Comments - ProgramZeta

You can install mods into Steam, just install them to:
.../Steam/steamapps/<username>/half-life/

Steam has gained a bad reputation as a system hog and general unworkingness, but I have not had problems with it. I bought Half Life 2 the morning after it was released, and I was able to play within 15 minutes. Although the original versions of Steam were severely flawed, many updates later I'm able to update with a double click. Steam is the future regaurding game deliviery, and after the Friends list is fixed, the ability to join friends in games. Once people adapt to using a background program that takes minor resouces, greater steps can be taken to fix the actual bugs instead of people nagging that Steam is evil and shouldn't be allowed to exists.

The current maximum for the Source Engine is 256 players. We don't think that will be available in the first release, but it is a solid goal to work towards. We'll move out from 32 as soon as we can get a coder to start working on the project.