[11:30:03 PM] Tyler McVicker: and Warren Spectors

[11:30:05 PM] Tyler McVicker: And EA

[11:30:07 PM] Tyler McVicker: Any others?

[11:30:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: monolith i think

[11:30:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, Xenoblade people?

[11:30:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the fear people

[11:31:06 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh okay

[11:31:48 PM] Tyler McVicker: Btw, how do you know all this if you started in 2014?

[11:32:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: what's the first thing you would do on your first day at valve?

[11:32:57 PM] Tyler McVicker: Look through everything

[11:32:59 PM] Tyler McVicker: Play anything

[11:33:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: this

[11:33:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: Learn everything

[11:33:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: I would do that at any game company

[11:33:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: ok

[11:33:35 PM] Tyler McVicker: I get it

[11:33:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: monolith was supposed to do a horror themed episode

[11:34:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the deal never went through sadly.

[11:34:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: So no dev happened on that?

[11:34:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: none, there is concept art though

[11:35:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: Have you seen it?

[11:36:52 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I've seen two, there are apparently more. every piece in our archival system is numbered and there are a few missing between them

[11:37:38 PM] Tyler McVicker: So the numbers were gonna be differnet?

[11:38:41 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah it skipps a couple numbers that are filled up by nothing

[11:38:54 PM] Tyler McVicker: What do you mean?

[11:39:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: basically, you can look at a list of all archived pieces from PCs within the local network

[11:40:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh okay

[11:40:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if you want to actually look at them, you have to input the number into a pc in our archival room

[11:41:02 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and you can view them from there

[11:41:12 PM] Tyler McVicker: So tell me the story on exactually what happened

[11:41:25 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: or access them via ftp, which you're not allowed to if you're not a vet.

[11:41:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: k

[11:45:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: after negotiations with monolith failed, their artists left and the other outsourced episodes weren't progressing either, the team agreed to cancel all licensed episodes and to take a break from ep3 to work on other projects

[11:47:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: as soon as portal 2 shipped everyone moved back into the hl rooms

[11:47:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: up until that point it was just supposed to be a straight sequel to ep2

[11:48:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: starting almost exactly

[11:48:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: where ep2 left off

[11:49:18 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: It would have probably been what you and everyone else expected

[11:49:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: hl2 with snow and an ending

[11:50:25 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they were in that weird in between period where source 1 started to really show it's age but source 2 was barely even on anyones mind

[11:51:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: in 2012, they basically threw out the entire concept of episodic content

[11:52:12 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that was a pretty big deal actually as some were clearly convinced that all content from now on should be episodic to avoid droughts

[11:52:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: so they started fresh

[11:53:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and tried to really set a different tone than the previous games

[11:54:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: 2012 hl3 was kind of a throwback to mid-development cycle HL2

[11:54:17 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: by that i mean kind of dark

[11:54:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: visually and thematically

[10/23/2016 11:55:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I get sad every time I think about that particular reincarnation of HL3, it's by far my favorite

[10/23/2016 11:55:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: That period of HL2 is my favorite

[10/23/2016 11:55:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: Are we talking like Air-Ex and stuff

[10/23/2016 11:55:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: ?

[10/23/2016 11:56:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we're talking cremators

[10/23/2016 11:57:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: from what i've heard, the cremators came originally from an entirely different project

[10/23/2016 11:58:05 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but the team liked the design so much that they appeared briefly during hl2's development and again during hl3 in 2012

[10/23/2016 11:58:43 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I've probably seen every bit of that particular era there is

[10/23/2016 11:59:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there is actually footage of the intro sequence

[10/23/2016 11:59:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: Remind me in a week an I'll try to get it

[12:00:26 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: gordon would wake up inside of an unspecified dimension

[12:00:41 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: apparently not xen

[12:01:30 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: so you would wake up in this field of grass

[12:02:50 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and there are these beings in the sky that look kind of like living aurora borealis (the lights, not the ship)

[12:03:06 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: like worms of light or something

[12:03:49 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: I don't know what was supposed to happen after that but It was definitely supposed to be the intro sequence

[12:04:00 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: not just for the demo but in general for the game later on

[12:04:37 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the rest of my knowledge is from a story outline and a couple of artworks

[12:05:38 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: so apparently you would "wake up" from that sequence and find yourself in the midst of a battle.

[12:06:06 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: altough there were supposed to be flashbacks to that place all throughout the game

[12:06:24 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: where you would pass out and find yourself in that dimension

[12:07:45 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: i don't know if that place is supposed to be real of a construct of your mind

[12:08:01 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the lines become really blurry for that kind of stuff later on

[12:08:19 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: so you're in the mids of a battle

[12:09:42 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's a single piece of artwork to this scene. it's a city skyline with a swarm of ships or aircraft in the sky

[12:10:09 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's apparently a full on invasion happening

[12:10:40 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: there are a couple more of there intentionally dream like scenes

[12:10:58 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: they were supposed to be a recap what happened in the last few years

[12:11:04 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: 10 apparently

[12:11:15 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: was

[12:11:32 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: 10 years, not 10 flashbacks

[12:11:58 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and it the jumps were supposed to get intentionally more dramatic

[12:12:42 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you were supposed to be shocked by how much has happened and changed since ep2

[12:14:18 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: so after watching how all of earth ends up getting enslaved, you finally wake up in a sterile looking room

[12:14:28 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: apparently for real this time

[12:16:48 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it turns out you're in a lab and I heavily suspect that you're in some kind of aperture facility

[12:18:44 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: because, and this is where it get's different, some of the artwork depicts gordon with a mechanical arm that looks very aperture-like

[12:19:29 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you somehow lost your arm, you have no idea were you've been for 10 years

[12:19:55 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and part of the storyline was unraveling what exactly went down during these 10 years

[12:21:51 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and in the beginning of 2014. they were making good progress

[12:22:22 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: to the point where they showed a closed doors demo to a few select media personalities

[12:22:34 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's the only playable version I ever had access to

[12:22:47 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and it's amazing

[12:23:09 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the mechanical arm replaced your weapon most of the time

[12:23:17 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and you could control the elements

[12:23:20 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: for example

[12:23:30 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: this is the #1 reason why source exists

[12:23:35 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: soruce 2 that is

[12:24:11 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and that's the physics engine

[12:24:32 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: they made their own custom physics engine for this to replace havok

[12:24:44 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and it's completely volumetric

[12:24:47 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: for example

[12:25:06 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can switch between ice and fire

[12:25:24 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: let's say you see an enemy down the hallway

[12:26:04 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can switch to a weapon and shoot, altough the game had steath components and you weren't supposed to shoot

[12:26:28 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you're in this hallway, trying to avoid bein spottet while also clearing the area of enemies

[12:27:26 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it starts off in a hallway, this particular level and you would combine your abilities to take out the enemies without being suspicious

[12:27:56 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: for example, you can freeze the floor a couple feet in front of you

[12:29:21 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: then you can use the ice to kick over an exploding barrel, it would slide down the hallway, enemies would mistake it as an intruder and open fire

[12:30:28 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can also erode support structures on a bridge by freezing, melting, freezing, melting for a while until the bridge colapses

[12:31:34 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: temperature is one of the things where volumetric physics can be pretty insane

[12:32:31 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it would simulate basic thermodynamics for things like making a baloon fly by heating up the air in front of you

[12:32:54 AM] Tyler McVicker: Why was this canned?!

[12:33:06 AM] Tyler McVicker: Everything you have said is perfect

[12:33:35 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and, although this didn't make it in before the cancellation, you were supposed to get an air abilityat some point later in the game

[12:34:38 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and again, thanks to volumetric physics, you would be able to blow things away from you in a physically plausible way

[12:35:49 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the system would also be able to simulate ropes and springs with plausible behavious

[12:36:25 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can have many ropes connected together into some kind of shape and it would behave and tear plausibly

[12:36:37 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's all still in source 2

[12:36:49 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: but it's not reliant on source at all

[12:37:39 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: theoretically, we could license that technology as middleware for other engines

[12:38:35 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: when I joined the team, one of my first contributions was rubikon strands

[12:39:17 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: that's a simplified version of the rope system to plausibly simulate hair particles

[12:40:16 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can have about 5000 strands of hair on the screen with minimal framerate impact

[12:41:13 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: I have backups on all the work I did on that project and more than just a few test recordings

[12:41:28 AM] Tyler McVicker: Why did it get cancelled?

[12:41:47 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: we're not done yet, I havent talked about the setting yet

[12:41:54 AM] Tyler McVicker: Oh okay

[12:42:15 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: they wanted to make it a super dark vision of the future

[12:43:39 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: so the whole world is enslaved under this (presumably combine) network of beings

[12:43:55 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you're back in city 17 at some point

[12:44:00 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: although not much is left

[12:45:58 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: There's now a government of humans in place that have been selected by these beings as their "representatives"

[12:46:30 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: their job is to spread propaganda about these being

[12:46:39 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and to make it seem like a good thing

[12:48:10 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: So in city 17, theres a new resistance group of people who live off the being's radars.

[12:50:08 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you join them and I guess become their leader

[12:52:01 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: you're scavenging for food with the group and you stumble upon what looks like a factory

[12:52:41 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: well, it turns out, they're making cremators in that factory

[12:53:55 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: every time someone commits a crime or what the representatives view as a crime, the person would be mentally tortured until they are i guess ready to become a cremator

[12:55:55 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: they are torturing them by somehow implating hallucinations that drive them insane. then the bodies are modified to be turned into cremators who would then patrol the streets as police and light everyone on fire who doesn't abide by the rules.

[12:56:36 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: during hl2s development, the cremators were supposed to be used against headcrabs, not humans

[12:57:00 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the worst part is, that's where it stopps

[12:57:17 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: there is not much beyond that point

[12:57:49 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: games are rarely developed linearly, HL games however are. The story is usually written alongside creating the levels.

[1:00:02 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: so that's where it ends in mid 2015 over creative differences. The writer apparently had a great idea how to finish off the story and connect it back to the end of portal 2

[1:00:15 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the rest of the team didn't agree at all

[1:00:16 AM] Tyler McVicker: Who was the writer?

[1:00:46 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: laidlaw and at least one co writer

[1:01:18 AM] Tyler McVicker: And it got cancelled due to creative differences?

[1:02:40 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: they kind of decided that it would be better to part ways so that laidlaw can focus on writing without constant whining by the designers.

[1:02:50 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it sounds more dramatic than it actually is

[1:03:01 AM] Tyler McVicker: That's why he left?

[1:03:34 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: kind of, yeah. Apparently he wasn't too happy with his work in general and thought about leaving earlier

[1:03:51 AM] Tyler McVicker: So it was cancelled because of Laidlaw

[1:03:54 AM] Tyler McVicker: Wow

[1:04:42 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's no bad blood though between valve and laidlaw

[1:04:54 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it was more of a mutual agreement to seperate

[1:05:15 AM] Tyler McVicker: So that leaves us with the 2015 restart

[1:05:36 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: I would say it got canned because of the rest of the team constantly criticising laidlaw, not in reverse

[1:05:45 AM] Tyler McVicker: Why though?

[1:06:11 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: because he had all the good ideas

[1:06:23 AM] Tyler McVicker: This is just upsetting

[1:07:05 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the designers were just whining all the time how their opinion should be more important because it is a video game and not a book.

[1:07:24 AM] Tyler McVicker: I'm guessing these guys hadn't worked on HL2

[1:07:27 AM] Tyler McVicker: Or HL1

[1:07:46 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: nope, there isn't much left of the original employees

[1:07:57 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: on HL at least

[1:09:36 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: wanna see the key art for the 2012-2015 era?

[1:09:50 AM] Tyler McVicker: Yea sure

[1:09:51 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's not much, just keyart to visualize the tone and feel of the game

[1:17:02 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: i really like that one. there's another one called "among rats" but have access to it from at home

[1:17:03 AM] Tyler McVicker: So what was being worked on there, is completely gone now?

[1:18:18 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's a 20-ish people team right now to my knowledge. that's not tiny by valve standards but nowhere near peak 2014

[1:19:12 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's actually kind of exciting right now

[1:19:28 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: don't get your hopes up though

[1:20:28 AM] Tyler McVicker: But like, is it building off of what they had, or completely restarting

[1:20:35 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: wolpaw has done 2 recording sessions for voice acting this week. at least he booked two

[1:20:52 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and he's not VO director on my project

[1:20:54 AM] Tyler McVicker: For Half Life?

[1:21:11 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: presumably

[1:21:29 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: definitely not l4d3

[1:21:46 AM] Tyler McVicker: So 20 people

[1:21:53 AM] Tyler McVicker: Is it the same game still?

[1:22:01 AM] Tyler McVicker: With Wolpaw working on it?

[1:24:08 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm not sure if I should tell you this because it's kind of gossipy but apparently there was a falling out between newell and the design lead

[1:24:21 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: lots of shouting

[1:24:25 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're fired now

[1:24:39 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the design lead and his minions

[1:25:01 AM] Tyler McVicker: I heard about this actually

[1:25:10 AM] Tyler McVicker: That there were fireings

[1:25:37 AM] Tyler McVicker: Just creative differences?

[1:25:40 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: they are also not telling other groups what the hell they are currently doing in that room

[1:26:18 AM] Tyler McVicker: So you don't know if it's the same game then?

[1:26:31 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: they have a new designer but no experienced lead at the moment

[1:26:57 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the most recent thing i know is that wolpaw is not writing anything currently

[1:27:13 AM] Tyler McVicker: But he is doing VO stuff?

[1:27:35 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and I don't know what that means, did they change the story? How without writers?

[1:27:59 AM] Tyler McVicker: He had voice acting appointments

[1:28:57 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: but I also don't want to get excited because, every time I mention the 2014 era, they sound so nostalgic. Not in a good way though. In a "Yeah, If only we finished that idea" way.

[1:29:09 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: not a quote, that's just how it sounds to me

[1:29:25 AM] Tyler McVicker: If he isn't writing, what is he doing?

[1:29:49 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: he's VO director

[1:29:54 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: but here's the thing

[1:30:09 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: so far he hasn't directed a story that he didn write himself

[1:30:30 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: but supposedly, he's not writing

[1:30:54 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: and last time they got so secretive, things didn't turn out well

[1:31:09 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: so far, internal secrecy has always been a bad sign

[1:31:47 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: he wrote and directed robot repair

[1:31:54 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: but it's been a while since then

[1:32:06 AM] Tyler McVicker: That was over a year ago

[1:32:10 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: no idea what he's doing, he comes to work every day

[1:32:33 AM] Tyler McVicker: Well, he is in the secret room

[1:32:39 AM] Tyler McVicker: Right?

[1:33:26 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the only secret room I am aware of is our VR R&D unit

[1:33:40 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the half life room is accessible

[1:33:55 AM] Tyler McVicker: Oh, then how are they being secretive?

[1:34:31 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's just not hard drives upon hardd rives of working builds stacked on top of another if that's what you're hoping for.

[1:35:06 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: by half life room, I mean the meeting room for the half life group

[1:35:38 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: the actual development happens in regular office rooms

[1:35:46 AM] Tyler McVicker: Okay, so it's being worked on, by a group larger than 10, that's all I needed to know.

[1:36:03 AM] Tyler McVicker: So like, where does the RPG.txt and HL3.txt come in?

[1:36:39 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: well, they're hints

[1:37:11 AM] Tyler McVicker: Towards what though? It leaked Oct last year and youre telling me that hl3 had stopped dev at that point.

[1:37:34 AM] Tyler McVicker: And also I have no idea on what the RPG is for

[1:37:42 AM] Tyler McVicker: There are some rumors going around.

[1:37:48 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: exactly, if you take a look at older leaks, they line up with development breaks

[1:38:03 AM] Tyler McVicker: How so?

[1:38:10 AM] Tyler McVicker: The leaks happen when dev breaks?

[1:42:41 AM] Tyler McVicker: So the things that leaked are things that were scrapped?

[1:44:42 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: we don't just do it with half life. If the community starts to get upset, we leak small things that hint at what was planned before we hit the roadblock. It gives them a bit more hope and us valuable feedback if they liked what we were doing. There's always the chance that we might pick it back up and continue, if they liked it

[1:45:15 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: kind of, yeah, but scraps that are still in consideration for the next attempt

[1:46:47 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: For example, when the TF2 community gets mad, we leak things to make them aware that we are actually still working on the game and caring, we're just now very efficient

[1:47:06 AM] Tyler McVicker: Okay, my mind needs a little bit to process all this info. I won't be spreading this, and I appreciate you coming to me to discuss all this. I just have one more question for tonight. You say that Valve has seen my stuff, and are aware of my channel, but do they look at it positively? Like, does Valve like Valve News Network?

[1:47:40 AM] Tyler McVicker: And we haven't had a tf2 leak in a long while. Have we been missing it?

[1:47:47 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: just not very efficient*

[1:48:02 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: no, there wasn't anything to leak this time

[1:48:22 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: this time the fuck up happened while releasing the update

[1:48:42 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: we can't leak parts of the update when that's the cause

[1:50:18 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: I can't speak for everyone but they wouldn't watch your videos for feedback if they don't care what you have to say

[1:52:33 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: just maybe don't link to archives of pirated copies of most of our games?

[1:53:44 AM] Tyler McVicker: Yea I understand that, I'm gonna redo the archive and remove some the dlls and stuff of the leaks.

[1:54:05 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: I don't think you have to

[1:54:32 AM] Tyler McVicker: Oh is Valve gonna take it down?

[1:54:39 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: we don't sue, we just shake our heads on disappointment

[1:54:53 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: nooo, nothings going to happen afaik

[1:55:24 AM] Tyler McVicker: Oh, well I didn't realize

[1:55:34 AM] Tyler McVicker: I won't be linking to the archive anymore then.

[1:55:57 AM] Tyler McVicker: Does this mean Valve doesn't like reporting on Leaks at all? Like those that had happened in the video?

[1:56:16 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's been up for a while and aside from some not so thrilled comments, no one here wan'ts do do anything about it

[1:56:37 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: leaks are fine

[1:56:59 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: 80% of them are controlled ones anyway

[1:58:14 AM] Tyler McVicker: Okay, I figured. I didnt realize it was upsetting. Anyways, I appreciate the conversation, and I'll try to message you soon so we can continue, I've just got class in the morning

[1:58:19 AM] Tyler McVicker: Thanks

[1:59:15 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: no problem. I will keep you updated

[2:00:12 AM] Cephalon Cephalon: message me via mail please, I won't check and maintain this account unless for conversations

[3:18:12 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: just got out of the nintendo meeting

[3:18:18 PM] Tyler McVicker: Cool

[3:18:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they offered 6 figures for an exclusive

[3:18:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we're thinking about it

[3:19:05 PM] Tyler McVicker: That's pretty interesting

[3:19:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: Probably a Unity made game

[3:19:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: Something Puzzle, attached to Aperture

[3:19:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: could be unreal. most here seem to be team unreal and NX supports it

[3:19:55 PM] Tyler McVicker: Nice

[3:20:02 PM] Tyler McVicker: Unreal is cool too

[3:20:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: switch, sorry. that's a habit by now

[3:20:10 PM] Tyler McVicker: I still call it NX

[3:20:27 PM] Tyler McVicker: I reported on that thing since it's first announcement, it's NX to me for a while

[3:20:41 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we got 5 of each

[3:20:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there are 2 versions

[3:20:52 PM] Tyler McVicker: What do you mean each?

[3:21:09 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: one with just the screen part that looks more or less identical to the one in the reveal video

[3:21:36 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and one with a "box" at the back with built in lan and a controller port

[3:21:57 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh, so a dev unit

[3:22:09 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah, they're final internals though

[3:22:25 PM] Tyler McVicker: Does the box one have like, 2 coaxel looking things

[3:22:32 PM] Tyler McVicker: Sticking out

[3:22:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: uh, they do. how do you know?

[3:23:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: It leaked the day before the reveal

[3:23:07 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: oh

[3:23:20 PM] Tyler McVicker: So that's pretty sweet

[3:23:34 PM] Tyler McVicker: Did they show anything of interest?

[3:24:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we talked for almost 2 hours, they showed pretty much everything there is to show

[3:24:35 PM] Tyler McVicker: Nice

[3:24:48 PM] Tyler McVicker: Was that Mario footage representative of anything?

[3:25:00 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: how do you know they showed us mario?

[3:25:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: Did you see the reveal?

[3:25:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: of course

[3:25:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: It had like 4 seconds of Mario something

[3:25:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: oh, sorry, I thought you asked about the footage they showed us

[3:25:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: It was like, Samba de Mario Galaxy

[3:25:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: hah, kind of

[3:26:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they weren't very specific and refused to answer questions about it. they showed us 2 tech demos, one of which was a new mario game

[3:27:23 PM] Tyler McVicker: Did it look more like Galaxy, 64 or 3D World?

[3:27:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm getting sunshine vibes, there were NPCs

[3:28:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: Piantas or something new

[3:28:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: hidden UI though, as in the trailer

[3:28:18 PM] Tyler McVicker: Figured

[3:28:22 PM] Tyler McVicker: It would give it away

[3:28:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the stage they showed was a forrest level

[3:28:41 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh

[3:28:46 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: so I'm guessing multiple settings, not just one

[3:28:55 PM] Tyler McVicker: That could mean 64 style is back babeeee

[3:29:11 PM] Tyler McVicker: Little background on me

[3:29:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: Galaxy is my favorite game of all time

[3:29:27 PM] Tyler McVicker: Portal is close, but Galaxy wins it

[3:30:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's an overview mode that switches to a top down view of the stage

[3:30:30 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can place waypoints

[3:30:36 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: looked open world to me

[3:30:59 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: i asked about that and they refused to answer

[3:31:13 PM] Tyler McVicker: Or maybe they are just big levels that have the man goal of the star, but side "quests" as well

[3:31:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: either that or one connected world with multiple settings

[3:31:56 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well, did they say if vet staff was working on this?

[3:32:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: Or no answers on that

[3:32:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they didn't even confirm wether it's an actual game or just a techdemo

[3:32:58 PM] Tyler McVicker: But that seems to be fleshed out a big more to be a tech demo

[3:33:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: looked way too good for just a demo though. all the assets look new and original

[3:33:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: And this console is out in 5 months

[3:33:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: It's too late to not be having full games nearing completion

[3:33:30 PM] Tyler McVicker: Tech demos are for console 2 years off

[3:33:46 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: or to convince devs to work on exclusives

[3:34:06 PM] Tyler McVicker: Irk?

[3:34:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: This was the leak

[3:34:32 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yeah, that's legit

[3:34:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: Cool

[3:34:43 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's a screenshot of the manual

[3:34:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh nice

[3:35:03 PM] Tyler McVicker: It's odd how they are still using the Nunchuk port

[3:35:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: I understand that the NES Mini uses it, but are they planning on having support for that?

[3:35:23 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'd do the same. why make an entirely new design for dev hardware?

[3:35:33 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no, it's to connect controllers

[3:35:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: for dev purposes

[3:35:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: Dev controllers?

[3:36:10 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yes, there's no bluetooth on the devkit

[3:36:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh okay

[3:36:19 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: controllers connect via wire

[3:36:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: Does it just look like the Pro controller with a cable?

[3:37:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's just a wii u pro controller with a cable. they said we're getting final controllers as soon as they roll off the production line.

[3:37:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[3:38:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: Was the other "Tech Demo" Splatoon?

[3:38:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no, the Adam demo by Unity

[3:38:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh, okay

[3:38:41 PM] Tyler McVicker: It ran that well?

[3:39:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it looked like 30 fps

[3:39:13 PM] Tyler McVicker: But it's the Adam demo

[3:39:16 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I don't know if they made any visual downgrades

[3:39:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: On a handheld

[3:39:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but I doubt it, looked as I remember it

[3:41:09 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're using a custom tegra class chip. seems to be on par with xbox one or slightly below

[3:41:13 PM] Tyler McVicker: So they gave Valve 10 units, and want an exclusive

[3:41:27 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: which is damn impressive for a portable

[3:41:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: Did they show off the dock and all that?

[3:42:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they we're very clear about not wanting to pressure us. we can just keep the kits and decide whether or not we want to do anything with them

[3:42:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: Wow they really want HL3

[3:42:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if we do decide to, they would offer between 150k to 400k depending on the franchise

[3:42:56 PM] Tyler McVicker: Haha, they actually do want HL

[3:43:05 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they specifically asked for an exclusive HL spinoff

[3:43:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: I could see a Portal thing no problem, like, with Co-Op for those controllers and stuff

[3:43:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: Who all was in the meeting?

[3:44:01 PM] Tyler McVicker: Like, did Gabe seem at all interested?

[3:44:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: around 20 people. gabe and a few other core members were there

[3:45:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: he was as impressed as anyone else in that room

[3:45:18 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh well that's cool

[3:46:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I tried real hard not to go all fangirl on them

[3:46:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is it really that impressive hardware wise?

[3:46:22 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there focus being on "tried"

[3:46:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: Lol

[3:46:27 PM] Tyler McVicker: I would have died

[3:46:40 PM] Tyler McVicker: They didn't have any NOJ people there did they?

[3:46:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: It's no scorpio but for what is essentially half handheld? yeah, very impressed

[3:47:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: nope, just nintendo devs and management

[3:47:19 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: bill trinen wasn't there either, sadly

[3:47:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: Reggie?

[3:47:48 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: nah

[3:47:56 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I didn't recognize anyone

[3:48:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: Those Treehouse people?

[3:48:09 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: actually one guy, I know from last years treehouse

[3:48:20 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the rest I didn't recognize

[3:48:22 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well, the treehouse people are pretty memorable

[3:49:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: current console games can be ported with minimal sacrifices and they run both docked and on the go

[3:49:26 PM] Tyler McVicker: Does docking do anything to performance?

[3:49:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: though the console runs at a lower clock speed when on the go

[3:49:35 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[3:49:35 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: most likely due to thermals

[3:49:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: I figured

[3:49:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's about a 20% difference

[3:49:58 PM] Tyler McVicker: What's the res on the go vs docked?

[3:50:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: which can mostly be matched visually by just dropping to 720p for mobile use

[3:50:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: docked up to 1080p and mobile up to 720p

[3:50:37 PM] Tyler McVicker: I predicted correctly

[3:50:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that may not be the screen resolution though, they were vague

[3:51:09 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the vita renders at 720 and has a 544 screen, i suspect they're doing something similiar

[3:51:21 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why is that a good thing?

[3:51:27 PM] Tyler McVicker: To have a lesser res screen?

[3:51:59 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: less than native?

[3:52:05 PM] Tyler McVicker: Yes

[3:52:21 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: because downsampling looks nicer than rendering straight 544

[3:52:36 PM] Tyler McVicker: And a 544 screen is cheaper?

[3:53:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm not saying the nx has a 544 screen, just that they didn't want to discuss specs at all aside from what they provided

[3:53:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[3:53:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they said mobile supports up to 720p, they didn't say that it's a 720p screen, that' all

[3:54:06 PM] Tyler McVicker: What's the general feeling of the office after the meeting? You think it might happen?

[3:54:40 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's now an NX group on our intranet, only 2 members so far though

[3:54:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that doesn't mean that it's gonna happen as you should know by now

[3:55:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: Well, it's definitely interesting to think about

[3:55:46 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they gave us a quick overview of the concept and their goals

[3:56:02 PM] Tyler McVicker: Anything more than the reveal went into?

[3:57:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: basically, NX is their only home console but it may not be the only handheld

[3:57:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: that depends entirely on the success of the switch brand

[3:58:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're considering a smaller, weaker version for just handheld games

[3:58:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but these games would still run on the regular switch

[3:58:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: although not the other way around

[3:59:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: Could one of the games be programmed to run better depending on the configuration it's played on?

[4:00:40 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: yes, they don't enforce parity between docked and mobile. you don't have to make your docked game work on mobile if you don't want to

[4:00:51 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but there has to be some kind of equal functionality on the go

[4:01:36 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we don't have docks btw

[4:01:44 PM] Tyler McVicker: Why?

[4:01:48 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the devkits don't have bottom IO

[4:01:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's a white plastic bar at the bottom

[4:02:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: because the EDEV has HDMI

[4:02:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and an extra fan

[4:02:20 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh okay

[4:02:46 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: EDEV is for capturing and prototyping and SDEV is for playtesting

[4:02:56 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can upload builds to EDEV via lan

[4:03:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: SDEV can only read flash cards

[4:03:08 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: of which we got 50

[4:03:17 PM] Tyler McVicker: How loarge are they

[4:03:17 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: a literal box full of cards

[4:03:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: 25 gigs

[4:03:46 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there are bigger ones on the way

[4:03:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay good

[4:03:54 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: 25 should be the target though

[4:04:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: or 24 i think

[4:04:46 PM] Tyler McVicker: SDEVs have UI at all?

[4:05:01 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: not much beyond what's shown in the photo

[4:05:09 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[4:05:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there's a setup wizard in the beginning to sign up for a nintendo acc and for language and location settings

[4:05:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: So they are pushing MyNintendo

[4:05:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can pick your location freely, though I'm not sure if that's staying for the retail release

[4:06:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I have a strong impression that it's region free

[4:06:12 PM] Tyler McVicker: It's already confirmed to be

[4:06:18 PM] Tyler McVicker: Or at least semi-confirmed

[4:06:31 PM] Tyler McVicker: There was an NOE rep that said it would be, but then the interview was taken down

[4:06:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we had to fill our a survey

[4:06:54 PM] Tyler McVicker: About what

[4:06:58 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they asked for things like "would you be interested in an achievement system?"

[4:07:05 PM] Tyler McVicker: "Yes"

[4:07:09 PM] Tyler McVicker: It's 5 months Nitnendo

[4:07:24 PM] Tyler McVicker: Do you think that March date will stick?

[4:07:31 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and if achievements should reward a currency that you can spend in games

[4:07:36 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: like play coins

[4:08:03 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: 5 months is more than enough to add achievements

[4:08:14 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: march is going to stick

[4:09:05 PM] Tyler McVicker: There was a patent app out talking about that.

[4:09:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: one interesting thing is:

[4:10:29 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they didn't talk about this and I forgot to bring it up but the documentation suggests that you can emulate touch input via IR

[4:10:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you can use touch on the go or pointing at home

[4:10:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: not sure how that's going to work without wii motes

[4:11:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: there are at least code snippets to get the location info of an IR cursor

[4:11:55 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and they use the same function as touch interaction

[4:12:25 PM] Tyler McVicker: That's weird.

[4:12:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: Maybe the joy cons would do it?

[4:12:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: That's the weirdest part

[4:13:06 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: we didn't get any

[4:13:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: What

[4:13:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're not ready to be released

[4:13:30 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay then

[4:13:42 PM] Tyler McVicker: So the final design is not done?

[4:13:42 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they want to reveal some secret about them publicly before they risk leaks

[4:13:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: no, they're done

[4:13:59 PM] Tyler McVicker: What do you mean?

[4:14:02 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: just not ready to be in the hands of devs

[4:14:13 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: i think the secret is that they double as wiimotes

[4:14:39 PM] Tyler McVicker: I thought it want backwards compatible

[4:14:43 PM] Tyler McVicker: Wasn't

[4:14:49 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it isn't

[4:15:09 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: but I suspect you can flip the joycons around

[4:15:17 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and there's an IR emitter on the other side

[4:15:24 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you just switch hands

[4:15:39 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: noticed how they never show the botton in the video?

[4:15:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: bottom

[4:15:46 PM] Tyler McVicker: I did yea

[4:16:25 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: they're bringing back the web framework

[4:16:37 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: old wii u projects can be ported with literally a single click

[4:16:48 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay cool

[4:17:14 PM] Tyler McVicker: The button layout is what doesn't make sense though

[4:17:27 PM] Tyler McVicker: For it to be used as a WiiMote

[4:18:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: why not though? the stick is at the bottom of the left joycon. if you switch hands, you still have buttons under your right thumb and a stick under your left

[4:18:46 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I'm almost certain that's their reason for an asymetrical stick layout

[4:19:15 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the stick is at the top*

[4:19:45 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: if you flip the whole thing around, you're still getting the same layout

[4:20:49 PM] Tyler McVicker: Oh yea.

[4:20:53 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay

[4:21:04 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: it's essentially the same as wiimote + nunchuck

[4:21:11 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you're just missing the B button

[4:21:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: You have the triggers on the back

[4:21:35 PM] Tyler McVicker: Those could maybe work.

[4:22:07 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: you would have to press them with your pinky

[4:22:18 PM] Tyler McVicker: Gmm

[4:22:20 PM] Tyler McVicker: Hmm

[4:22:28 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: well, there are dual sholder buttons at the inside

[4:22:34 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: shoulder

[4:22:44 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: the part that slides into the screen

[4:22:57 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: at least that's what it looked like in their photos

[4:23:04 PM] Tyler McVicker: I thought so

[4:23:12 PM] Tyler McVicker: I figured it would have too

[4:23:29 PM] Tyler McVicker: Hey, I'll brb, I have to run out and do something, I'll me back in under an hour.

[4:23:33 PM] Tyler McVicker: Is that okay?

[4:24:22 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I don't think I'm available for more than 20 minutes

[4:24:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: I haven't been at the vr office all day

[4:24:47 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: and there's a lot of work to do

[4:25:00 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay. Well, I have a few questions, answer them when you get time.

[4:25:22 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: sure, just write them all down as a list and I will work my way through

[4:29:06 PM] Tyler McVicker: 1. Whats the progress on the VR game right now?

2. Was Alyx or Kliener in the 2015 era?

3. Why did you come to me to tell me this stuff?

4. Will there be a entire hardware revision for the Vive soon?

5. Is Valves relationship with HTC still good?

6. Is it not known exactly what the Hl team is even working on anymore?

7. Could I see the intro footage from the 15 build?

8. If you have any art or stuff from FStop, that would really help with the writing of a video.

9. Are there any other smaller teams working on random stuff around the office?

10. What exactly is the l4d team even working on? Is it a full sequel or a completely different type of game?

[4:29:11 PM] Tyler McVicker: Okay, ttyl

[4:43:00 PM | Edited 4:43:53 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: 1. Whats the progress on the VR game right now? 40% done if I had to put a number on it. We're targeting a surprise release during Dev Days 2017 if and only if we're happy with the game's state by then. You may hear first bits of info at GDC. We're probably going to have a VR talk and could use the chance to hint at what we're working on. Possibly footage too. I can't tell you what's going to happen until a few days prior. We're really bad at predictions and change our minds too often to promise anything.

[4:46:38 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: 2. Was Alyx or Kliener in the 2015 era? Neither were mentioned in any of the footage and artwork I saw.

[5:08:02 PM] Cephalon Cephalon: 3. Why did you come to me to tell me this stuff? Seeing all these amazing projects end up absolutely nowhere is just crushing every single time. It's relieving in a way to talk about them. My original idea was just to contact you about the "the know" video because you had