Everybody panic: A Valve developer said "HLX" in public

Gamers still hoping against hope for a true follow-up to Half-Life 2 (after so, so many years) may remember last year’s flurry of speculation that Half-Life 3 was finally nearing completion. Amid all those rumors, though, we never got any official sign from anyone inside Valve that a Half-Life project was currently in development.

那些依然怀抱希望、期待《半衰期 2》（Half-Life 2）真正续作的玩家们（在经历了如此漫长的岁月之后），或许还记得去年关于《半衰期 3》即将完成的种种猜测。然而，在所有这些传言中，我们从未从 Valve 内部得到任何关于《半衰期》项目正在开发中的官方信号。

That changed this week thanks to an apparent slip-up during a panel at GameSoundCon, an industry conference devoted to “the art, technology, and business of game audio.” In a panel devoted to Valve’s use of open audio engines (captured in this Vimeo clip), Valve composer and audio artist Mike Morasky let an interesting string of three letters slip while talking about the way the company implements high dynamic range (HDR) audio: Our HDR system is basically that’s one of the three pieces that come together to make an HDR that you can easily optimize. And in fact, I think Deadlock has their own version of HDR. HLX has its own version, so on and so forth [emphasis added].

本周，这一情况因 GameSoundCon（一个致力于“游戏音频艺术、技术与商业”的行业会议）上的一次小组讨论中的明显失言而发生了改变。在一次关于 Valve 使用开放音频引擎的小组讨论中（视频已在 Vimeo 上记录），Valve 作曲家兼音频艺术家 Mike Morasky 在谈论公司如何实现高动态范围（HDR）音频时，不经意间说出了三个引人注目的字母：“我们的 HDR 系统基本上是构成 HDR 的三个部分之一，你可以轻松地对其进行优化。事实上，我认为《Deadlock》有他们自己的 HDR 版本。《HLX》也有自己的版本，诸如此类 [强调部分]。”

“HLX,” of course, has been widely reported as the internal code name for Valve’s next Half-Life project. The codename has shown up in Valve engine code since at least 2024, but it has never been referenced in public by a Valve employee until now (though Morasky was responsible for a close call in an interview last year).

当然，“HLX”已被广泛报道为 Valve 下一个《半衰期》项目的内部代号。该代号至少从 2024 年起就出现在 Valve 的引擎代码中，但此前从未有 Valve 员工在公开场合提及（尽管 Morasky 在去年的一次采访中曾险些说漏嘴）。

In the panel video, fellow panelist and Valve sound designer David Feise can be seen mumbling a sarcastic “nice work” to Morasky after the HLX codename slips out of his mouth. Later, while the audience is clapping at the end of the Q&A session, Feise leans in to Morasky and appears to say, “Good job—you only said HLX once!”

在小组讨论的视频中，可以看到同为小组成员的 Valve 音效设计师 David Feise 在 HLX 代号脱口而出后，对着 Morasky 嘟囔了一句讽刺的“干得漂亮”。随后，在问答环节结束观众鼓掌时，Feise 凑近 Morasky，似乎说了句：“干得好——你只说了一次 HLX！”

An official utterance of the “HLX” shibboleth is of course a good sign for those looking for any indication of the franchise continuing beyond 2020’s Half-Life Alyx. But the question of when Valve will make its next Half-Life project official still looms large.

对于那些寻找该系列在 2020 年《半衰期：爱莉克斯》（Half-Life: Alyx）之后继续发展迹象的人来说，官方口中说出“HLX”这个暗号无疑是一个好兆头。但 Valve 何时会正式公布其下一个《半衰期》项目，依然是一个悬而未决的重大问题。

Longtime Valve watcher Tyler McVicker—who said Half-Life 3 was in the “final stages of development” and suggested a 2026 announcement was “likely” last year—admitted in a recent video that he now doesn’t believe that HLX is being announced this calendar year. But he also pointed to recently increased coding activity within Valve (as measured by externally viewable internal “commit” numbers) that something big might be coming sooner than later.

长期关注 Valve 的观察家 Tyler McVicker（他去年曾称《半衰期 3》处于“开发最后阶段”，并暗示 2026 年公布“很有可能”）在最近的一段视频中承认，他现在不认为 HLX 会在今年内公布。但他同时也指出，Valve 内部最近的代码活动有所增加（根据外部可见的内部“提交”数量衡量），这表明大事可能很快就会发生。

One thing is for sure: Whenever Half-Life 3 finally is announced and released, it will have to be truly incredible to make up for the loss of the long-running metagame of speculating about its mere existence.

有一点是肯定的：无论《半衰期 3》最终何时公布和发布，它都必须足够出色，才能弥补长期以来关于其是否存在这一“元游戏”所带来的失落感。