Just Fight mod for Half-Life

Hello and welcome to the second Just Fight article! In this article, I try to explain what my mod is, what it isn't, and what the current stage of development is.

Just Fight was originally supposed to be a mod to Half-Life 2: Episode Two, it was the same premise, fight through hordes of Overwatch soldiers, zombies and antlions. But pretty soon I found how boring and "amateurish" of a mod it would make, Half-Life 2 is not optimized for this kind of gameplay and fixing this is beyond my capabilities. So, after some time I decided to make a tribute to the original Half-Life by making some deathmatch maps, but after getting the hang of mapping in GoldSrc, the idea of creating an actual mappack for my favourite game became more and more achievable.

My first variation of Just Fight was much more inspired by the original Quake, with abstract and bland levels, searching for keys and no scripted sequences. I abandoned this variant and decided to think more of proper ways to make a worthy tribute to my favourite game.

My second idea was born when I remembered my first experience with Half-Life, I didn't know English at all and Black Mesa for an adolescent me was this enormous base with mad and whimsical scientists who do the craziest experiments with giant machinery and everything is constantly breaking. So, I wanted to recreate this feeling of an impossibly huge super-secret facility with whimsical scientists who spent all government funds on the most insane projects. Of course, this facility has an abundance of bottomless pits, radioactive materials, toxic fluids, unethical experiments, faulty AI and very impractical transportation systems.

Overall my goal is to achieve this '90s dreamlike feeling from the levels I create, the Top Secret Facility must have some semblance of sense, but not much. As you probably understand, Just Fight is not a very serious mod, it is not Crack-Life level of insanity but closer to Hazardous-Course 2 which was one of the inspirations for my mod/mappack.

Now about the structure of Just Fight, what the progression for the player will look like.

1. The player is teleported to the old parts of the Top Secret Facility where he needs to figure out what happened in the facility and stop anomalous activity. There are little to none of alive friendly scientists, and those who still alive and hiding in secluded spots are soon will be dead in various ways. Aliens mostly use brute force to stop the player, relying mostly on teleporting various monsters, sometimes even teleporting them both in front and behind the player. After brief fighting on the surface of the facility, the player returns to the underground transportation system that leads to newer parts of the facility.
2. After riding on top of the cargo train player arrives in the "middle" part of the mod, where aliens start using laser turrets massively, snark traps now block some of the pathways, and finally, big guys are unleashed directly on the player. The player reaches the surface again where aliens are not so abundant, but they lack numbers they compensate with the quality of their behemoths. After the player deals with the troubles on the surface he finally reaches the new parts of the facility, heavily fortified and full of centries and security measures.
3. In the newer parts of the facility player finally meets with scientists who know what needs to be done to stop the aliens: to activate the Inter-Dimensional Shielding Device and destroy the alien "Overbrain" that resides in the depths under the facility. After the Inter-Dimensional Shielding Device is activated, aliens can't teleport into our world and the player is left to strike the final blow upon alien invaders.
4. This is where the player needs to descend into great depths under the facility and finally destroy remnants of alien forces.

When developing Just Fight I promised myself to not include this:

• No HECU.
• No crawling in the ventilation.
• No the original Half-Life OST, you will mostly hear the ambient hum.

In 2023 I was very unproductive, especially since the summer heat was affecting me very badly. For now, I trying to fix and improve my earliest maps, and after the 25th Anniversary Update fix my mod/tidy it up to the new standards. I made a new splash screen for the mod that you can see below:

And that's basically it for this year. Not very productive, but made some progress.

If you have questions about Just Fight don't be shy to ask me in the comments! Also happy holidays and may the new year be better!