Half Life 2 R.C. Candidate.
Just under 2 weeks ago valve revealed they where indeed aiming for a September 15th date for submitting the release candidate to Vivendi and today the man himself, Gabe Newell, has confirmed:
The original RC for half life was accepted in 48 hours so we could possibly see a gold announcement next week.
RC = Release Candidate. Valve think they are done with the game and are letting vivendi test the game for any major bugs(considering valve has been bug testing for the last 3 months or so) If vivendi approves of this RC the game will go gold, and we will get a release date.
September 30th release date anyone? They never did say what year :P
Yes, the RC went to VU yesterday.
The original RC for half life was accepted in 48 hours so we could possibly see a gold announcement next week.
RC = Release Candidate. Valve think they are done with the game and are letting vivendi test the game for any major bugs(considering valve has been bug testing for the last 3 months or so) If vivendi approves of this RC the game will go gold, and we will get a release date.
September 30th release date anyone? They never did say what year :P
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I have worked in testing (games) for a few years.. and in my experience whats gonna happen is they will send this RC and venveti is probably going to jump all over it.. you gotta remember its their cash cow.. its probably one of the biggest things they are waiting for. They are probably gonna toss 6 to 8 testers just dedicated to going through the game and finishing it multiple times.. Alot of the testers will also be begging to play the game and probably be offered overtime.. There are probably some testers who are still playing it now and haven't slept. they are getting paid good money and enjoying the game..
Venveti is going to have a checklist of MAJOR things that NEED to work.. any small bugs will be noted.. but if the game passes all major functionality it will be greenlit.. I'm a BIT skepetical of 2 days.. half life 2 is a bit bigger than half life 1 was at least in terms of hype and how much money they hope to make from it. I'd say they will probably hit it hard for 3 or 4 days, and send anything serious after that time to valve.. if there's nothign serious i'd say they'd continue for another 3 or 4 days and if it looks good they will gold it. But i suspect there will probably be 1 or 2 things found and there will need to be some fixes at least 1 time is my guess.. probably only once tho. You gotta remember venveti probably doesnt have microsoft level STE's (software test engineers) doing all the testing.. while the managers will have plans and stuff, venveti knows small things can be fixed with patches.. but again they aren't exactly squished for time right now either.. if this was mid/end october they'd be panicing becuase they NEED to get it out before the thanks giving shopping holiday.. So i'm gonna say they have the liberty of sending it back for even little bugs if they want.. but in my experience most companies aren't going to sweat the little things..
I'm surprised they made the 15th date, but honestly i bet if they HAD to they could have submitted by the beggining of sept, i think the extra 15 days they had was just kind of extra time and they were just squashing more stuff.. you also gotta know that valve knows right now there's bugs in the game, they know venveti will probably find them, but they are things they know the game can live with.. there's a point where you have to just say okay were done fixing bugs now and the ones that are in there must stay.. Becuase fixing bugs introduces new ones alot of the time.. so you have to draw a line... I'd be VERY surprised if it went gold by the weekend.. I'm expecting probably a week full of testing POSSIBLY two, then a gold announcement..
But who knows for sure! I just thought i'd give some insight here since i've worked with RC's before.. The rule of thumb is, the better the development company, the better quality the RC is.. most games never need more than an RC 3.. that is usually a pretty good one.. sometimes they go to a RC 4 and its worse, and they revert back to RC 3 becuase they know things are just going to get messier.. Fortunately valve and venveti still have time to do just do that if neccessary before the holiday shopping season starts.. WE may not like it, but i very seriously doubt thats gonna happen and i think the game will probably make it out by mid october, or early november.. The only thing they'd have to compete with really is halo 2, and thats a Console game so it hardly hurts them.. (tho for the kid who has all systems even pc, it can still be a factor of who's out during shopping time first!) enough babbling from me now
Enjoy the wait guys, cuz now i think the hard part is over! you can all relax in your chairs knowing its on its way now.
http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?p=751321#post751321
Halo 2 is november 15th yeh? Is that worldwide or just North American release?
We don't have a release date from VU at this time, but we're hoping they will put out a release date soon.
And of course, why wouldn't it be soon? Valve are reknowned for their perfection when producing games, something that's clear from the six year development cycle to get us Half-Life 2. With Half-Life taking a mere 48 hours from release candidate stage to going gold, it's pretty clear that we're on the final stretch and the waiting game is nearly over.
Taken off the frontpage of half life 2.net
I'd agree with that one, sounds about right to me.
According to the news post at HalfLife-2.nl, the magazine says they have played through the full game and will be releasing a full review with 50 brand new screenshots.
Once again, this shows that the game is getting ever closer, and soon we'll be able to find out if the long wait has been worth it.
We'll keep you posted on any further developments.
Taken from halflife2.net