“Bootleg Squadrog, sir. It is not about individualism. It is not about cowboy heroism. It is about being one cohesive unit. The only identity I have is that of a group identity.”
You are sent on a mission to recover Gordon Freeman, but as expected, things don’t go according to plan.
At least you have an escape route planned.
Go get him soldier!
-Adrian Shepherd
3rd Regiment Bugstompers
Blumberg Base, Wisconsin
Excerpt from “History Belated: The Black Mesa Incident”
(New Mexico Collegiate Press, Hobbs, 1987)
Chapter 10.4
Dust on the lens was a prior culprit and it was believed that it was dust on the lens yet again when the infrared negatives showed ground anomolies. The region in question was southwest North America, specifically the northwest quadrant of New Mexico.
Satellite reconnaisance noticed objects spontaneously appearing on the desert sands in periodic intervals of 10.67 hours. The first object was a 1961 Buick Oldsmobile. It was hastily whisked away by Black Mesa technicians soon after its appearance. The vehicle was later followed by a striped basketball, a portable oven grill, and a small brown kitten (most likely a Calico).
Trans-teleportation was a hot-button topic during World War II, culminating in the bittersweet Philadelphia/Norfolk incident and the lesser-known Wilmington/Atlantis dilemma. The research being conducted at Black Mesa was highly illegal and scientifically dubious. But, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, a decision was made to preserve Black Mesa and extract prime scientists.
The call was made for base infiltration and the “exfiltration” of one key scientist named G. Freeman. A marine squadron stationed in Wisconsin answered the call.
“I was very impressed with the job done on Opposing Force. The new models were very well done and the “attitude” of the whole deal was spot on. But throughout the game I was hoping to see more squad-based, teamwork scenarios. These are supposed to be highly trained marines after all; working as a lone cowboy just seemed out of place. So Bootleg Squadrog is my attempt at team-based goodness. I am fascinated with organized military maneuvers, and the scripting system of Half-Life made squad implementation possible.”
This was March 2022’s Classic of the Month mod.
- Title: Bootleg Squadrog
- File Name: of-sp-bootleg-squadrogv2.7z
- Size : 2.0 MB
- Author: Brendon Chung
- Date Released: 01 January 2003
Due to a special file, this doesn’t currently work with MapTap, sorry.
- Copy the gearbox folder into your opposing force folder.
- Launch Opposing Force
- Open the console and type map bs_boot1and press enter.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
The playthrough below is part of the Classic of the Month Event, run by Don AKA Unq.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contai2013/02/n spoilers.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
-
9,521Overall
-
1Today
-
11Last 7 days
-
38Last 30 days
-
663365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 8 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 36 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 30 Mins by PlanetPhillip
Longest: 1 Hours by MisterYij
Total Time Played: 4 Hours, 45 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
super map!!! 10/10
Nice mappack, just a little to small!
Gearbox must see how to do their idiotics NPC allies intelligent with this excellent map. 5/5 to be a Oppfor Map
I second that, awesome programming skillz
GACK! I’d really like to play this map, but for some unexplained reason, it randomly crashes on me. Please help!
Hey Phillip
Will you add more mods from Brendon Chung like The Puppy years, Bogstompers,etc. Because he have a lot of cool mods
Yes, eventually.
The stand alone Gtotto King using the Q2 engine was really an enjoyable short experience
Small, and very great Opposing Force mod which offer more teamwork then original Opposing Force. You have to work with other soldiers, which gives a true “soldier” feeling. The mapping is also nice, BUT the mod could be a bit harder.
4,5/5
Environmentally, a well designed mod. Original gameplay is a nice idea but very easy, all your mates do the work with not much input from you. Only one team-mate can be “used’, and that’s for a specific task. Some are indestructable as they have to trigger other events. And some just disappear into thin air when the script no longer requires them.
An experimental mod that could be better with more player involvement.
great scott! xD what a great game
This is mod have many bugs.
The author on Half-Life: Opposing Force: “…throughout the game I was hoping to see more squad-based, teamwork scenarios. These are supposed to be highly-trained Marines after all, working as a lone cowboy just seemed out of place. So Bootleg Squadrog is my attempt at team-based goodness.”
And in that respect, Bootleg Squadrog is a resounding success. It’s true that Opposing Force just didn’t capitalize on its team-based gameplay potential…and this unit really turns out to be what fans have been waiting for all along. Yes, it’s finally here, and in great style at that. Only once does your squad number less than four, and even then it’s for a good, obvious reason. Gameplay is a great mission-based formula backed by some solid, useful cutscene work. In fact, it plays out somewhat like a story-driven action movie that twists & turns (as opposed to generic action movies that have no brain). And the scripting work really adds to the experience too. What can be more horrific than descending on an elevator while a Garg approaches on the floor below…? This set-piece, among others, really show off the author’s skill when it comes to setting up scripts that rival those from the venerable Half-Life.
There’s more to this release than just the fresh gameplay. There’s an intro map (with training side-area) that’s rife with nice touches, but the real plus is that the map pack is replayable, because you actually get to select your third weapon right before the leap into action (the two standard weapons are the knife and Desert Eagle). What’ll it be, an MP5? M2409 SAW? Sniper rifle? Shotgun? LAW/RPG? Go ahead, play the unit five times!
It’s to the credit of the entertainment value when all that can be said about Bootleg Squadrog is that it’s simply a great play. It is on the short side at 10-15 minutes, but as the old saying goes, “Time flies when you’re having fun!” Not that big on level design, but it’s on par so that’s ok. Still, the achievement in team-based gameplay with excellent scripting is rare not only for HL/OF SP maps, but for computer games in general, and for that the Silver is in order.
Notes
This review was originally published Friday, 21st March, 2003 by Calyst.
This review was originally posted on the Ten Four website, which is now offline. The full review is republished here by permission and more details can be found on the About page.
This took me sooooo long to add because one of my squad kept dying. Eventually, Unq suggested it was to do with MapTap and sure enough it was. There is a special file that changes the health and strength of various aspects of the squad and foes.
Anyway, I finally finished it.
This has a great feel to it and the briefing room is fun – make sure you use the projector!
The gameplay was perhaps a little too easy and instead of splitting the mod into what seemed like two separate section, made a tunnel from the first landing site to the second.
Anyway, all in all worth your time.
Manually
Easy
30 Minutes
Having a problem at the beginning just where the squad is about to go through the double doors. OP freezes. Once it was a black screen, and had to go to task manager where it said OP was not responding. The next time it froze a split second further on, a half a screen of presumably the outside at night, turned 90 degrees to the left and filling only half the screen! Again, had to go to the task manager.
I’m wondering if this map has to be played at a specific screen resolution? The map does start up with the drill sergeant talking in the bunk area and also soldiers talking, there is a way over sized soldier across from me, and there are multiple small yellow glittering lights moving around in front of me. If that isn’t “normal’, please let me know.
Finally got beyond the initial door and “all the way” to where I choose and get a weapon. As that was impossible ( there was no cursor, the red check mark did show when choosing “e” but disappeared again and no weapon was delivered.
I think my rating would be self evident….however as I didn’t finish the mod (that was impossible) I showed no rating. As another post above suggested, its too buggy.
I think for the weapon selection to work correctly, you can’t have loaded a saved game from before that point. Happened for me, I just restarted the first map and then weapon selection worked fine. Saving and loading after that map also worked ok.
Well this was a little bit odd for me, first, you have to know this is a mod you have to play all in all in just one sit!!! yeah like old NES style it feels, why? because every time I save and then reload the game, I had some error or bug that ruin the gameplay, so take this advice for real and DON’t TRY TO SAVE AND RELOAD!!
Overall the gameplay is odd it feels like an unfinished more ambitious mod, you never get to freeman and well the whole thing is really easy, and you only are allowed to carry one weapon so think well.
This is a quick play so I guess is ok to play it latter.
Manually
Medium
30 Minutes
Well, About OpF-themed mods. do not hesitate to play “Field Intensity” it is absolutely brilliant, and believe me, is the same me. The same Hec, but 11 years wiser hehe. So go on, look for it on MOD DB
As with most of Brandon Chung’s stuff, this oozes style and quality. Overall it’s not chock full of combat but Bootleg Squadrog is worth playing for the fun experience, and there’s dashes of humor here and there which I always appreciate.
I loved the idea of making your own weapon selection. I went aggressive and chose the sniper rifle, although any selection you make should be fine since there’s really not that much shooting to be done to be honest.
The maps are very well constructed and laid out. I liked the inclusion of the training area, even though they mostly duplicate Op4’s except you can pick and choose what training to do. The slideshow for your mission briefing is also great. But after that point, the maps all maintain the high quality seen in the opening areas.
As I said, there isn’t much combat here. The bugs I encountered weren’t game-breaking, although once I had to restart because of a broken script. It’s definitely worth the download for the experience.
Manually
Medium
33 Minutes
Also worth mentioning is this:
Make sure to delete skillopfor.cfg from the gearbox directory after you are done playing this mod!
Also you probably want to delete sentences.txt from the sound directory and of_nv_b.spr from the sprites directory but these are less critical.
Whilst there isn’t much combat (except for the room where the lights go out), this is quite fun!
Probably not the best mod I’ve ever played, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. At times I felt I was just following the squad and on the odd occasion the only one I needed was the engineer to cut through doors, the rest of the squad for the most part was superfluous to the proceedings.
I got the impression this was probably meant to be something that was part of a much longer game. The rescuing of the two Black-ops guys seemed a little strange as normally they kill every living thing, if you are going to rescue anyone, at least they should have contributed to getting further in the game.
Manually
Easy
40 Minutes
Another one of Brendon Chung’s quirky little mods. As with his other mods, this seems to be more of an experiment, complete with Chung’s sense of humor.
His note for the mod states that it was an attempt to more completely flesh out the squad cooperation aspect that Opposing Force suggested was possible. And he succeeded — the squaddies act according to plan, and you have your part to play. The only sacrifice is that the actual mechanism of tapping squaddies to follow you is excised almost entirely — everything is done through masterful scripting, improving on the marvelous work done in Chung’s earlier 1986 mod. Only in one instance are you absolutely required to grab a squaddie and have him follow you, and it’s towards the end.
Design-wise the mod is great — Chung has a strong sense of aesthetic that was apparent even back in his Q2 days, and there’s a few little neat effects like usable binders in the night vision training course. Some truly great sequences are at hand, as well, such as the very Aliens-style firefight midway through the mission proper. There’s a sense of fun to the mod, too, such as naming the operation you’re undertaking “Arctic Chimp.”
Despite its short length, it feels like a tribute to the idea of Opposing Force, if not the execution. Worth giving it a go, though you may want to back up your skill config file first if you plan on playing vanilla OF later.
Manually
Easy
30 Minutes
This is most certainly a very special and unique mod. While it suffers from some missing voice acting in my opinion it’s a very cool map pack in that regard that you fight with an entire squadron of yours through half the game. The author scripted all fellow soldier npcs accordingly.
Mapping wise and game play wise this mod truly knows to convince it’s only down turn would be the fact that you need to make a backup of your skillsopfor.cfg because this map pack uses a modified version which is required or you wont be able to win the first map.
Go ahead and play it people while it’s rather short it certainly is very entertaining.
Manually
Medium
30 Minutes
Review:
It is bad the level where there are infinite spawning of pit drones are the most difficult, and many problems is that there are no autosave it is very bad at that particular level. You have to pick a certain weapon in-order to defend the ally properly and don’t get me started of how bad he’s path nodes are, he moves and reloads where the pit drones are there is no NO WAY to atleast have a gaining strategy to stop the infinite spawn, I actually reseted and played it again just to get the SAW to properly defend him.
Overall: Many bugs, infinite spawn in one particular level.
How to fix or improve this map: Remove the infinite spawn or atleast have a counter-measure to it.
How to install this mood without steam?
Copy the contents of the gearbox folder in the download into the gearbox folder where your Op4 installation is. Should work for Steam or non-Steam.
Don’t let the hour long playtime fool you: this map pack is the definition of QUALITY, not quantity.
You start out briefly in a base, and have the choice to play around with some basic training, or head straight to the mission, where you also have the option to select what weapons to take with you*. There’s also a very small briefing segment where you can operate a slideshow, again you can just walk right past if you want to head straight into the action (or replaying the game).
There’s alot of cool features that took me by surprise, such as being parachuted into the mission area, a very tense combat segment inspired by aliens, using an item to rescue a squad mate… I won’t spoil it all, and it was great to encounter fresh new ideas to spice up the HL formula.
The atmosphere and pacing is really good, as you coordinate with a squad (who move very well, much better than the vanilla game) and it almost feels like a squad based shooter. There are some tense moments in the game where you feel outnumbered or even like all hope is lost… again I won’t spoil it and you’ll just have to see for yourself. I can say within that hour of playing, it was a very thrilling and engaging experience that you really have to try first hand. Also there’s no puzzles at all, just incase that’s your kind of thing.
Bugs.
*I was at the point where I got to choose my guns, but I wasn’t given any, so when I got to the mission I was pretty much unarmed. I had to start a new game from the beginning to fix this.
Sometimes NPCs just dissapear into thin air.
Once again, quality not quantity is the key word here. Highly recommend this short and sweet map pack!
Manually
Hard
1 Hour
Bootleg Squadrog plays more like an interactive short story than a bona fide map pack. The player is along for the ride, but a lot of the encounters do not require your input, bar one.
There is a lot of setup and not a lot of pay off, but the scripting is fantastic and the reuse of existing voice lines to attempt to create characters within the squad is done rather well.
It also appears to have a handful of bugs, such as the weapon loadout which did not work for me at all, though I hadn’t realised this until the story was over. Also the attack on the dam which I’m pretty certain was intended as a night time map, had a midday skybox texture which left it looking pretty ridiculous.
What this really did above all else was make me want a longer mod with custom voice lines to better flesh out some memorable characters, who you hook up with along the way. Had there been some proper traditional gameplay and interaction with the squad prior to the dark room attack, I feel it would have had a lot more impact.
Manually
Medium
32 Minutes
About the skies: yeah I just found the mistakes in 2 of the original bsps. I just uploaded the “latest” maps from the Blendo site which should fix the daytime skies.
About the weapon loadout: yeah, that’s a bug in vanilla HL/Op4 – game_player_equip does not survive loading a saved game. If you watch the CotM stream you’ll see I came across it too.
Did I install this correctly? Guns have no reloads, there is no HUD so I can’t see my health or ammo, I was able to take an RPG from the armory into the first level, and once I picked up a pistol in said first level, my previous weapon was gone forever because there is no weapon switch menu.
Is this how it is supposed to be???
Oh, and I can’t seem to find a way forward after the room with the Security Guards. There is a metal door which I assume I need my engineer to take care of, but whenever I try to get him to follow me (or anyone for that matter), he just says that we’re in a restricted area.
And there was no autosave entering the first level
(Sorry for the constant comments!) I verified the integrity of OP4’s files on Steam and now it seems to work fine!
Sorry, missed all these comments! Glad you got it working in the end.