Comments - filthybeast01

OK, never mind. Started from the nearest save point and played through again, and this time John jumped right onto the terminal and the scripted sequence played out as it was supposed to. Weird.

In the subway station, got the code and got into the room with the computer terminal. John said he could use it, and he will come into the room with me, but won't use the terminal.
Any ideas?

Well the pics and trailers actually look promising, but I'm reluctant to DL a mod for which I cannot even read the installation instructions. If I were sure I could get it installed I might take a chance on it even if I can't understand what the characters are saying,

Not great, but not terrible either. Creators like sending you on long treks down corridors and tunnels with enemies located in singles and small groups at choke points. Most of the combats are fairly routine with a few over-the-top insane difficult ones thrown in. Supplies are plentiful. Puzzles are pretty straightforward. Maps are constructed of familiar elements from HL mostly, of course, with only a few imaginative new elements added. This is one that would have been a lot more fun if it were a lot smaller, because the long passages of moving ahead and dealing with dozens of enemies one at a time gets a bit boring, frankly.

Mildly recommended.

In the Files section above. I used the RP Crossplatform download. Unzipped direct to steamapps/common/Half-life folder. Restart Steam and it should be in your games list.

Played part 1 OK, not bad at all.

Started part 2, but have run into an issue that has me stumped. Got well into it in my first session, but the next day the game refuses to open any of the save points in the 'load game' screen. No error message pops up, but nothing happens no matter how long I wait. So it looks like I will have to shelve this for now.

Thanks very much for taking the time and trouble to post a .zip version of the mod that I can easily install and run.
That said, I wish I could offer a more positive review, but there are some issues with this mod that keep it from being as enjoyable as it could be.
The prison section is just…plain. Too long, and it all looks exactly the same. Pretty bare bones appearance, especially when later parts clearly show that you know how to use clutter to make an area look more natural.
Did not much enjoy your habit of throwing enemies at the player in ever increasingly larger numbers. Not much imagination in that tired old trope.
When you arrive at the sewer section, all of a sudden the enemies get WAY harder to kill-like maybe able to absorb 10 times as much damage. What’s up with that?
At least a couple of the level changes left me frozen in place, unable to move away, had to noclip to get going.
Final area: Looks to me like maybe you put in more work on this than all the rest of the mod put together, and it actually looks pretty good. In the tunnel above the derailed passenger car there is a balcony area with several guards. I got up there [noclipped] and found…. a spot on the left side that transports me back into one of the sewer areas. Since I’m not sure there’s any legit way you could get up there, it seems an odd place to put that transition point.
Also in that final area, there is a place near a stairway where automatic cannon fire comes at you...from out of the ground. No gun emplacement or anything like that visible, just...shoots up out of the ground at you. Something amiss there.
Seems perhaps there was not much play testing or you would have surely encountered most of these issues and fixed them.
Bottom line: Shows promise, but needs work.

I put it in Sourcemods as directed, but it does NOT show up in my Steam list-yes, I restarted Steam; not surprising as there is NO GAMEINFO.TXT FILE in the download. I have downloaded and successfully installed hundreds of HL1/2/Ep. 2 mods over the years, so I kind of know my way around how this works. Without a gameinfo.txt file, Steam can't "see" this.
So I am going to sing an old familiar song here. I know it seems simple and obvious to you how to get this running, but...GIVEN HOW MUCH TIME IT TOOK YOU TO PUT IT TOGETHER AND POST, COULD YOU NOT HAVE FOUND AN ADDITIONAL FIVE MINUTES TO INCLUDE A README DESCRIBING HOW TO GET IT RUNNING?
The fact that you have posted it here clearly shows you want people to try it out, and I want to do that. Not gonna happen until you share with us the necessary secret procedure.
Balls in your court now.

Well, that's...interesting. Stealth is not used much in HL2 mods. I hope the full game lets the player know that there are rewards for finding an alternative to just killing every threat, because that is not something that is intuitively obvious.

I already have it, the free trial period has expired long since, they want money now. As a matter of principle I'm not laying out cash for something I will so seldom use.

Tried to open it with 7-Zip but no luck: "Cannot open as archive".
Researched this error on line, but the solutions either don't work or are beyond my skill level.

Is there any chance you could post the download file in .zip format?

Very nice, looking forward to more of this.
In the foyer where one enters the elevator shaft, there is a storage room [cleverly labeled "Storage"] that does in fact contain some useful stuff. I could find no way to get into it, though, except by noclipping. Did I miss something?

When I try to extract the zip file, I get a 'read error' message.

Agree completely. Technically well done, but level design in far too many places offers the players no clues whatever as to how to proceed, leaving you no choice but just to explore everywhere and blast everything with guns and grenades, hoping something will be destructible to let you advance. I've played hundreds of HL mods, but this one does a really lousy job of giving the player any sort of reasonable clues about how to find the path forward, other than the brute force method. D- in this area. I don't mind difficult puzzles, but you have to give the player some sort of chance.

I have played Trap 2 Mindlock, and the author did a FAR better job of creating a difficult mod that is much more playable because usually when you find the way forward in that one, you say to yourself, "Duh! Shoulda seen that right away." Not so with the prison; in far too many cases the way forward is NOT in any way logical.

Too bad because otherwise this is a nice, large, and fun mod to play.

Watching the vid carefully, I have seen what I was missing: the files have to be extracted through 7-Zip TWICE. Among all the several hundred HL mods I have installed over the years, I do not recall ever having to do this before.
The initial 7-Zip extraction process yields 4 files of type .7z.00#. In 7-Zip File Manager, select all 4 of these files and extract again to the file location of your choice. This produces a single folder, CMA - Origins full, containing all the fully unpacked files.
Open the folder and find the .exe launcher for the game you want to play, and get started.

Schwarz: I know with your experience and knowledge of computers, files, and programs that this seems easy, obvious, and intuitive, but trust me, for those of us less experienced in handling large compressed files every day, it is not. As I said above, the process for getting your mod installed was unique. My difficulty figuring this out does not make me stupid, any more than your difficulty with English makes you stupid. So you should really stop tossing that word around so carelessly.

OK I'll bite. What the heck is TAS?

Me either.

Well I'm sorry; I know you imagine yourself to be clever and all, but really...if you want me to play through your training session you have to give intelligible instructions. Inscrutable hyeroglyphs on the wall don't get it done. I'm sure once I understand what you want me to do, the pictures will make some sort of sense, but right now I'm just stuck and frustrated. I don't mind having to learn how to do something I've never before had to do in a Half Life mod, but you have to MAKE IT CLEAR WHAT IT IS YOU WANT DONE.
Also: cannot save games, as others have noted.

Understood, but I really don't think you are doing yourselves any favors by not making this a bit more challenging. If you are implying that subsequent installments will be more action-oriented, then I will certainly be willing to give them a look. You obviously have mapping skills sufficient to create a complex environment with a very lived-in look.

A nice but very plain vanilla mod. Nothing edgy or even very exciting happening here.
Plenty of large and nice looking maps: a ship, sewers, city streets, factories. Scripted sequences with NPCs run smoothly. But there's just not much action going on; this is more of a travelogue than an adventure.
Occasionally you are are provided with a weapon, but you hardly need it, there are so few confrontations with enemies you cannot just avoid by running past them. Not is there much of anything in the way of a challenging puzzle maze for you to figure out in order to advance. I kept on to the end, hoping for something exciting to happen, but it never did.

An outstanding mod. Challenging but not stupid crazy near-impossible puzzle-mazes and combats. Humorous banter from the NPCs. Very large, elaborate, complex, and handsome levels.
Only one glitch: a scripted sequence of a guard in a bathroom that crashes my PC; and since this is not essential to the storyline, it can be skipped.
Well done. Highly recommended.

Just get on YouTube and search "Half Life Echoes" to find a walkthrough where you can watch the scripted sequence. I had this problem too; every time I try to open that door, the game crashes at once. He's right; it's a very short and pointless vignette that adds nothing to the story.

Countless missing textures and objects. Got through the first map anyway, but not worth the effort beyond that, sorry.

Difficulty level was no worse than moderate. Just had to keep in mind every time I got hung up, keep looking, he's put in some way past this blockage. Resist the temptation to make it more difficult by throwing larger and larger crowds of enemies at the player. I get upset with developers who have no more imagination than that.

Hmmm, well, I don't know why it appeared console cheats were disabled when I was playing this yesterday; they work fine today. OK then. Having got through the first couple of insane combat sequences unaided, I did not care to ride that one-trick pony again, so I used god mode to get past them in order to see all the maps. And very nice maps they are. Some challenging climbing/jumping puzzles.

Well he fixed that, console is disabled now so no god mode for the rest of us. Which means I won't be finishing this exercise in masochism. Too bad, some quite good mapping skills on display.

I would still like to know where the installer is trying to put this game on my PC. I have searched my PC after the install and cannot find it. I tried using console to launch a game using the "map" command, but no maps are found.
You went to a great deal of trouble to make this; please spend a bit more so we can play it.

Outstanding map; complex, 3-dimensional, very atmospheric. You are obviously quite talented and very ambitious. I look forward to additional maps in this series. Well done.

Managed to finish this by using console to call up the third map on which I had crashed; I loaded in fully equipped, and there are plenty of supplies laying around. Not a bad prison combat mod at all. Just needs a correct gameinfo.txt file put together by someone who knows what they are doing, so you don't have to resort to a workaround like I did.