Half-Life: Enriched mod

WHAT?! BAD NEWS? IS THE PROJECT CANCELLED?! No, calm down. Half-Life: Enriched is going to be developed further but there is going to be a fundamental change. More on that later.. let's start with some good news.

The Good news

I've mentioned in my last post that I submitted a HL deathmatch map for the The Whole Half-Life mapping competition. Recently the results were posted and my map, Core Critical, has reached first place!

I had not made a deathmatch map before and there was some stiff competition, so I'm really happy with the recognition from the judges. You can find all entries on the competition page or download the latest version of Core Critical. The first prize was the amazing Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar book but since I already own a copy, I decided to forgo my prize and instead pitched an idea to the THWL judges to host a new event later this year. This way someone will get another shot at that great piece of Half-Life literature. I'll be sure to report on that once it happens!

The Bad news

The bad news unfortunatly has to do with the development of Half-Life: Enriched. From the start I really wanted to support all versions of Half-Life, including the old retail version of Half-Life also known as WON Half-Life. However, with the addition of a new Half-Life version and a new SDK, things have become complicated. Let me whip up a chart!

As you can see, there are two SDK's I'm working with. The original 2.3 for WON Half-Life and the new Unified SDK for Steam Half-Life. However, after November 2023 Steam Half-Life was forked into two branches. That basically leaves me with three different engine versions with their own unique limitations and quirks.

However, each map will still have to function with all these three versions. If I change something in a map to accomendate the 25th anniversary version, then it might break the WON version or even the legacy Steam version.

Next to that the Unified SDK comes with new features that I want to use in the map but are not available in the old WON SDK. And it's not as easy as copy and pasting code over to the old SDK. The Unified SDK is structured different and uses a much newer updated version of C++. As a coder, I'm a rookie at best and translating new code to the old standard from 25 years ago requires a lot of current and legacy knowledge.

The reason why updates have stalled over the last months, is that I have to keep up with all these factors. It's extremely tedious work going through the maps for the 100th time fixing up things and breaking new things along the way. I even thought of doing seperate map versions for each SDK version but it's just too much to handle. Quite frankly, it's also grinding down my motivation. My aspiration to support all old Half-Life versions have become the ball and chain tied to my ankles. I'm not going to finish Half-Life: Enriched this way.

So with a heavy heart I'm going to cut the legacy support from my list. I will still supply the last WON DLLs with the build, along with the config files and menu art for the old Half-Life retail version. You will probably still have an experience that's 95% accurate when using these files. I might get the legacy support back on the list if I can find someone to help me with the code issues but for now going forward, it's going to be Steam 25th anniversary edition only.

The Potentionally Good news

By leaving the legacy support behind (for now) this will mean there will be more frequent update to Half-Life: Enriched. I've actually done a lot of work over the last few months using the new Unified SDK and the new features, most noticable the skill based and random encounters. Be sure to read my previous post on how these function.

With the next update, the Single Player campaign will start getting its final form. Then it's on the the co-operative conversion, which I'm looking forward to most! Hope to see you all soon next time.