Well I skipped a year, but given that 2022 is now upon us, here’s a new General Chat! Let’s hope 2022 has better things in store for all of us!
What are you looking forward to? For my part, more Half-Life mods, of course! I’m keeping an eye on things like The Core, Dark Matter, Signal Lost, and THWL Tower Source.
And Operation: Black Mesa just got added to Steam, so hopefully that’s not too far away. Oh, and FMPONE’s addon for Alyx, Levitation is looking really sharp!
For my part, I hope to consume a little less and create a lot more in 2022. And post some more mods! What about you?
Well, daily I skip through this site, Discord and MDB in the hope of something decent HL2 being released and daily I’m disappointed, oh well, but you’d have thought somebody would have released something for the festive period.
Sure there’s the usual though occaisional tweaks and updates, but nothing new. I’m still amazed that people are working on Doom maps as it happens but not a lot in the source world happening right now, or at least nothing I know about or am able to play. Still, live in hope I suppose and I wish all of you out there in the HL universe a happy and prosperous New Year. Roll on Summer eh…
Plenty of hl2 mods released in 2021.
Blasted Lands, What remains, thunders leaves, snowdrop escape
southernmost combine, which got an article here
and a few demos of good things to come: rift 17, entropy zero 2
Just sort hl2 moddb by new basically. Most of the stuff released is shitposts or someones first map packaged as a mod but some gems are in there.
Happy New Year ! Somehow found my way back to this site while scratching around for something decent to play. The commercial market is lacking at the moment although there are better signs now Sniper Contracts 1 and 2 have been successful. They’re basically hybrid FPS’s in competition with Hitman and Snipe Elite. The developer have done a really good job with the Cryengine level design. But apart from that I found myself trawling through possible old FPS games I’d never played only to find I’ve played all the good one’s ! Then I had a brainwave and checked for a Half Life 2 Workshop only to find its not there on Steam (am I correct about this?). Then started browsing “best top 10 HL2 mods” articles and eventually found my way back here (I had an account a few years ago but I think it got deleted due to me no logging in). Welcome back !
I come here almost every day (for many years), hoping for something new for any of the games we cover. I only play single player, never online. Also like Crysis and FarCry maps, but there’s almost no action there either for the past few years, and unlike our site, there’s no decent place(s) to go to find them. I don’t like the latest FarCry games. I liked Chaser, and F.E.A.R 1, 2 & 3 were OK. With the chip shortage and video card prices/lack of availability, some new games may not work well.
I’ve played every map (that wasn’t badly rated) for every game, and several times too. I keep handwritten pages of what I’ve played. Using this site, I search by picking Play, then the game, then Show All, then Av.Rec. I play all PIN, PIL and Maybe. Its so well organized here! In contrast to other places…..
Right now I’m doing Black Mesa maps, again. Its a somewhat convoluted exercise, because with the redesign of BM, some previous add-on maps don’t work, some work by starting via the console, and some via workshop entries. The Steam BM community single player searches are pretty hopeless.
I just finished playing Blue Shift for Black Mesa that I found almost by accident, and is somewhat complicated to install. Probably the best map I’ve ever played, visually anyway, and so far improved and different from the original, its hard to compare.
Thanks Michael for mentioning Sniper Contracts, I’d never heard of it. So I bought #1 today and will give it a try.
The more ideas for things to play within our genre, the better. Sometimes things are so ‘thin’, new stuff looks like an oasis in the desert!
“Thanks Michael for mentioning Sniper Contracts, I’d never heard of it. So I bought #1 today and will give it a try.”
No problem.
Talking of thin on the ground I’ve been working on setting up HL2 for full 4K. It’s looks great at this resolution. The in game HUD even scales and I think there’s been some updates from Valve for their new Steam Deck (I have the HL2 beta set to install). Yet the actual settings GUI is still not scaling and almost unreadable in 4k apart from the game title on the main screen (ie. “Half Life 2”) which does scale because it has “tall_hidef” set in the “.res” file. But only on this font. It’s not set for anything else. I found that if I use this file – https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Modifying_Source_GameUI – I can scale up the fonts. I’m in the midst of adding “tall_hidef” to each font used in the settings GUI but am having trouble developing a script to process the “tall” font sizes. The same number needs adding to each font size to uniformly scale them up to 4K. I could go through all 33 entries manually but that might need to be done multiple times to tweak the font sizes in 4K.
Actually can you post here the installations instructions? I could not find them
There aren’t any yet. I’ve managed to upscale a single font successfully but the rest is not easy. if you scale the fonts then you have to alter their x/y metrics as well for their on screen placement. So if I uniformly upscale them all and start HL2 then there’s the menu screen but no text anywhere, lol ! So it’s a bigger job than I thought. It means going through hundreds of controls and text and redoing their x/y coordinates. It could be done but I decided that I’d send in a bug report to Valve/Steam about this as they are the one’s who should really fix this (and why on Earth haven’t they ?). However it looks like it is a possible modding job for someone familiar with the source engine.
Here’s the open issue for this so it seems Valve intend to fix this – https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/2510
I have a fix !
Play HL2 in 4K (3840×2160) without settings menu’s & subtitles being too smal
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2713903842
Hi. Anyones knows the Half Life 2 mod name of the screenshot on the tittle?
This is a work-in-progress shot from Levitation, an upcoming mod for Alyx.
Can Alyx be played properly without VR ?
It can be played but not (yet) quite properly. I googled “alyx novr” and there are some results BUT if you go deeply you’ll realize that it’s complicated and at some point frustrating (e.g. you have to load the maps one by one, when you load a new map you have no more weapons…).
The minimum specs – well… that’s another story…
Right. Thanks for that. Maybe Valve will snap out of it and avoid VR. I don’t mind VR. If people are into that then that’s fine. But when it’s forced upon me, “VR only”. Especially games I’ve been loyal to like Medal of Honor and Half Life.
On the header, the dark “General Chat” shot is also from Levitation, and the pipes “General Chat” shot is from Operation: Black Mesa.
Happy New Year all. I’m hopeful that more chapters in the “Black Mesa: Blue Shift” Workshop mod are released in 2022. So far it is really good!
For the one looking for a (very) good HL2 mod : have you ever tried Southernmost Combine or What Remains ? 😉
Looking forward to Operation Black Mesa and there’s also Peer Review, the Decay remake, though I’m not sure how far along that is. Would be nice if that little known vapourware The Core materialised and TWHL Source should be interesting though sadly I didn’t have the energy/time to contribute as I’d burned out finishing bm_meltdown for Black Mesa.
Am hoping Cyberpunk 2077 gets a lot more updates and fixes as I’ve been holding off giving it a try until it’s in good shape.
Thanks so much for your fabulous bm maps that I’ve been replaying for the x’th time 🙂
Glad you enjoy them!
Years ago, it used to be that keeping up with playing new add-on games or new games for the PC involved a lot of (enjoyable) time. The dearth of SP FPS maps, mods and even new games sometimes feels like hunting for water in the desert, and my ‘search engine’ has been pretty useless too! Makes me think if there was a resource that could point specifically to these, or where to get more information, it would be most helpful.
I came across this 10 year old thread here that was a link within ‘About’, which sort of does this.
https://www.runthinkshootlive.com/posts/your-favourite-underrated-fps-games/
For what its worth, a suggestion is to have a more obvious and modern “link to links” specific category. Perhaps called SP FPS PC (Single Player, First Person Shooter for PC only), at the end of the “Play” tab list. This could include games that are currently around to buy that have a main SP focus like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Crysis, FarCry, Chaser etc., together with map and mod GAMES add-on sites. Our Chat here, which already has come up with a number of great ideas, will get lost over time?
Does anyone know how to fix mods ? I can use my Steam Controller with rumble in Half Life 2: Update OK (as long as I update the SDL dll). But Source SDK 2013 mods have no rumble even if the Source SDK sdl dll is updated. Some mods like The Citizen and Dark Interval appear to be missing gamepad support completely (no “exec 360controller”). Also the Steam Overlay does not work with Source SDK mods (it does with some mods that use Half Life 2 not the SDK) – https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013/issues/393 . So I’m forced to use GloSC (third part solution for Steam Overlay). It all seems a bit of a mess !
All my projects are currently on hold as I fight a particularly persistent case of COVID, but I’ve got a bunch of stuff I hope to get (back) into this year. My fingers keep itching to do some mapping again, so I hope to make at least one map this year.
Here’s one worth checking out if you haven’t already… Xen Forces-Breath of Xen…it’s on MDB…quite enjoyed it…it has subtitles but that doesn’t affect anything.
Thanks for that! Yes a nice enjoyable one, perhaps too easy when fighting enemies, but quite a long map.
I’m excited about 2022 as well. I hurt by shoulder bad but thinking I’ll be able to fire up the computer and get back to playing.
Happy New year everyone, just found this site and i hope to play many mods so here’s to hoping.
Many people say that there hasn’t been a new map on this site for a long time. I’ve been working on an Ep.2 map pack for 5 years, I’m working on the last chapter and would like to upload it here when it’s done. I hope you will like it.
I have a problem and maybe someone can help me. As I posted, I am just finishing an Ep.2. map pack. I recently bought Black Mesa Definitive Edition and would like to make Black Mesa maps. Right now the Hammer Editor is configured for Ep.2. When I run Hammer.exe in the Black Mesa “bin” folder, I get an error message: “Invalid game found in VPROJECT environment variable, ignoring.”
Obviously the “invalid” game is Ep.2. How can I solve this problem?
Important! I don’t want Hammer to “break” because I still have to finish my Ep.2 map pack.
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It worked out, Dolmo helped me.
Hi people. Happy New year, sorry a bit late my pc cpu boiled. Any way love the site and the compo maps etc.. I would like Valve to make half Life Alyx into a normal game to play. I cant and wont use VR. I dont think they will, but hey life goes on. I was just playing through Eye Of The Storm 2 Unfinished Dev version. what a shme he gave up. I know Source can be a ass to work with but that Lord he has some talent. Maybe someone else can pick it up.
Anyway. UK Governmant is scrapping covid restrictions, so we will have a couple of decent months trying to recover. But please listen. They are going to bring in Climate lockdowns. Get ready for that. Peace to you all. AKA DJ Criss Angel.
anyone have an idea as to why i can no longer install sourcemods?
i used to be able to, but these days, mods dropped into “E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\sourcemods” no longer show up in the list of games after a restart.
does it have to be on the C drive? and if so, how do i set up a separate SteamLibrary on that drive?
The sourcemods folder needs to be on the same drive as your main Steam installation. I assume your SteamLibrary is a library on another drive?
You can get around this by making a symbolic link for the folder.
ugh, yeah. my C drive, where Steam is installed to, is a (relatively) tiny SSD integrated into the motherboard, so I have pretty much everything else installed on a series of HDDs in the casing’s drive bays.
funny thing is, i have a series of old source mods that were there from my previous installation, that DO show up in my Steam Library. but nothing else does.
how does one go about making a symbolic link? I think i tried that once before for another problem, and I couldn’t get it to work
please ignore the duplicate. i lost connection when i tried to send the first time. and it apparently still posted the coment
Hello, would you planning to add Field Intensity mod page in here? This mod is became so hyped and from what I’ve heard it’s one of the best mods for Half-Life.
Hello!
After 5 years I finally finished my first Half life 2. Ep.2. map pack: “City 17 is far away”
Seven maps, a little story with lots of fights and some puzzles. I will send it to RTSL soon. I am very excited, hope you will find it fun!
Do you know an active forum to exchange info about the HL2 mods and Black Mesa mods ? I mean I’m still looking for GOOD mods & maps. I have already played many of them but maybe they are still some that I have not discovered yet. I am a fan and I would like to tchat with other fans. Thanks a lot.
Engineer Gaming
I would like to ask for help!
Does anyone know how to send my own map pack to RTSL?
I sent a map pack to the RTSL email address on 4 June, but I haven’t received any reply since then.
If anyone can help, please reply here!
Hi Tibor, yes I received the email. I’ve been on holiday until now – and if you haven’t noticed I don’t get the chance to post many mods on the RTSL site. I will try to get to play and post yours soon but forgive me if it takes some time.
Thanks.
Hello, Unq!
I apologize, but I had no way of knowing you were on holiday, I hope you had a good rest. I also wrote in the email that I am not impatient as I know you are very busy. My only problem was that I thought you hadn’t received my map pack because I hadn’t received any reply and it’s been over 3 weeks. Of course, I have calmed down now and apologise again. And I didn’t realize that you can’t put many mods on RTSL, because I don’t know how many they send you?
I hope you are not angry with me, regards. Tibor 🙂
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Hello, i also sent my half life mod called “half – risen” [the full version] a month ago.
and i didn’t got a reply, i know that unq was busy, but i don’t even know if the team got my email…
Hi Vatra, yes I did get your email and sorry for not replying. Your mod is also in the list to post, but please forgive me as it might be some time before it’s on the site.
Thank you 🙂
Has anyone here seen or heard anything about a mod for Half-Life called Hard-Life?
From what I’ve read and seen youtube’s of (just Google the name), its mostly a difficulty mod. Not of interest to me, I’d rather see all that effort diverted to making a bunch of new (normal) mods where things don’t look familiar, and I’m able to play them!
Just a heads up that the long awaited Black Mesa: Blue Shift Chapter 4 is now out. I’m part way through it and I can’t think of enough superlatives to say about it. Especially the graphics which are jaw dropping good.
I thought the previous 3 chapters were brilliant too. If you have played them, it isn’t necessary to start over, Chapter 4 (or any of the others) can be played alone. The whole thing is the best present you could give yourself, if its new to you!
The only problem with the mod is the somewhat (to me anyway) clunky installation. The best way is to follow instructions and get rid of previous install files, if you had a previous Black Mesa Blue Shift installed.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/black-mesa-blue-shift-remake/downloads/black-mesa-blue-shift-chapters-1-4
Wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
For 2023 I look forward to more time to play HL games.
Got hurt, had health issues, then found a great new job. Lots of training (Boo).
Things are settling down now which means time for gaming exists again.