They Hunger: Sven Co-op, Half-Life Give-away! (Updated) news

With ModDB recently posting a great "10 Years of Half-Life" video feature which included both They Hunger and Sven Co-op in its list of Top 5 third-party mods, it seemed like a good time to officially announce something that many of you may have already guessed at...

(Incidentally, "Quite possibly the best Half-Life mod of all time" is a pretty good quote. If we had a box, that'd be right on the front. Thanks ModDB -- your cheque is in the mail!)

The first episode of They Hunger Co-op is set to be included with the next Sven Co-op release, with the second following soon afterwards! Featuring numerous improvements in addition to co-operative multiplayer, it provides yet another incentive to re-play Black Widow Games' classic They Hunger series before its commercial follow-up They Hunger: Lost Souls comes out.

The images below show some of the changes that have been made to Episode 1. Note that we've been in contact with Neil Manke and the BWG team throughout development to ensure that it remains an authentic TH experience -- In fact, some changes actually bring it closer to their original vision.

Various sprites used for vegetation have been replaced with models, in addition to many other small visual improvements. The actual structure of the maps, story sequences etc. remain identical to the original, however.

Certain weapon models like the TH pistol and Thompson submachine gun (below) have been updated by Flewda. Weapons are replaced using SC4.0's new Global Model-Replacement system.

Outdoor lighting tends to be slightly darker, while the hard, inky shadows of the original are retained indoors. You can see Teddy's Zombie Otis in this shot, by the way. Being tougher than regular Zombie Cops, the addition of Otis helps to keep things challenging even with multiple players.

The TH Zombie Head (left) has been replaced with John Carpenter-style Headbugs (legs by Civilian^Soldier, assembled and animated by Peter Kavanaugh). Also, Shp!nx replaced the TH Snarks with an actual Zombie Rat. This brings them closer to what Black Widow Games originally had planned, but were forced to cut due to time constraints.

Sven Co-op's medkit looked out of place in They Hunger, so we made the syringe shown above (model by Peter Conneely, animated by Peter Kavanaugh). The green fluid is used for healing, while purple is used for revival. Note that players are also restricted to They Hunger player models on the TH maps via one of SC4.0's new customization features.

Keep an eye on SvenCoop.com for more They Hunger Co-op and Sven Co-op 4.0 news shortly.

Valve was running a Steam special on Half-Life for its 10th birthday. Seemed like a great chance for people to pick up an extra copy for a friend or relative to play Sven Co-op with -- or for people who, for whatever reason, actually haven't played it before -- but I thought it must be frustrating for those without access to a valid payment method.

So anyway, we have [UPDATE: See below] or so copies of Half-Life to give away (we'll buy more if we can, but Steam has some sort of security feature that's preventing more than five purchases in a day). If you'd like one, just send us a brief note to explain why you can't easily get hold of one yourself. You don't need to be a starving orphan or anything, just something along the lines of "I don't have a credit card..." is OK. 'Prizes' will be delivered in the form of a Steam gift code (no physical copy). Obviously stocks are limited, so be quick.

Edit: The response to this has been much greater than I expected... I sort of assumed most people here would either have all the Half-Life they needed, or be able to buy from Steam, but apparently that's not the case.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to people's generous donations of HL1 gift codes, we now have a considerable number of copies to give away! Though the Steam sale is now over, we still have some left, so if you need one, just follow the instructions above.

UPDATE #3: Sorry, we're now out of copies to give away. See here for comments from some of the people who received copies.

It's Sven Co-op's 10th birthday pretty soon too, by the way. Looking like we should have a new version out before then.