this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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The story of a crazy Half-Life 2 bug, as told by former Valve dev Tom Forsyth (Mastodon thread) (mastodon.gamedev.place)
submitted 16 hours ago by silverchase@sh.itjust.works to c/games@lemmy.world
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

(Archived link)

New Half-Life 2 development lore drop!

It's a wild ride to read. It's about a very niche bug that softlocks the game but somehow the bug can travel back in time and even affect the original retail version of Half-Life 2.

TLDR: the bugThe softlock happens because an NPC is standing in the way of a door. This didn't happen in the original because it was compiled using the old-school Intel x87 floating point handling and not the (relatively) more modern SSE behaviour, which does cause the softlock. The bug managed to time travel to the retail build because modern compilers use SSE instead of x87.

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[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 17 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

I like this one:

Also, whacking the manhacks with your crowbar goes from being a panicked flailing in flatscreen, to being an elegant one-swing home-run hit in VR.

It makes me like the fact that there are no melee weapons in Half Life: Alyx even less, though.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I'm watching a playthrough of HL: Alyx right now and I'm about two hours in, and it's really disappointing that there's no crowbar. Or similar. What a staple to miss in such a game.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

Apparently Valve experimented with melee weapons early in development, but intentionally decided to cut them because of the perceived lack of impact and weightlessness of held items, but the main thing was that playtesters kept getting their long melee weapons snagged on stuff. Alyx notably does not allow your hands or held items to intersect with other objects, nor does it let your hands get too far away from your body's position to prevent shenanigans. If you unexpectedly hook your crowbar on a door frame or a table or something you'll find yourself inexplicably leashed to it after walking a couple of feet and then not be able to find your hands.

This article goes into some detail. Apparently the crowbar specifically was removed to prevent players from assuming they were Gordon Freeman, despite the constant stream of evidence to the contrary. But it doesn't seem like too much of a leap to replace that with Alyx grabbing a random length of pipe or chunk of rebar or something from the multitudes of trashed urban environments she traverses throughout the game.

Anyway, as soon as modding support was opened up for HL:A the first things that inevitably appeared were about 4,987 mods that added the crowbar back in. So it's an easy enough wish to fulfill, if that's what you want.