The Wastes Windows, Linux game

Greetings, Wastelander...

We're currently running a 90% off sale for The Wastes to celebrate the 5th anniversary for The Wastes (2018)! This also corresponds with the 23rd anniversary of the original mod release of Wasteland Half-Life! This sale will last from April 10th, 2023 to April 17th, 2023.

On top of the sale, we also are releasing recovered internal development builds from after the release of The Wastes RC1.4! Special thanks to Alex 'Ubar' Batten for unearthing these builds! Without him these builds would strictly be stuck being nothing more than screenshots and old news posts.

These builds will be released on April 12th, 2023. They are set to unlock at 12:00PM UTC+00:00 on ModDB and will be uploaded to archive.org shortly afterwards.

Here's an overview of the builds we have to release:

The Wastes RC2

Files:
The Wastes 2.0 Build 213 (TW2-BIN-070304.exe)
archive.org | ModDB.com

Dryland (tw_dryland.zip)
archive.org | ModDB.com

Hades Apparatus (tw_hades.zip) - This file was provided only as a folder and will be repackaged as a result.
archive.org | ModDB.com

The Wastes RC2 (officially known as The Wastes 2.0) was the direct follow up to The Wastes RC1.4 that intended to update the mod to be fully compatible with the Steam release of Half-Life.

The Wastes RC2 was announced on March 7th, 2004 with a good chunk of the RC1 team returning. This revision of the mod intended to expand the mod by introducing brand new game modes and to start implementing game modes and ideas originally intended for Wasteland Half-Life Beta 3.

Design Document for The Wastes RC2 shown above is provided by Alex 'Kruddman' Yao.

The Wastes RC2 lasted over 5 months before being canceled on August 27th, 2004.

Our build is from about a month (July 3rd, 2004) before the announcement of The Wastes 2.0's cancellation. While it appears that the new game modes are absent in our build, it does contain the two maps from Leo 'Pyroquantre' Lipasti that were shown off in the news posts: Salvage and Dryland.

Salvage:

Dryland:

Also provided with The Wastes RC2 files is an earlier version of Hades Apparatus. This map is not playable in the provided The Wastes RC2 build as it was intended for use in Capture the Flag, which is absent in the build. Rob 'slipi' Loboda has released Hades Apparatus on The Whole Half-Life back in December, 2020 with the original source files and design documents pertaining to the map. We will be releasing the slightly earlier version in addition to the rest of the files.

The Wastes RC2 also contains music for Edward 'aufo' Fuller's map Silo by Sam 'Potshot' Allen. Said track was only known to exist thanks to archived IRC logs and was thought to be missing. This track will be added into The Wastes (2018) in an upcoming update to the game.

Wasteland Half-Life 2

Files:
Wasteland Half-Life 2 Alpha 1 (WHL2A1.zip)
archive.org | ModDB.com

Arlisto (rawr.rar)
archive.org | ModDB.com

After the release of Dead Cities for Battlefield 1942, Ted 'The_Postman' Anderson and several other Wasteland alumni returned to the land of Half-Life. Their return was incredibly short lived, however.

Announced on November 11th, 2004 and seemingly discontinued less than 2 months later. Not much was known about Wasteland HL2 prior to this build. We knew that there was a map named "Arlisto" by Rob 'Zazi' Kermes and not much beyond that...

Arlisto:

Even with this build in hands, we still are left with questions on whether or not this was all that was truly made for the modification or if this is all that ever ended up in a build. Regardless, we're glad that something survived for this iteration of the project.

The Wastes: Source

Files:
The Wastes: Source Beta 1 (thewastes_dev_full_20050829.exe)
archive.org | ModDB.com

The Wastes: Source Beta 2 (thewastes_dev_full_20050901.exe)
archive.org | ModDB.com

The Wastes: Source R1 Development Build 22 (thewastes_dev_full_0.1.22.exe)
archive.org | ModDB.com

The Wastes: Source R1 Development Build 28 (thewastes_dev_full_0.1.28.exe)
archive.org | ModDB.com

The Wastes: Source R1 Development Build 29 (thewastes_dev_full_0.1.29.exe)
archive.org | ModDB.com

Despite the team stating that there's no plans for The Wastes to be on Valve's upcoming Source Engine during the development of The Wastes RC2; 2005 brought us The Wastes: Source.

On October 7th, 2005, The Wastes: Source was announced. This iteration of The Wastes was in development for nearly a whole year. Ultimately, the team realized it was time to move on as all of their adult lives were starting and there wasn't much time left for them to maintain The Wastes anymore. This is where The Wastes' story ended, until Vera Visions took up the helm nearly 10 years after the death of The Wastes: Source!

The latest build we have is from April 1st, 2006, which is just under 2 months before the mod's cancellation. Contains only 3 maps: Carousel, Mahlstrom, and Toxic.

The mod was getting close to being on par to the gameplay seen in The Wastes RC1, but it still had a ways to go before it could have been released. The build is lacking any player models and is using really rough ports of the original weapon models from TW RC1.

Carousel:

Carousel was made by Leo 'Pyroquantre' Lipasti and Rob 'slipi' Loboda originally for the Half-Life 2 Deathmatch mapping contest that took place from November 30th, 2004 to January 15th, 2005. The map was ultimately repurposed and modified for The Wastes: Source. The original mapping contest version is uploaded on The Whole Half-Life along with its source files by Rob 'slipi' Loboda. Leo 'Pyroquantre' Lipasti would also release the version intended for The Wastes: Source and his other TW: Source maps converted for use in Half-Life 2: Deathmatch after the death of The Wastes: Source alongside announcing his retirement from mapping as a whole.

Mahlstrom:

Mahlstrom is a faithful remake of a Wasteland Half-Life custom map by Martin 'MGPalmer' Tepper of the same name. A later version appears to exist depicting some radical changes, however that version is currently lost.

Toxic:

Toxic is a remake and re-imagining of a map originally intended for The Wastes RC2 by Leo 'Pyroquantre' Lipasti. This map was also provided with Carousel and Mejico (a map absent from the builds of TW: Source we have) in the HL2DM ports that Leo 'Pyroquantre' Lipasti released after the mod's death.

Current events

The past couple of months we have been spending time getting the website of The Wastes back online.

We re-launched the main website on March 17th, 2023 with as many news posts, images, and downloads recovered as possible. Currently in the pipeline are the websites to Barter Town and Dead Cities.

Barter Town was the community-run subdomain for Wasteland HL add-ons. While most custom content prominently was hosted on the forums, Barter Town did host various content for Wasteland HL. We plan on restoring it and hosting as much custom content made and released for Wasteland HL, The Wastes (mod), and The Wastes (2018).

Dead Cities was Ted 'The_Postman' Anderson and Tom 'Mr. Blonde' Richardson's take of Wasteland HL/The Wastes on Battlefield 1942. The mod managed to achieve 2 releases and had a very snazzy website. We saw it worthwhile to put it back online.

We've also launched a Matrix room for The Wastes! Come join in and talk about TW!

Matrix.to

The future of The Wastes

We've been actively working on a roadmap for upcoming updates for The Wastes and planning out major changes for upcoming major updates. We'll be ready to talk about these updates in a few months, so keep an eye out for that.

One of the major focuses of this update post is archival of The Wastes' history, ranging from old development builds to TW to the community's content made for the mod. This is very important to us as time forgot both Wasteland HL and The Wastes and we want to make sure the history of TW is recovered.

If you have any official or community content from Wasteland HL, The Wastes, and/or any of the mods related to the lineage of the mod, then please reach out to us at "archive (at) vera-visions.com"

We hope to see you soon on the wasteland, but until then...
Keep on fragging!
~ Vera Visions & Cobalt-57