Half-Life 2: Rave mod

Let me first start by saying that I’ve always been a huge fan of Quake 3; it’s the game play that’s had me addicted for years and I’m not the only one, as a small community of us old school veterans continue to fight it out every night with rails, rockets and fo’shizzel.

I watched the era come and go, and yet I am one of the few players left still unable to transverse to a different, slower paced, probably even long-term strategy based game.

One of the things I loved about Quake 3, and still to this day, is the requirement to think on your feet, the requirement to spin out a ‘strategy’ made up from a series of moves to frag the other opponent with ultimate precision.

Such executions never fail to please me; the gibbage and blood are confirmation of what I have achieved. I am now one kill above what I was previously, and that’s one kill closer to fragging your ass, punk.

Call me old school, call me whatever you like, I will not deny that these fundamentals of game play have been burnt into my mind like a cast iron branding. I admit that without these simple fundamentals such as gibbage, gore and blood I am left feeling empty and without the required achievement deserved for each life I take.

While Next-Gen gaming technology has fascinated me for many months, for many hours, and many (sleepless?) nights, I have always wanted to replicate such game play. I have always longed for a return of the adrenaline pumping action which John Carmack founded while high on crack. As I quote “I never speak of "the good old days" – John Carmack”.

But alas, no such replacement has been created to date; all attempts have been futile failures in my eyes and in the eyes of the vast majority of ‘my kind’. We are left with an outdated game, built on an outdated engine, with out dated graphics and while our frame rates improve with each new technological breakthrough we are still left (heh, not just counting the pennies, you thieving bastards) wishing that one day… maybe one day… some one will replicate those key points of game play. (UT3)

Now what I’m not going to say is that I’ve accomplished this dream, because I believe… or have come to the realisation that this dream is un-accomplishable, Quake 3 was released with such perfection that it cannot ever be improved or re-made.

But what I am going to say, what I can firmly assure, is that I have replicated the ‘Genre of Style’ the game portrays.

What I have done is taking the basic concept of Quake 3, the basic ideology of ‘adrenaline pumping knuckle crunching pain’ (APKCP) and replicated it in the modern age of Next-Gen technology.

My first hurdle into this development was to resolve the problem where the demand for such games is almost non-existent. Most gamers are into their own long-term strategy or team working first person shooters and with such a wide range and variety of different online games to choose from the demand for fast-thinking adrenaline games such as Quake 3 has been diluted.

To bring back an interest in such game play, I analysed what parts of modern society would be most interested in playing such a game.

If you take a look at what fuels adrenaline games like Quake from a real-life social perspective of the Quake 3 scene at its peak – you will find amphetamine narcotics played a shockingly large roll.

Considering, the kind of people in 2007 who would still want to play such a style of game, the largest market was the ‘rave/clubbing’ scene and it fitted the bill with all the colourful special effects and music related to adrenaline gaming perfectly.

To emphasize the drug use in this game, I created ‘overly happy’ facial expressions for the characters which you could relate to them being… chemically happy? I also dilated all the character pupils. I also created rather large Extacy pill replica’s which are used as the only health increment in the game – so it is rather vital to take these ‘large’ Extacy pills if you want to survive.

There’s also a the ‘Speed Shroom’ which is modelled around your average magic mushroom of the Liberty Cap variety, the Speed Shroom gives you a movementand physics based speed boost along with some basic psychedelic visual effects.

The term APKCP was coined by James Fletcher, all rights reserved.

GAMEPLAY MOVIE:

>> RaveMovie.wmv