For many years, it has been speculated that there was a cut weapon in Half-Life known as the "Zero Point Generator." However... This is the original name of the Gauss Gun! If you take a moment to compare the Day One skill file to the one in the final game, you would notice that the Zero Point Generator is in the same spot as the Gauss Gun. The skill file also shows that the original name of the Egon Gun was the Tau Cannon before it was given to the Gauss Gun. How exactly this piece of mis-information stayed around for over 10 years is quite baffling.
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I'm also logging into my Combine Overwiki account (first time in nearly 7 years) to correct it on the site.
Well, it is a pretty good supposition, but it's not like... *confirmed* to be the original Gauss Gun, it could simply be the case that they originally intended to have a different gun, that was the slot it occupied in the cfg file, they couldn't get it to work like they wanted it to, so that gun was cut, and they replaced it with the gauss cannon. I'd say it would be best to put that in trivia as a theory, not to present it as a discovery.
The Gauss Gun has been in game for a long time. This Skill config would of been from August 1998 at the earliest.
Photo of the Gauss Gun from the German press build. Speculated to be from December 1997.
Photo of the Gauss Gun from the E3 1998 build of Half-Life. From May of 1998.
and if there's any other doubt in your mind that it isn't the Gauss Gun. There's a comment in game.cpp for the Gauss skill values that is ALSO "Zero Point Generator." github.com/ValveSoftware/halflif…
I'm not doubting you, I'm actually inclined to agree with you, I think you figured it out, all I'm saying is that we don't have confirmation that this is the case, like it doesn't come from Valve's own dev commentary material like Raising the Bar or something, although this information you provided on your latest comment with the HL1 SDK seed is very revealing and might be enough to prove that your theory is correct.
Dario came up with calling Gauss the Zero Point Generator. There was even an interview where Gabe specifically told Dario to stop calling it that to not confuse people.
Incorrect, he didn't refer to it as the Zero Point Generator in the interview. He referred to them as the Gauss and Egon and Gabe told him to call them the Tau Cannon and Gluon Gun.
that is pretail, not e3... e3 gauss had a different texture for the brass part and the pipe leading to the brass, otherwise its the same here is a picture of lambda core from e3: media.discordapp.net/attachments…
The photo of the Gauss in Lambda Core was a card handed out AT E3 1998.