New Year - News Time - New Times mod for Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Hi, I hope everyone is having a wonderful new year's eve, New Times didn't released in 2023 as I mentioned last year, but as I said it wasn't guaranteed, but on the bright side a lot of progress has been done on the mod during 2023. For those that didn't notice the mod description was updated, Now it shows that both chapter one and chapter two are finished. So lets get on with the news, shall we?

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First lets start with something that you guys already played, which is chapter one.

Chapter One was updated, the changes include slightly graphical update, to gameplay changes.

• First of all, the muscle car starts smoking when reaching the underground tunnels, so it makes more sense to it stop working. See the video below.

• Now for the first rebel encounter where the guy with the gun leads the player. I noticed that a few YouTubers had issues with this section, so I thought to myself, there has to be something else that I can improve this section without cutting it. So I did a such insignificant change that really improved the section, I simply made that ally npcs can also activate the triggers.
  Beware that the NPC may fall back to reload his gun, so that can still be a bit janky, but overall its way more likely to go fine.
  See below.

And now for the minor gameplay changes:

• You shouldn't get stuck anymore on the sides of the bridge of the vehicle escape section, as it has been clipped off.
• The combine terminal puzzle with the rebel now is clearer, with blinking lights and with the send squad to location HUD tip.
• The elevator waiting part shows the player that an elevator is actually coming, with blinking red lights, and a rail.

Now moving on on the graphical changes, they are simple sprites on combine monitors and other stuff, its very slightly but improves on the look of the levels.
Take a look below:

I've had an issue with the background maps, that the game refused to load another chapter background map, it kept loading the same chapter one background. So instead of burning my brain trying to fix it.
I decided to make a new unique background map.
A calm and unsettling view of the city from the mountains.

Since last year, a lot of progress has been made on the maps, as you could see before, Chapter two was finished, its playable from start to finish, all it needs is a bit more polish on the details.

Chapter 2 for the most part takes place deep underground on an old soviet railroad that was used for transporting secret military equipment, but was repurposed for a general railroad (Until the Combine took over the earth in 7 hours).

Chapter 3 will focus on C17 combat, like Follow Freeman and Urban Flight.
Some friendly NPCs may have importance in getting access to places the player can't get to, So make sure to find them and protect them.

You will also see Civil Protection officers more frequently, as a third party, fighting against combines and resistance members.

The chapter is not finished like chapter two, but some decent work has already gone into it.

Now, still nothing was created for Chapter 4. But I already started messing with the first level of Chapter 5.

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I decided to add some random factor to the maps, so the experience may be different on a new playthrough, for example of stuff that can be different is: Enemies, Supplies, path and items required for puzzles.

Here are some examples:

This door may be unlocked.

But if its locked, then this one will be unlocked.

Here are three possible civil protection setups.

Here you can see a battery puzzle, that requires four batteries. They spawn by default on the side.
As soon you enter the new area, all four will randomly teleport to different spots of the level.
Including different supplies spawns and enemies.

So far this battery puzzle is the most dynamic level of the mod.
Here is how big is the area.

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Most of the ambient tracks were remixed from valve games and remixed by Me and Wenz.
But I decided to grab some musics from a composer called zeNate.
He makes free to use Half-Life inspired music, So I am using some of zeNate's amazing music on the mod.

This track was renamed to Office Raid for New Times.

This track was renamed to Elevator Problems for New times.

So make sure to check out zeNate's channel, he made many more incredible music!

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I didn't manage to release New Times this year, but we did make a lot of progress this year.
Some of you may have noticed that the release date changed to 2024, since a lot of progress was made to the mod, I'm confident that the mod will be out by 2024.

Thank you, and I hope you have a wonderful day!