“One of Gordy’s alternate adventures finds him in the company of a small group of scientists and a few barneys holed up in a cement bunker deep within the bowels of Black Mesa. It is shortly after the resonance cascade and as all hell breaks loose around them, they seal off the few exits, determined to work on solving the mess they’ve gotten into. Knowing full well of the military’s intentions they’re content to wait it out down here, their only immediate concern is keeping an adequate power supply. As luck would have it an old power grid is linked to a geothermal generator in this sector of the complex – It’s up to you to find it and get it going again. All that is known about the generator itself is that two slave computers have an auto-lock on the main steam feed valve. Good luck, God’s Speed…
- Title: The Ropes
- File Name: hl1-sp-the-ropes.7z
- Original File Name: kman100.zip
- Size : 1.55MB
- Author: Kevin Norton
- Date Released: 03 March 1999
Download directly into MapTap [1.6MB]
You MUST have MapTap installed before using this link.
You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
- Copy maps folder into your Half-Life/Valve folder. Don’t worry about overwriting anything.
- Copy k101tex.wad into your Half-Life/Valve folder.
- Launch Half-Life 1
- Open the console and type map kman101.
- Press enter/return or click the Submit button.
- Play and Enjoy.
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
Taken from the readme, which I know 90% of players won’t read!
Introduction:
- Note the BIG warning sign on the crane. (It’s ugly as hell and a little hard to read – sorry didn’t have time to Wally me a new one!) Gordo may be scrawny, but he’s ~160# alone I’d say…
- Fuse? Try something to short out the coils – preferrably metal and almost player sized…
- The “AUX” switch opens the gate to the conveyer room and activates the drawbridge conveyer switch only.
- The big winch won’t work until you get the fuse problem solved.
Sublevel 07:
- “Fan Unit 1” door – you walked past the only way to get the door open – it involves fire fighting equipment and a long shot. All other doors that don’t open on the first try in this level won’t open ever.
- Fan, try jumping from about halfway up the ladder, the blade you land on moves ~180 deg. while you’re in the air. You’ll probably take damage but that’s why the first aid is there. DON’T RUN on the blade!
- The “slave” comps are connected to the office comp w/ the reel to reel face, they’re the ones controlling the wheel gate… Both the big switch and the “turbine control” wheel must be on to fire up the generator.
- “Bob” the scientist is pretty hard to save, don’t worry about it, the door can’t be opened anyway.
- The exit door switch won’t work unless the big generator is running.
Assention:
- Can’t open the gate? – try getting across the canal first.
- The canal requires you to make your own bridge – of sorts.
- After you get across the canal the first time, make sure Barney follows you across the bridge before you get close to the gate. I had a hell of a time getting this to work at all, and Barney will not work for you (ever) if he’s too far away when you touch the gate.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image. Sorry but the order of the screenshots got screwed up.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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1,945Overall
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Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 3 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 23 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 9 Mins by reaction
Longest: 0 Hours, 30 Mins by PsyWarVeteran
Total Time Played: 1 Hours, 9 Mins
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Excellent! Another small HL mod fix for my brain =D
Hello, I’m stuck in this mod, can anyone help? Here’s a quote from the readme file:
“Sublevel 07:
– “Fan Unit 1″ door – you walked past the only way to get the door open – it involves fire fighting equipment and a long shot. All other doors that don’t open on the first try in this level won’t open ever.”
I don’t know how to open this Fan Unit 1 door and I couldn’t understand the hint.
Ok nevermind, I solved it 🙂
There’s a shootable opening to an air conditioning tube above the fire-extinguisher. I had found it and jumped into it long ago (btw, you can push a chair to make it easier to get there, but at first I jumped from that “fire” thing). This tube leads into the fan room and you can see this door from the other side. I actually tried to shoot the switch but probably just missed it. Now I shot it once more and it opened 🙂
I found this small mappack really fun to play… You won’t find a complex story to follow; however, this map-pack is challenging enough to keep you playing ’till the end.
JC
Agreed JC. Nice mod. Big rooms and shafts and stuff. Good lighting and atmosphere. Fairly tricky puzzles (till you read the txt file). Not many enemies but they’re well placed. Some minor bugs. Has the feel of a good adventure coming on, but it ends. Play on skill 3.
I hope the talented Mr Norton keeps up the good work with something larger.
As this mod is circa 1999, he may have already. Anybody know?
This is my favorite fan-made mission; as simple as that, no need to say more.
ok good game/good balance of gameplay/bit short
I’m undecided about this. I liked the large areas, even though they were a little bland but found the puzzles a little obscure.
I wanted to recommend this to you but fins that there is just not enough “meat” here to get excited.
The combat before the army grunts gives me the impression it was put there to make moving between each area more fun than actually being the MAIN reason for being there – if you know what I mean.
All in all this could have been a pretty interesting release but just not enough ommph!
Fairly average map pack with some uneven, monotone and quite frankly tedious level design, puzzles and combat.
Set in the usual standard Black Mesa setting it does have a few large architectural areas that overall look quite good. But as said, its design is fairly uneven; most of the beginning consists of large but dull and boxy constructions with very limited detailing. Granted, this was made not long after Half-Life was released but overall it’s far from Valve quality. However, not all of it is necessarily bad; the actual mapping improves as you progress further into the maps all together with some really decent lighting. This takes its toll in regards of keeping a good consistent experience throughout though.
The puzzles are a bit hard, even unnecessarily difficult, to figure out what to do. At one part you come across this sort of generator that you’ll need to power up in order to move a large block. It’s never really clear what you’re supposed to do and just by luck I finally figured out what was missing. Thankfully the author put a .txt in the .zip in case you’d really get stuck.
The combat is in general very easy. For more than three quarters you’ll fight mostly headcrabs and zombies with a large amount of houndeye’s and alien slaves, which is the toughest alien you’ll face down there, thrown in. Most of the combat sections consists of fighting zombies and slaves in huge rooms and corridors from a large distance, and yeah, as you’d might guess, making it all too easy. Towards the very end, however, you’ll run into a few human grunts which spice up the game a bit.
The story is laughable and the ending is disappointing and don’t expect any challenge in terms of combat but if you like huge environments and difficult puzzles then perhaps you might want to take a gander.
It needs the authors text file to make sense of the puzzle parts, that said he did at least admit its an experiment. Considering this was made on a P150 with 48 megs of RAM (my wristwatch is more powerful) it’s an idea that maybe explains why some of the early maps in the 100 seem so awful by modern standards. What I don’t get is the .txt file says the mods release date is Feb 1998, as far as I can see HL1 was released in Nov 1998?
By 2011 standards this mod would have been OK, if we didn’t have to second guess the authors puzzle logic, which harks back to:
Mappers: Never underestimate how stupid players can be
The gameplay once you got the puzzles was too easy, the look and feel was BMish and bits were fun but overall its short enough for a PIL.
It’s worth playing but don’t get your hopes up.
This map pack was pretty fun in some areas, but the whole thing was very ordinary to say the least. The puzzle with the lift that breaks wasn’t made well, and I still don’t know whether I did it the way I was supposed too although I knew what I was actually meant to do I think. The other puzzles were pretty fun and some, such as the fuse one, were well made. This lacked action but made up for it with the puzzles.
It’s fun but it is boring in areas. If you like puzzle solving then this is one for you.
Is of questionable quality work, although it is possible to forgive it, because it is one of the earliest works in the mapping: 1999, sic!
What can I say…? It might be interesting. Fighting mainly go against the headcrabs, zombies and an at the end with the other. One of the major drawbacks – you can not take a security guard at the beginning. Though not long, but with him it would be more fun to shoot monsters encountered.
Also, by telling you here will have a little think and work with your hands, in the sense of working as a loader. I mean, to push the barrel-boxes. [spoiler]At one point, have to pull a barrel on the elevator and push her down the hallway good 100 meters… In another case, set the boxes in a row at the bottom of the ditch, so that later, when he fills the poisonous liquid to pass them on to the other side. [/spoiler]
Also, the end is not impressive. [spoiler]We go in the underground station. There would take the train, or instead, but we go in the elevator, then the game ends.[/spoiler]
In general, for our time poor job, at that beginning mapping time quite even.
I got to the elevator with the grunts inside and killed them. After I press the switch the screen fades to black, and then I end up looking down into the warehouse on some kind of crazy high angle. Is this the end? When I try to end the game after that it freezes HL up on me.
Yes, that’s the end of the mod.
Not sure what happened to the recommendation image for my post above.
Now I see from above, the lift full grunts was the end, however at that stage for me the screen went black and said loading for a long time, I needed to Ctrl+Alt+Del to break out of it. I tried that part a couple of times but the result was the same.
For the most part this was fun to play. Sometimes it took me a while to figure out how to proceed but I eventually got it. It’s pretty good except for the ending (or lack thereof) where it freezes up.
Im putting an avoid it because there’s alot of watinig time there!!!, the maps felt just as if the mapper make them all first and then put just few scattered ennemys here and there, the first and the further 2 maps were plain and lame, so lame actually, with strange paths that don’t lead anywhere!, and so this is a noclip perfect festival because at least for me the mechanisms of those puzzles didn’t work at all and that’s frustrating never focuss yourself at one pure 100% puzzles dynamic if you are going to despise combat parts, if I look for a puzzles pure modification in HL1, I go for the trap mod, and not this at all!!!, that’s for sure.
The maybe coolest part of this mappack were the ending map soo wasted but at least with some little battle!!
Finally, only to add some idea here, while I was killing a bullsquid during this mod, I wonder if one time in HL mods we could play as those cool creatures, i’d love to be a BULLSQUID!!!!!, imagine that, mooving fast, killing distracted guys with the cool BS tail, sppiting acid to the grunties……. So any ideas people, maybe a mod or an attempt of it as a bullysquid out there in HL1 modding scene?????????
Five maps with unimpressive design but impressive layout. It tries to overwhelm with big rooms, but doesn’t cut it because of low level of detail.
The crane crash scene made me wonder if I am supposed to go down there at all, because I survived the crane crash, but then died from unknown reason.
If you lift the heavy stone to maximum height it will be magically teleported down.
I thought that I should enter the door on the generator, but it didn’t open. Good thing that it’s possible to exit from there.
Getting Barney to enter the code is harder than it should be.
Retexturing commonly used prefabs was a nice idea – it makes them feel fresh.
Unlike previous confusing puzzler, Unknown Faction, this one is not protracted, and it’s very good that the author included hints in the readme file, because I would never thought that I should push a barrel. All in all, not bad mod, but there are better ones. Play it if you want challenging puzzles and original ideas.
This mod wasn’t too bad but it also wasn’t terribly interesting either. I would say that overall, I enjoyed it.
First up are the environments. I thought that some areas were a reasonable representation of the Black Mesa complex, however, I felt that it was, on the whole, too empty. There were plenty of barrels and crates scattered around but it still didn’t quite fill the empty hallways and tunnels. It was actually disappointing to see that some small sections had quite interesting details, while the areas directly around them were bland, empty and open. If there had been more effort in populating the empty areas then it may have felt more interesting to play in.
There were a couple of interesting physics related puzzles that I don’t remember seeing in a Half-Life mod before. They made me stop and think for a bit but weren’t too hard to solve. There were also a couple of other puzzles in there that were very obtuse. The walkthrough hints in the readme was nice touch but I thought that some bits were too vague to be useful and it ended up confusing me more.
Thinking back it seemed that the mod was based around the puzzle solving with bits of combat thrown in to populate the open areas between puzzles. The only problem was that most of the enemies that I encountered were far enough away from me that I could snipe them without them noticing me. I think that indicates that the areas were far too open for any combat to be engaging.
I would give this one a go if you were out of good quality mods to play and want to get another solid Half-Life nostalgia hit. This one is pretty standard but it isn’t anything outsanding.
Well, another puzzle-based mod that is thankfully the right length, in contrast to Unknown Faction. The Ropes gets some credit for being a very early map pack (February 99) but in general it misses the mark.
The puzzles are the focus of this pack, although there’s nothing too out of the ordinary here (push a barrel, shoot a switch, break some stuff, throw another switch, along with a couple more clever ones). But they are pretty nicely combined in this pack interspersed with some really trivial combat. The author has added some hints in the text file if you get stuck.
The maps are big and open but lacking detail, although what’s there is passable by Black Mesa design standards. The lack of a story and any decent ending kind are other black marks here.
It’s worth a play if you want to see a mixture of puzzles in Half-Life but otherwise I can’t recommend it.
I found it enjoyable, different, and somewhat challenging. Add a decent length of play time too. Can’t ask for more from a very early try at mapping.
The ending was especially dumb, I hate it when mappers have given up and gone to sleep, and then decide some afterthought will be just fine to close it off. Didn’t even know it ended, I thought it was buggy.
Pretty old puzzle maps (five in total) with more or less combat in the Black Mesa complex.
You’re sealed of with a few scientists deep in BM, and the only way out after the incident at the anomalous material labs is to get some generator working so you maybe can escape somehow…
Pro’s:
-Very good puzzles (thanks to the hints in the readme hehe)
-Good enemy placement
-A few scripts
-Decent, but no special mapping – good lighting
Con’s:
-Short playtime
-Bugs (graphics, script)
-Less combat
-Balancing, it’s too easy due to many health / HEV chargers and lot of ammo
-Flaws like jumping up a stair, winch doesn’t work properly, ventilation blade scene
-Quite many locked doors
-Long walkways, or, large empty-feeling areas
-Puzzles are hard and not that obvious at first – often you don’t know what to do or how to solve them
Conclusion: If you like hard puzzles, this is made for you, mixed with a few combat sequences it’s not a bad mod at all, give it a try, it’s worth it!
Yet another newcomer to the Half-Life editing scene, Kevin says in the text-file that this map kind of grew just as an exercise to learn mapping and blossomed into the release we have now. Despite his inexperience, though, The Ropes is actually a reasonable release. Some of the areas are very nicely done and I particularly liked the subtle but effective use of lighting in the levels.
Unfortunately, there are many areas where he’s let himself down. The two facts I mentioned at the beginning of this review are really the roots of most of the problems. The fact that the maps were basically unplanned has resulted in a lot of wandering and a lack of direction in the levels. I don’t think it was terribly unfocused – I’ve played a lot worse – but all the hunting round trying the find the next course of action grew a bit tiring when there was little else to break it up. The puzzles that repeatedly hold you up don’t work all that well either, being rather counter-intuitive in places.
Although the gameplay isn’t too bad, it could have done with a lot more attention. It’s much too easy, for a start, mainly due to a lack of enemies and the levels feel very empty at times. Apart from the brief [or, possibly, not so brief] interruptions causes by the puzzles, you’ll just breeze through this in no time. The first three levels were very easy to complete using only the crowbar, just to give you an idea of the kind of thing to expect.
In better news, the unit did seem to improve dramatically in the final map which was probably due to Kevin’s improving skills as time wore on. This wasn’t really enough to compensate for the poorer earlier levels and it’s a shame that he didn’t go back and spend a little longer on those.
This improvement is quite a positive sign and I hope that he’ll perservere with his mapping since this release does show a fair bit of promise. Not really recommended, then, but not too bad all the same.
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Saturday, 6th March, 1999 by Morgan.
This review was originally posted on the Ten Four Website, which is now offline. Permission has been granted to republish the full review and more details can be found on the About page.
The Ropes for Half-Life
This one is another decent mappack, with a good mix of action and combat.
Some of the areas are really huge, but they’re also empty, so some teleporting enemies wouldn’t hurt. Though, the atmosphere is really nice, the textures were mostly decent, and the puzzles were quite tough.
Overall, not a lot to say here, it’s really great.
Another old but decent mod. Good mapping, has some puzzles. It doesn’t have an ending but the experience makes up for it.
Manually
Medium
30 Minutes
The Ropes is pretty good for a first mapset. There’s nothing amazing but most everything is competently done. Some of the puzzles might take a bit to figure out but just in case the readme has hints for all the major puzzles.
A lot of effort went into The Ropes and it shows. It’s worth a jam if you like old or classic styled maps.
Manually
Medium
9 Minutes
This mod is beautiful. Don’t downgrade it. Architecture also counts, not only the gameplay. The guy was trying to implant several ideas in the map and they worked well. The mod is based on reducing the combat experience and be a more friendly with the environment and puzzles. That’s why you have tons of health because he expected you to fall from the ladders, from ledges, etc.. Since you are very cautious you don’t suffer damage doesn’t mean it’s too easy. Just commit some mistakes and you will be happy. For example on hard up the elevator there’s a grenadier waiting you behind that corner. Just recieve that and all that kits in the area will be consumed!
Did you hear the sound of the Generator?? Wow, it sound like an atom bomb. In any moment it could explode but nothing happened. Thanks to god.
Manually
Hard
30 Minutes