Remodding The Old Remod! news

It's really rare to find mods for Half-Life 1 that dabbles with WW2 stuff, especially one that goes full Indiana Jones when it comes to its approach, so when The Gate came out, it was quite interesting at first.

The mod itself was fun while its fun, the level design wasn't too bad, the premise and the story can be a bit plot-holey but acceptable, and the new coding along with the new features aren't too bad either.

You got yourself some recoil effects for the guns, the sniper now instahits (i think there was even a border thing around the scope this time, though it looks kinda bad since its cut off), the houndeyes are now dogs, some custom scientist entity, there's some new MP3 player that plays stuff that's not from the media folder, there's a limit remover that doesn't crash the game whenever the maps have more than 512 brush models, and a binocular (which didn't make the final cut for some reason).

You first start in the second gate in Egypt, near where the Nazis first "find" the first gate, not too long after you'll be sneaking around a tank base, getting some trucks fired up in a small village area before going straight to France, a U-Boat base, and the Bismarck of all places (yes, you even get to actually sink it).

The setpieces were pretty fun as well when they're not pulling shenanigans at you, i personally really liked the mine cart chase in gate15.

Of course, things really start to fall apart fast before long.
- The creator of the mod seems to be a bit off when it comes to grammar in the subtitles.
- The story itself is filled to the brim with plotholes the size of the Bismarck.
- Odd model choices such as the lady that originally briefs you.
- The coding didn't bother getting altering the gun mag limits (STG still has 50 rounds/Luger with 17).
- The new enemies don't drop their weapons (only dropping a magazine) when killed.
- The sniper is a Springfield (we're in Nazi occupied zone).
- The sniper animations is broken (the first release has the sniper drawing whenever it shoots).
- The sneaking part being frustrating and random due to the HGrunt AI.
- Using a STG44/MP44 in the mod (despite it not existing in '42).
- The increased difficulty and near HGrunt spam (though you can't really blame CJB, Nazi places and all)
- That low-light assault on the desert base.
- The grenade-spamming HGrunts.
- The vague gameplay design that screws a lot of first time players.
- That out-of-nowhere hour long wait in the cell part.
- THAT ACCURSED "LADDER" BEFORE ENTERING THE BISMARCK.
- And most noticeable of all, NPC's that talk but did not move their lips (which is pretty bad considering the story focus of the mod).

This mod had problems, too much problems.
I haven't yet played the sequel, but i do hope that these problems don't persist.

So i altered the maps, for the better or worse (depending on your taste/preference).
Made the vague slightly more obvious, reduced the cell waiting time, removed part of the stealth act (though you still need to hide for that truck part), modify the models, add proper lipsyncing in the mod, and God knows if i forgot any.

It was going mostly fine, though there was one thing that constantly blocked me.
No matter what i did, i just couldn't find a way to get the NPCs mouths to open in scripted_sentences.
And that's when i realized.

The coding.
The lipsync in the coding itself was broken.
I thought long about it, and decided to simply get rid of the coding itself.

Now, a lot of the features don't really depend that much on the coding, so they were really easy to replace, sans a few.

Environment models and custom NPCs either use cycler or monster_generic, already included in the original HL coding.
The sniper acts like the usual crossbow, though i did made the bolts near invisible (instead of completely invisible, useful for tracking where it goes).
Music files are moved and renamed in the media system folder, don't know why they even boasted about that custom MP3 player when HL already have a fully serviceable MP3 player.
The dogs will be missed, though while they do add variety to the enemy roster, i do personally think that they are kinda useless since they were so easy to kill (well, you do have automatic weapons and all).Recoil effects will be missed, though it did slow down the 9mmAR firerate.

But hey, i got it done, and hopefully the new features make up for the lost ones.

That's all that i can think of saying for now.
Hopefully, you all can enjoy it as i have.
Thanks for reading.