Half-Broken mod for Half-Life

Half-Broken 2's technical development keeps going better and better by the day, but I've yet to talk about what's the mod actually about, so in this article, I will do a quick resume about the story of the enemies, show some mod's screenshots and talk about how the mod's going and for when a possible new demo.

Note: to keep the minimum spoilers, I will be mostly talking about the main events, some development details and show some models and designs.

The Aliens

Story: After being held back following the defeat of the Gatekeeper that held the interdimensional breach open, the remaining aliens on the Black aseM Space Base converted all of the present technology to open a new portal to their dimension and send an assault on earth, which ended up being defeated by the WMC (more on it next section), so they started to colonize the space base to prepare an even bigger, full scale invasion...

About: The aliens from the original Half-Broken (or Half-Broken Deluxe if you want something more lore accurate) returns, alongside new dangerous variants, other species, a mysterious military force maining alien weapons and assault gunships, some unseen before behaviour and bigger badder aliens than any others (maybe alongside, their leader?).

The Robots

Story: The WMC (World Military Control) is an organization that was set to defend the earth during the first alien invasion, and after it's huge victory, earned nearly unlimited resources and ensures the near total defense of the planet, allowing them to construct a gigantic complex and create an entire army of weaponized robots and machines, but one thing's strange though: why are they targeting you?

About: The robots' models closely ressembles the ones seen in Half-Broken (or, again, Half-Broken Deluxe), implying that those were made by one or some of the engineers on the Black aseM Space Base, and it goes from armoured drones to heavily weaponized mechs, passing by intelligent transport and combat, land and air vehicles, being powered by an unknown source of energy and working like perfect soldiers.

The Weapons

Because you need a gun to defeat an enemy, Half-Broken 2 comes with a whole package of weapons: featuring melee, some simple firearms, rifes, machine guns, bigger versions that do lots-a damage, energy weapons, grenades, SNARKS, and some exclusive ones for an experimental multiplayer.

Some new features includes the possiblity to dual wield certain weapons, use secondary modes, do some combos and use exploits to your advantage.

Altough you get more and more weapons as you progress in-game, all the weapons you can acquire reliably kills things, with bigger and lesser impacts depending on the enemy's characteristics.

About the gameplay and demo

As of now, the story is just about there and there is a vision on the gameplay, but the maps I have made up to now were some tests on how the mod would be as I need some plan on what a final version should be like.

However, what I can say on how the story's built: The campaign is divided in 3 "Acts", and changes places on each ones, with new environment, gameplay, enemies and story bits.

As for a demo, since the time I published that obsolete "tech demo" on the page, I can get some gameplay demo more early since the mod is functionnal technically, but if I can get an actual demo for the mod, it would be on point where the maps and art style starts coming together, probably when Act 1 is almost done.

So, while still on it, here's screenshots of some test maps and experiments I've made (Note: none of them are final, and I need to get on some artistic rework for the mod soon):

Oh, and before I finish, I'm also working on an actual project that I plan releasing later that year, not gonna say anything about it now, but I'll maybe talk about it when done.

Also, for future articles, I may actually show more media and give more details, and eventually release a trailer when the mod is almost ready.

So that's it for now, see y'all until next time!

- Ayydrian Sheepherd