Caliber: Source mod for Half-Life 2: Episode One

Updates in terms of years is never a good format, but such is things when life gives you lemons, oranges, and every other fruit under the sun. After what could be considered a bleedin' long minute, I bring you some very good news, just in time to be fashionably late to the new year;

The first demo of Caliber is going to be releasing... Soonish™. Included is going to be one of the bonus campaigns, Long Falls (pictured above), maybe a few maps from the old version, and the tutorial. Now how soonish is going to depend on more than a few factors, but dont start getting uppity just yet. Another developer build is going to be coming within the next week; this package isn't going to include any real maps, rather, its more of an SDK/Test build. I'm releasing this first because releasing super-early broken alpha versions of maps that are going to be awesome is not my style - In my perception, its like ruining a surprise gift by giving the receiver a crappy, broken version of the gift they're going to get, waiting a few weeks, then giving them the real thing. Who does that?

The good thing about this development build is that things shouldn't be changing too much from this point forward. The coding and sound-work for Caliber has taken alot of sweat and tears, and a completely safe amount of blood. For the most part, its all neatly wrapped up and everything is ready to go on those ends, its just the maps, models and some texture work that needs the serious shining.

Here's a few key features that might excite fellow mappers and modders alike;

1. Full compatibility with goldsrc/source 2003 maps. All the old logic entities have been ported over, and most existing entities have been patched to support them. Half-Life 1 maps should run without any changes, barring compiling in hl2's bsp/vrad. In the laid-man's terms, this means Caliber is almost fully compatible with Half-Life Source, in a weird sort of way. The textures, sounds, and other loose files however, you'll have to provide for.

On top of that, a good portion of cut hl2 content has been jammed in, though the functionality of that aspect I cannot guarantee. I bet you're wondering: Why? Well dear viewer, these are just a few of the benefits of starting out as (yet another beta mod)©, and having the mindset that If you get half of it done, you might as-well finish the other half, even if its never, ever going to be used.

2. New additions, to both existing entities and completely new ones. Important base entities like sprites, screen effects, trains and breakables have had a bunch of additions. The response system has had a few updates, allowing for even more non-scripted dialogue and features that Caliber is going to make heavy use of. A ton more weapons have been added, separated into two sets for each stage of the campaign, with all the old favorites returning in some form, and some new ones making a debut.

3. Plus, a whole bunch of general improvements that also apply to vanilla HL2. Npc's in general have been made much smarter, and will absolutely obliterate their old counterparts through sheer brainpower alone. More unique FX has been added for different material types, and existing effects have been improved/reverted to their old versions. Rain now has proper splashes, and all that exposed pipework actually has water in it now, just to name a few things.

And finally; almost every change Caliber has made to the engine is reversible through con-vars and soft-coded tweaks, just in-case one of you absolute madmen wants to play half-life two with a very small and strange set of changes and improvements.

Now im not saying this is a completely stable thing; I've fixed every crash that I've come across during testing, but im sure there's plenty more waiting to pounce. If you do get a crash, keep that dump file! There's a whole bunch of valuable guts in there that may help fix it.

Hydrodam area, cut content from a few years ago that will be included in the demo.

In the next update, I'll give a rundown of what this whole thing actually is, or at least, should be in (hopefully) not too long a time from now. If power stays on, food prices don't skyrocket and nukes dont rock the planet, I'd give it around a ((couple)) months. Thanks for reading! Stay psyched!

P.S A special thanks to Izotope, developer of Hammer++! That thing almost single-handedly saved this thing!