ARSENIO 3044 mod for Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Hi everyone! This is the first dev blog for Arsenio, We plan on making one every month to update everyone on the progress and state of Arsenio.

Models

MP5K

Our animator and modeler Wildchee reanimated the MP5K from the Half-Life 2 Beta.

You may be wondering why an MP5K would be in a futuristic mod, as the MP5K is almost 100 years old in real life. There are some factions that salvage weapons like the MP5K and use them hundreds of years after it was originally created, the most common faction is the rebellion.

Glock

Wildchee has also modeled the Glock, in the future, the Glock is still manufactured.

Maps

Maps have not been the primary focus until very recently, we've made some progress on the first map:

Most of the credit goes to Charly_bro for this first map.

Arsenio currently only has 2 mappers (one of them is me) and the project needs at least 3 more mappers, so if you're interested in mapping for Arsenio, let me know.

Code

This is where most of the development has happened, the Arsenio engine contains multiple new NPCs, weapons, and improvements to the source engine.

Weapons

The weapons in Arsenio feel very different from the ones in Half-Life 2.

In the future, some of these changes might be optional.

Most weapons right now use temporary models, usually weapon skins from GameBanana. Once these weapons have animations/models the temp models will be removed, this is the same with NPCs. I of course am not going to show off any models that aren't mine without permission from the creator, so the mp5k is basically the only weapon we can show right now.

There are a few more weapons that have not been added yet.

NPCs & Factions

There are many new enemies in Arsenio, some of them are from the leaked Half-Life 2 beta, some are from half-life 1, and there are even a few new enemies unique to Arsenio.

Factions

SHADOW

SHADOW is a terrorist organization with the goal of overthrowing the combine and ruling over the earth. They are the second most advanced faction behind the combine.

Shadow is Arsenio's main enemy faction, the player(named Arsenio) will encounter shadow later in the game. The following NPCs are in shadow currently:

Bloodseekers (Female assassin from the hl2 beta)

Hulks (Combine guards from the beta)

Combine Supersoldier ( A concept from the Hl2 beta )

Houndeyes (as a pet for soldiers)

THE COMBINE

In this universe, the combine doesn't want to enslave humanity, they want to control it and continue gathering resources from the earth and its inhabitants. The player (who is named Arsenio) is a special unit within the combine. Most of the combine NPCs from Half-Life 2 and its episodes are still in Arsenio, except as allies. The only new NPC currently is the bullsquid, which the combine use as pets, arsenio can command bullsquids to aid him during the game.

REBELLION

The rebels are the same as they are in half-life 2, just without Gordon.

There are a few "subfactions" of the rebellion that aren't as powerful.

There are more NPCs that don't have factions added yet, such as the gargantua from hl1.

Other code

Arsenio uses a lot of the parkour mechanics from Mobility Mod. The player must have the exosuit to use parkour.

If you are interested in the MANY other code changes download the source code here: Github.com

We are also looking for a shader programmer who can add PBR and CSM to Arsenio, if you are interested in programming shaders let me know.

Story

Finally, the Arsenio story is all tangled up right now, we need someone who has experience with writing a story as we are terrible at that. We also need some voice actors for the player (Named Arsenio) and some of the NPCs and characters. If you are interested in voice acting or writing let me know, please.

Thank you for reading this entire thing and I hope to see you really soon, if you are interested in Arsenio please consider joining the discord server: Discord.gg