NOTE : THIS IS MY FIRST MOD! I made a 2020 update in articles to give some context. Thanks for visiting! :)
In this mod you play as a anonymous, lone rebel, woken up by the combine's threatening movement through the forest, with no memory whatsoever of how you got there. You'll go through the forest and find your way to City 17, and drive through to the other side of the City to find a way to get to The White Forest base, with or without help. In this mod you will explore and traverse many environments and locations, including (and still might change in development) : White Forest, City 17, and possibly The Coast. This mod takes place not too long after Freeman has just been taken out of stasis.
Articles
Hello guys! :)
I wanted to write this for a long time, to give you my true thoughts on this little project of mine. I made this mod when I was 14 back in 2018, and it was really my first attempt ever using hammer (I made a few, uhh, terrible Garry's mod maps before this).
I'm 17 now and looking back at it I do cringe a little at my approach. Its a first go, it isn't anything special, and there's a lot of criticism for it, rightfully so I'd say. I believe it was more of an attempt to chain together and evolve my mapping skills in a way I can easily see. I spent a lot more time on later sections than the beginning ones, something I think stands out a bit too much, and therefore I regret not going back to hone them out more after my understanding of the engine improved.
I don't mean to sound self-centered when I say this, but I am definitely proud with this and see it as an achievement of mine, even if this is not good in most people's eyes. Mainly because it was a big challenge, especially working in such an old engine with limited knowledge and I'm proud I even got this far, however I understand it can be very underwhelming for the average player and for that I truly apologize.
I know its bizarre bringing this up 2 years later, but I wanted to bring some context now that I'm older, to have an update. I am honored this has gotten the attention it has, and I would therefore like to say I am sorry for putting anyone's expectations too high, especially before I released it.
For anyone downloading now, remember when playing this is a 14 year old's first attempt at modding.
Hope you understand, and thank you so much for reading (and playing)! :D
UC Episode 1 Being Released! (Making Episodic format)
News 4 commentsI have decided to release this mod in various episodes, partly because I believe what I'm trying to create would take way too long to be made into a full...
Files
Unforeseen Circumstances Episode 1 (GERMAN)
Full VersionDu bist ein Rebell, der inmitten eines dichten Waldes mit dem Blick auf die Combine aufwacht. Du musst dich durch den Wald und erneut nach City 17 durchschlagen...
UC Episode 1 (Full Patched Version - correct file this time)
Full Version 5 commentsNow with the correct mod attached! Sorry about that heh. I thought it was a bit superfluous having to download 3 separate items to get this mod running...
Helicopter AI Patch
PatchThe helicopter's AI has been a bit quirky, hopefully this small patch will fix it.
UC Episode 1 Patch 1.11
Patch 3 commentsA small patch that fixes a few issues as well as some other tweaks. Includes the previous 1.1 patch
UC Episode 1 PATCH 1.0
PatchA small patch for all of the maps with small changes, and knocking out some bugs.
UC Episode 1
Full Version 4 commentsThis is the first Episode in Unforeseen Circumstances, hope you enjoy
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Link to Half-Life 2: Unforeseen Circumstances Episode One by selecting a button and using the embed code provided more...
Have you considered lately extending the mod ? I had fun running the first part.
Hey! Unfortunately I stopped working on episode 2 a long time ago, I haven't touched hammer in quite a while, so I don't think I'll be coming back to it as I've moved onto other things now.
Thanks for playing regardless, I'm glad you had fun! :)
Great job on your first mod! Keep up the good work! 😁👍
Here is a complete playthrough of this mod, feel free to use the footage for whatever!
Yo creator, the download is fkd, it's some friggin operation overload. WTF! Read the comments in the download page ffs.
Contacted him, he's trying to resolve this ASAP.
Despite my best efforts I can't seem to progress past level UC_2B. Crashes when It reaches the next level. I've patched it all up yet no dice, gonna need to continue with console commands D:
I don't think it's worthy of the hate despite it's shortcomings so I hope you do continue with Episode 2!
Hey, thanks for the comment! Its been such a long time since I've touched hammer, and I honestly don't really know why that crash is happening with some people. I've looked over the map transitions in hammer and I can't seem to find the problem, even so, the map change seems to work fine for me whenever I play which makes it really hard to diagnose. If I manage to find a fix I'll be sure to upload some sort of patch.
But yeah, I apologize. Thanks for playing nonetheless.
i give this mod 6 out of 10
-You should not use block doors (prop doors are better)
-use same texture for all floors in the building. use same texture for all walls too. Do not make wall and floor same texture
-Dont make level endings black put same with level startings
-there was no track below the train when we first see it.
-Make caves spherical like in ep2
For a first mod this was good. I hope you improve and continue on your works :) (apologies for my bad english)
my suggestion is play popular maps and mods and look how they created their maps there is also very nice gmod maps too. You can decompile them and see how they made it
Full gameplay
Well, here goes my review for this mod.
I give this mod a genuine 4/10 and here is why.
On my first playthrough of the game I thought it was pretty amazing, but I realized many things.
1. You never loaded up the maps before release (I know this because there was the rebuiling node message.) Which leads me to believe there was little-to-no playtesting for this mod. Somethings just really irk me whenever I played through this. On your first level, the hills or cliffs have tops with unaligned and just weird textures, they have the same textures for the body of the cliff. I just got lost on the first level, there were literally no hints on where to go (lighting, signs, npcs, etc.) So I got lost messing around for about 10 minutes before I fell off the gate and realized I had to go through the water. Then, you only arming me with a gravity gun and making me fight a metrocop makes no sense whatsoever, so I just run past him and I see about 9 more combine soldiers and get instantly killed. So I had to BHOP past everyone, go to the end of the level and play through the next section. Again I got into a fight with only a gravity gun against more combine. I was lucky enough for the zombie to kill one so I could get his grenade and SMG, but if I have to rely on bugs in the game to progress, it isn't a good game. The tunnels have unaligned textures and a...brick wall for the ceiling? That doesn't make sense but I digress. Half way through the game there's an un-climbable ladder so I have to noclip. If you have to cheat to progress that is horrible level design. Another thing that saddens me and makes me dislike this mod and think you pulled it out of your *** is the just the amount of polishing and sense you put in mind while making this mod. It's very unpolished and the level design makes no sense, how is there two gravity guns in this mod when there's only one in the Half Life universe? How are you a rebel but has an HEV suit with HEV hands on the C_Weapon models? At least put some customization in this mod, or hire the talent that can do it. Whenever I save, my game crashes. That is another problem with this mod. I think this mod needs ALOT of work in order for it not to be another HDTF. As for now I say this mod isn't worth your time unless you enjoy playing random level packs.
I definitely appreciate the review, but I can't help but point out a few things I have stuck in my mind, which I've listed here:
1. I have play tested the maps after every compilation, and I have no idea why you would be experiencing a node graph error, there was a graphs folder inside maps which should've eliminated that, which I did check as well.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by only gravity gun? There were a number of crowbars in the stream of water, however I agree it could've been a little more obvious, I didn't think too much when designing that.
3. For the first level I intended you would have to kill the cop with a crowbar which then gives you the pistol to fight the combine.
4. The "un-climbable" ladder you speak of was simply because of the lack of exit entities, which seemed not to affect me during play test, however realizing this through many comments I did include in the patch a fix for this.
5. I completely agree its fairly unpolished, I wasn't that coordinated with engine on a lot of the levels, and sometimes I took large breaks until deciding to come back to editing, and during some times I physically couldn't know how to so called "Polish" something up, even researching many hours of tutorials.
6. I'm not sure what you mean by only 1 gravity gun in the Half-Life universe. When are you ever told that in the lore? I've seen in a lot of other mods you would get the gravity gun, the same as this. At the end of the day if its a weapon use-able in the Half-Life engine is it really a big deal?
7. As I did say above, I didn't want this mod to be full of custom assets and such, I just wanted it to be a simple "first mod", and I agree it can be weird for the "story" but I wasn't willing to dedicate everything I could to it.
And well, at the end of the day I just hope you can appreciate this as a first mod. Yes, its pretty terrible in some areas, I have to agree, but during a lot of the development I literally never intended to release it publicly. I just hope I can improve much in anything else I happen to work on to make sure this doesn't happen again..
Thank you. :)
Well from what the player knows is that there is only one gravity gun in the HL lore. We basically traveled through the entire country in HL and saw only one gravity gun throughout it - I think what I said was a bit nitpicking than anything else. I had no idea this was a first mod. It wasn't horrible but it needs some work. Tutorials will not get you anywhere. You should expiriment with all kinds of fgds and versions of hammer. But if you insist on watching tutorials, watch Tophatwaffle, 3kliksphilip, or Dredile. I think they'd help you best. You should also play through and notice all the details in the game your mapping for, use it as inspiration.
Also I just found out why you were getting a Node error, turns out that there was a old .ain file for only the first map which somehow I missed out when replacing the graphs folder for the mod. All the other maps don't have that though.
Right now I'm just experimenting with different things and such which I didn't use before. I have to admit that I did get most of the help when making it from various tutorials, and simply expanded upon the method or idea that was shown. I'll definitely make sure take my time with anything else I decide to make in the future, and whether or not its a continuation of this mod, I don't know.. In my mind though, it might be best to start from scratch at this point and make something different.
Very few people ever publish their first ever mod attempts because until you've gotten your hands dirty a couple of times with the sdk there's no way your work will be at a high enough level of quality for others to enjoy it.
Modding is iterative: you start out with little projects, making them again and again and each time learning from your mistakes. It is only after you have gone about it a bunch of times that you are likely to apply yourself to a large, story driven project.
Honestly for a first attempt this work is not bad, and you should not be too hard on yourself for the reception it has received. At the same time, perhaps it is best for you to start over, having learnt all the lessons from working on this project.
Hang in there buddy!
Thank you for the comment, I never intended to release the mod publicly, however you could call me foolish to think that I thought this was actually a pretty amazing mod before I made this page, I wanted to share this first mod to perhaps prove myself. Turns out maybe that wasn't the best idea ever, but I suppose its a good lesson!
Nah mate, don't worry about it, constructive criticism is how we grow.
There were a few little bugs and things that didn't make sense, but generally it was playable with some good combat.