Saturday, 20 November 2004
Source: PlanetHalfLifeRelated: Spirit of Half-Life
Version 1.4 of the Spirit of Half-Life has been released:Spirit of Half-Life version 1.4 is out! This time around the release is a community effort, headed by ytiAdmin and Confused. Respect to these guys. Feature highlights: An ambient_fmodstream entity, capable of playing .mp3, .wma and .ogg files. env_particles can now be multiply instanced - for all you people who like to make streams of water/goo/blood/fire spurting out of bullet holes. weapons and ammo can now have a 'master' to stop them being picked up (perfect for tempting people from behind thin-walled gun cabinets), trigger_onsight can now look from multiple entities of the same name, and no longer looks from dead monsters (you could have 3 patrolling grunts, and activate something whenever one of them sees you), The model mirror entity... which does exactly what it says on the tin. Not to mention loads of new demo levels and documentation. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!Check the site of Spirit of Half-Life for more info and download links.
Source: HL2Files.comHL2Files.com reports that Swedish Gaming magazine broke it's NDA and reported the following:
Speaking during a recent press briefing at Valve HQ, Newell is said to have revealed that, at this stage, the company envisage Half-Life 2 female NPC Alyx as playable in Half-Life 3, and promised more alien-based revelations.So Half-Life 3 and or a expansion for Half-Life 2 are possibly already being set up. Do note this is in no way official. You can read the full story here.
Source / Related: MechModThe Alpha 1.0 of the great looking Half-Life mod MechMod has been released:
The MechMod Alpha 1.0 is now up for grabbing!Go download it now from our downloads page!Read more on this thread for support and comments: [ ALPHA 1.0 COMMENTS/OPINIONS THREAD ]Please Note: MechMod uses the Tokamak library and since Tokamak is only for win32 and isn't opensource, we are unable to compile for linux dedicated servers. Hence, MechMod is totally a win32 modification as of now. You will have to host servers on Win32 (listen or dedicated) to play MechMod. We are working on an Alpha 1.1 patch where we replace our Tokamak collision snippet with ODE, which will include linux server dlls as well. Thank you for your patience and support in this matter.NOTE: If your game crashes upon creating and your video card cannot support our water effects, either tone down the effects or switch to Direct3D instead of OpenGL (video mode). For further assistance regarding console variables, read our Manual.So stop what your doing and start downloading this piece of pure beauty called MechMod right now.
Source: PlanetHalfLifeThe BrainBread team posted a nice status update on the beta of the mod, along with some great movies of it:
Today our internal Beta 1.7 was released. This Beta is going to be our first release candidate! This means: tonight we are testing the Beta with a large amount of betatesters, then we fix the bugs that show up and add some minor things that are missing. After that BrainBread - MUNDUS VULT DECIPI is ready for release! Yay! To make the waiting time a bit shorter I have a bit of betatesting history for you: 3 different movies, each one showing a different client version. Just keep in mind: they do not represent the current gameplay, the latest client a betatester filmed was 1.4.Here are the files:Beta 1.0, done by meBeta1 movie Beta 1.1, done by OverlordBeta1.1 movie Beta 1.4, done by ScyllaBeta1.4 movie 320x240 Beta1.4 movie 640x480 See you soon on the BB servers, lordscottishFor more go on over to the zombie infested site of BrainBread.
Source: PlanetHalfLifeGameSpy has put online several great articles covering multiple aspects of Half-Life 2. From the game itself to the available books and more. First of GameSpy tested Half-Life 2 on a 50 inch HDTV. Here some words:
Once I had Half-Life 2 up and running, I can say that this was, by far, the best any game has looked on this TV to date, and that includes DOOM3 and Halo 2. The game's crisp textures, colorful settings and highly detailed characters translated well, although I did have to turn up the brightness a little. Bright outdoor areas generally looked the best, such as the opening scenes in the City 17 courtyard, the buggy ride down Highway 17, and the strider battles late in the game.This article can be read in full here. Next up they took a look at Half-Life: Source:
The biggest change is that the game now supports the same physics engine as Half-Life 2, and a few other things like upgraded water effects. Otherwise, it's the same as Half-Life -- we've jumped into a few levels and, aside from bodies bouncing around a bit more, it looks and plays the same as it did six years ago.Want to know more about Half-Life: Source then read the rest here. After you're done with that one, GameSpy offers you a look at all the available editions of Half-Life 2, both the Steam and Retail versions:
The DVD is the package's lone redeeming quality, but not for $80. It's a shame Vivendi didn't simply release a "regular" DVD edition here in the US (if you really want, you could try importing the UK version, which ships on DVD). As for the Steam "Gold" Package, that really depends on how important discs are to you -- and whether you want to pay $90 for all the swag.Still not sure which one to get? Well maybe this article can help you. But there is more to Half-Life 2 then just the game. Prima Games also released several books about the game and GameSpy also takes a look at those:
The book also contains lots of material that didn't make it into Half-Life 2: discarded enemies, levels, even story bits that got cut at one point or another. Several short stories and plot fragments written by Half-Life 2 writer Mark Laidlaw are included, which were originally given to the development team for design inspiration. In some places, they provide deeper background for the story in Half-Life 2; in others, they show how some plot elements developed and how others were eventually scrapped.Check the full article about the books here. Last but not least is the article Postcards from City 17, which is a photo (Screenshot) tour of City 17:
Over the next few pages, we've put together a visual tour of sorts depicting various parts of the adventure. Don't worry about spoilers: we've done our best to keep the good parts to ourselves.Check it all out here at GameSpy.
Source: PlanetHalfLifeA update has been released for Steam addressing some problems people have with starting up the games:
A small number of Half-Life 2 customers have been experiencing problems while playing the game, and we have traced these issues to corrupt Steam cache files. We've released a Steam update to help resolve these issues. If you have been experiencing problems such as crashing during gameplay or startup of Half-Life 2, please restart Steam and then click on one of the links below. Steam will then automatically verify your cache files. The verification process will take roughly five minutes to complete.To validate Half-Life 2 click hereTo validate Counter-Strike: Source click hereTo validate Half-Life: Source click hereWe're also investigating a solution for the sound skipping problems a small number of users are running into. We'll have a solution for this as soon as possible.Check the Steam site for more information.
