Adrenaline Gamer 2 mod for Half-Life 2

What is Adrenaline Gamer?

The original Adrenaline Gamer (which was conceived of on a site of the same name) is a match mod which adds many new features and game modes to Half-life deathmatch. It has been used in just about every league or cup in the HLDM scene for the past 4 or 5 years.

So AG2 will just be a match mod for Half-life 2?

No, it will be much more than that. Whereas the first version of AG only really added more functionality to an existing game and, beside a couple of tweaks, never really altered the basic gameplay, just about every aspect of AG2 is being designed from scratch. What this means is that even though we will be using Half-life 2 as our base, we not hesitate to add, change or even remove things if we feel it is in the best interest of the overall gameplay.

So you are not just a simple Half-life 2 deathmatch mod?

Again the answer would really have to be no. There are already a couple of teams out there who are just simply adding deathmatch to HL2 without changing much, so if that is all you are after, then be sure to check those mods out. We on the other hand want to build as good a deathmatch game as we possibly can, and so will try not to let the base we are using limit us too much. We want a game that is not only great fun to play, but one that also has a lot of depth and longevity.

We will of course be including many of the match features that can be found in the original Adrenaline Gamer though (along with some new ones).

How close will you stay to Half-life 2?

Reasonably close. We are trying to keep to the HL2 theme as much as possible, so you will not really see anything that looks too out of place in the game. We will also be using pretty much the same weapon set as the single player game (though we will be tweaking those weapons until we achieve the kind of balance we feel is needed for a good deathmatch game).

What can fans of the first Half-life deathmatch game expect?

There will be quite a few things from the original game that will be present in AG2, but not too much (we will be releasing more information on this in the near future). Remember that this is a new game, and as such there should be plenty of new things to learn. We also felt that it there is no need to make it too close to the original when we already have that to play.

Will this game appeal to competitive players from other scenes?

Hopefully. We have put a lot of effort in to thinking about the gameplay, and trying to make it as tactically deep as possible. There will also be just about every feature for playing matches in AG2 that most competitive players expect to have these days.

So you are not really targeting players who are new to deathmatch?

On the contrary, we want as many new players as possible. It is just that we feel that any team developing a deathmatch game should never dumb down the gameplay to make it easier for those newer players. It rarely solves anything as the better players still tend easily beat the newer ones, no matter what you do. And you only end up turning many of those hardcore players away if you change too much.

Instead, we will be working hard on a few other ideas which we feel will help to fix this problem (and we do feel it is a problem - one that is present in all deathmatch games). If anyone has any other suggestions for this though, we would love to here them.

What makes you feel that you are qualified to build such a game?

AG2 is a mod that two of the team (Precizion and Bullit) have been thinking about building for a few years now (although that design has changed recently to bring it more in line with HL2), and so have had a lot of time to think on just what it is that makes a great deathmatch game. They will be putting everything they have learnt in that time in to making AG2 as good as they can.

Some of the team have also played a lot of different deathmatch games (such as HLDM, UT2, QW or CPM) at a very high level, and will be bring all their experience from those games in to this project.

All I want to know is: Will the game be fast?

Oh yes.

Features:

Adrenaline Gamer 2 will have many different features that will make it an exciting deathmatch experience. Whilst we won't be talking about all of them until the game is nearer completion, here are just a few of them as a teaser:

Match Options
Besides a comprehensive set of voting commands, AG2 will also offer other options which will make playing matches at a competitive level all the better. Perhaps the best of these will be the all new coaching feature.

Fast and Fluid Movement
Everyones favorite, bunnyhopping, will be making a return in AG2 along with a couple of new tricks. When combined they will make for some very fluid movement around the maps, making the game a joy to play even when only running around on an empty server.

Professional Quality Maps
We have some of the best mappers from Half-life working on the maps for AG2. Each map will only be allowed to be a part of the mod's releas