Former Valve Employee's Showreel Shows Valve's Space Game SOB and Mysterious Half-Life Level

[Shawn Zipay]

The man behind the Cinematic Physics in the latest versions of the Source engine, Gray Horsfield, recently parted ways with Valve earlier this year. Having worked there since 2006, Horsfield had his hand in a number of projects from Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Left 4 Dead, Portal, DOTA, and every sequel thereof.

Well, his talents are best seen in some of the most memorable scenes from Valve's latest works, many of which are showcased below in his personal showreel.

What's interesting to note are the things that we haven't seen before. The collapse of the Citadel from City 17 is one such item. Others include a number of space shots that are from the rumored Valve space title, SOB. There is also a very particular level that looks to be on the Source engine (it's using the Half-Life 2 HUD) wherein the player jumps atop a group of flying creatures to make their way around the environment.

The "newest" bits run from 1:12 to 1:55. This includes the collapse of the Citadel, the first possible look at SOB, and that mysterious Source engine level running with the Half-Life 2 HUD.

Gray Horsfield worked at WETA prior to his near six year long stint at Valve.

UPDATE: As the above video seems to have been set to private, be sure to check out a mirror at Kotaku.

[nemes1s3000]

It seems the video has been up for a couple of months, and people are starting to notice it now because a couple of douchebags decided to troll the internet (Reddit and 4Chan) with "Leaked footage of HL3." So mister Gray Horsfield decided to set it to private, until the confusion subsides.

[Linux]

I got to watch it last night, was some pretty cool and amazing work that Gray Horsfield did. Bummer the rest of the world isn't able to see it now because some stupid little kids decided to be trolling morons and ruin it for all -_-.

[jimykx]

I could not see it because of it being private but i found one and i think this is the same video, if it is not then please tell me :P So, is valve testing out destruction on their engine to add it on future games?

[cikame]

The space shots could have just been from prototyping Zen levels. I hope he had an apprentice or two i love all those physics destruction moments.

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: Former Valve Employee's Showreel Shows Valve's Space Game SOB and Mysterious Half-Life Level

I could not see it because of it being private but i found one and i think this is the same video, if it is not then please tell me :P So, is valve testing out destruction on their engine to add it on future games?

Have you played Episode 1, Episode 2, Left 4 Dead, or anything else from Valve in recent years? They've had cinematic physics in all of those games, most of which are seen in the video.

[jimykx]

Re: Former Valve Employee's Showreel Shows Valve's Space Game SOB and Mysterious Half-Life Level

Have you played Episode 1, Episode 2, Left 4 Dead, or anything else from Valve in recent years? They've had cinematic physics in all of those games, most of which are seen in the video.

yeah I know, but the videos show some stuff that appears to be more dynamic than those actual cinematic physics that for the most part were rendered with physics and then in the game it's just an animated sequence that looks very realistic because of the pre-renderization being done with physics( in a computer much more powerful than mine xD ). Probably it had some models/props there working at the same time with the animation that were implanted with physics , but for example the sequence it shows of the left 4 dead gas station blowing up, it always blows up the same way ( same for the plane crashing).
Again, what the video shows of interesting is the fact that some sequences appear to be showing all of the physics being rendered in real time (the house being destroyed). If you try downloading a phys_ map (which is usually a small map with a destroyable house with lots of physics integrated (similar to the ones shown there but not as good)) for GMOD or any other source game that supports the map, and you try blowing up most of it at the same time instead of taking it down slowly it will lag THE CRAP out of most computers, and this is another thing that makes me believe they are trying to optimize their physics to work massively and at the same time.
I still remember an interview to l4d2 where they said something similar to: In l4d the explosions had to totally blow up the zombies(make them disappear ) because we tried to make them fly with the physics but it created massive framedrops in our system. We perfected the physics system in l4d2 and it now allows us to make zombies go superman after they get exploded.(you get the point) So why wouldn't they try to make something similar to it in their future games? probably hl3? Destruction is what i believe to be a great and one of the future's game's features.