I’ve started building this low-profile project for my own convenience but soon decided to share it once it’s done. Well, here it is.
This 2003 storyline port does just that - makes the plot-related maps from 2003 playable in the latest version of Half-Life 2 on Steam. It includes all the necessary assets and features without bloating the filesize or trying to recreate some big thing.
The scope is just to make the story maps playable without the frustration of the leak engine.
It is not a remaster, overhaul or restoration.
Main features:
- Play all 50 maps of the 2003 story campaign with authentic assets, look and feel. Comes with chapter select!
- Preserved essence: all the levels keep their old texturing and placeholders, showing the immense gap in quality that Half-Life 2 had to cross to become the masterpiece.
- Balance and accessibility: additional health items, ammo and autosaves were placed across the entire storyline. The scenes have been subtitled in the same manner as the base game.
- Content contained: the 2003 assets and entities show up only in the old levels. You can launch any Half-Life 2 map from within the mod and it won’t get weird. Useful for those who want to compare the prototype with the final image.
- Enjoy infinitely better stability and convenience.
In short, this is the mod for everyone who wants to check out the seldom talked about 2003 levels without having the experience ruined by all the unpredictable beta jank.
The initial release includes only the main storyline maps and entities encountered on them! It's not designed to recreate some lost timeline or give a second life to Cremators or the Hydra and other mythical content.
Treat it more like a museum emulation of playing the beta for the first time, but better.
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Additional credit:
This project couldn’t have happened without the "September 2003 Storyline Map Pack" for the leak engine by XJR900, Vitoy & Maelstrom. You can find it on hl2-beta.ru.
Thanks to A. Shift for help with the skybox textures and playtesting.
