Half-Life: Extended End of The Year update news

Hello!

It’s been a little while since we last released an article, but worry not! This whole time we’ve been hard at work on preparing the mod for the Day One release.
Initially, we were planning to release HL:E Day One before the end of 2022, But due to some things out of our control, as well as finalisation of our assets taking a bit, we unfortunately couldn't release this on time.
Though, our team hasn't been wasting time prior to this article, so here are some of the things we've prepared:

Technical changes and improvements

We’ve successfully ported HL:E to a newer version of Solokiller’s SDK, providing better stability and modernity. The mod’s code has been optimised and sanity-checked, enriched with some QOL features:

• Extended makes use of the Opposing Force arsenal and adds two more weapons on top of all that. That’s a pretty vast arsenal, so in order to avoid ‘Weapon creep’ we added a toggleable feature: weapon swapping. Similar weapons that would make each other redundant if they could co-exist in your inventory now can’t be carried all at once if weapon swapping is turned on in the settings (which it is by default):

• SoLoud music manager has been implemented into the mod, it allows custom music, doesn’t cut music off on level transitions and more!
  Special thanks to Jay, without their original code this task would be much harder.

• We also got a few graphics additions that could be turned on and off to your liking, those being WON monster shadows and software-esque water (thanks to Admer for inspiring us on this one):

We’ve also done some tweaks to some monsters’ behaviour and presentation which we don’t want to spoil (though, we showed some of them on our Discord server a while ago)... and we had to cut custom gibs that were unique for each monster (:salute:), for they took up way too much precache, limiting us in many ways.

Models

HL:E is kind of known for the NPC variety, but the quality used to vary from model to model. We’ve updated our models to be consistent all around, optimised the amount of sub-models for certain NPCs (yes, perhaps some models having 20+ heads was a bit much) and enriched them with some extra detail while keeping meticulously faithful to the LD style.
Our work is however not done yet! But we can show you some goodies:

I can see you looking at it’s shiny red eye, contemplating in amazement “Glowing things? In Goldsource? How?!”
The answer is simple: fulbright flags for models.
Without getting into technical details, models can now possess textures that will glow all the time i.e ignore current light conditions. The way it works is just like Sven Coop or Xash. This system will replace the _light models system currently seen in the public SDK.

Here are some more examples:

We’ll be posting some more media on the images tab, so check those out whenever they’re up!

Mapping

At the time of writing this article, we’re exactly one certain Anomalous Materials room worth of mapping away from Day One maps to be complete. All the already completed chapters are currently undergoing optimisation, thorough revision and polishing. We even have some promising idea lists prepared for the next bunch of chapters ;)

In our previous article we went into some detail on our techniques and principles when it comes to mapping, so for now the best way to update on mapping would be to show you some pictures:

So here we are

We’re working on making the mod be more slim and smooth and less clumsy or creeped, as it occasionally is in the current public SDK version. Overall, the mod has acquired a much better and fleshed out shape over this year in comparison to it’s early 2021 state, everything is being revised and made sure to be consistent in quality. A lot has been achieved this year, but there’s still a plenty of room for work and creativity. We hope that the demo being postponed doesn’t disappoint you too much.
It is a wonderful time of the year and we’d love to give you a more substantial present, but it’s still baking.

On this note, we’d like to end our end of the year update. The mod’s future is bright and certain, and we hope yours as well, merry Christmas, happy New Year and happy holidays!