Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Windows, Mac game

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhi. It's time for our always punctual monthly update! Always guaranteed to come out on a month! But first, an announcement:

In other words, we've been granted access to a huge chunk of their Source 1 stuff, source code included, for the express purpose of making Jabroni Brawl as stupid good as it can be without being hindered by the previous limitations of operating purely as a mod. Once we're fully ported over, that means we'll really be a full fledged GAME rather than just a mod. Scary thought. I suppose this also raises questions about whether we should really still be on ModDB but ehhh whatever. And yea you may have already heard about this considering it was announced over our discord some time ago, but HEY now I'm announcing it here.

Also, to clear up some confusion since I've seen people claiming "Valve didn't want to give it to them", yea that's not even close. If they really didn't want to, they just wouldn't have. Everything we asked for and then some was given to us once we were approved, and while the many rounds of e-mail tag certainly took awhile to finish (mostly due to some late requests by us to add more devs), given the VERY HIGH PRICE (literally tens of thousands of dollars JUST for the barest minimum access) that a developer would have usually had to pay for access to all this stuff, we are nothing if not grateful to them for their amazing generosity. This is an awesome gift they've given not just to our team, but other mod teams as well (such as Boreal Alph, for instance!). This should be recognized as nothing more than Valve giving back to the Source modding community in a BIG way.

Well, we're gonna port the project to the CS:GO engine, as it's the most up-to-date version of Source around. In fact, we already started a while ago, hence this update is a bit late - it's turning out to be QUITE the process, no thanks to our game having already been ported numerous times across basically every previous version of the SDK. Zero, our lead programmer, has already racked up over 600 hours working on just that.

The main obstacles standing in our way of having a test-ready port are the following:

Backwards compatibility for models. Sadly there’s so many issues here in getting CSGO to properly registered models from older builds that it’d take too long to list. Just trust us when we say this is a huge pain.
Panorama. New engine bring new UI framework. A blessing, compared to VGUI. But that also means starting all over from scratch. Literally from zero. Everything. Windows, menus, HUD, images, fonts, and so on. Probably animations too! So that'd be taking a lot of time and effort. On the bright side, Panorama has a built-in layout editor, making this task a tad bit easier.
Invisible cats. Yes. We’re still not sure why these explosive fiends just refuse to render properly…
And whatever other issues pop-up once we have a build that can be played.

For now, we are still running off the old SDK2013 build (tho with some modern fixes made, detailed below), making maps and testing out new features while also chucking new stuff into it thanks in part to Valve's generous assistance.

SO, let’s recap what we've been up to over the last year:

WEAPONS:

Single barrel shotgun

Yea we added another shotgun. We’ll probably even add another one, so there. Faster firing rate, better accuracy, less pellets/damage. Was mainly something added to compliment the Hunted gamemode’s weapon sets, but it proved decent enough for other gamemodes as well.

Nailgun

Another TFC classic. But the nailgun itself wasn’t a particularly good weapon on its own, so you’ll only find this as a subweapon available to assassins on TFC.

Super nailgun

Well TFC did have a supernailgun, which I figured would be perfect for all the other gamemodes, but it was an odd looking gun. And why spend the effort making a new model when we could just copypaste->mirror an existing one for laughs??

New pistol model

Original model was pretty damn out-dated. So here’s a new one!

Quad RPG

Super WIP model. For now we’re just using the model of the HL RPG. It’s essentially just like a tfc/tf2 soldier quad rpg, but with extremely reduce self-damage to allow for more mobility, and an added alt fire that will launch all the rockets currently loaded at once in an erratic fashion.

Shredder

Another classic from Turok 2. Not in-game yet, but the idea is primary fire shoots out a blue laser projectile that explodes into a mass of ricocheting bullets, while alt fire shoots a ricocheting red laser that triggers a small explosion on each bounce. Should end up pretty devastating.

MAPS:

SMALL MAPS!

You’ve probably noticed a lot of our maps are a bit on the BIG side. So what if you want to just play a round with 1 or 2 friends?? Well, don’t worry, we recently held a map jam amongst our mappers with the goal of designing a map for ~4 people. Here’s the results!

And HEY what better way to show off maps meant for very few people, than with deathmatch games featuring 20+ people?? ENJOY

Bloodstained - By I_Van

Nowhere is safe in this little estate, so keep moving and keep shooting. Check those corners and keep your finger on the trigger, lest you be buried in the canyon around you.

Datacube - By Maestra Fénix

A small map for fast fights, inspired by classic maps/mods like Q3DM17 'The Longest Yard', Kyper Kuutio, Neuromancer or Dystopia

Helix - By: Bekoha

About as small a map as they come. Fight in two connected spiral staircases, while avoiding falling into the fan blades below.

Hideout - By: Bubbyboytoo

Fight in this compact yet 3 tiered map in either the underground, in the building, or on the rooftops.

Industries - By: Ellie

based around the fictional offices of JB Industries featuring one main meeting room with a looping corridor around it.

Level3 - By: Junior

A 3 floor arena modeled after locations seen in Portal

Sauna - By: Nask

A rats map that takes place in a sauna. Includes flushable toilet that can teleport you across the map at a smaller size.

REGULAR MAPS! The sorta size we usually shoot for.

Airlines - By: MissingNoGuy

A huge moving vehicle map set aboard two planes. Inspired by the custom map ts_stuntpath from The Specialists.

Bug - By: Craty

A futuristic looking map consisting of various buildings to explore, and jumppads to help you navigate.

Cloisters - By: Nask

Coast10 - By: Valve. Ported by LordDz

It’s coast10 from the Half-Life 2 campaign. Whoa!

Courtside - By: Junior

A symmetrical map consisting of two bases and a wide open arena, complete with scattered jump-pads and portals.

Deathcarts - By: LordDz

As you’ll see in the video, the twist here is you’re stuck inside a func_vehicle golf cart. Good luck!

Demise - By: Gearbox. Ported and edited by: Nask

A popular DM map taken from Half-Life: Opposing Force, this features various portals, func vehicles, and throwable boxes, to make for a chaotic close-quarters map.

Dimensional - By: MissingNoGuy

A map set within a teleportation chamber and filled with func_vehicles.

Harvest - By: Sean. Ported and edited by: Ellie.

It’s Harvest, from TF2. We’ve modified it a bit to remove all the player clips and increase the ceiling a metric ton, so as to fully support all the aerial antics JB3 entails.

Infighting - By: I_Van.

A lifelike recreation of the mapper's house, even including fine details like the blood pumping close quarters action and zombie attacks. Use the little cross!

Mars - By: Bumpy.

A medium sized map located in Mars inside of an abandoned military base.

Mayhem - By: Housemaster

An insanely chaotic racing map where touching literally anything with your car will cause it to violently explode.

Minigames - By: LordDz

Various challenges in one map, made with lots of black hammer magic.

Park - By: Gearbox. Ported and edited by: Nask

Another port of a popular Half-Life: Opposing Force DM map. We’ve got a lot of ideas being tossed around for this, but for now it’s pretty much just a straight port.

MEGA MAP SNEAK-PEEKS:

Gunman Chronicles Mayan Map - By: About a dozen JB devs

Boy this was nearly ready, but not quite. Look forward to hearing more about this massive +1 year in the making map soooooon

Narrows - By: Phone-Booth

I’ve already spoken on here before about Tales From The Galactopticon, the extremely ambitious, difficult to pronounce, and sadly cancelled Half-Life 2 mod by a team of super talented people. Well, one of them happens to be one of our testers, and thanks to some blackmai- i mean, flattery, he’s been convinced to make a brand new Galactopticon map for us. Here’s a teaser.

System Shock 2 - Deck 4 - Ported and edited by: Bekoha and Violation.

NightDive are awesome. They’ve given us a greenlight to rip as much System Shock stuff as we want, so obviously a new map was in order. There’s a lot of options on where we’re gonna take this from here, but it’s too early to say. For now, enjoy this look at the layout to this ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE map.

NOTABLE UPDATES!

Akina - By: Ott

Akina has received a massive and long overdue facelift. Instead of legions of identical cars, the map is now filled with dozens and dozens of unique vehicles. They all share the same speed and acceleration, so it’s purely aesthetics dictating which one you’ll take. Many will make use of custom sounds as well, like the tram from the opening of Half-Life which will do the entire VOX opening monologue as you drive it.

Cold Science - By: Nask

This map has undergone numerous detail passovers since last shown. It’s now easily one of our prettiest looking maps yet.

Forest - By Valve for Day of Defeat. Ported and edited by: Zero

Zero’s been hard at work setting up this map to support our new control points gamemode, while also giving it a detail pass and including more props and features (like the mortars!) from DoD into this map.

Frostbite - By: Junior

Frostbite has also been the proud recipient of numerous detail passes, and also now has giant kickable ice cubes and driveable sleds as well to really up the ante.

Station - By: Maps from They Hunger 1-3, layout by postal, cobbled together by Matto, now updated by MissingNoGuy

I had written up a long list of ideas for this map last year, and MissingNoGuy went ahead and incorporated them all into this map. Throwable skulls are hidden throughout the map and capable of instantly killing anyone hit with them. A parked helicopter can now be found, complete with mounted turret. And numerous other tweaks and details have been added as well.

GAMEMODES:

Three new gamemodes have been added:

CONTROL POINTS - Essentially built to be just like the TF2 mapping framework. You can use this gamemode type to set up either an arena map (two teams, no respawns), a payload map, an attack/defend control points map, a king of the hill map, or a symmetrical CP map.. Our payload maps are still early WIP, but here’s some footage for everything else:

RATRACE - The obligatory racing gamemode. The first 3 to reach the end of the map win, with more points being awarded the higher you ranked. Checkpoints can also be placed along the map for people to respawn from when they die. Lap functionality doesn’t exist yet, but may be added at some point.



HOTSPOT - This hectic team-based gamemode centers around 2+ teams fighting to control randomly selected zones in a map. Rounds are 90 seconds, but the timer is paused for every second a team maintains full control over a zone. That team will then get 1 point for every second they can keep the other teams out. Every 30 seconds a new zone will randomly be chosen for the teams to fight over. At the end of the round, the team with the most points wins!

We’ve also added some fun new features to our existing gamemodes:

SvT - A new alarm system has been added. If a guard sees a sneak and keeps him on his crosshair long enough, they’ll activate an ‘alarm’, wherein the Sneak’s location will be marked on the HUD of all living terrorists. Cameras can also be set up along the map to do the same thing, but Sneak can destroy these. On top of the Location giveaway, there’s also a slight chance to trigger a reinforcements event, wherein a handful of dead players will be respawned with a weak loadout. This is a stealth gamemode after all, so be sneaky!

SvM - The alarm system is also applied here. Everytime a Team M member sees the sneak, his location will also be marked for everyone else on Team M. This basically ensures a degree of teamwork regardless of the level of communication certain players may or may not have.

BR - New mutators continue to be added, with no end in sight. Our new lineup consists of:
Duty Calls - Realistic bullet-based guns only, dark brown color overlay, regenerating health
Hard Mode - The map gets flipped. Really messes with your head on maps you know well, and does absolutely nothing on perfectly symmetrical maps!
Hurricane - Random strong bursts of wind will knock you in any random direction, including straight up! Uses Florida Man player model
Melon odyssey - Melon guns only, can only use the alt fire slow melon. Results in an ocean of slow melons floating around the map.
Ricochets Only - Colt only, no reloading, can only damage with ricochets. Just as hard as it sounds.
Rocket Pogo - Rocket crowbar only. Movement is extremely sluggish, so your best bet is to navigate with the rocket crowbar itself.
Text Adventure - Saved the best for last. Refer to below video

FEATURES

NEXTBOT

So the first and most obvious benefit of our full Source license, is access to Valve's Nextbot code, the system used to power the bots in TF2 and L4D (and also the zombies in L4D). This more advanced framework for creating bots and NPC's has been a huge boost for us. Which, yeah, means that JB3 will indeed have FULL BOT SUPPORT. Rejoice!

But it doesn't just stop there. We're also setting up all our NPC's to run off of this. Everything from chasing scientists, all the way down to the little chumtoads, will be set up to make use of this. We'll hopefully have more to show off on this very soon, as a certain giant map is already being set up to make full use of this.

Loading time reductions

We’re currently investigating a number of approaches for reducing the load times for our maps. While most are too WIP to really discuss, one possibility is a system for dynamically loading the needed player models as required, so people won’t have to pre-load all of our 100+ player models as they’re loading in. For now that’s really the only one ready to discuss, but trust me when I say it’s def something we’ll be looking to sort in any way we can.

More unique player model features!

Probably the most noticeable short-coming in many Source mods is using the same set of hands for all the player models. As a game featuring an insane amount of wildly varied player models, this issue only became all the more noticeable. Enter Ficool, who sorted out a new proper CSGO rig for us to use, and then started slowly redoing the majority of our weapon animations to support new arms. Modelers such as Ellie have then been hard at work making new arms for specific player models to use. The results have been nothing short of highly entertaining, and it’s our hope to eventually have all our weapons support this, and any player model that makes sense having unique arms, to be set up with them. Here’s some footage highlighting a few:

Well, so far we have custom blood effects, death sounds, death effects (for a few), and now arms for our many, many player models. The next logical step is full custom voice line sets, and so we’ve set up a new system to allow for voice line overrides for specific player models. For instance, all the TF2 models will now use fitting lines taken from their games. We’ll also be looking at doing some custom voice work here and there for any player models that’d particularly make sense. All of which will hopefully help players get better immersed in the highly disturbing experience that is playing Jabroni Brawl: Episode 3.

And finally comes the hotly anticipated custom foot step sounds! For a game that features as many unusual player models as ours, this was just a given. This is extremely early (literally implemented just hours ago) so it will surely be more expanded by our next update. For now though, here's a tease of what's to come:

HALLOWEEN

Once again, we’re making Halloween extra fun in JB. We’ve added loads of TF2 stuff, and made various maps switch to fun halloween versions when the holiday mode is enabled.

The WHEEL OF FATE is here! Every now and then a random card gets drawn, which in turn applies a random temporary status effect to every player on the map. Here's just a few cards you'll encounter. Can you guess what they do??

Horseless Headless Horsemann is naturally here as well! A random player will be declared IT and be endlessly hunted down by the Horseman. He can be killed though, but it won't be easy.

Here's a pic of the Halloween event version of No_Mercy, showcasing the wheel of fate and the HL1 apache

Here's the underworld portal in the halloween event version of farmhouse, where you can gain super HP, if you can make it through alive.

Lil' Ghostnut can also be found on farmhouse, roaming the map and spooking players

Postal Zone also gets a nice Halloween makeover. And, as a bonus, newly created zombie kleiners, barneys, and g-men will roam the map. You’d be surprised how much time went into picking out good voice lines for all of them, but it was def worth it.

TF2 Scarecrow has also been added as a playermodel, having formally just been a map prop

CHRISTMAS

Christmas is also a thing that exists, contrary to popular belief. So we’ve gone ahead and set up fun stuff to occur during that holiday season. So far it’s still early, but you can look forward to strings of christmas lights appearing on maps, and also to Hunted getting a fun change, as the VIP will now be replaced with Santa. We’ll very likely be expanding on this further as we go along, though.

NPC's

A ton of new NPC’s have been added, with more still to come. We’ve already mentioned the dinos and the horseless headless horseman, but here’s some others you can look forward to.

First up are the alien flocks and the cockroaches from Half-Life 1. The roaches you no doubt recall being throughout the black mesa facility, and the alien flock you probably saw in the background of the g-man end scene. Both are fun background details, and have a surprising amount of effort put into their AI by Valve. First five to rеply to this article with "2o2o year of jebobi" win a stеаm kеy btw. But anyways, just adding them wouldn’t be enough, so we’ve made the two function instead as a customizable base for mappers to make use of, by switching their models/sounds/death effects with whatever they want. Here’s some footage to illustrate some of what’s possible

But of course a ton more standard NPC’s have also been thrown in. Here’s some footage to showcase them:

Censored!

As you probably noticed, this game has a big scary dildo shown prominently on the end of a power drill, for use as a chainsaw-like weapon (blame Jaanus for giving us this ungodly abomination). Such vulgarity might not be totally kosher for streaming, or people that just aren’t interested in seeing that kinda stuff in a game. So we’ve added a number of censor levels for people to make use of! They can either serve to blur out these unspeakable objects, or replace them out-right with far more SFW variants. Behold:

The new SFW option replacing dildos with sausages

The powergrill - the SFW replacement for the drildo

And of course this can go hand in hand with the already existing gore level settings. Just yet another example of how customizable JB has become.

Visual Effects

Housemaster has been hard at work as always, working to further improve the visual fidelity of our project. Here's a video of some of what he's been up to. While still very WIP we're aiming for over the top gore and blood, with support for various colors and effects depending on your player model.

Misc stuff

Ellie added a new Lil’ Peanut player model to act as the Sneak for SvM matches involving Lil’ Peanut. You can see it here in this video

Really though, the amount of stuff that’s been added over the year is far too much to list out. But instead, here’s a video highlighting a few choice additions. Enjoy!

Fixes fixes fixes fixes

While the new engine build is brewing, we’ll be continuing to do our testing on the current SDK2013 build. That being said though, we’ve now updated this build to use the latest binaries from Team Fortress 2, and also applied all the base game code fixes from HL2/CSS/TF2 branches made since 2015. So it’s at least not totally out-dated… Well, by Source 1 standards at least.

But HEY let’s talk about some more FUN stuff. We recently solved the mystery of a nasty memory leak. It's a pretty fun story, but also QUITE LONG. So for the sake of not stretching this update any further, I just pastebin’d it here. If you're interested in a FUN read, check this out:

Pastebin.com

TRANSLATIONS

All localization files are a work in progress because of any new additions added to the game. More than 500 strings have been added or updated since our last update, with more to come.

Of note is the Neutral Spanish localization: Neutral Spanish is a Spanish dialect that can be understood by Spaniards, Mexicans, Argentinians, Chileans, and any other countries that speak the language. It used to be that our Spanish localization was Neutral until they got separated, and now the regular Spanish localization is meant for Spaniards, and the Neutral one for anyone else. However, our Spanish translator is generally busy with the Spanish localization as is, so he can’t do both at the same time – if you could help us with that, let us know!

In short:
• Kept up to date: Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian

• Kept up to date, no Closed Captions: Hungarian, Portuguese

• Mostly done: Czech, Italian

• Half-done localization (they need help!): Bulgarian, Finnish, German, Greek, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Simplified Chinese

• Little or no progress (they need help!): Traditional Chinese, Korean, Spanish (Neutral), Turkish, Romainian, Vietnamese

Brazilian Portuguese: ~100% done.
Bulgarian: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), ~50% done.
Czech: Missing lines related to new gamemodes and content, ~75% done.
Dutch: ~100% done.
English: This is the baseline for all other localization files, so it’s naturally kept up to date.
Finnish: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), ~50% done.
French: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), ~50% done.
German: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), ~50% done.
Greek: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), ~50% done.
Hungarian: No Closed Captions support, main localization files need a few lines to be kept up to date, ~75% done.
Italian: Mostly up to date, with Closed Captions being 100% done, but the main files are missing playermodel-related lines and new additions. ~75% done.
Japanese: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), also missing localization related to lessons. ~45% done.
Korean: No translators currently
Norwegian: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), ~50% done.
Polish: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), ~50% done.
Portuguese: No Closed Captions support, but otherwise pretty much kept up to date! ~80% done.
Romainian: No translators currently.
Russian: ~98% done.
Simplified Chinese: No Closed Captions support, very outdated (no changes since big update), ~50% done.
Spanish: ~99% done.
Spanish (Neutral): No translators currently
Swedish: A few lines short from 100% support (very recently added content). ~95% done.
Thai: No Closed Captions support, main localization files need a few lines to be kept up to date, ~75% done.
Turkish: Only lessons localization so far, ~10% done.
Traditional Chinese: Only lessons localization so far, ~10% done.
Ukrainian: ~99% done.
Vietnamese: No translators currently

TEAM ADDITIONS:

Just a few additions this time around. Welcome aboard to:
- Paper Product, who will be helping with the arduous task for making low-poly versions of our guns to be used as world models
- Stiffy360 who will be helping with rigging player models and sorting out animation issues
- JugadorXEI who will help with keeping our translation team organized and up to date
- and Ficool, who stopped by only briefly to give us a huge head start in redoing our weapon animations to support player model specific arms.

RECRUITING:

We’re always looking for fresh talent here!

More translators would be nice, namely for:
Bulgarian, Finnish, German, Greek, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish (Neutral), Turkish, Romainian, Vietnamese

More programmers would also be QUITE handy, but since we’re now working with Valve’s private IP, you’d have to be quite experienced and with a proven, trust-worthy track record... And also be willing to wait on Valve to slowly sort out the needed paperwork lol.

Animations could also use a hand, since about a dozen of our guns need to be redone on the CSGO rig to support c_arm’s. Help with player model animations and NPC animations would also be great! That said, we do have quite the talented animator already, so if we were going to add more, you’ll have to be able to at least match his level of skill.

Mappers and modelers are always welcome, if they’re experienced enough. We’ve got quite the team so far, so you’d need to really know your stuff if we’re gonna add even more.

If you’re interested in helping in any of these areas, or something else, feel free to join our discord and shoot me a DM. Thanks!!

Discord.gg

CLOSING:

Thanks for following along with us over all these years! This is certainly our biggest update yet, and not just in terms of content. We’re all committed to getting this into the public’s hands, but are gonna have to ask for a bit more time as we slowly work towards porting to the CS:GO engine. We promise it’ll be totally worth it. In the meantime, feel free to keep up to date on our progress here, or on twitter and discord.

Twitter.com
Youtube.com
Discord.gg

2019 YEAR END STATS:

- 2937 commits (1826 - game repo, 1111 - code repo)
- 269 new roadmap tasks
- 285 posted crash dumps
- 140 closed roadmap tasks
- 121 game updates
- 36 new maps
- 18 new non-playable characters
- 13 new player models
- 9 new weapons
- 6 game servers
- 4 new dev team members
- 3 new game modes
- 2x sped up automated code build times
- 1 stabilized prop_vehicle
- 1 free Source 1 engine license

Thanks for reading, and here’s to another productive year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!