Over the years, I created many 'Steampipe patches' for various Half-Life mods. The Steampipe patches are not actual ports of the original source code of those mods, but re-implementations from scratch made to reproduce as closely as possible the behavior found in the original mods. Some of the original Half-Life mods with custom compiled code feature entities with little to no changes and were easier to reproduce, while other mods such as Poke646 feature more complex entities/NPCs that were harder to reproduce. The behavior found in the re-implementations was not 100% accurate, but an approximation.
The goal of these re-implementations was to be able to sufficiently reproduce the behavior of mods, fix bugs that possibly existed in the original mod release through re-implementation, and provide source code to allow people interested in expanding those mods, the chance to do so.
Recently, I found out that several mods for which I made a 'Steampipe patch' have been reverse engineered. Reverse engineering is a difficult subject for which I am not really knowledgeable, but when done correctly with the appropriate tools, and with sufficient understanding on the subject, it is possible to 'rewrite' source code using information extracted by decompilation; disassembly; etc. In the context of a Half-Life mod, and assuming all entities and custom game logic have been correctly reverse engineered, the resulting behavior is almost, if not, 100% identical to the one found in the original mod.
In contrast to my 'Steampipe patches' which currently only work on Windows and are 'approximations' of the behavior of original mods, the reverse engineered mods have been made cross platform and likely offer a better, if not, exact replica of the behavior found in their associated mod. For these reasons, and also because they can provide a better; closer experience to the original mods, I made the decision to archive my 'Steampipe patches', precisely the ones that have been reverse engineered and or have been made cross platform. It implies that I will no longer be providing support for these patches, as from now on I will be recommending users to download the reverse engineered cross platform ones.
The source code for my Steampipe patches will remain available on my Github repository for people that might still be interested in using it.
I remember testing most of your mod patches while you were releasing a few years back, and I'd like to say that I appreciate it a lot. Thanks to you, we were able to experience unforgettable moments within the Half-Life universe.
Thank you for all the precious effort of yours for the Half-Life community.
ubilλmbdλ Thank you, as well as to anyone who contributed to the patches by testing, reporting bugs and providing feedback.
Thanks as well to the community for all the great mods that have been made throughout the years and for those that might eventually come.