So its been quite a while since I last showed off anything with this project. Before I get into the current state of levels and the eventual release I'd like to go over the changes to the base game that everyone reading this might not be familiar with. I'm going to go through each change as it appears in this video:
Most weapons have been tweaked or revamped
SMG:
- Base spread has been reduced. The inaccuracy of the gun builds over time making it much more controllable.
- Recoil has been added. If the player does not adjust their aim the SMG will continue to ride up.
- The SMG Grenade has been removed, partially for balance reasons and also due to the lack of a grenade launcher on the model driving me absolutely insane.
Pistol:
- The gun no longer fires as fast as the player can click. It now has two fire modes like it did in Half-life. Default which is very accurate but somewhat slow and secondary which is much harder to control but fires much quicker.
AR2:
- Primary fire has been replaced with a projectile which does energy damage like the AR2's alt fire does, evaporating enemies on kill.
- Secondary fire has been reworked to explode on impact. The orb itself is no longer an instant kill on touch and instead does damage within an area of effect.
Player HUD Changes
- Health and Armor are now display in the center of the screen for more readability.
- Armor regenerates up to 100 and completely protects from hit scan damage.
- Health kits can be picked up for use later and the number of currently held kits is displayed in the bottom left.
Additions to Enemy AI
- Manhacks now prime themselves to detonate after a delay once they are near an enemy, effectively turning them into a flying grenade.
- Vortigaunts return as enemies with a unique projectile attack which explodes either on impact with the player or after a small delay on impact with the world.
- Vortigaunt AI can be varied up slightly in the map editor to make them more or less aggressive. Their default AI is a balance between attack and defense and has them generally attempting to flank the player whenever they are not currently attacking him to keep the player on his toes.
- NPC's can now be stopped in their tracks and stunned depending on what weapon hits them. This gives weapon like the shotgun extra utility when fighting mobile enemies such as the Vorts.
- Most NPC'S have new models and skins. Some of this is just to look better however some of it also serves a functional purpose, such as the new Elite cop who will have a bit more health than normal cops and be less common.
- A variation of the zombie, the Rebel Zombie, has been added which can run like a zombine but will not pull out a grenade. Special thanks to Sabrean for making his zombie models available for me to use.
Current state of the mod:
The main focus of my work for the last few months has been solely dedicated to getting levels done. While there are other changes I'd like to possibly add right now I want to get the project presentable and playable. I feel like I've gone far too long without showing much progress so expect a decent stream of updates over the coming year as I get more and more done.
As of now I have an intro level at a beta phase and more coming in the works that I'm making pretty good progress on. In the coming weeks I would like to put out a demo of this current intro for everyone on MODDB to play. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated as I continue to learn how to make my levels as good as they can be.
Moving into the future I would love to get some people to privately playtest the mod or assist with level design. If you're interested in joining the project please contact me privately here and I'll respond ASAP.
Thanks for reading and I hope you look forward to/enjoy the demo that's soon to come!
Cool!
So, I have a question now. Will it be possible to play through official Half-Life 2 Campaign + Episode One and Two with this? Possibly having the maps edited to include new features, plus having "Seamless" transition between episodes? You know, finishing Half-Life 2 and going right into Episode One and same for Ending Episode One and going into Episode Two.
And I want to ask what kind of other features do you plan to add.
As for feedback? I like how it is coming out! And I have a suggestion for a few options.
1. Headbob/Viewbob - This should be a feature that can be chosen, either during installation (and it will set the cvar for it to true) or in the options menu. I know some people tend to get motion sick with head bobbing in games, but I find it more "immersive" to play with that feature. Having an option to turn it on or off would be cool.
2. Free aiming - If possible this should be another option that allows people to aim wherever on the screen within radius. Something like in SuperMod (SMOD)
Again a toggle able feature.
3. Leaning - Gordon should know better than jump into dangerous situations without the knowledge what is behind the corner. Lean from behind cover to see your enemies, but they have reduced chance to spot you.
And that's all. Good luck with this mod!
As is the mod would mostly work with maps from Hl2 and its episodes but certain things like player speed would mess up certain platforming areas I'd imagine.
It works, it's pretty cool to see the new enemies in the maps, however the changes in the weapons and things like the manhacks really mess up the game. The canals is a chapter filled with manhacks, and now they're not only annoying but they explode so yeah.
It's pretty nice to see a full, formal update for the mod. I've already spoken to you about play testing and the like. Looks like it is coming along nicely, and so far I like the changes you have made. My only concern is that with the healthkits being stared and the suit charge taking 100% of the damage, the mod may be a little too easy. Do you plan to make the combat highly challenging to counteract this? Or do you have another method to balance out the difficulty?
The armor only really acts as a small buffer against hit scan damage. Enemies are actually more accurate and fire longer bursts than they do in the base game so without this compensation the game could potentially feel very unfair. It's mostly there just to prevent situations you could run into in Half life 1 and 2 where you'd have very little health left and no reliable way to avoid damage.