Smod: CryLife for Half-Life 2

2 comments by Pepsifan04 on Mar 18th, 2013

First of all:
If you don't know what Steam Pipe is I recommend reading this:
Support.steampowered.com

This "update" converts .gcf archives in to .vpk , this update applies to (as for now):
Counter-Strike: Source
Half-Life 2: DeathMatch
Day of Defeat: Source
Team Fortress 2

As much I don't care about TF2 and DoD:S, that Half-Life 2: DeathMatch is crucial for SMOD:CryLife to work (CSS is optional, since it only adds maps and materials for those maps)

As for now "the update" has been rolled back, but this won't last forever,
and when this happens SMOD:Crylife will become unplayable, and by saying that I don't mean
that some maps or materials will be missing, the game won't even launch (I'm not speculating, this really happened when "the update" was applied)
At this moment there's no "user-friendly-fix" for that, if there will be an fix for that,
I'll include that in the final release, and nobody-will-have-to-do-things-like manual-patches-or-changing-other-shit-inside-the-mod

However if there won't be mentioned earlier "user-friendly-fix"  The SMOD:CryLife development will be officially stopped and nothing will be released (not here anyway, but somewhere where people know how to change/configure things on their own)

There are several fixes for this valve bullshit:

1:
Include ALL the files for mod to run with the relase

+Mod will work no matter what
+It's "update proof"

-Archive with mod will reach +- 7GB
-It's Illegal to distibute files from other valve games if "user" does not own the copy of the game
(there's no way to determine that, when someone is just downloading the mod, without installing it)

2:
Make an Non-Steam release

+Mod will work no matter what
+It's "update proof"
+I can apply LLA fix without worrying about steam replacing The modified hl2.exe

-Archive with mod will reach +- 7GB
-It's Illegal to distibute files from other valve games if "user" does not own the copy of the game
(there's no way to determine that, when someone is just downloading the mod, without installing it)
-It's Illegal to release sourceengine mods outside Steam platform.

3.
Keep the current file-structure and release mod as normal with advanced install instructions.

+Archive with mod is "only" 2GB
+It's legal
+I can't think of anything else

-Advanced install instructions
-Most people don't even read readme.txt or notes.txt or anything, just copy-paste from .zip/.7z
-this will result in lots of spam and " Y U NOT WORKING"
-People couldn't even bother to change SteamAppId on smod:t from 220 to 215 by themselves, so I doubt "AII" will work.

To summarize this wall of text nicely:
I'm not stopping the development right now, it's not on hold or anything, I'll continue making it and
if there will be possible "user-friendly-fix" I'll release the mod as planned,
however If the Steam Pipe update will break everything, then the mod development will be stopped
and there will be official announcement about that, still though, the archive with the probably unfinished mod will be released somewhere on the internet.

Stay Tuned.