Comments - BrowningMG

It tried to warn me by not loading.

This Remod is literally a downgrade of two good mods. Softlocking bugs, wacky and non-consistent visuals (some textures are upscaled, others are blurred), sometimes terrible sounds in ETC 1 Remod and missing enemies in ETC 2 Remod.

Play it only if you like HD-fied everything and custom weapon models. If not, try originals mods instead.

I have solved it!

The issue, which is shared with Dead Sector Remod, by the way, is having both Remod and original version of ETC and ETC2 in Half-Life folder at the same time.

Re-naming folders don't work! So just put original mods in separate folders while you play Remoded versions.

Hope this solution will help someone else too.

Hail to the King, baby! This train was to small for the two of us!
Moddb.com
How good is the mod that lets you kick the G-man from his train and take the ride for yourself?

It's not good. It's ******* great!

Now I try ETC2 Remod and it launches vanilla ETC2. Played for half an hour - zero changes.

Am I doing it wrong or is something wrong with this mod?

Does not launch. "Failed to initialize authentication interface. Exiting…"

So, Xash only?

For some reason it crashes a second after it starts loading main menu. No errors - mod just crashes.

Any help? I really want to think me teeth into this slimy piece of very promising-looking mod.

For some reason it crashes a second after it starts loading main menu. No errors - mod just crashes.

Any help? I really want to think me teeth into this slimy piece of very promising-looking mod.

I have some strange issue with this mod - ETC2 Remod works fine, but when I try ETC1 Remod it loads vanilla HL campaign. Any solutions?

I have strange issue with this mod - ETC2 Remod works fine, but when I try ETC1 Remod it loads vanilla HL campaign. Any solutions?

And while we are on topic of torturing IWD files, do you know any way to give overheat mechanic to normal guns? Honestly, I can't figure out how it works even in the armored car gun itself by looking at its files (armoredcar_turret and 20mm_armoredcar - I think, one is for the enemy and the other is for you).

Would really appreciate some advice.

I have checked it. And I can say for certain it does nothing. At least, not by itself - when I was turning most weapons projectile while I was messing with WCP mod, I've learned you can do it only by placing stats in specific order, otherwise it would crash the game. So, maybe \shotcount\ can work under the right settings, but I don't know for certain and I have no idea what combination of settings could make it work, if any.

Though I've figured out an interesting bypass. Instead of changing \shotCount\ to make any gun fire multiple bullets, you can set \fireTime\ (rate of fire) to very high (something 0,001) and use \clipSize\ to dictate how many pellets gun will shoot while \reloadTime\ (and \realoadEmptyTime\) will dictate actual rate of fire. it will effectively give your gun a bottomless mag that you won't actually reload, like in Quake, but it will work like a shotgun should. A pile of crutches, kinda, but works just fine. I've had a lot of fun turning my Tokarev in AA-12 and moving down some Jerries right now.

Thank you. Though I think I've tried to change this number and it did nothing. May try it again to double check.

Well, I like to give a due when due is due, so to speak. I am glad my feedback was appreciated.

As for the audio and subtitles - its not a big issue. Just something that caught my attention, hence I had to report on it.

And yes - you have basically brought the feel of oldschool disaster movie in Half-Life. I have seen it twice - the finale of They Hunger Act II, when you run through burning asylum. And in the finale of Gunmen Chronicles, when you escape collapsing alien-infested lab (that's why I find Gunmen to be reminiscent of your mod). But you have brought it to new level - arguably, disaster sequences constitute around half of the whole game! This is unusual - and incredible. I have never played a shooter like that, when your main hazard was environment and not the enemy.

Oh, there was also that mod called Challenger Deep, I think? Anyway, it was basically Black Mesa underwater, with main hazard being the risk of drowning. It was VERY rough though - and very ancient. I think, around the same time Azure Sheep was released - super ancient.

Regarding intermediate sections - I won't call them boring. This mod revolves around making your way forward more than fighting. In other mods such section would have broken the pacing. But here its not much of an issue. Mod is slow-paced, even meditative at times, so sections with no action do not make it worse, I think.

The problem with the hospital that I've found wasn't the key conundrum. If anything, no matter how annoying it may have been, it was also an interesting distraction from base gameplay. Its just that hole in the wall did not let me pass through for some reason. My character just did not want to get inside no matter what I have tried.

Oh, and gravity issue. I treated it like a feature, but yes - moon gravity stayed even after simulation section till the end of the game. Was fun, but yeah - clearly a bug. Some platforming section clearly did not have this in mind.

And once again - thank you for your great mod. I rarely get this much enjoyment from HL mods.

True, it deserves more. Though I must add, after trying to make people enjoy it in Sven - some did not like it. My guess is that seemingly simplistic level design spooked them. Which is a shame - behind this facade hide tons of details. It has some of the most interesting level designs I have ever encountered.

So, thank you once more for the recommendation.

Does shotgun work? I thought there is no way for a weapon to fire multiple bullets at once in CoD2. The coachgun in Back2Fronts mod fired single bullet, for example.

Is there still any semblance of modding community for this game? Because I have some issues regarding weapon modding that I struggle to solve myself. I would really like an advice or two on it, if there anyone left to ask for an advice.

That's great to hear. So far the screenshots show some very impressive locations. Can't wait to play it.

So I finally followed your advice and have just finished ESHQ 13.8. And I can't express just how thankful I am for that advice of yours.

Because this is legit one of the strangest and coolest mods for HL, as well as the longest one I've ever played. RL on Sun Eater Pillar route? They Hunger? ESHQ eats them and ***** them.

It took me around 20 hours to complete it - at least! It is so long I've lost count of how many hours it took and just how many chapters I've finished. You have some half dozen levels per 20-something chapters, each level taking from around 20-30 minutes to an hour+.

This is absurd. In a good way, but I am literally dumbfounded - I doubted anyone would bother to make HL campaign of this size, yet the madlad here did - and it is glorious!

And it had so many juicy moments. In a way, its kinda quantity over quality, but the resulting quality is good. Its just overshadowed by absurd quantity. Yes, everything is boxy and simplistic - but author made colossal levels, I guess he had to pull polygon here and texture there for smooth performance. And, given so moments of this mod, its also clearly an aesthetic choice. Some of scripted sequences were some of the most impressive stuff I've seen in HL, some moments were pure ingenuity - take for example what he did with smoke and flooding! I never thought such moments could look and play that well in HL - and yet!

Great mod. I thank you and commend you for your recommendation.

All in all, ESHQ is like good old games - perhaps, a homage? - its does not hold your hands and half-walk itself. ESHQ makes you think, not just shoot stuff. It makes you orient yourself on the level, look around, investigate minor details - think, think, think.

And this is brilliant. I certainly could do with more HL1 mods like this beauty.

And if we would compare this mod with any other HL mod, then indeed Residual Life has some semblance. But even more so - that Call of Ctulhu mod. Basically has the same formula: some puzzles, some levels you mostly walk through, minimalistic design. Only its minimalism wasn't, I think, a choice of style - more likely that author couldn't do better. That mod was quite junky at times.

P.S. Небольшое дополнение.

Любопытно получается. Мод - буквально бродилка-стрелялка. Но не с равновесным ударением на обе компоненты, и не с традиционным для шутера ударением на стрельбе. Нет, ESHQ - это БРОДИЛКА-стрелялка, где ты чаще будешь просто бродить. И хоть это и звучит как тоска смертная, на деле оказалось удивительно увлекательным процессом.

Ещё отмечу ошибки перевода. Как только я увидел accurate в значении "аккуратный", я сразу понял, какой язык у автора первый. Верно было бы careful, accurate - это точный, либо как точное замечание/описание, либо как точный выстрел. В остальном же я их, увы, не запомнил - но их хватало. Пара десятков за весь мод точно накопится. Обычно они не слишком бросаются в глаза, но вот момент с аккуратный-accurate, например, сбивает с толку, т.к. тебя явно должны были попросить быть аккуратным в лабе, но вместо этого почему-то требуют точности. Как бы, контекст так и так не даёт ошибиться, да и мелочь это, но всё же.

Ах да - эпизод в больнице-заброшке был троллингом? Я 10 минут бегал туда-сюда и собирал ключи, как идиот, с мыслью: "да когда вы, блядь, закончитесь?!!". А наградную мухобойку в итоге так и не заюзал, лол.

To the creator of this mod - you were drawing inspiration from older shooters like the first Unreal and Quake 2, as well as from Gunmen Chronicles and the first FEAR, right? Because some levels reminded me of those games - sometime in vibes, sometime in design.

And what is curious. ESHQ uses minimalistic, boxy, utilitarian-looking, geometrically-minimalistic aesthetics. And its clearly not because you can't make a tube non-square - in fact, those circular textures on some of the machines (teleporters and other "beamy" devices) blended with the environment so well I sometimes mistook it for an actual circle. And some of script sequences as well as level layouts and just the silent spectacle of some places were impressive.

You've made some fire and flooding levels so well I can call it genius moves. You've made working smoke - that suffocates you! - and flood that looked like water coming under great pressure! And that bit where whole section of corridor sinks in lava and you use intact part as an elevator - that something. Despite simple, utilitarian looks of your mod, I've yet to see equal amount of attention to details in any other HL1 mod. And I don't mean "details" as decoration - I mean putting parts of wall that collapsed into the cave in lower section of the cave where those bits would naturally land! Or placing scratch mark from big piece of ventilation pipe being thrown down the corridor - right where they should have naturally been!

If anyone would be fooled by squares on squares that are most of the levels - heck, shame on them! This level of detailing is beyond what most mods could dream of.

Of course, there are downsides as well. Sometimes there are almost hour-long sections without any fights - not what most HL players are used to. You just go around, explore, proceed forward, do some puzzle, gather some secrets. I loved these quiet moments, but not everyone will.

Oh, and often you must do puzzle to proceed. Find what to press or key, or what to shoot and how, etc. At no point it really halted my progress, but a few times I wasted 10-15 minutes trying to figure out what the heck am I supposed to do. But not once did I use the walkthrough! Every puzzle is perfectly doable with no external clues - just be a bit more tenacious and use your brain.

Also, author isn't English-speaking. More precisely, he is definitely Russian-speaking, because when you, like me, can use both of these languages, some typical Russian-to-English translation mistakes become obvious. So, while text is good enough, and is, BTW, voice-acted (or machine-voice-acted? no idea), there are some really silly mistakes here and there.

In advance, I apologize for barging in. But answering under 3-years old posts in Residual Life discussion won't give this mod its due.

If you remember, we had a brief discussion on secrets and level design of RL, then version 1.9. Concluding which, you advised me to try ESHQ given my love of long HL campaigns.

So I've just finished ESHQ 13.8. And I can't express just how thankful I am for your advice.

Because this is legit one of the strangest and coolest mods for HL, as well as the longest one I've ever played. RL on Sun Eater Pillar route? They Hunger? ESHQ eats them and ***** them.

It took me around 20 hours to complete it - at least! It is so long I've lost count of how many hours it took and just how many chapters I've finished. You have some half dozen levels per 20-something chapters, each level taking from around 20-30 minutes to an hour+.

This is absurd. In a good way, but I am literally dumbfounded - I doubted anyone would bother to make HL campaign of this size, yet the madlad here did - and it is glorious!

I hope you'll get better. Screw the mod - you are way more important.

Cool short mod, easily completable under 2 hours. Features compact and quite detailed maps (especially for 2004) with good and decently difficult firefights. Has its own take and vibe both on Black Mesa and Xen surroundings and do not feels like a small HL clone.

Probably the only few downsides besides small size are its small intro and some areas having inobvious exits.

All in all an instant recommendation. Short, simple and very fun. If you are HL fan sick of mega-projects like Echoes, Residual Life, Residual Point, Azure Sheep or They Hunger, this mod will provide a great relief.

Well, too late for speculations after I've dumped dozens of hours into new Alpha version of the mod and played Chem General thoroughly. 3e is just the Anthrax Bomb. Sorry for killing intrigue.

Oh, right, dummy me! Thank you, I've somehow mistaken it for the opposite.

Motivating, now I wanna try this mod again, explore more, try new different things. Thanks!

Well, a good example too, I guess. Just the amount of secrets, including a lot of secret level and chapters, seemed more like a Q2 to me. It was its thing - you go for secret area, find a secret passage there, then arrive at secret level to explore it and find secrets withing secrets.

And take Sun Eater Pillar for example - you can miss laptops, you can miss Chozin, you can miss dead-end map with the last purple battery and you can miss the Dwarf, of course. Not to mention you can miss the whole Pillar! Same with the area where you find first batteries - it is a collection of secrets stacked upon each other, any of which you can easily miss.

That's why Q2 comes to my mind - it has similar Matryoshka-structured secrets, basically.

Worthy reward from a worthy mod made by worthy people whom I cannot thank enough.

I wonder what else I could have missed in such a massive campaign. There maybe something else out there, still untouched, some little nook and little cranny filled with something. Never would have thought that HL game would make me go insane with exploration, since neither this series, nor its mods are known to reward one. Yet here I am, remarking how swell the exploration is.

Truly, thank you.

P.S. This mod is Quake 2 inspired, right? Secret paths leading to secret levels filled with secrets. At time mod feels like a spiritual successor to Q2 level design philosophy. Probably the only I've ever seen.

I haven't ment it in a bad way though - I recon there is no other HL mod that comes close in how differently you can complete it. Seriously, secret levels and paths I can get, but entire secret CHAPTERS? Bonkers, that is awesome! I played through it several times in the first week I installed it just to try new things and I still haven't done every possible route.

As for the story - dunno. It is there, definitely, but it seems to be behind the scenes most of the time. Like it is implied that whole Black Mesa was kickstarted by that huge crystal but no one actually tells you about it.

Anyway, I wasn't scared by its unfriendliness, more like the amount of effort it required motivated me to pull through it so I can see it from all sides.

Probably the only HL mod that requires a map and an instruction to fully explore.