Back from the "dead"
It's been a long time... How have you been?
The last article we've posted was back in December of 2017. Quite a while! Now, we're happy to show you what we've been doing as the time passed. It wasn't always full-on productivity. We've had some motivation issues, downtime was a thing, one of our key devs had some extremely serious health issues, some folks left the team, other joined. Much of the work we've been doing was coding, or some small, yet important features. Basically, it wasn't worth a media update. Now, with lots of new content, we can show you all what took us so long, and hopefully it was worth the wait!
The NPCs
The Jet Unit ("Heavy")
The Combine are bringing in the big guns. Used only in extreme situations, these guys mean business. Welding the infamous AR3 and Smoke Grenades, as well as a lot of armor, you can bet meeting the Heavies won't be a walk in the park.
The Smoke Grenades, known by the Combine as the Jet Extractors, are used by the Heavy to gain advantage over his targets. Avoid the smoke!
Make sure not to enter the smoke, as it can give your enemies a great advantage.
The Bullsquid
The Bullsquid lurks in the shallow waters of the canals, waiting for prey to come close. It loves to ambush whoever dares to come close enough, or whoever makes the mistake of not keeping track of the water around them.
We've decided to make fighting the Bullsquid more interesting by making it try to use melee attacks more often than long-distance spitting. We belive this fits the maps of Water Hazard more, and makes use of the water and junk/debris around the riverbeds of the canals.
While the Bullsquid is not done yet, we're quite happy with how it is so far. Expect more info about in future updates!
The Maps
As you probably know by now, Boat-Less is far more than just a simple mappack. This time, we've decided to show you some more of our brand new maps. with old versions for comparison. Have a look!
And here are a few more screenshots.
These are either in WIP or nearly done phases.
Here are a few improvements to the Water Hazard maps, as well as some new previously out-of-bounds areas.
More progress on these maps wil be shown in the next update, which will come in the near future.
That's it for now folks! Expect more frequent updates from us in the near future. Boat-Less is back on track! Thanks for sticking with us. This mod is far from dead, and it will only get better from now on.
Expect more content soon.
-WALLe and the team
atleast you featured the glorious green bullsquid
Finally! :D
Awesome!!
I dont like the use of the Bullsquids, but overall this a solid media dump!
Woaw! The bullsquid looks pretty darn good! Keep up the good work :)
Finally, the bullsquid is back!
Good on you for pretending we haven't buried him yet. Source was such a nice child, we took care of him. All of us moders, we made him relevent, as you kids say.
RIP now Sourcey boy, RIP.
Nice! the mod is looking great so far I espiecally like the new maps they look great and the combine heavy looks like a fun foe to fight. keep it going guys!
"As you probably know by now, Boat-Less is far more than just a simple mappack."
Yes but.. *why*? It used to be just a "now you can get thru canals w/o the boat", you were adapting the maps... now it's... blowing out of proportions? Sure those screenshots are nice but why on Earth is there Combine installations... presumably in the canals? Why Victory Mine signs?! What's up with this overblown scope.
How is this all supposed to fit in the now-boat-less section of the game? The Canals? Also, you're adding new Combine units and such... just, for the Canals? Are they gonna disappear from the game once you've reached Black Mesa East? And wouldn't it make Gordon Freeman late by like 6 more hours, spent in all these... office buildings... Victory Mine subway stations... Combine facilities... stalker trains from Ep1...
So what's the big idea, huh.
It'll make sense.
I'm glad someone here asked. Let me explain in short:
The mod simply as a mappack was just not fun. A build was made, and it was weird, boring, and made no sense whatsoever. All of these additions are made so that the mod as a whole is fun and makes sense. The mine is already cut, I forgot to remove the decal, that was just us experimenting with different ideas. Note - this mod is a full mod, which will he playable on Steam with its own AppID. It features its own take on the the story, and is more than just a Water Hazard mappack now.
Hope this clears stuff up :)
Woah. So will it be a fully playable Half Life 2 with Water Hazard heavily modified (and thus the timeline changes a bit)? I remember you guys saying you wouldn't change Half Life 2 beyond the chapter but if you're really striving for something this ambitious, I'm all on board! ..Or I guess offboard, because no boat. :)
We will feature the modified Water Hazard maps as the core of the mod. No other chapters from Half-Life 2 will be used. Boat-Less has its own alternative story. As for what the story is, it's a "What if?" scenario. We will explain more about it in future updates.
i wish i could downvote dev comments.
Woo! Yeah! Back-less is boat!
...wait.
What's wrong? Feel free to give negative feedback too!
I have to say that Im bit disapointed to, although I thought mod is dead so no problem :) after all, its yours mod.
But when I first saw this (2017?), I was already ok just with posibility to walk through canals on foots, make this chapter just bit longer, loved those unlocked areas and boundaries. Just like some mappack, maybe compatible with mmod and so on. Just my fealings. Still great you are back tho.
That actually would be pretty sweet if you could use Boat-less to prolong HL2's playthrough and have it compatible with other mods!
Didn't expect the bullsquid to appear. This is great.
Its back baby!
Great stuff, looking forward to more!
I’ve been really busy being dead, you know after you murdered me!
I largely agree with others here that the scope of the mode is perhaps getting a bit overblown, but I'm VERY excited to see how you implement the bullsquid. I'm also REALLY happy you're using the beta bullsquid model - I really want to see it in action. Will you guys be attempting to implement the swimming ambush behavior that was considered for the bullsquid in the HL2 beta?
What a shame... I wanted to play this so bad