The Robotropolis Project mod for Half-Life

The past few years have been hard for TRP. Quite amusing how much deadlines I tried setting for myself, only to blow past them like my own personal conscience meant nothing. Map5 is still unfinished, and I feel like even though my modding drive's been driven elsewhere, I'm still burdened by the spectre of my still unfinished mod. Yet, it wasn't all of that which eventually led me to releasing this somewhat demo of my mod. It was something else.

I'll spare you the faff about most of my modding attention being diverted over to the Doom frontlines, I'll just go right into the core. Not that long ago I discovered a community effort to reanimate one of Sonic SatAM's episode, I believe it was called Rejuiced. It very much reinvigorated my drive to finish this mod once again, maybe try to finish it right as it finishes and strike the spear at its most sharp? And so once again I pulled up the ol' tools once more to work on the mod. However, a sudden problem struck my installation.

It seems that with recent Steam updates, I've caught something that's quite astronomically bizarre. Anything Goldsource related that I run on Steam takes a whole 30 seconds before it finally properly runs a game. It doesn't do it when I map change from one map to the next, nor if I restart the map through the console, but everytime I either start a new game or load an existing one, I have to wait an entire 30 seconds of wait time before I can finally play.



Of course, I thought it was probably some bug that was recently introduced that'll go away in no time, and so I waited. Days went. Weeks. Months. And now, it's near the end of 2021. It has yet to leave my presence. Loading custom mods in Source is faster than Goldsource. It was particularly aggravating. I wasn't hyperboling when I said that anything Goldsource related stuff on Steam ends up taking aeons to load; Sven Coop, Cry of Fear, Half-Rats: Parasomnia, the list goes on, all of them are affected. I tried replaying the Halfquake series not too long ago, and while it was still an experience I find enjoyable, I think even Patience was forgiving compared to the 30 second load times every single time I make a mistake and die.

I have absolutely no idea what actually caused this whole mess. I tried wiping my install, deleted everything, and then reinstalled. Nothing. I asked people around and none of them seem to have the same issue as me. My initial suspicion then was that maybe my computer setup was incompatible with whatever recent update that was done to Steam, and so I tried testing this theory by playing my long dusted behind-the-curtains copy of an ancient "Steam" HL1 version out of desperation. Indeed, lo and behold! Saving and loading was perfectly fine in that copy. Suddenly, I'm back to my young habits before I properly adapted to actual Steam, playing HL1 mods out of a shady copy and having fun once again. Imagine my happiness when Signal Lost was released and I could play it without the use of that infernal software.

And then, I thought, maybe it I move TRP over to this installation, I can finally return back to working on my mod and having a jolly time again. I moved over the folders from my Steam install to my "Steam" install, hit New Game, and...



It crashed.

Suffering. Agony, even. I don't know why, but it seems that I can't play my mod at all through my shady copy. I wonder then if some files have been altered in such a way that only actual Steam HL1 can read or if maybe limitations that was in that old released got removed in the new version that I've been mapping for, and at that point, I broke. I can't do it, anymore. I surrender. This has been happening to me for months, and with no way out, I decided then to break open a demo of what I've worked on so I could atleast have something released while I try to sort out this entire chaos.

It's not perfect, heavens no. I can still see flaws I need to fix immediately even as I attempt to do one last run before I release this demo, from the lighting all the way to brushes that are clearly not to grid. But if I want to have any motivation to repair any of it, I need to have Steam not try to test my patience everything I open up the console to load this map I just compiled for the 2-3 dozenth time today. So, there's that.

I hope you all could have fun with this short demo. The whole thing currently takes place from the abandoned mines all the way to the high level development floor of the Flamer MKII construction facility. I tried to add a fair bit before release, stuff like autosaves and extra supplies, but that's about it. I'm sorry for not getting more out or if there's stuff I still miss, I'll try to take notes for when my install could finally once again grace me with good loading times.

Thanks for reading.