Incline Half Life and Half Life 2 - List of recommended modifications and mini campaigns

[Ninja Destroyer]

Inb4 DraQ response.

You missed Bad Day, you fucking Slavaphobe

http://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/screenshot-thread.72409/page-434#post-3400782

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So is They Hunger still considered one of the best HL mods?

Yep.

If this statement is true, then I can write off every single HL1 mod as being shit. Because They Hunger most certainly is shit.

I watched a friend of mine play the mod (Part 2 I think) and he got stuck regularly in rooms because he couldn't figure out where to go next. He may have been a dumbass, though. But a little later I got a chance to play the mod, so I started from the beginning. Soon I found myself in over my head with too many zombies, too little ammo, and I was collecting ammo for a sniper rifle which I didn't have. I tried until I couldn't get any further, and then went and consulted the internet. Turns out that in a pitch-black corner of a pitch-black passage a couple of levels back, there is a hidden path that leads to a tiny room where the sniper rifle can be found.

Uninstall.exe followed shortly afterwards.

More recently I tried Cry of Fear, and except for the somewhat neat touch with the camera 'revealing' items, the whole mod was a major disappointment.

Still, major props to Ninja Destroyer for putting up his list.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Fuck Valve and fuck Half-Life.

If you were old enough to play Half-Life in its heydey, and didn't play it and the prolific output of what was probably the best mod scene ever, then you can turn in your PC gamer card right now.

I was old enough to see how Half-Life destroyed the FPS genre. Did I have fun dicking around with mods at the time? Sure. Still doesn't change the fact that it steered the genre into the cinematic interactive bullshit that's so rampant today.

A number of people make this argument, yet the only element of Half-Life's design that has persisted is the scripted sequence, something which pretty much all of the major shooters released in 1998 featured: Sin, Unreal, Shogo, and of course Half-Life. The modern shooter takes its design cues from Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, from 2002, and borrows several significant ideas from Halo (2001).

Here's a list of some of the salient design elements of Half-Life 1:

• environmental puzzles
• large alien beastiary whose abilities were designed to complement each other, rather that merely presenting different attack patterns
• the marine AI, which featured coordinated tactics between multiple marines
• the translation of classic (i.e. Doom) weapon design onto real world weapons, i.e. the assault rifle looks like an MP5 but behaves similarly to the Doom chaingun
• varied pacing which mixes up shooting, exploration, puzzle solving, and scripted story sequences
• continuous, in-game storytelling, where the player never leaves the PC's perspective
• large, multimap chapters which involve moving back and forth between areas and solving puzzles in order to open up progression paths (i.e. Blast Pit, Power Up, On a Rail, Office Complex, etc.)

Here's a list of some of the traditional design features which Half-Life 1 inherited:

• large weapon inventory, where each weapon fits an archetype rather than being variations of 4 or 5 categories
• the entire weapons inventory can be carried at one time
• health and suit power is restored by items found in the game world
• sci-fi, government research run amok setting, as opposed to "realistic" military setting
• movement, rather than cover, based combat

As you can see, basically none of what made Half-Life Half-Life has survived to present. In fact, there have been basically no other shooters which have played anything like Half-Life, except Portal and Left 4 Dead, both of which are very different games yet incorporate some of Half-Life's key ideas. Half-Life 1 included what was at the time the most elaborate scripted scenes yet attempted in a shooter, and that is the extent of its influence on modern shooter design. It was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault which took the use of scripted scenes to transform shooter gameplay into an action movie rail-shooter. Call of Duty 1 (2003) refined that formula, and shifted combat towards static, cover-based, "shoot the bad guy when he pokes his head up" design. Between 2003 and 2007, shooters were increasingly being made for consoles first, and primarily took their cues from Halo, the first mega-successful console shooter, and secondarily from Call of Duty (think Gears of War's use of sticky cover). Once CoD4 was released in 2007 to unprecedented commercial success, however, the action movie rail-shooter formula dominated all subsequent shooter design. The extent of that influence can best be seen in how the Crysis series developed: Crysis 1 (2007) followed up on Far Cry's (2004) large, semi-open world design, yet Crysis 2 (2011) completely dropped that approach in favor of what had become the dominant shooter design model.

In short, Half-Life 1's influence on modern shooter design is limited to scripted sequences, something which other shooters in 1998 were doing too, albeit less elaborately. Half-Life 1 was also the first shooter to feature an extended build-up to the action, something which many subsequent shooters have also adopted, albeit through the use of tutorials and cutscenes and usually a scripted vehicle ride, rather than through an extended exploration and scripted storytelling experience.

edit: Half-Life is different than Doom, and Call of Duty is different than Doom and came after Half-Life, but that does not mean Half-Life was the inspiration for Call of Duty's differences with Doom. Call of Duty's differences with Doom have very little overlap with Half-Life's differences with Doom. They share scripted sequences, and very little else, and in any event they each employ scripted sequences for very different ends and with very different techniques. Finally, 1998 was the year of the shooter scripted sequence -- it was not unique to Half-Life: Half-Life just had more elaborate scripting and more of it than the other big shooters released that year.

 

[mastroego]

Fuck Valve and fuck Half-Life.

If you were old enough to play Half-Life in its heydey, and didn't play it and the prolific output of what was probably the best mod scene ever, then you can turn in your PC gamer card right now.

I was old enough to see how Half-Life destroyed the FPS genre. Did I have fun dicking around with mods at the time? Sure. Still doesn't change the fact that it steered the genre into the cinematic interactive bullshit that's so rampant today.

That may possibly be, but only because other developers learned the wrong lessons from a Masterpiece.
Which isn't a first (I mean in general, not just in the game industry), and doesn't diminish the masterpiece itself.

 

[barker_s]

Great thread Ninja Destroyer !

One thing I'd like to add shamelessly add: CWC Mappack . It's a mini-campaign made by CWC (a Polish Worldcraft message boards, now long gone) community back in 2002. All maps are connected into a campaign, but each one has been made by a different mapper, so it's a nice mixture of different gameplay and architectural styles. I'm mentioning, because it contains one map made by yours truly (map 4 I believe).

 

[Sceptic]

environmental puzzles

Already done in Hexen and System Shock.

large alien beastiary whose abilities were designed to complement each other, rather that merely presenting different attack patterns

Doom already had this, depending on what you mean by "complementation". That said HL did do this extremely well, but that's probably its biggest gameplay achievement.

the marine AI, which featured coordinated tactics between multiple marines

lulz

the translation of classic (i.e. Doom) weapon design onto real world weapons, i.e. the assault rifle looks like an MP5 but behaves similarly to the Doom chaingun

So reskinning the Doom chaingun as an MP5 that doesn't behave like an MP5? Wow, what an achievement.

varied pacing which mixes up shooting, exploration, puzzle solving, and scripted story sequences

Aside from story sequence Doom, Hexen, System Shock, Strife and many others had already done this. Actually SS and Strife had done the story stuff too, except not scripted. So the achievement in this part is adding scripted story sequences, totally improving the gameplay.

continuous, in-game storytelling, where the player never leaves the PC's perspective

Yay for more non-gameplay crap. Doom never left the PC's perspective either.

large, multimap chapters which involve moving back and forth between areas and solving puzzles in order to open up progression paths

Hexen had already done this.

As you can see, basically none of what made Half-Life Half-Life has survived to present.

What made Half-Life Half-Life was the overreliance on script and cinematic approach. Everything else had already been done. That the only thing that carried over is the overreliance on scripts is not accidental.

In fact, there have been basically no other shooters which have played anything like Half-Life, except Portal and Left 4 Dead

wat

Half-Life 1 included what was at the time the most elaborate scripted scenes yet attempted in a shooter, and that is the extent of its influence on modern shooter design. It was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault which took the use of scripted scenes to transform shooter gameplay into an action movie rail-shooter.

MOHAA simply removed all the Half-Life elements that had already been done, namely the multimap approach, the puzzles and the exploration, and kept the one thing that Half-Life had introduced. This by definition makes HL the better game, but how could you not notice how this means the modern shooters were influenced by HL's approach, especially knowing that the overreliance on scripts was THE big thing HL was praised for at the time?

Call of Duty 1 (2003) refined that formula, and shifted combat towards static, cover-based, "shoot the bad guy when he pokes his head up" design.

COD1 had absolutely nothing to do with cover. That came in with COD2. Hell even MOHAA was more cover-based than COD1, and COD1 was specifically a response to the more consoleish approach of MOH. Then Infinity Ward must've noticed at some point that going consoles would make them a lot more money, hence COD2 and everything after it.

Crysis 1 (2007) followed up on Far Cry's (2004) large, semi-open world design, yet Crysis 2 (2011) completely dropped that approach in favor of what had become the dominant shooter design model.

Crysis 1 had already massively scaled down the open approach of Far Cry. Also, Far Cry was a BIG departure from the traditional model that was becoming more and more common when it was released, this is why some of us like it so much. If an FPS with open design like FC had been released pre-Half-Life with mid-90s technology nobody would've batted an eyelid.

In short, Half-Life 1's influence on modern shooter design is limited to scripted sequences, something which other shooters in 1998 were doing too, albeit less elaborately. Half-Life 1 was also the first shooter to feature an extended build-up to the action, something which many subsequent shooters have also adopted, albeit through the use of tutorials and cutscenes and usually a scripted vehicle ride, rather than through an extended exploration and scripted storytelling experience.

What exploration? You just follow linear corridors from A to B. As for everything else sure... except that's the point.

edit: Half-Life is different than Doom, and Call of Duty is different than Doom and came after Half-Life, but that does not mean Half-Life was the inspiration for Call of Duty's differences with Doom. Call of Duty's differences with Doom have very little overlap with Half-Life's differences with Doom. They share scripted sequences, and very little else, and in any event they each employ scripted sequences for very different ends and with very different techniques. Finally, 1998 was the year of the shooter scripted sequence -- it was not unique to Half-Life: Half-Life just had more elaborate scripting and more of it than the other big shooters released that year.

You're completely missing the point even as you state it. You keep saying yourself that Half-Life had more scripts and more elaborate scripting... gee you think that might be why it got so praised FOR HAVING SO MUCH SCRIPTING? You think that might be why all shooters that followed wanted to copy the overabundance of scripts? You think that's why all future shooters also wanted the more cinematic approach? Nah, cannot possibly be because they were copying the one aspect that made HL so successful. Never mind that Valve themselves went even more over the top with scripts and linear gameplay in each iteration, first with HL2, then with the episodes.

Oh and COD1 had far, far lesser reliance on scripts than HL. Again that only came with COD2. And every game that overrelies on scripts does it for the same reasons, to try for a more cinematic approach, because that's what Half-Life was praised for. It's what it's still praised for (hell even you, despite trying very hard, keep falling for it, will all of this "continuous in-game scripted storytelling" crap).

I mean don't get me wrong, HL1 is superior to every single modern shooter, but pretending that its huge commercial and critical success, where the overreliance on scripts and story was the reason for such success, is not why the traditional modern shooter formula became overreliance on scritps and sotry, requires blind fanboyism of the highest order.

If you were old enough to play Half-Life in its heydey, and didn't play it and the prolific output of what was probably the best mod scene ever, then you can turn in your PC gamer card right now.

Some of us were old enough to not have been so easily wowed by the glitz. As for the mod scene, I never cared enough about the base game to bother, and besides, at the time, I was having way too much fun with HOMM2 maps and the Unreal mod scene.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Sceptic

I'm not going to bother responding point by point to that because:

1. Most of it is incorrect. For example, Doom had discrete level breaks, score screens, and end of episode text crawls, i.e. you left the PC's perspective about every 10-15 minutes. Most of your other counter-arguments show a similarly hazy recollection. For example, neither CoD2, nor any CoD game, has had a cover system. All of them, however, have had combat mechanics which depends on the player not running around in the open if he wants to live. Perhaps you mistook "static, cover-based combat" for "regenerating health"? Such mistaken perceptions certainly categorize much of the rest of your arguments.
2. What isn't outright incorrect doesn't really seem to address my argument. For example, I brought up Crysis 1 and 2 to show how dramatically shooters changed after CoD4 hit (Crysis 1 was released 6 weeks before CoD4, Crysis 2 3.5 years after CoD4). If you're truly so butthurt that the second half of Crysis was more linear than Far Cry, just supply Far Cry for Crysis 1. Either way, the argument stays the same: after CoD4 came along, shooter design changed across the board. Likewise, you seem to be taking great pains to show that some design ideas in Half-Life showed up in an earlier shooter. Even when that's the case, it's really not relevant to the argument: the thrust of my argument was that Half-Life has little to no influence on modern shooters, not that everything Half-Life did had never been done before. That said, if we look at what Half-Life was like, as a whole experience, it clearly played very differently from every shooter that had come before, even if some its parts were borrowed/inherited. By the same token, modern shooters, BOTH in part and in whole, are as different from Half-Life 1 as Half-Life 1 was from earlier shooters.
3. As an addendum to category 2, you often seem to misunderstand what I'm getting at. For example, with my comment on varied pacing, you cite Doom as an earlier game which achieves the same thing, presumably because you do explore levels and their are some color coded door-key puzzles in Doom and I had cited puzzle solving and exploration as part of how Half-Life's pacing varies. That however is missing the forest for the trees, and admittedly, here I did not completely explain my point so here is one argument I will respond to in full. Doom, generally, keeps the action at a fairly consistent pace, i.e. with few exceptions you're always shooting something or about to shoot something. Sometimes you're shooting monsters while looking for a key to open a locked door, but in general, action is always happening. Half-Life isn't like that. You generally have an action set piece or two, then things quiet down for a little while and you do something else, before the action ratchets up again. Consider the brief part of "We Got Hostiles" that occurs on the surface. You get on an elevator to the surface and as soon as the level load completes a high energy music track kicks in. You step off the elevator in a warehouse which opens into a stockyard filled with Marines. You fight through them while taking artillery fire and while an Osprey keeps delivering more Marines. You escape into a ventilation access, but the roof of the main ventilation shaft blows open, perhaps falling debris does some damage to you, and Marines start rappelling into the shaft. After you kill those Marines, the only way forward is through a side duct, and then... things calm down substantially. You've been through this extended action sequence, one of the best in the game, but now the threat has passed, the high energy music has stopped, and the sound of gunfire and explosions has quieted. After that, you spend about 5 minutes exploring the ventilation system, seeing earlier parts from a new vantage point, and overhearing the conversations of Marines who don't know you're up in the vents. There's a headcrab or two to kill, but the tempo of the game has slowed down dramatically, allowing you to recover from the high tempo action sequence which preceded it. When you exit the vents, you get a scripted story sequence with a scientist and you move on to a new chapter before the action starts picking up again.
4. The arguments that don't fall into category 1, 2, or 3 are, and I quote, "lulz" or "wat" or something similar.

tl;dr: It seems like you have a personal stake in proving that Half-Life 1, a beloved and popular game, is overrated, i.e. the sheeple are misguided and only one so wise as yourself can see the truth, and you're attempting to prove that point rather than what was actually being discussed: whether Half-Life 1 has much influence on modern shooter design.

 

[Sceptic]

Most of it is incorrect. For example, Doom had discrete level breaks, score screens, and end of episode text crawls, i.e. you left the PC's perspective about every 10-15 minutes.

Ok you're right, there's no point in having this argument.

tl;dr: It seems like you have a personal stake in proving that Half-Life 1, a beloved and popular game, is overrated

Yes, I have an immense personal stake in proving that a shooter that I don't even particularly think of as a bad shooter (it fluctuates between "good" and "mediocre", with dashes of "oh god this is awful") isn't the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ.

Your magnificent display of fanboyism, OTOH, is certainly free of any personal stake.

Makes perfect sense.

 

[A horse of course]

ban Sceptic

ban ScottishMartialArts

 

[Sceptic]

I blame Unkillable Cat, he started this

 

[A horse of course]

ban Unkillable Cat

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Your magnificent display of fanboyism, OTOH, is certainly free of any personal stake.

All I have argued is that Half-Life has minimal influence on modern shooters and that suggesting Half-Life was the harbinger of decline is tenuous at best.

Everything else is you projecting.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I blame Unkillable Cat, he started this

Fuck you, you mong.

 

[Sceptic]

Everything else is you projecting.

Projecting what? This is what I don't understand. My non-hatred of the game?

Besides I didn't so much object to your arguments vis a vis HL not being harbinger of decline (I do think the main element it introduced is, and I've explained at length why) but to your claims that HL was the first game to do a bunch of stuff that had already been done in shooters 5 years older. What am I projecting when I point this out, again? I quoted the relevant bits. You said this stuff. This stuff is historically inaccurate.

We've been through this many time since I joined. I don't particularly dislike the game. What I dislike is people trying to justify it as teh great shoota eva by attributing to it things that it didn't create. Doing that is the very definition of fanboyism.

The "lulz" answer was to stuff that is as baffling as being told "the moon is made of cheese". The closest gameplay ever to HL is in L4D? What the hell do the two even have in common? (well they're first-person. And you shoot things in both. And uh... they both have "Valve" on the box I guess?) Let's not even go to Portal, a game that isn't even a shooter, being more like HL than every other shooter in existence...

 

[grudgebringer]

Your magnificent display of fanboyism, OTOH, is certainly free of any personal stake.

All I have argued is that Half-Life has minimal influence on modern shooters and that suggesting Half-Life was the harbinger of decline is tenuous at best.

Everything else is you projecting.

Look, there are two points that've been brought up into discussion.

The first one is that you've listed those 'salient' things which are brought up by you as it was something original or intrinsic to HL. Which are not. As it was pointed out by Sceptic, those things already been done by different iterations on the genre since, you know, Doom engine. And some of those points are hilarious btw, like coordinated AI of marines.
It really seems that fans of HL are too blindfolded to see the overall picture. Just don't look at HL as it was some kind of revolution in the genre, look at it as a pretty well-thought remix. Indeed, Valve did good job at picking different elements that are immanent to FPS and mix them in their own taste. In modern terminology you can even say that they streamlined things. And as we can see a lot of people enjoyed the way Valve mixed it. If you look at it in that way you'll see that HL is totally a mass product.

The second point is that HL is a harbinger of FPS decline. Yes, Valve wasn't the only one doing same things. Like you know, Ritual did something similar too, and in the same time frame. For instance, they applied storyline to FPS, they made alternate paths built in levels solely for plot reasons and so on. But let's be honest it hadn't that huge success/impact as HL did. After HL no one would attempt to make FPS without storyline, script events or, by the way, without real world weapons (which is pure decline IMO). Shooters that were done in the old vein, but came after, like KISS or Serious Sam, treated as anachronisms.
So, people loved it and they wanted more of the same. Why that doesn't convince you that HL did a huge impact on FPS genre? In terms of forming ground rules for how it should be done, HL trampled a new path for the industry and we all can see where it led us to.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

snip

So evidently salient means "original" or "brand new" or "wildly innovative" now? Granted I can see the source of the confusion, as I had a second list titled "traditional", but the distinction I was trying to draw, wasn't between "brand new and innovative" and "old school doom", but between the stuff that was really a significant -- you might say, salient -- part of the design versus what was what was just inherited convention. For example, Hexen and Hexen 2 both had hub-based levels, but that was pretty much it; hub-based levels were, and are, a rare design decision that few shooters pursue. Compare this with being able to carry every weapon at once: every shooter of that era had that feature. Do you see the distinction I was drawing? Take a look at the two lists again -- and remember, salient means salient, not innovative. Make more sense?

As for the Marine AI, you may also have noticed -- although if you think salient means innovative, perhaps not -- that I was writing in bullet points, and that in such a format, you tend not to express the full nuance of an idea, instead relying on brief, shorthand descriptions which state the main idea but not every nuance or contradiction. Did the Marines have fully dynamic AI, where each individual Marine entity was fully aware of the other, and they pulled all sorts of special ops shit? No, of course not. But they would retreat or take cover if injured. While one would retreat, another would shoot at you. If you took cover, they would throw a grenade where you were hiding. They aggressively pursued you, and they would quickly navigate the level to keep the pressure on you. This was pretty advanced behavior for shooter AI in 1998. The only thing comparable was the Skaarj AI in Unreal, which was aggressive and would dodge your projectiles. For comparison, here's some Quake 2 (1997) gameplay (start at the 5:00 mark). Notice the AI reliance on rote, entirely predictable attack patterns:



In contrast here was the first real Marine encounter in Half-Life 1:



The latter was a very different beast than the former. If you were sitting down to play Half-Life 1 for the first time in 1998, you were used to enemies like those in Quake 2, and the likely outcome of your first marine encounter was getting your ass kicked, because encountering AI opponents that aggressive was pretty much unheard of. Quick question: when did you first play Half-Life?

As for the second point, your argument is classic post hoc ergo propter hoc: Half-Life had an in-game story (as did Sin and Shogo) and Half-Life had scripted events (as did Sin and Shogo and Unreal) and every shooter after Half-Life had a story and scripting, therefore Half-Life set the standard that every shooter have a story and scripting. You acknowledge the point that every other shooter from 1998 was doing the same thing, yet you argue that since Half-Life was the most successful shooter released that year the fact that story and scripting were part of a larger, genre-wide trend is irrelevant. Maybe that's true -- maybe the designers of subsequent games were all taking their cues from Half-Life -- but if that's the case then why is it that designers of subsequent shooters incorporated story and scripting, which were part of a larger design trend, and not the stuff like semi-hub-based levels (done first in Hexen 1/2 but rarely done elsewhere besides Half-Life), or a continuous gameworld where one map leads seamlessly into the next, or telling the story entirely through in game interactions, or the use of extended environmental puzzles (remember the nuke facility with trip mines and headcrabs?), or breaking up the high tempo action with low tempo gameplay? The absence of these salient design features in subsequent games, and the presence of design features common to other 1998 shooters, is why I make my argument that the influence of Half-Life is vastly overestimated. Yes, shooters after Half-Life were never the same as shooters before Half-Life, but those subsequent shooters played a lot more like Sin or Shogo than they did Half-Life.

Just because Half-Life is the most remembered shooter from 1998 doesn't mean it's influence extended beyond the genre-wide trends it participated in.

edit: it occurs to me that there is one additional thing that Half-Life 1 did and that shooters made between 1999 and 2003 or so also did, however I didn't immediately make the connection because they handled it in a different way and it subsequently disappeared from shooter design. That one additional thing is varied tempo/pacing. Half-Life 1 handled it by ratcheting down the shooting, and presenting the player with extended sequences of low threat exploration and environmental puzzles which blocked the progression path. Other games did it by providing the player with a home base to return to between discrete missions. Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek Elite Force did this, as did the NOLF series, and Deus Ex. The last shooter I remember doing this was Unreal 2 (2003), although the fourth Splinter Cell game also had a home base but then Splinter Cell was a third person stealth game. A couple others, notably Far Cry, handled it the Half Life way -- varied gameplay in level versus home base transition levels. Once CoD4 made its impact, however, shooters have tended towards a breathless pace, filled with loud, obnoxious, Bruckheimer/Bay-like action from start to finish, where the only break is during the loading screens.

 

[grudgebringer]

So evidently salient means "original" or "brand new" or "wildly innovative" now? Granted I can see the source of the confusion, as I had a second list titled "traditional", but the distinction I was trying to draw, wasn't between "brand new and innovative" and "old school doom", but between the stuff that was really a significant -- you might say, salient -- part of the design versus what was what was just inherited convention. For example, Hexen and Hexen 2 both had hub-based levels, but that was pretty much it; hub-based levels were, and are, a rare design decision that few shooters pursue. Compare this with being able to carry every weapon at once: every shooter of that era had that feature. Do you see the distinction I was drawing? Take a look at the two lists again -- and remember, salient means salient, not innovative. Make more sense?

Ok, if so.

As for the Marine AI

Spoiler

you may also have noticed -- although if you think salient means innovative, perhaps not -- that I was writing in bullet points, and that in such a format, you tend not to express the full nuance of an idea, instead relying on brief, shorthand descriptions which state the main idea but not every nuance or contradiction. Did the Marines have fully dynamic AI, where each individual Marine entity was fully aware of the other, and they pulled all sorts of special ops shit? No, of course not. But they would retreat or take cover if injured. While one would retreat, another would shoot at you. If you took cover, they would throw a grenade where you were hiding. They aggressively pursued you, and they would quickly navigate the level to keep the pressure on you. This was pretty advanced behavior for shooter AI in 1998. The only thing comparable was the Skaarj AI in Unreal, which was aggressive and would dodge your projectiles. For comparison, here's some Quake 2 (1997) gameplay (start at the 5:00 mark). Notice the AI reliance on rote, entirely predictable attack patterns:



In contrast here was the first real Marine encounter in Half-Life 1:

The latter was a very different beast than the former. If you were sitting down to play Half-Life 1 for the first time in 1998, you were used to enemies like those in Quake 2, and the likely outcome of your first marine encounter was getting your ass kicked, because encountering AI opponents that aggressive was pretty much unheard of. Quick question: when did you first play Half-Life?

I played it in 1st half of 1999 or near so, and, yes, AI was quite impressive at the time. At least it makes you believe so. Though you were talking specifically about the marine AI, which featured coordinated tactics between multiple marines. Lol if you take radio grunting outgoing from marine units as AI planning coordinated moves then it's quite funny.

As for the second point, your argument is classic post hoc ergo propter hoc: Half-Life had an in-game story (as did Sin and Shogo) and Half-Life had scripted events (as did Sin and Shogo and Unreal) and every shooter after Half-Life had a story and scripting, therefore Half-Life set the standard that every shooter have a story and scripting. You acknowledge the point that every other shooter from 1998 was doing the same thing, yet you argue that since Half-Life was the most successful shooter released that year the fact that story and scripting were part of a larger, genre-wide trend is irrelevant.
Maybe that's true -- maybe the designers of subsequent games were all taking their cues from Half-Life -- but if that's the case then why is it that designers of subsequent shooters incorporated story and scripting, which were part of a larger design trend, and not the stuff like semi-hub-based levels (done first in Hexen 1/2 but rarely done elsewhere besides Half-Life), or a continuous gameworld where one map leads seamlessly into the next, or telling the story entirely through in game interactions, or the use of extended environmental puzzles (remember the nuke facility with trip mines and headcrabs?), or breaking up the high tempo action with low tempo gameplay? The absence of these salient design features in subsequent games, and the presence of design features common to other 1998 shooters, is why I make my argument that the influence of Half-Life is vastly overestimated. Yes, shooters after Half-Life were never the same as shooters before Half-Life, but those subsequent shooters played a lot more like Sin or Shogo than they did Half-Life.

Just because Half-Life is the most remembered shooter from 1998 doesn't mean it's influence extended beyond the genre-wide trends it participated in.

Well, if you think the most remembered and successful example of that era is not giving birth to a branch of another shooters of the same kind then you're looking at the industry kinda wrong. The influence of HL is not overestimated, it's just that Valve did quite complicated things better than others. Following works incorporated some prominent elements from preceding titles, but they were picking the ones that are more effortless, - easier to implement and not to fail, - and at the same time has possibly bigger wow effect to the public. So aforementioned features like hub levels, environment puzzles or high-low tempo gameflow were rejected in the proccess.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Great thread Ninja Destroyer !

One thing I'd like to add shamelessly add: CWC Mappack . It's a mini-campaign made by CWC (a Polish Worldcraft message boards, now long gone) community back in 2002. All maps are connected into a campaign, but each one has been made by a different mapper, so it's a nice mixture of different gameplay and architectural styles. I'm mentioning, because it contains one map made by yours truly (map 4 I believe).

Since I didn't play it I've tried it now for a couple of levels. First of all, who in the right mind would put so early a couple of black ops girls when you have so small amounts of ammo ? There is an error later where vortiguants would spawn in the same spot forever. After that, we have a confrontation with tentacle monster, where I was going back and forth. After some time the ventillation shaft finally was opened, but before that it was a dead end. I could go on and on about this, but just don't want to. Even the design feels crude most of the time. I liked the traps though, it was a nice touch to them. Overall, I can't put this on the list, it's nothing personal.

Unkillable Cat
Strange thing about TH. I remember it was my first mod ever and hadn't any problems with the sniper rifle or the difficulty. Sure, some people seems to make cryptic design which isn't intuitive but They Hunger was preety straightforward to me.

 

[octavius]

edit: it occurs to me that there is one additional thing that Half-Life 1 did and that shooters made between 1999 and 2003 or so also did, however I didn't immediately make the connection because they handled it in a different way and it subsequently disappeared from shooter design. That one additional thing is varied tempo/pacing. Half-Life 1 handled it by ratcheting down the shooting, and presenting the player with extended sequences of low threat exploration and environmental puzzles which blocked the progression path.

The one thing I hated about Half-Life was those extended sequences of jumping puzzles. My God it was tedious compared to the gun fights.
The thing I liked best about Half-Life was the marines vs aliens fight in Opposing Force. I wish we'de get more of that and less of the jumping crap.
But all in all H-L was a great game, and OF was even better. Blue Shift was a huge disappointment, though.

 

[barker_s]

First of all, who in the right mind would put so early a couple of black ops girls when you have so small amounts of ammo ? [...] Even the design feels crude most of the time.

That's the point, kind of. As I said, each map was made by a different person and nobody knew what kind of stuff other people put in their maps. As for the crude design - there are maps made by beginners, but there were also other maps made by quite skilled people. Haven't played it in ages though, so I cannot comment on good-to-shit ratio.

And no hard feelings man. I didn't want you to include it in the list - I'm aware it doesn't compare to things like They Hunger. I posted it mostly as a curiosity that I was involved in a long while ago.

 

[A horse of course]

I replayed TH a year back and felt very let down.

 

[Astral Rag]

HL2 mod Transmissions: Element 120 looks pretty good:

Spoiler

Transmissions: Element 120 is a short, free, single player experience set in the Half-Life Universe featuring a unique gravity defying weapon that allows you to jump buildings and sustain large falls.

The story takes place at a mysterious date & location after the events of Half-Life: Episode 2. Where are you? Why have you been sent?

TE120 is the result of over 2 years of nights & weekends creating custom levels, code, models, sounds, and more by a single developer. To help bring the Source Engine up to date several new features are included:

Enhanced dynamic lighting
Integrated Source Shader Editor 0.5 for enhanced post processing & lighting
Improved support for complex physics structure
Support for super massive physics objects
Pre-processed AO
Improved AI and group behavior on multiple AI types

source

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/4...not-half-life-3-but-its-pretty-darn-close.htm

http://www.pcgamer.com/half-life-2-mod-earns-its-creator-a-job-interview-with-gearbox/

 

[Riskbreaker]

Gggmanlives' review of "Afraid of Monsters"

I'm yet to play Afraid of Monsters and its more famous (and apparently adored by steam community, for whatever that's worth at this point) spiritual successor.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

http://lambdageneration.com/modding/half-life/14-of-the-wackiest-half-life-mods/

14 of the Wackiest Half-Life Mods



April 6th 2015 • By Xendance



The Half-Life series can be quite glum at times, especially with no resolution in sight for the series. Good thing we have the modding community to deliver us some wackiness. Here are fourteen wacky mods hand-picked to help relieve those blues.



This list is in no particular order as all of the mods featured here are all wacky and funny in so many different ways imaginable. Now that’s said, let’s begin, shall we?

1. Jamie’s Mod
The Next Big Team (2013) | GoldSrc



Born from the pits of Hellfire2345 and lemurboy12‘s imaginations, Jamie’s Mod is possibly the best-known Half-Life crack mod. All models and weapons in the original game have been mashed with obscure YouTube characters, and then corrupted in some way. The result is an experience akin to what would happen if late-2000s YouTube became sentiment and began assimilating games. And it’s wonderful.

Download: Mod DB

2. G-Man Invasion
G-Man Invasion Developers (2007) | GoldSrc



Russian-made G-Man Invasion replaces every character and creature model with the G-man. Yes, even the roaches. Like Jamie’s Mod, it’s a hilarious twist on the base game. The tiny rodeo G-Men riding snarks are the most crazy thing. Sometimes it wonderfully crosses over into the horrific as you realize that the barnacles are gaping G-Men maws.

Download: Mod DB

3. Cat-Life: GS
BWL Development (2009) | Goldsrc



Only a demo of this mod exists due to bumpy development. The original mod never got finished, and two separate attempts to revive the project failed as well. Cat-Life: GS was the first remake attempt and only playable content available. Despite the issues, the concept is still amusing – You experience the events of Half-Life through the eyes of Newton the cat. According to the concept art, Newton was even going to have a miniature kitty HEV suit. Awww.

Download: Mod DB

4. Half-Life: Alternative Origin
M0rt@nius (2006) | Goldsrc

Not so much a mod as it is a single map. Though simplistic, it’s hilarious because it’s not just nonsensical. It also follows the logical pattern set by the core Half-Life games: You’ve played as a scientist, security guard, marine, and even as a vortigaunt in Decay. In Half-Life: Alternative Origin, you ‘play’ as a vending machine.

Download: TWHL

5. Half-Life 2: Survivor
Valve Software and Taito Corporation (2006) | Source



Half-Life 2: Survivor is not a mod, it’s an actual Valve game licensed to Taito Corporation. It is tailored for Japanese audiences and meant for arcade cabinets. If you are having stereotypical expectations, fret not. You’re right about them. The female rebel is what appears to be a non-mixed Asian Alyx, and you can dress her up in kitty ears. Girl Gordon’s HEV even has a skirt attached to it. At the end of a game, the screen bids you goodbye with the following sentence: “Your fighting spirit will not be forgotten through all eternity”.

There is now a PC port that you can play, courtesy of people over on the Facepunch Studios forums.

6. Scientist SlaughterHouse: Mod Messup 1: WTF
FPDream Software (2009) | Goldsrc



Before Jamie’s Mod there was SSH: MM1: WTF. Like the former, it’s a corruption of the first Half-Life game, though with cruder humour. Scientists tend to explode into an excessive amount of gibs and blood decals. Sign textures have hilariously been replaced with curse words. This mod should appease everyone’s inner 12-year-old.

Download: Mod DB

7. Half-Life 2: All Sounds Replaced with my Voice
Trase666 (2012) | Source

Except for ambient noises and character dialogue, Trase666 replaced every single sound file in Half-Life 2 with his own voice equivalent. He’s no Michael Winslow, which makes the whole experience even funnier. Remember when you were a kid and you had to make the sound effects for your action figure fights? (Or maybe you still do that, we’re not here to judge.) Yeah it’s exactly as much fun. The original YouTube video that Trase666 uploaded has since amassed nearly 2 million views and even made an appearance on G4TV.

Download: garrysmods.org

8. Hazardous-Course 2
Richman (2012) | Goldsrc



Everything in this mod wants to kill you. And you will die a lot, in wonderful ways. Like an old-timey Megaman game, you’re expected to learn from your deaths and become increasingly paranoid of your surroundings. A wall pipe will never again be just a wall pipe; it is now a potential bomb of hot steamy death. A patch of floor texture discolored by just one degree? It’ll break when you step on it, making you fall onto spikes underneath. Or just explode. The funny here comes from the ways in which you die, but also from your own paranoia.

Download: Mod DB

9. Counter-Strike For Kids
Codemanj94 (2010) | Source

Not stritcly Half-Life-themed, but it makes the list for its history. Way back in 2008, the Janus Syndicate uploaded a TV commercial parody of a fake child-friendly edition of Counter-Strike to the Machinima.com YouTube channel. This was done in response to how very young children began playing the game online as it gained popularity. In 2010, Codemanj94 uploaded a real, working pack mod for Counter-Strike: Source based on the video. Now you too can throw a pokeyball at your friends, or have a pillow fight!

Download: Mod DB

10. Half-Life Halloween Mod
Swiss_cheese9797 (2002) | Goldsrc



This mod is the only reason They Hunger did not make this list. They Hunger at least tried to be scary, and achieves it in places. The Half-Life Halloween Mod, however, is the mod equivalent to Halloween as explained by a 10-year-old on a sugar high. The best part about this mod is how few pretences it has. It’s crude: the forest segment is just a winding corridor with tree wall textures.

Download: Mod DB

11. Glitch-Life
w00tguy123 (2006) | Goldsrc



Glitch-Life plays more like an art game than a comedy mod. Textures and animations are randomized with each playthrough, creating a bizarre experience. Like Jamie’s Mod and G-Man Invasion, this is a corruption of the base game. Watch in awe as a lone scientist spins inside a room plastered with pictures of skulls.

Download: Sven Co-op Message Forums

12. Mr Propper
FlaggSV (2010) | Source

What Jamie’s Mod is to Half-Life, Mr Propper is to Half-Life 2. The only difference is a slightly more coherent theme – A lot of the models are themed with bathroom cleaning products. Not all, though. Watching civilian M&Ms being brutalized is as funny as it sounds. Unfortunately, the creator, Flagg doesn’t seem to have released it anywhere.

13. Half-Mind
Sn1pe (2009) | Source



Half-Mind is a Half-Life 2 corruption, like Mr Propper. It’s subtler, though, and feels like a European student art film. At times it seems to only be missing the dissonant violin cords, or Dear Esther-like narration. But then the combine soldiers start breakdancing.

Download: Mod DB

14. Big Lolly
Cayle George (2003) | Goldsrc



Before Pyroland, there was Big Lolly. In fact, modder Cayle George has since been hired by Valve and worked on Team Fortress 2. Created for his brother’s birthday, Big Lolly is an magical candyland adventure. You play as Barney Calhoun in a pink tutu, making your way through sugary valleys while whacking at adorable gummybears with a lollipop.

Download: Mod DB

Honorable Mentions
Crack-Life (2012)
Much like Jamie’s Mod and SSH: MM1: WTF, but less well-crafted. Keep in mind it’s still being worked on, and it does have its highlights. Snarks screaming obscenities as they chase you is the funniest thing we’ve seen in a long time.

Jaykin’ Bacon: Episode 3 (TBA)
Although it doesn’t make the list, it’s only because of how beautifully done it is, and because it hasn’t actually been released yet. From what we can judge from the material online, however, we can safely say that while it is a hilarious deathmatch full conversion, calling it a ‘wacky mod’ would not be doing it justice.

They Hunger (1999)
Didn’t make the list proper, like Jaykin’ Bacon. This Halloween-themed full conversion mod is worth taking a look at though as it shows an impressive technical knowledge of the GoldSrc engine.

Sven Co-op (1999)
Nowadays the mod comes with a ton of content from the forums, a lot of it very wacky indeed. What makes this mod funny is the ability to play the original Half-Life in co-op mode, which makes for hilarious situations. As the humour comes from interaction with other people, we’d have to include virtually every other multiplayer mod if we were to include this one.

Garry’s Mod (2004)
Because it generated an entire Internet subculture and because it is now a stand-alone commercial title, we felt including it would be cheating. It is wacky, though. In fact, it started the whole “physics are funny!” fad popular today.

This list is by no means exhaustive. There is a whole wealth of interesting and unique user-created mods out there waiting to be found. Many of these are quietly hosted on sites like GameBanana or on the Facepunch forums, and only get famous once a popular mainstream board or vlogger features them. This is why mod-hunting is rewarding. You get to find amazing things first-hand.

Have fun!

Taito still exists and they've made HL2 arcade machine ?

 

[Don Peste]

It's missing Rocket Crowbar.
Completely related, why did SourceForts die? Whyyyyy!!

Oh, the arcade machine is available to download.