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141-560: Sin was released to generally positive reviews, with praise going towards its level design and premise, but criticism for technical issues that resulted from a rushed release. It sold poorly as a result of competition with Half-Life , but grew to have a cult following . Nightdive Studios acquired the rights to Sin in 2020, and in March 2020 republished the game, along with the Wages of Sin expansion pack, as Sin: Gold . In September 2020,

282-522: A Labor Day weekend in 1973, a meeting of about twelve military officers at the Pentagon discussed the creation of a Defense Navigation Satellite System (DNSS) . It was at this meeting that "the real synthesis that became GPS was created." Later that year, the DNSS program was named Navstar , or Navigation System Using Timing and Ranging. During the development of the submarine-launched Polaris missile,

423-552: A port of Half-Life for the Dreamcast , with new character models and textures and an exclusive expansion, Blue Shift . Following the cancellations of several third-party Dreamcast games in the wake of Sega 's decision to discontinue the console in March 2001, Sierra cancelled the port weeks before its scheduled release in June, citing "changing marketing conditions". Blue Shift was ported to Windows. The Dreamcast port became

564-441: A software development kit , enabling developers to modify the game and create mods . Both tools were updated with the release of the version 1.1.0.0 patch . Supporting tools (including texture editors, model editors, and level editors such as the multiple engine editor QuArK ) were either created or updated to work with Half-Life . The Half-Life software development kit served as the development base for many mods, including

705-415: A 200-page design document detailing nearly every aspect of the game. They also produced a 30-page document for the narrative, and hired the science fiction novelist Marc Laidlaw to help manage the script. Laidlaw said his contribution was to add "old storytelling tricks" to the team's ambitious designs: "I was in awe of [the team]. It felt to me like I was just borrowing from old standards while they were

846-415: A choice on whether or not to accept the offer; if he accepts, Freeman is placed into stasis , and if he does not, then Freeman is teleported in front of an army of aliens to his inevitable doom. Half-Life in many ways was a reactionary response to the trivialization of the experience of the first-person genre. Many of us had fallen in love with video games because of the phenomenological possibilities of

987-513: A concept for a horror first-person shooter (FPS) game. They did not want to build their own game engine , as this would have created too much work for a small team and Newell planned to innovate in different areas. Instead, Valve licensed the Quake engine and the Quake II engine from id Software and combined them with their own code. Newell estimated that around 75% of the final engine code

1128-497: A continuous first-person perspective for lack of time. Laidlaw said they discovered unexpected advantages in this approach, as it created a sense of immersion and enforced a sense of loneliness in a frightening environment. Laidlaw felt that non-player characters were unnecessary to guide players if the design had sufficiently strong "visual grammar", and that this allowed the characters to "feel like characters instead of signposts". An early version of Half-Life began immediately after

1269-662: A cruise missile attack. Prior to the development of nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missiles , the United States and the Soviet Union conducted their first at-sea deterrence patrols using modified submarines armed with very large nuclear-armed cruise missiles ; The US operated various diesel-electric submarines armed with the Regulus missile , and the Soviets operated Modified Whiskey -class armed with

1410-511: A crystal of unknown origin. This causes a resonance cascade which severely damages Black Mesa and causes alien creatures to teleport into the facility and begin massacring its personnel. Venturing to the surface for help, Freeman discovers the United States Marine Corps has been dispatched to Black Mesa to eliminate both the aliens and the facility's personnel as part of a government cover-up . Returning below ground, he

1551-424: A full-scale bank heist and hostage situation perpetrated by a well-known Freeport criminal boss Antonio Mancini. But as the player progresses and pursues the criminal behind the heist, further questions are raised: Who is really behind the heist? And is this linked to the reported appearances of mutants in the city? Throughout the missions, Blade is aided via radio link by a computer expert working at HardCorps: JC,

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1692-461: A fuse to initiate detonation. US nuclear weapons that met these criteria are designated by the letter "B" followed, without a hyphen, by the sequential number of the " physics package " it contains. The " B61 ", for example, was the primary bomb in the US arsenal for decades. Various air-dropping techniques exist, including toss bombing , parachute -retarded delivery, and laydown modes, intended to give

1833-491: A futuristic action-adventure on board a zoological research spaceship) and They Hunger (2000–2001, a survival horror total conversion trilogy involving zombies). Some Half-Life modifications received retail releases. Counter-Strike was the most successful, having been released in six different editions: as a standalone product (2000), as part of the Platinum Pack (2000), as an Xbox version (2003), and as

1974-414: A maze of conveyor belts or using nearby boxes to build a small staircase to the next area the player must travel to. Some puzzles involve using the environment to kill an enemy, like turning a valve to spray hot steam at their enemies. There are few bosses in the conventional sense, where the player defeats a superior opponent by direct confrontation. Instead, such organisms occasionally define chapters, and

2115-557: A navigational fix approximately once per hour. In 1967, the US Navy developed the Timation satellite that proved the ability to place accurate clocks in space, a technology required by the latter Global Positioning System . In the 1970s, the ground-based Omega Navigation System , based on phase comparison of signal transmission from pairs of stations, became the first worldwide radio navigation system. Limitations of these systems drove

2256-460: A new group of aliens called Race X and Black Ops units after being split from his team. Gearbox developed a second expansion pack, Blue Shift , in which players control Barney Calhoun , a security guard at Black Mesa, as he attempts to escape the facility. It was developed as a bonus campaign for the Dreamcast port of Half-Life, but was released for Windows on June 12, 2001, after the port

2397-623: A requirement to accurately know the submarine's location was needed to ensure a high circular error probable warhead target accuracy. This led the US to develop the Transit system. In 1959, ARPA (renamed DARPA in 1972) also played a role in Transit. The first satellite navigation system, Transit , used by the United States Navy , was first successfully tested in 1960. It used a constellation of five satellites and could provide

2538-503: A single missile to strike multiple targets, or to inflict maximum damage on a single target by attacking it with multiple warheads. It makes anti-ballistic missile defense even more difficult, and even less economically viable, than before. Missile warheads in the American arsenal are indicated by the letter "W"; for example, the W61 missile warhead would have the same physics package as

2679-551: A single-player spin-off, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (2004), as well as in two versions using the Source engine. Team Fortress Classic , Day of Defeat , Gunman Chronicles (2000, a futuristic Western movie -style total conversion with emphasis on its single-player mode) and Sven Co-op were also released as standalone products. Half-Life is also the subject of the YouTube improv roleplaying series Half-Life VR but

2820-460: A skilled hacker , capable of breaking into even the tightest of networks. In fact, Blade had first found out about JC when investigating a cracker who had broken into the HardCorps system. After tracking down the hacker, Blade, recognizing the perpetrator's talents, decided to make him a job offer at HardCorps instead of arresting him. Thus, JC became one of the HardCorps most valuable assets and

2961-500: A surprising amount of life in Half-Life ". The PlayStation 2 version was a nominee for The Electric Playground ' s 2001 Blister Awards for "Best Console Shooter Game", but lost to Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox . In 1999, 2001, and 2005, PC Gamer named Half-Life the best PC game of all time. In 2004, GameSpy readers voted Half-Life the best game of all time. Gamasutra gave it their Quantum Leap Award in

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3102-819: A third-party remake of Half-Life developed by Crowbar Collective on the Source engine, was published as a free mod in September 2012 and later approved by Valve for a commercial standalone release. In November 2023, for the 25th anniversary of Half-Life , Valve updated the Steam version to revert content to its original 1998 state, fix long-standing bugs, and add content including the Half-Life: Uplink demo, four new multiplayer maps, Steam Deck support, rendering improvements, and support for 4K resolution monitors. Valve also released an hour-long documentary on

3243-423: A three-branched nuclear capability is to significantly reduce the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation's nuclear forces in a first-strike attack; this, in turn, ensures a credible threat of a second strike , and thus increases a nation's nuclear deterrence . Historically the first method of nuclear weapons delivery, and the method used in the twin instances of nuclear warfare in history,

3384-475: A void and the player restarting the game. Wired 's Julie Muncy called the Xen sequence "an abbreviated, unpleasant stop on an alien world with bad platforming and a boss fight against what appeared, by all accounts, to be a giant floating infant". The Electric Playground said that Half-Life was an "immersive and engaging entertainment experience" in its first half and that it "peaked too soon". During

3525-544: A warzone between the Marines and the aliens. The tide of the battle begins turning against the Marines, and they withdraw from the facility after calling in numerous airstrikes . Entering an underground storage garage, Freeman fights his way past both aliens and Marine stragglers to reach the Lambda Complex. There, scientists inform him that the rocket launch proved unsuccessful due to a powerful alien creature known as

3666-415: Is SinTEK, a large multi-national biotechnology corporation specializing in medical and chemical research, owned by the beautiful and charismatic Elexis Sinclaire. Elexis took over the company following the mysterious disappearance of her father, Dr Thrall Sinclaire, who founded it in 2005. The protagonist of the game, Colonel John R. ("Rusty") Blade, is the commander of one of the largest security forces in

3807-471: Is a jet- or rocket-propelled missile that flies aerodynamically at low altitude using an automated guidance system (usually inertial navigation , sometimes supplemented by either GPS or mid-course updates from friendly forces) to make them harder to detect or intercept. Cruise missiles can carry a nuclear warhead. They have a shorter range and smaller payloads than ballistic missiles, so their warheads are smaller and less powerful. The AGM-86 ALCM

3948-666: Is believed that the, in development successor to the nuclear A-135, the A-235 Samolet-M , will dispense with nuclear interception warheads and instead rely on a conventional hit-to-kill capability to destroy its target. Small, two-man portable tactical weapons (erroneously referred to as suitcase bombs ), such as the Special Atomic Demolition Munition , have been developed, although the difficulty to combine sufficient yield with portability limits their military utility. According to an audit by

4089-405: Is fast paced, it is dramatic, and it brings the very idea of adventure on a PC out of the dark ages and into a 3D world. All that and not a single Orc in sight." IGN described it as "a tour de force in game design, the definitive single player game in a first-person shooter". GameSpot said it was the "closest thing to a revolutionary step the genre has ever taken". Several reviewers cited

4230-496: Is instructed by a scientist to make his way to the facility's Lambda Complex in order to put an end to the alien invasion. Making his way through Black Mesa, Freeman kills a giant alien creature in a rocket engine test facility before using a monorail system to reach and launch a multistage rocket , which the Lambda Complex team intends on using to close the portal allowing aliens to teleport into Black Mesa. He subsequently finds out that black operations agents have been sent to

4371-531: Is overrun by alien creatures following a disastrous scientific experiment. The gameplay consists of combat, exploration and puzzles. Valve was disappointed with the lack of innovation in the FPS genre, and aimed to create an immersive world rather than a "shooting gallery". Unlike other games at the time, the player has almost uninterrupted control of the player character ; the story is mostly experienced through scripted sequences rather than cutscenes . Valve developed

Sin (video game) - Misplaced Pages Continue

4512-725: Is the US Air Force 's current nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile . The ALCM is only carried on the B-52 Stratofortress which can carry 20 missiles. Thus the cruise missiles themselves can be compared with MIRV warheads. The BGM/UGM-109 Tomahawk submarine-launched cruise missile is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, but all nuclear warheads were removed following the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty . Cruise missiles may also be launched from mobile launchers on

4653-528: Is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation , on or near its target. Several methods have been developed to carry out this task. Strategic nuclear weapons are used primarily as part of a doctrine of deterrence by threatening large targets, such as cities . Weapons meant for use in limited military maneuvers such as destroying specific military, communications, or infrastructure targets, are known as tactical nuclear weapons . In terms of explosive yields , nowadays

4794-589: Is to contaminate the Freeport water system with vast quantities of U4, turning all of the city's inhabitants into mutants. He manages to thwart that plan, but it turns out to be just a diversion because, in the meantime, SinTEK's troops steal nuclear warheads from a U.S. military base. Elexis threatens to fill them with U4 and launch them at specific targets, turning the entire world's population into mutants. As Blade becomes aware of that, he heads to SinTEK's main base in order to stop Sinclaire. However, once Blade defeats

4935-500: Is twofold. It results in a tighter target impact circular error probable and therefore by extension, reduces the need for the earlier generation of heavy multi- megaton nuclear warheads, such as the W53 to ensure the target is destroyed. With increased target accuracy, a greater number of lighter, multi-kiloton range warheads can be packed on a given missile , giving a higher number of separate targets that can be hit per missile. During

5076-679: The AIAS ' 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards , Half-Life was awarded "Computer Entertainment Title of the Year" and " PC Action Game of the Year "; it also received nominations for " Game of the Year " and outstanding achievement in " Art/Graphics ", " Character or Story Development ", " Interactive Design ", and " Software Engineering ". Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the PlayStation 2 version for Next Generation , rating it three out of five, and wrote that "it may be getting old, but there's still

5217-583: The AIR-2 Genie . Further developments of this concept, some with much larger warheads, led to the early anti-ballistic missiles . The United States have largely taken nuclear air-defense weapons out of service with the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Russia updated its nuclear armed Soviet era anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, known as the A-135 anti-ballistic missile system in 1995. It

5358-555: The Brookings Institution , between 1940 and 1996, the US spent $ 11.3 trillion in present-day terms on nuclear weapons programs. 57 percent of which was spent on building delivery mechanisms for nuclear weapons. 6.3 percent of the total, $ 709 billion in present-day terms, was spent on weapon nuclear waste management, for example, cleaning up the Hanford site with environmental remediation , and 7 percent of

5499-549: The Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons , which regulates depictions of violence against humans. Valve replaced the human characters with robots, spilling oil and gears instead of blood and body parts when killed, among other changes. In 2017, Half-Life was removed from the German censorship list. To acknowledge this, Valve released Half-Life Uncensored , a free downloadable content pack, that reverts

5640-582: The Medium Atomic Demolition Munition and the novel Blue Peacock , nuclear depth bombs , and nuclear torpedoes . An 'Atomic Bazooka' was also fielded, designed to be used against large formations of tanks. In the 1950s the US developed small nuclear warheads for air defense use, such as the Nike Hercules . From the 1950s to the 1980s, the United States and Canada fielded a low-yield nuclear armed air-to-air rocket ,

5781-655: The Meteor 1 was launched on 26 March 1969 on the Vostok rocket , a derivative of the R-7 ICBM . WD-40 was first used by Convair to protect the outer skin, and more importantly, the paper thin "balloon tanks" of the Atlas missile from rust and corrosion. These stainless steel fuel tanks were so thin that, when empty, they had to be kept inflated with nitrogen gas to prevent their collapse. In 1953, Dr. S. Donald Stookey of

Sin (video game) - Misplaced Pages Continue

5922-574: The P-5 Пятёрка . These early nuclear-armed SSGs served for a few decades until there were enough SSBNs put in service, after which they were retired. Their spiritual successors, armed with larger amounts of more modern, smaller cruise missiles continue to serve to this day serving in a tactical strike role, although they could be rearmed with nuclear cruise-missiles if need be. Air- or Ground-launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles (sometimes even nuclear-powered ) were considered by both sides early in

6063-730: The Polaris SLBM . The subsequent arms-race culminated in some of the largest submarines ever designed; the Trident-armed 170 meter long Ohio -class submarine armed with 24 x 8 MIRV Trident missiles , and the battlecruiser-sized 48,000 tonne Project 941 Акула , the Typhoon -class submarine , armed with 20 R-39s with 10 MIRVs each. After the Cold War, SSBN and subsequently SLBM development have slowed, but nascent nuclear powers are building novel classes of SSB (N)s, while

6204-634: The Quake engine . When the Quake II engine engine was completed some months later, the developers switched to that engine. A skeletal animation system was used for the characters. The game demo was found to have a CIH virus infection in one of its mirror links. Activision had advised players only to download the game demo from their website. Due to the amount of patches which made the game more CPU-intensive, primary Amiga developer and later AmigaOS developer Hyperion Entertainment had to eventually cancel

6345-599: The SSC-X-9 "Skyfall" (9М730 Буревестник ) was revealed by Russian President Vladimir Putin . It is under development and is slated to enter service sometime in the 2020s . Missiles using a ballistic trajectory deliver a warhead over the horizon; in the case of the most capable of these, classified as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) (and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) if transported by submarine ), they can reach distances of nearly tens of thousands of kilometers. Most ballistic missiles exit

6486-592: The greatest video games ever made . By 2008, it had sold more than nine million copies. It was ported to the PlayStation 2 in 2001, along with the multiplayer expansion Decay , and to OS X and Linux in 2013. Valve ported Half-Life to its Source engine as Half-Life: Source in 2004. In 2020, Crowbar Collective released an unofficial remake, Black Mesa . Half-Life inspired numerous fan-made mods , some of which became standalone games, such as Counter-Strike , Day of Defeat , and Sven Co-op . It

6627-436: The review aggregation website GameRankings . While PC Zone gave the game a "Classic" award, praising its inventive level design and engaging plot, most other publications did not have such a glowing view towards it. Next Generation said, "while we feel the game may be a little light in the originality department, it certainly shines where it counts – gameplay – and [is] definitely worth your time." One common complaint

6768-531: The 1990s, writing that it "helped write the rulebook for how games tell their stories without resorting to aping the conventions of film". According to Newell, Half-Life was budgeted with the expectation of lifetime sales of around 180,000 copies. However, it was a surprise hit. In the United States, Half-Life debuted at #8 on PC Data 's weekly PC game sales chart for the November 15–21 period, with an average retail price (ARP) of $ 49. It rose to sixth place

6909-569: The 7.5m copies of the PC version were bought because the game offered such potential for community-driven expansion". As of November 16, 2004, eight million copies of the game had been sold, by 2008, 9.3 million copies had been sold at retail. Guinness World Records awarded Half-Life the world record for Best-Selling First-Person Shooter of All Time (PC) in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008 . Half-Life 2

7050-549: The AI is Self-Aware and Freeman's Mind . In 2003, Valve's network was infiltrated by hackers. Among the stolen files were the unreleased Half-Life modification Half-Life: Threewave , a canceled remake of the mod Threewave CTF from Quake . The files were found by the independent reporter Tyler McVicker of Valve News Network on a Vietnamese FTP server in February 2016, and were unofficially released that September. On

7191-471: The AmigaOS version due to the lack of hardware at the time. Voice actress Hannah Logan, who voiced Elexis, thought she did it well as she could do "a really low" voice and "do sexy vixens pretty well and it comes pretty easily." Logan commented on Elexis and Blade: "Love and hate are different sides of the same coin; I think they are in 'love' with hating each other. Passion, pain, pleasure, winning, it's all

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7332-449: The B61 gravity bomb described above, but it would have different environmental requirements, and different safety requirements since it would not be crew-tended after launch and remain atop a missile for a great length of time. While the first modern ballistic missile designed is the basis of contemporary rocket- and missilery, it never carried a nuclear warhead. The first ICBM ever designed

7473-452: The Cold War, but both concluded that it was impractical with the technology of the time. Nuclear-powered aircraft were considered due to the nascent aeronautical and rocketry technology of the time, especially when considering the temperamental and inefficient nature of early jet engines , which limited the range and use cases of strategic bombers and cruise missiles. Later on in the Cold War both disciplines had advanced far enough that it

7614-786: The Corning Research and Development Division invented Pyroceram , a white glass-ceramic material capable of withstanding a thermal shock (sudden temperature change) of up to 450 °C (840 °F). It evolved from materials originally developed for a US ballistic missile program, and Stookey's research involved heat-resistant material for nose cones . Precise navigation would enable United States submarines to get an accurate fix of their positions before they launched their SLBMs, this spurred development of triangulation methods that ultimately culminated in GPS . The motivation for having accurate launch position fixes, and missile velocities,

7755-541: The Earth's atmosphere and re-enter it in their sub-orbital spaceflight . Ballistic missiles aren't always nuclear armed, but the conspicuous and alarming nature of their launch often precludes arming ICBMs and SLBMs, the most capable classes of ballistic missiles, with conventional warheads . Placement of nuclear missiles on the low Earth orbit has been banned by the Outer Space Treaty as early as 1967. Also,

7896-502: The FPS category in 2006. GameSpot inducted Half-Life into their Greatest Games of All Time list in May 2007. In 2007, IGN described Half-Life as one of the most influential video games, and in 2013 wrote that the history of the FPS genre "breaks down pretty cleanly into pre- Half-Life and post- Half-Life eras". In 2021, the Guardian ranked Half-Life the third-greatest game of

8037-733: The Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (a fictional special forces unit of the United States Marine Corps ), and Black Ops assassins. Half-Life includes online multiplayer support for both individual and team-based deathmatch modes. It was one of the first mainstream games to use the WASD keys as the default control scheme. At the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico , physicist Gordon Freeman participates in an experiment on

8178-500: The Internet. A likely explanation for the multitude of bugs is that the game may have been rushed to meet the 1998 Christmas season, possibly as an attempt to beat Half-Life to market. Mark Asher of CNET Gamecenter wrote, " Sin had a good first month, but then tailed off sharply." Combined with the failure of competitors Shogo: Mobile Armor Division and Blood II: The Chosen , its performance led him to speculate that

8319-524: The Nihilanth keeping the portal open from their end, and he must venture into the alien's homeworld of Xen to kill the Nihilanth and close the portal; the Lambda Complex team proceeds to teleport Freeman to Xen. In Xen, Freeman encounters numerous dead scientists who teleported there before him. He comes across a large alien, the Gonarch, and manages to kill it after a long battle. Making his way towards

8460-452: The Nihilanth, Freeman finds a large factory dedicated to manufacturing alien soldiers. Eventually discovering the Nihilanth's lair, Freeman kills it and closes the portal. However, he is suddenly confronted by the G-Man , a mysterious interdimensional agent who disarms and restrains him before informing Freeman that his "employers" wish to hire him for an assignment. The G-Man then offers Freeman

8601-808: The R-7 is still in use as the launch vehicle for the Russian Federation, in the form of the Soyuz spacecraft . The first true weather satellite , the TIROS-1 was launched on the Thor-Able launch vehicle in April 1960. The PGM-17 Thor was the first operational IRBM (intermediate ballistic missile) deployed by the US Air Force ( USAF ). The Soviet Union 's first fully operational weather satellite,

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8742-523: The SinTEK's security and mutants at the base, he reaches Sinclaire, only for her to escape by transferring her entire body into a rocket that launches itself into the sky, splits and spreads everywhere. Sinclaire disappears through the rockets, JC is unable to locate them, and in Blade's fury at the escape, he smashes a button, causing the nuclear missiles to abort their launch. Development started in 1997, on

8883-471: The Steam multiplayer server browser. It was reissued, along with its expansion pack SiN: Wages of Sin , on GOG.com on January 30, 2014, DRM -free and fixed for modern hardware. Nightdive Studios , a team focused on bringing classic PC games to modern systems, acquired the rights to SiN in January 2020. On March 18, 2020, Nightdive re-released Sin on Steam and GOG as SiN Gold , an updated version of

9024-526: The US, selling another 286,593 copies and earning $ 8.98 million. The PlayStation 2 version received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom. Half-Life ' s global sales reached 2.5 million units by July 2001. Edge noted in 2003 that "a significant number of

9165-429: The United Kingdom, it placed second in February—behind the debut of Baldur's Gate —and fifth in March. In April, it claimed #3 on Chart-Track's rankings and dropped to #16 on those of PC Data. On April 23, Sierra announced that global sales of Half-Life had reached almost 1 million copies. After maintaining the 16th place for May in the US, Half-Life exited PC Data's monthly top 20 in June. Half-Life became

9306-546: The United States, a position it held for the month of December. While its US sales were below 100,000 copies by November 30, by 1999 it had sold 212,173 copies and earned revenues of $ 8.6 million in the United States by the end of 1998. In January 1999, Half-Life debuted at #3 on Chart-Track 's PC game sales rankings for the United Kingdom, and remained in PC Data's weekly top 10 for the entire month, peaking at #4. By January 19, after two full months of availability, global sales of Half-Life surpassed 500,000 units. In

9447-399: The United States, it was the fifth-best-selling PC game for the month of January. On PC Data's weekly charts, it rose to #2 from February 7–20, with an ARP of $ 35. Holding a position in the weekly top 10 for the rest of February, it climbed to fourth for the month. The game remained in PC Data's weekly top 10 until the week of March 21 and dropped to position 11 for March as a whole. In

9588-440: The Valve-developed Team Fortress Classic and Deathmatch Classic (a remake of Quake ' s multiplayer deathmatch mode in the GoldSrc engine). Other mods such as Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat ( DOD ) began life as the work of independent developers who later received aid from Valve. Other multiplayer mods include Firearms , Natural Selection and Sven Co-op . Single-player mods include USS Darkstar (1999,

9729-561: The announcement of Sin Episodes . Various cryptic puzzles could be found on the website, and solving these would lead to new pieces of media and art. However, support for this piece of viral marketing by Ritual Entertainment did not last, although it has been claimed by Ritual that the final puzzles still remained unsolved. Sin was re-released on the Steam platform on April 5, 2006, bundled together with Sin Episodes: Emergence . This version of Sin (version 1.12) includes fixes for audio and video playback problems, as well as integration with

9870-475: The basis of the Half-Life port for PlayStation 2, released in late 2001. This version added competitive play and a co-op expansion, Half-Life: Decay . In 2004, Valve released Half-Life: Source , a remastered version of Half-Life created in their new game engine, Source . It includes no new graphical elements, but adds new physics, water effects and 5.1 surround sound . It received negative reviews for its glitches and lack of new content. Black Mesa ,

10011-510: The cabal and playtesting, Valve identified and removed parts that proved unenjoyable. Birdwell said that while there were struggles at first, the cabal approach was critical for Half-Life ' s success, and was reused for Team Fortress 2 from the start. Much of the detail of Half-Life 's development has been lost. According to Valve employee Erik Johnson, two or three months before release, their Visual SourceSafe source control system "exploded". Logs of technical changes from before

10152-547: The censorship. Valve canceled a version of Half-Life for Mac , developed by Logicware, in 2000. Newell said the port was substandard and would have made Mac players "second-class customers". Rebecca Heineman , the co-founder of Logicware, denied this, saying that Valve cancelled the port as Apple had angered them by misrepresenting sales projections. She said the port was complete and three weeks from release. Valve released ports for OS X and Linux in 2013. Captivation Digital Laboratories and Gearbox Software developed

10293-435: The city of Freeport, HardCorps. Prior to the beginning of the game, Blade is working to rid the streets of a potent new recreational drug named U4, which is rapidly gaining popularity in Freeport and is rumoured to be able to cause genetic mutations to its users. Yet the source of the drug is still unknown, and its effects not entirely studied. As the game begins, the player is placed into the shoes of John Blade as he responds to

10434-400: The creation of Half-Life , featuring commentary from the original developers, designers and artists. Two days after the release, Half-Life reached 33,471 concurrent players on Steam, its highest-ever number. Half-Life was followed by an expansion pack , Opposing Force , on November 1, 1999, developed by Gearbox Software . Players control HECU Corporal Adrian Shephard , who fights

10575-411: The designer Brett Johnson, the level design was inspired by environments in the manga series Akira . Valve struggled to find a publisher, as many believed the game was too ambitious for a first-time developer. Sierra On-Line signed Valve for a one-game deal as it was interested in making a 3D action game, especially one based on the Quake engine. Valve first showed Half-Life in early 1997; it

10716-506: The disaster, with the environments already wrecked. Laidlaw worked with Johnson to create versions of the lab environment before the disaster to help set the story. He said: "These were all economical ways of doing storytelling with the architecture — which was my whole obsession. The narrative had to be baked into the corridors." Within a month of the cabal's formation, the other team members started detailed game development, and within another month began playtesting through Sierra. The cabal

10857-487: The dropping aircraft time to escape the ensuing blast. The earliest gravity nuclear bombs ( Little Boy and Fat Man ) of the United States could only be carried, during the era of their creation, by the special Silverplate limited production (65 airframes by 1947) version of the B-29 Superfortress . The next generation of weapons were still so big and heavy that they could only be carried by bombers such as

10998-631: The established powers, all members of the United Nations Security Council , are plotting the next - generation of nuclear-powered nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines. Hypersonically-Gliding Warheads are a novel form of warhead to arm ballistic missiles. These maneuverable devices threaten to obsolate current forms of ABM defences, thus various nascent and established nuclear powers are racing to field examples of such systems . Other delivery methods included nuclear artillery shells, mines such as

11139-456: The event of a surprise attack. Early ballistic missiles carried a single warhead , often of megaton -range yield. Because of the limited accuracy of the missiles, this kind of high yield was considered necessary in order to ensure a particular target's destruction. Since the 1970s modern ballistic weapons have seen the development of far more accurate targeting technologies, particularly due to improvements in inertial guidance systems . This set

11280-535: The eventual Soviet Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that served a similar purpose—it was just deliberately designed to deorbit before completing a full circle—was phased out in January 1983 in compliance with the SALT II treaty. An ICBM is more than 20 times as fast as a bomber and more than 10 times as fast as a fighter plane , and also flying at a much higher altitude , and therefore more difficult to defend against. ICBMs can also be fired quickly in

11421-442: The evolution of US human spaceflight. The Atlas vehicle sent John Glenn , the first American into orbit. Similarly in the Soviet Union it was the R-7 ICBM / launch vehicle that placed the first artificial satellite in space, Sputnik , on 4 October 1957, and the first human spaceflight in history was accomplished on a derivative of the R-7, the Vostok , on 12 April 1961 , by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin . A modernized version of

11562-549: The existence of the United States was the one need that did justify this cost in the view of the United States Congress. This deterrent effect is why GPS was funded. The nuclear triad consisted of the United States Navy's submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) along with United States Air Force (USAF) strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Considered vital to

11703-414: The facility to neutralize even the Marines before being captured by two Marines and left for dead inside a trash compactor . Escaping through a waste treatment complex, Freeman stumbles across a large laboratory filled with alien specimens, proving that Black Mesa was aware of the aliens before the resonance cascade. Traversing through the surface of Black Mesa yet again, Freeman finds that it has become

11844-516: The field and felt like the industry was reducing the experiences to least common denominators rather than exploring those possibilities. Our hope was that building worlds and characters would be more compelling than building shooting galleries. —Valve president Gabe Newell Valve , based in Kirkland, Washington , was founded in 1996 by the former Microsoft employees Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell . For its first product, Valve settled on

11985-408: The fifth-bestselling PC game of the first half of 1999 in the US. Its domestic sales during 1999 reached 290,000 copies by the end of September. During 1999, it was the fifth-best-selling PC game in the US, with sales of 445,123 copies. These sales brought in revenues of $ 16.6 million, the sixth-highest gross that year for a PC game in the US. The following year, it was the 16th-bestselling PC game in

12126-456: The final month of development were lost, and code had to be recovered from individual computers. Half-Life was released in November 19, 1998. The revised version of Half-Life shown at E3 1998 was given Game Critics Awards for "Best PC Game" and "Best Action Game". Valve released two demos . The first, Half-Life: Day One , contained the first fifth of the game and was distributed with certain graphic cards. The second, Half-Life: Uplink ,

12267-523: The first-person shooter genre's market size was smaller than commonly believed, as the "only FPS game that has done really well [over the Christmas 1998 period] is Half-Life ". However, BBC News ' Alfred Hermida reported that the game had achieved "decent success" over the holiday shopping season, and wrote that he expected a sequel to emerge as a result. The villain Elexis Sinclaire

12408-478: The following week, before dropping to position 10 for the week ending December 5. During the December 6–12 period, the game climbed back to sixth place; by this time, its ARP had dropped to $ 36. It placed between sixth and eighth on PC Data's weekly charts through the end of December, and its ARP rose back to $ 45 by the week ending January 2. PC Data declared Half-Life November's sixth-best-selling PC game in

12549-489: The form of missiles. Gravity bombs are designed to be dropped from planes, which requires that the weapon be able to withstand vibrations and changes in air temperature and pressure during the course of a flight. Early weapons often had a removable core for safety, known as in flight insertion (IFI) cores, being inserted or assembled by the air crew during flight. They had to meet safety conditions, to prevent accidental detonation or dropping. A variety of types also had to have

12690-558: The former have much larger yield than the latter, even though it is not a rule. The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 (with TNT equivalents between 15 and 22 kilotons ) were weaker than many of today's tactical weapons, yet they achieved the desired effect when used strategically. A nuclear triad refers to a strategic nuclear arsenal which consists of three components, traditionally strategic bombers , intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The purpose of having

12831-521: The game is killed off in the first few moments of the film; also, it takes place in the 2070s, whereas the games take place in the late 2030s. A sequel, Sin Episodes , was made by Ritual and was intended to be released episodically over Steam network . The only episode, titled "Emergence", was released on May 10, 2006. An alternate reality game based in the Sin universe was launched in 2005 to promote

12972-504: The game provided for free to accounts that already owned SiN . SiN Gold incorporates the Wages of Sin expansion pack, adds support for modern resolutions, restores the original game assets, and fixes many bugs. Additionally, alongside the Gold edition, Nightdive announced plans for a remastered version of Sin to run on their Kex engine, scheduled for release in late 2020 or early 2021. It

13113-412: The game using GoldSrc , a heavily-modified version of the Quake engine , licensed from id Software . The science fiction novelist Marc Laidlaw was hired to craft the plot and assist with design. Half-Life received acclaim for its graphics, gameplay and narrative and won more than 50 PC " Game of the Year " awards. It is considered one of the most influential first-person shooter games and one of

13254-490: The game. The player battles alone for the majority of the game, but is occasionally assisted by non-player characters ; specifically security guards and scientists who help the player. The guards will fight alongside the player, and both guards and scientists can assist in reaching new areas and pass on relevant plot information. An array of alien enemies populate the game, including headcrabs, bullsquids, vortigaunts, and headcrab zombies. The player also faces human opponents in

13395-409: The game. Some of the more widely reported bugs include a total lack of sound in the game, an end of chapter boss which could not move, a level on one path through the game not being finishable and general game crashes. Although these bugs were quickly patched up, the damage of the negative publicity had already been done, especially with the majority of the press reviewing the unpatched version. The patch

13536-675: The ground , and from naval ships. There is no letter change in the US arsenal to distinguish the warheads of cruise missiles from those for ballistic missiles. Cruise missiles, even with their lower payload, speed, and thus readiness, have a number of advantages over ballistic missiles for the purposes of delivering nuclear strikes: However, cruise missiles are vulnerable to typical air-defence means as they are essentially one-use unmanned aircraft ; strategies such as combat flights of fighter aircraft , or an integrated air-defence system comprising both CAP and ground-based elements, such as surface-air missiles (SAM) , can be used to defend against

13677-457: The huge creature and afterwards learns that it was, in fact, Mancini himself. Blade also finds out that the substance found in Mancini's body after his death is only manufactured by one company: SinTEK. All these unavoidable facts force Blade to embark on an investigation into SinTEK's vast industrial area located in the outskirts of Freeport. Later, Blade learns that Elexis Sinclaire's main goal

13818-403: The introduction of gameplay elements relative to the story. The collaboration proved successful, and once the cabal had come to decisions on types of gameplay elements that would be needed, mini-cabals from other departments most affected by the choice were formed to implement these elements. Membership in the main cabal rotated since the required commitment created burnout . The cabal produced

13959-418: The level fun. First, it had several interesting things happen in it, all triggered by the player rather than a timer so that the player would set the pace of the level. Second, the level responded to any player action, even for something as simple as adding graphic decals to wall textures to show a bullet impact. Finally, the level warned the player of imminent danger to allow them to avoid it, rather than killing

14100-412: The level of immersion and interactivity as revolutionary. AllGame said, "It isn't everyday that you come across a game that totally revolutionizes an entire genre, but Half-Life has done just that." Hot Games commented on the realism, and how the environment "all adds up to a totally immersive gaming experience that makes everything else look quite shoddy in comparison". Gamers Depot wrote that it

14241-459: The need for a more universal navigation solution with greater accuracy. While there were wide needs for accurate navigation in military and civilian sectors, almost none of those was seen as justification for the billions of dollars it would cost in research, development, deployment, and operation for a constellation of navigation satellites. During the Cold War arms race , the nuclear threat to

14382-508: The nuclear-deterrence posture, accurate determination of the SLBM launch position was a force multiplier . Precise navigation would enable United States submarines to get an accurate fix of their positions before they launched their SLBMs. The USAF, with two-thirds of the nuclear triad, also had requirements for a more accurate and reliable navigation system. The Navy and Air Force were developing their own technologies in parallel to solve what

14523-404: The ones doing something truly new." Rather than dictate narrative elements "from some kind of ivory tower of authorial inspiration", he worked with the team to improvise ideas, and was inspired by their experiments. For example, he conceived the opening train ride after an engineer implemented train code for another concept. Valve initially planned to use traditional cutscenes , but switched to

14664-434: The only one able to assist them in hacking-based missions. As the game progresses, it is gradually revealed that the whole bank robbery is funded by Elexis Sinclaire, who in fact only wanted Mancini to steal a safety deposit box from the bank's vault. When she learns that he launched a full-scale bank heist instead, she injects him with concentrated U4 and turns him into a mutant, sending him after Blade. John manages to defeat

14805-495: The player is generally expected to use the terrain, rather than firepower, to kill the boss. Late in the game, the player receives a "long jump module" for the HEV suit , which allows the player to increase the horizontal distance and speed of jumps by crouching before jumping. The player must rely on this ability to navigate various platformer-style jumping puzzles in Xen toward the end of

14946-477: The player sees "through his eyes" for the entire length of the game. Half-Life has no levels ; it instead divides the game into chapters, whose titles briefly appear on screen as the player progresses through the game. With the exception of short loading pauses, progression throughout the game is continuous, with each map directly connecting to the next, with the exception of levels involving teleportation . The game regularly integrates puzzles, such as navigating

15087-520: The player to drive certain vehicles, including an all-terrain vehicle, a patrol boat, a forklift, and a helicopter. There are three different types of body armor – for the legs, for the torso and for the head, with each of them depleting separately according to where the player is hit. Computer terminals can be manipulated through a DOS -like command prompt. Many levels have multiple ways in which to complete them, and actions can trigger changes in future levels. Some of these actions can force

15228-437: The player to go through an entirely different set of levels. The enemies can run for cover, call for reinforcements, locate the player, and respond to specific scripts. Set in the near future of 2037, many of the levels and locations are reminiscent of their current-day equivalents. Banks, building sites, sewage works and other everyday recognizable buildings form the basis of many of the levels in Sin . One major difference in

15369-435: The player with no warning. To move forward with this unified design, Valve sought a game designer but found no one suitable. Instead, Valve created the "cabal", initially a group of six individuals from across all departments that worked primarily for six months straight in six-hour meetings four days a week. The cabal was responsible for all elements of design, including level layouts, key events, enemy designs, narrative, and

15510-425: The review aggregation website Metacritic , Half-Life has a score of 96 out of 100. Computer Gaming World ' s Jeff Green said it was "not just one of the best games of the year. It's one of the best games of any year, an instant classic that is miles better than any of its immediate competition, and – in its single-player form – is the best shooter since the original Doom . " Next Generation wrote: "It

15651-399: The same in their cat and mouse game. ... I think Elexis is very much in touch with her 'feminine' side, but uses it in a masculine way, as a weapon. A bimbo is, ultimately, a victim. Elexis knows exactly what she is doing - she uses her sensuality to win, not that it always works, but it is definitely a major piece of ammo in her arsenal." Sin received above-average reviews, according to

15792-446: The satellite transponder in orbit. A fourth ground-based station, at an undetermined position, could then use those signals to fix its location precisely. The last SECOR satellite was launched in 1969. Decades later, during the early years of GPS, civilian surveying became one of the first fields to make use of the new technology, because surveyors could reap benefits of signals from the less-than-complete GPS constellation years before it

15933-446: The six/ten-engined, seventy-meter wingspan B-36 Peacemaker , the eight jet-engined B-52 Stratofortress , and jet-powered British RAF V bombers , but by the mid-1950s smaller weapons had been developed that could be carried and deployed by fighter-bombers . Modern nuclear gravity bombs are so small that they can be carried by (relatively) small multirole fighter aircraft , such as the single-engined F-16 and F-35 . A cruise missile

16074-450: The stage for smaller warheads in the hundreds-of- kilotons -range yield, and consequently for ICBMs having multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV). Advances in technology have enabled a single missile to launch a payload containing several warheads; the number of which depended on the missile's and payload bus' design. MIRVs has a number of advantages over a missile with a single warhead. With few additional costs, it allows

16215-454: The studio announced plans to release a remastered version, titled Sin: Reloaded , originally for a 2021 release but currently delayed to an unknown time. Sin introduced some new features to the first-person shooter genre, such as the ability to knock the weapon out of an opponent's hand and to take area-specific damage from enemies. Although driveable vehicles did not play a big part in the game, there are some sections and levels which require

16356-470: The third one in 1974 carrying the first atomic clock into orbit. Another important predecessor to GPS came from a different branch of the United States military. In 1964, the United States Army orbited its first Sequential Collation of Range ( SECOR ) satellite used for geodetic surveying. The SECOR system included three ground-based transmitters from known locations that would send signals to

16497-400: The time, which relied on cut-scene intermissions to detail their plotlines, Half-Life ' s story is told mostly using scripted sequences (bar one short cutscene), keeping the player in control of the first-person viewpoint . In line with this, the player rarely loses the ability to control the player character , Gordon Freeman , who never speaks and is never actually seen in the game;

16638-541: The total, $ 795 billion was spent on the manufacturing of nuclear weapons themselves. Strictly speaking however not all this 57 percent was spent solely on "weapons programs" delivery systems. For example, two such delivery mechanisms , the Atlas ICBM and Titan II , were re-purposed as human launch vehicles for human spaceflight , both were used in the civilian Project Mercury and Project Gemini programs respectively, which are regarded as stepping stones in

16779-463: The two franchises are connected. Half-Life (video game) Half-Life is a 1998 first-person shooter game developed by Valve Corporation and published by Sierra Studios for Windows . It was Valve's debut product and the first game in the Half-Life series . The player assumes the role of Gordon Freeman , a scientist who must escape from the Black Mesa Research Facility after it

16920-422: The world of Sin is the lack of a police force. Ten years prior to the game, the police force collapsed due to corruption and ineffectiveness against the rising tide of crime. Private security companies have taken the police's place, with some of them patrolling the streets like the former police, some in charge of protecting their employer's assets. One of the companies which employ their own armed security forces

17061-455: Was a gravity bomb dropped by a plane . In the years leading up to the development and deployment of nuclear-armed missiles, nuclear bombs represented the most practical means of nuclear weapons delivery; even today, and especially with the decommissioning of nuclear missiles , aerial bombing remains the primary means of offensive nuclear weapons delivery, and the majority of US nuclear warheads are represented in bombs, although some are in

17202-422: Was a "tremendous" challenger for Lara, as she was "even better built, with even greater bust and with a beauty mark like Cindy Crawford ." However, Phaedra Boinodiris from WomenGamers.com, talking to GamesRadar in 2007, used Elexis as an example of game characters "sexualized to the point of deformity" as she looked "like she crawled out of an S&M club." The game sold 350,000 units worldwide. A mission pack

17343-538: Was a major influence and the team wanted Half-Life to "scare you like Doom did". The project had the working title Quiver , after the Arrowhead military base from The Mist . The name Half-Life was chosen because it was evocative of the theme, not clichéd, and had a corresponding visual symbol: the Greek letter λ (lower-case lambda ), which represents the decay constant in the half-life equation. According to

17484-411: Was a success at E3 that year, where Valve demonstrated the animation and artificial intelligence . Novel features of the artificial intelligence included fear and pack behavior. Valve aimed for a November 1997 release to compete with Quake II . By September 1997, the team found that while they had built some innovative aspects in weapons, enemies, and level design, the game was not fun and there

17625-528: Was announced at E3 2003 and released in 2004. The player controls Freeman 20 years after the Black Mesa incident in the dystopian City 17 , where he joins a rebellion against an alien regime. It was followed by the episodic sequels Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006) and Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007). After cancelling several other Half-Life projects , Valve released Half-Life: Alyx in 2020. Nuclear missiles Nuclear weapons delivery

17766-424: Was announced during 3D Realms’ Realms Deep digital event that the remastered version will be called Sin: Reloaded , and that it will see a release in 2021. However, as of November 2023 the title remains vaporware. At Realms Deep 2022, an announcement for the game Phantom Fury, a sequel to Ion Fury , was shown. Close to the end, John Blade makes an appearance, and HardCorps is mentioned briefly, implying that

17907-469: Was by Valve. As the project expanded, Valve cancelled development of a fantasy role-playing game, Prospero , and the Prospero team joined the Half-Life project. Half-Life was inspired by the FPS games Doom (1993) and Quake (1996), Stephen King 's 1980 novella The Mist , and a 1963 episode of The Outer Limits titled " The Borderland ". According to the designer Harry Teasley, Doom

18048-439: Was canceled. Gearbox created a cooperative multiplayer expansion pack, Decay , exclusively for the PlayStation 2 port of Half-Life which is played through the perspectives of Gina Cross and Colette Green, two Black Mesa scientists. Half-Life received support from independent game developers, supported and encouraged by Valve. With the game, Valve included Worldcraft , the level design tool used during development, and

18189-494: Was essentially the same problem. To increase the survivability of ICBMs, there was a proposal to use mobile launch platforms (such as Russian SS-24 and SS-25 ) and so the need to fix the launch position had similarity to the SLBM situation. In 1960, the Air Force proposed a radio-navigation system called MOSAIC (MObile System for Accurate ICBM Control) that was essentially a 3-D  LORAN . A follow-on study, Project 57,

18330-424: Was exceptionally large; at the time it was normal to expect a game patch file to be up to 5 MB in size, whereas SiN 's first patch was over 31 MB. This was at a time when a substantial fraction of internet access was via dial-up , causing Activision to take the unusual step of offering to send CDs containing the patch to any owners of the game who did not have sufficient bandwidth to download it from

18471-420: Was feasible to create both reliable long-ranged cruise missiles and the strategic bombers able to launch them. Another arms-race began which produced contemporary post-Cold War cruise missiles and launch systems; VLS technology also allowed for surface ships to be armed with nuclear-armed cruise missiles while concealing their true payload. In 2018, the first operational nuclear-powered strategic cruise missile,

18612-421: Was followed by the expansion packs Opposing Force (1999) and Blue Shift (2001), developed by Gearbox Software , and the sequels Half-Life 2 (2004), Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007) and Half-Life: Alyx (2020). Half-Life is a first-person shooter that requires the player to perform combat tasks and puzzle solving to advance through the game. Unlike most first-person shooters at

18753-417: Was intimately involved with playtesting, monitoring the player but otherwise not interacting. They noted any confusion or inability to solve a game's puzzles and made them into action items to be fixed on the next iteration. Later, with most of the main adjustments made, the team included means to benchmark players' actions. They then collected and interpreted statistically to fine-tune levels further. Between

18894-459: Was little design cohesion. They postponed the release and reworked every level. They took a novel approach of assigning a small team to build a prototype level containing every element in the game and then spent a month iterating on the level. When the rest of the team played the level, which the designer Ken Birdwell described as " Die Hard meets Evil Dead ", they agreed to use it as a baseline. The team developed three theories about what made

19035-616: Was received mostly very positively. According to Story-Driven Character Design , the "beautiful, sexy" Elexis Sinclair was in fact the main selling point of the first game. PC Ultra included her among the three best elements of the game "definitely the most innovative opponent seen in the latest first-person shooters." The character has also been often compared to Lara Croft from Tomb Raider , due to both characters being seen as sex symbols in gaming. A 1999 article about female video game characters in Polish magazine Gambler opined that Elexis

19176-511: Was released for the game in 1999 by 2015, Inc. , titled Sin: Wages of Sin . The player reprises the role of John Blade, and the story picks up after the conclusion of the main game, pitting the player against Gianni Manero, a notorious crime boss looking to take over Freeport city. In 2000, ADV Films released a 60-minute anime film Sin: The Movie . Although loosely based on the game, with similar characters and plot elements, there are some differences. For example, one of major characters from

19317-549: Was released on February 12, 1999, and featured original content. A short film based on Half-Life, also titled Half-Life: Uplink , was developed by Cruise Control, a British marketing agency, and released on February 11, 1999. The protagonist is a journalist who infiltrates the Black Mesa Research Facility, trying to discover what has happened there. Half-Life was censored in Germany to comply with

19458-554: Was the Soviet R-7 . The first SLBM-carrying submarine was also Soviet; the prototype Modified Zulu -class and the mass-produced Golf -class ballistic missile submarines carried their SLBMs in their sails, but these pioneering designs had to surface to launch their ballistic missiles. The Americans responded with the first "modern design" of ballistic missile subs; the George Washington -class , which launched

19599-422: Was the long load times, which measured in the minutes between each level, death, or quickload. With later patches , the long load times were greatly shortened, although compatibility with old save games was lost, forcing players to play through the game from the beginning or use cheats to progress to their previous point in the game. Another major concern was the abundance of bugs and glitches littered throughout

19740-421: Was the most immersive game they had played. The final portion of the game, taking place in the alien world of Xen, was generally considered the weakest. Besides introducing a wholly new and alien setting, it also featured a number of low-gravity jumping puzzles. The GoldSrc engine did not provide as much precise control for the player during jumping, making these jumps difficult and often with Freeman falling into

19881-610: Was worked in 1963 and it was "in this study that the GPS concept was born". That same year, the concept was pursued as Project 621B, which had "many of the attributes that you now see in GPS" and promised increased accuracy for Air Force bombers as well as ICBMs. Updates from the Navy Transit system were too slow for the high speeds of Air Force operation. The Navy Research Laboratory continued advancements with their Timation (Time Navigation) satellites, first launched in 1967, and with

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