A complete port of 2003 storyline maps for Half-Life 2. Includes all 50 levels, all necessary assets, scripting and programming. Based in huge part on "September 2003 Storyline Map Pack" for the leak engine by XJR900, Vitoy & Maelstrom. Visit hl2-beta.ru if you want to download it. This project aims at preservation and accessibility. It does not remaster or overhaul the levels and it doesn't place cut content that weren't in them already. It was done for personal purposes and I decided to share it for anyone interested.
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I’ve started building this low-profile project for my own convenience but soon decided to share it once it’s done. Well, here it is.
This 2003 storyline port does just that - makes the plot-related maps from 2003 playable in the latest version of Half-Life 2 on Steam. It includes all the necessary assets and features without bloating the filesize or trying to recreate some big thing.
The scope is just to make the story maps playable without the frustration of the leak engine.
It is not a remaster, overhaul or restoration.
Main features:
- Play all 50 maps of the 2003 story campaign with authentic assets, look and feel. Comes with chapter select!
- Preserved essence: all the levels keep their old texturing and placeholders, showing the immense gap in quality that Half-Life 2 had to cross to become the masterpiece.
- Balance and accessibility: additional health items, ammo and autosaves were placed across the entire storyline. The scenes have been subtitled in the same manner as the base game.
- Content contained: the 2003 assets and entities show up only in the old levels. You can launch any Half-Life 2 map from within the mod and it won’t get weird. Useful for those who want to compare the prototype with the final image.
- Enjoy infinitely better stability and convenience.
In short, this is the mod for everyone who wants to check out the seldom talked about 2003 levels without having the experience ruined by all the unpredictable beta jank.
The initial release includes only the main storyline maps and entities encountered on them! It's not designed to recreate some lost timeline or give a second life to Cremators or the Hydra and other mythical content.
Treat it more like a museum emulation of playing the beta for the first time, but better.
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Additional credit:
This project couldn’t have happened without the "September 2003 Storyline Map Pack" for the leak engine by XJR900, Vitoy & Maelstrom. You can find it on hl2-beta.ru.
Thanks to A. Shift for help with the skybox textures and playtesting.
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Files
Half-Life 2 2003 Storyline Port V1.1
Full Version 18 commentsUpdated release of the port. Requires Half-Life 2. How to install: simply put the folder in (your Steam installation folder)/Steamapps/sourcemods, restart...
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Hey, are you planning to port other map packs from the beta era? In particular, 2001 (the same one with American skyscrapers and Borey) as well as cards from E3 2002 and 2003. I would like to play on them simply by installing them as a mod for the original Half Life 2 on a stable engine, I think people were grateful
it dosent show in my steam libary help me please
being able to actually play the content from 2003 without it crashing every 5 seconds really enlightened me on just how different it really was from the release version. shame the stuff like the canal barge got removed, that would've been kinda cool to see.
Cant seem to load into the next part of maps, first map of each chapter works fine but trying to go to trainstation_02 or whatever crashes everytime
is it possible to replace the standard weapons with weapons of the 2003 version, so that you can play a regular company (2004 retail) with beta weapons in this mod?
these are the 2003 weapons though
Why are you using 2002 ar2?
I promise you, friend, of all of the people to YBF-splain the beta to, Cvoxalury and A-Shift are probably the worst people to do so with.
The mod is using what the original anon-hl2 was using in 2003.
finally, someone did it