Experience Half-Life 2 like never before. Return to City 17, held within the iron grip of the Combine and the Consul. Reunite with old friends, and enemies, and some of them brand new. Immerse yourself in a revitalised combat system featuring old arsenals made new again, with added features to raise the bar in gameplay. You've been waiting for quite some time, now. It's time to climb aboard.
Latest full release: Division 1.2, the first part of RTBR, including Gordon's awakening in City 17 and the journey to meet his allies, and then escape from the city after a teleporter mishap
Latest demo release: Division 2 Demo, a snippet of the second part of RTBR, featuring the first six levels of Gordon's escape from City 17
ADDON GUIDELINES:
As of February 2022 we've enabled community addons to be uploaded to the mod page. This can take the form of reanimations, remodels, retextures, maps, sound redesigns, or however else you'd like to customise your RTBR experience and allow others to as well. A lot of the guidelines are contained by ModDB's own rules regarding content, but here's a run-down:
Please stick to these rules or your addon won't be allowed on RTBR's page.
Hey there folks! Welcome to the July 2022 Gameplay Sandbox Update. It’s been a while since our last update – that being the demo from February – and in that time we’ve been hard at work on Division 2. As we explained in the last update, we wanted to steer away from content-heavy updates as that would involve showing a lot of Division 3 stuff, and we want the focus to remain on Division 2. However, we’ve made some big changes to the weapon sandbox in Division 2, and we decided now was a good time to get into some of them, especially as some stems directly from demo feedback! There’ll be a few other things to nibble on too, so stick around!
NOTE: This update has quite a lot of video footage included to help illustrate the info provided, so we'd suggest watching the video below for this update. However, we've provided some gifs and a transcription in case you're not able to, and we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have over on our public Discord: Discord.gg
KRALICH: Kicking things off, Division 2 is introducing a lot of new changes to the weapon sandbox – bringing new functionality for classics of the arsenal, some not introduced into a cut content mod before. Let’s break down some of these changes, starting with the AKM.
KRALICH: In RTBR, the AKM is a reliable weapon with heavy damage output, but to balance it with other weapons available at this time, we introduced a delayed-fire system where, after the first five shots held down, the weapon slows in firerate by about 20%. It’s powerful enough to mow down weak enemies even when the trigger’s held, but with careful burst firing, the player’s DPS will be higher. Next, I’ll hand off to Iridium, who programmed the pistol’s function.
IRIDIUM: In an early release build of HL2, a bug existed where you could hold right click to “charge up” a second shot from the pistol. We decided to canonise this feature with a secondary burst fire for the pistol, firing two shots in quick succession. The primary fire is now also much more accurate, however it can no longer be spam fired. Since the demo, the primary fire rate has been increased to 250 RPM (up from around 225 RPM), and the burst fire allows for four bursts per second. Now, Amicus will describe the shotgun you’ll find in Ravenholm.
AMICUS: Half-Life 2’s double barrel burst was satisfying, but challenged the balance of a lot of other weapons at close range whilst also being unnecessary overkill in panic firing situations. For RTBR, we decided to innovate with a semi-auto secondary fire which has a considerably faster firerate but also less accuracy. The primary fire’s accuracy was slightly buffed to compensate, giving players a little more control over their ammo economy. Arbabf is up next, with the grenade cooking system!
ARBABF: The grenade is a weapon that has a bit of inconsistency associated with how much you can get out of it, and whilst useful against less intelligent enemies like zombies, loses some of its usefulness against the Combine. As a result, we’ve implemented a grenade cooking system, which lets players time their grenade throw to deal some serious damage and wipe out many soldiers at once; however, overcooking it will be hazardous to the player. As you’ve been watching these, by the way, you might have noticed that the flashlight has changed – it now has a new texture with a wider field of view, and an infinite battery life, which helps with player visibility as well as making the flashlight more useful in general. Now, back to Kralich, regarding the MP7 and Stunstick.
KRALICH: Division 1’s MP7 was a force of nature, mowing down enemies with little trouble. Our AKM initially struggled to keep up, and so in the Division 2 demo it received a nerf in damage that was a bit overtuned. Now, it’s been buffed from 25 rounds in the mag to 30, and received a small buff in damage potential that still gives the AKM room to shine, but the MP7 now also has its own personality at short range, as intended.
KRALICH: In Division 1, the Stunstick’s damage was higher than the crowbar but slower in attack speed, ostensibly for breaking crates and other environmental hazards in one hit. However, this was a niche use that didn’t play well into the strength of the weapon, and we decided to add a charge up system. At full charge, the stunstick will one-hit kill a zombie, giving players a powerful option for saving ammo in difficult situations.
Now that we’ve gone over the weapon functionality, let’s get into another addition to our weapon system – draw and reload frames.
KRALICH: Our weapon animations are detailed and aimed at triggering all the right reactions in our collective lizard brains, but we also noticed a few instances where they were just a little too long in practical gameplay. Rather than compromise the quality of our animations for those who like to chew the scenery, we’ve introduced a system used in CSGO and a lot of other modern shooters where the weapon’s “readiness” is determined on a per-frame basis instead of when the animation concludes.
When drawing a weapon, the weapon’s actual ability to fire is arbitrarily linked to when the draw animation concludes. This limits the ability of players to “quick switch” in the relevant weapon for a task, so draw frames now determine a weapon is ready to fire as soon as the animation shows it pointing forwards. This speeds up ready time across some weapons by only a fraction of a second, but adds to the flow of combat a lot.
Like draw frames, our weapon reloads have flair, but swapping out just a little too early could sometimes result in players just missing the “reload readiness” at the end of the animation. Now, a frame is marked as when the weapon is reloaded and ready to go – usually synced up to the magazine being inserted. Players can then quick swap to “skip” the rest of the reload, which, combined with draw frames, keeps combat flowing nicely.
So you’ve gotten a good look at our weapons now, but what about enemies? Well, one has received considerable reworks since the demo, and has added functionality for mappers to boot!
KRALICH: The cremator is an iconic enemy of the cut content, and we brought it back in Division 1 and 2 with some changes to its AI like an added melee attack that were aimed at making it more satisfying to fight. However, we didn’t totally hit the mark, and following on from feedback in the demo, we made a few notable changes to its abilities. I’ll hand off to Iridium to discuss the cremator as most of it has been his brainchild!
IRIDIUM: The cremator has received changes that are aimed to reduce the surprise and guesswork that came with predicting its attacks. This led to much frustration during the Division 2 demo encounter. We did this in a few ways. First, wind-up and wind-down animations from the beta were utilised, which help to telegraph that the cremator is preparing to fire, and then it de-escalating as a threat once it winds down. Secondly, the melee attack speed was sped up, diminishing player ability to trick the AI of the cremator, getting it stuck in a melee loop. Thirdly – coded by Arbabf, and designed graphically by Randomcatdude –we took the new cremator fire, and updated it to burn the player in a way that showed an afterburn overlay similar to TF2. This overlay is much less intrusive than the red screen and large green flames of before, giving players less disorientation when fighting the cremator. As a bonus, I added the ability for the player or other entities to be ignited and extinguished with a cremator fire entity specifically, which allows the creation of new environment puzzles.
KRALICH: As you can see, we’ve done a lot of work ensuring Division 2’s sandbox is up to snuff with more interesting weapon functions to explore and a fairer cremator to face. Now, let’s get into a few extra tidbits – assets and levels! I’ll hand off once more to Amicus to talk about this first one.
AMICUS: The sawblade cannon was originally a trap we envisioned for Ravenholm involving players being able to launch sawblades from a controlled gigantic crossbow, but whilst cool in theory, in practice, we found it was almost always better to just fling them with the gravity gun. We still wanted to explain what use Grigori has for sawblades – he’s not flinging them like frisbees – and so we modelled this broken-down sawblade cannon model. You’ll be able to spot a few throughout Ravenholm, with sawblades nearby for your own use. Next up is a prop for Maxwell’s lab, and Val’s up this time.
VAL: Maxwell’s lab has been intended to have its own personality from both retail and the other labs in the mod, and this has been done with dozens of custom props, decals, and textures that each build on this personality. Remodelling the Black Mesa East props with a distinctive new look is one of the last tasks in this lab, and leaves things off in a great way. Next, Entity will say a few words about Outercanals01’s lighting improvements.
ENTITY: A common complaint about Outercanals01 in the wake of the demo was how dark the map was, and whilst this was intended to a certain extent, we also agree in some places it was just too dark to see where you’re meant to be going. As a result, we’ve gone back and brightened up the ambient lighting and direct lighting on the light_environment considerably, as well as adding floodlights to the platforming area so players can better see where they’re meant to be jumping. Back to CW now, discussing Quarrytown02 as he’s voicing some of the denizens of the place!
CW3D: Quarrytown02, as the middle-leg of Gordon’s trials in Ravenholm, introduces more zombies you’re used to facing, as well as a few new to Ravenholm. Rife with secrets to uncover, it’s a place where dedicated players will have plenty to dig up. Finally, back to Kralich!
KRALICH: The penultimate map of Ravenholm is, currently, the closest to its retail counterpart in design, but once more Flash’s art passing is making a familiar basis unrecognisably beautiful, and setting a remarkable standard for the rest of the Division.
And that’s all for our mid 2022 update! We know it’s been a while, but rest assured, as this update demonstrates, we’ve been real busy! Before leaving off, if you’d like a piece of the action, consider joining with one of the roles below:
If any of these roles look good to you, please add me on Discord at Kralich/David#0901. Thanks everyone, and we’ll see you next time, hopefully for some big news about Division 2!
Half Life 2: Raising the Bar REDUX: January 2022 Update, featuring more animations, more maps, and SKITCH!
Hey folks! Welcome to the third major update of 2021 for RTBR. This September, we’ve got a bucket load of new content to show you, from assets to progress...
We’re releasing the code up to the latest public release, and also have a few extra bits of content to tide you over before the update at the end of...
Half Life 2: Raising the Bar REDUX: June 2021 (Division 2 Content) Update.
Half Life 2: Raising the Bar REDUX: Division 2 Demo Release
DIV 2 Background Map Competition Entrants, plus a bonus map
Raising the Bar: Redux: Division 1.2 Release - here at last!
This addon for the RTBR Usp-Match changes its appearance to an all-black color scheme with white sights! The name? Raven.
Raising the Bar: Redux: Division 1.1 Update - HERE AGAIN
Only registered members can share their thoughts. So come on! Join the community today (totally free - or sign in with your social account on the right) and join in the conversation.
Played through Division 1.2 & 2 -- what an amazing mod. Total blast. Pretty fun seeing how it has a lot 1:1 parallels to Retail but tweaked with a Beta style coat of paint -- none of the maps are the same, all of them are different, but outside the city escape following the teleport sequence where you fight through apartments, a construction site, get chased by a chopper, etc. almost all the other sections correspond with Retail, at the moment at least.
I had a question regarding the voices -- I just saw a video demonstrating some version of the original lab teleport sequence and the original voices were used but I recognized several lines that this mod used. In fact, Elena Mossman is the same. Is there a specific reason the voices of Kleiner and Barney were altered? Is it because there will be sequences that were NOT recorded by the actors so you're keeping things consistent or is it for another reason? I ask just because it's interesting that both RTBR and Dark Interval use their own voices but I had just assumed most of the lines hadn't been recorded.
For Division 1.2 we had dedicated voice actors for Kleiner and Barney, but not yet an Elena Mossman voice actress. However, we now have a female voice actor for Elena and so those lines will also be re-recorded and reimplemented later on. Our goal is to have every mainline character recast and revoiced so we can have more flexibility in narrative design with these characters.
So promising. Can't wait to see it finished. The only problem I have is the level design can be a little clunky or misleading at points, and the first few chapters in the city are just a little too open. But there's so much potential here and that can be easily fixed. The art direction, weapons, and music are all on point. Keep up the amazing work!
Are there Gonomes in this?
There will be!
From the pool of Half Life 2 Beta mods that are available, this one by far is my favorite both aesthetically and gameplay wise. Really looking forward to the changes for RTBR
Thank you for the kind words!
omggg this is what i've been waiting for!!! love you for life baby!
I just wanted to know, will the conscripts be featured in Raising the bar redux? Always found them to be pretty sick so I'd be mildly disappointed if they weren't in.
RTBR will feature conscripts.