We're watching you, music man

Image credit: Valve

Wake up. There's Half-Life 3 chatter occurring again. This time because, about an hour into a panel about sounds in video games, a Valve composer has uttered three eyebrow-raising letters. HLX. In an industry rife with acronyms, what's so special about this one? Well, it's a rumoured codename for the next entry in the aforementioned series about a man with a crowbar, for one.

"Basically, that's one of the three pieces that come together to make HDR that you can easily optimise," Valve music designer Mike Morasky said during a panel at GameSoundCon , answering a regular old question about the techincal ins and out of managing sound in games. The panel had been running for about an hour when he said this, so clearly nothing that'd get people out of their seats was in the offing.

"In fact, I think Deadlock has their own version of HDR," he continued. "HLX has its own version, so on and so forth." AHA, voices screamed around the world. He said the thing.…