Set in a futuristic Middlesborough, UK, players seems to compete in defined arenas, with a live radio commentator.
Using a few different weapons, players must find the three keycards that will allow them to enter the next arena.
But at the same time killing as many enemies as possible. In addition, there are extra points to be had for getting those enemies through the large red hoops.
“For our final year university project we were put into groups and asked to design a game on an engine of our own choosing. My team created a mod called Capital Punishment using the source engine for Half Life 2.
The aim of the mod was to use weapons such as bats to propel enemies through large hoops scattered about the environments, gaining them points for every successful hit.
I created the two levels for the mod, both of which were loosely based on areas of Middlesbrough where I attended university. I also created some of the models for the mod and oversaw a large portion of the design.”
This was originally released as an executable, with a patch. I have created a “Folder” version for here.
The mod will display 4 main arenas, but only 2 are included in the mod.
- Title: Capital Punishment
- File Name: hl2-sp-capital-punishment.7z
- Size : 86.13MB
- Author: Paul Haynes
- Date Released: 01 December 2007
- Copy the Capital Punishment folder into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Capital Punishment should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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2,368Overall
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0Today
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1Last 7 days
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5Last 30 days
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63365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 7 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 26 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 15 Mins by Sparks
Longest: 0 Hours, 35 Mins by brianthesnail
Total Time Played: 3 Hours
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There is a lot of new content included in this mod and the general concept and presentation is very good, however, what really lets it down is the very simple gameplay.
The enemies, pose little or no danger and often just stand there. The levels are simple enough to not get lost but have enough flow to feel fun to play. The textures are very nicely done and as a previous UK resident, it feels authentic.
The weapons are another slight disappointment as they seem crudely built, but perhaps time was a factor.
The idea of “shooting” the enemies through a hoop sounds cool but I have no idea how to get them that high. I tried crouching but it never worked.
All in all, it’s probably worth your time but I recommend playing on HARD to make it worth it.
Manually
Easy
20 Minutes
Quote:
“The aim is to simply shoot everyone that attacks you, and if possible punt them through the hoops dotted around to gain bonus points. This can be done using the shotgun by crouching and aiming upwards at someone, or with the baseball bat in some places. The baseball bat doesn’t work so well, unfortunately we didnt have an animator on the team so we couldn’t implement a lot of things we wanted to.”
Shotgun sounds like the best bet.
No working…
What’s not working?
Works fine.
Well, it’s moderately fun for 15m! It’s an assignment, so enjoyment is always going to be capped to 5/10; so about 3 out of a max of 5 for me. The mapping was done perfectly well with no glaring errors, and the playable environment was quite adequate to the task; the afternoon sunlight effect worked very well & the first church looked very ‘lost coast’.
There were a couple of hidden caches, one behind a breakable wall/fire-barrel combo – the wall broke open when I lifted the barrel away (which was odd) and another in an obscure alleyway/passage.
Flaws – there was the occasional “idle animation’, the opponents occasionally became invisible (but for their heads) and waving your weapon during the start menu displayed a curious sword-like triangle. There’s no sprint & no flashlight, no save/load menu option, but you don’t need them.
There were numerous power-ups, obviously health, lightning made you trot for a few seconds, who knows what the crayons did (graffiti master?) and there were various achievements none of which were awarded for completing the levels, sadly! The power-ups were largely useless, lasting only a few seconds. The hud info was a bit ambiguous; there was a bat-swing-strength bar or ammo counter depending on weapon, and a curious bar underneath that seemed to go up & down of its own accord with no obvious meaning.
The weapon models were crude, ok, but assignments are based on a strict time limit so it’s better that it all functioned properly, foremost.
The ‘music” is annoying, if like me, you hate those tracks! Arghh..
I picked up a machine gun (which killed then immolated enemies, nice touch!), the shotgun (meh..) and a de-antagoniser which reskinned the opponents & turned them into allies, for as long as they survived; also a nice touch, very much like Tom Chiu’s “Black Death” map concept. The opponents are ally skinned metrocops, and pose no real threat. The on screen commentary refers to them as ‘smack heads’; whether that refers to the drug, or their intention of smacking your head with their bats, is not made clear!
There’s a realistic “ringing head” damage system, with regenerating healing but no obvious health counter.
There seemed to be a hold-for-power-up for the baseball bat, but even at full swing I lacked the knowledge or skill to punt the opponents skywards – frankly, couldn’t care less. This seemed to be the only weapon alt-function available, sadly.
The 3 key cards were all “hidden” in plain sight and required no skill to find.
The menu & campaign selection were neatly done & functional; the on-screen instructions worked ok, but like the soundtrack, the commentary was just irritating & unnecessary.
A good student effort; I hope they received generous marks. As a playable mod, it’s ok for a few minutes of mild fun, then delete.
Drat. Forgot meta data..
Manually
Medium
15 Minutes
The mod has a load of really fun ideas some of which work, others that don’t really one of the features is that you get points for shooting people through hoops which is cool in theory but as all of the hoops are high up getting the right angle is really feels quite awkward (it is possible but lining up the shot kills the flow a bit) This mod kind of reminds me of serious sam in that I find my self circle strafing a lot and there are various power ups so there is a bit of an old school feel to the game (although it isn’t entirely clear at times what the power ups do) I also liked the player feedback that achievements gave but I given the arena context an Unreal Tournament style escalating multi kill prompt system could have been more appropriate. I also liked that you could shoot enemies into other enemies.
The maps were ok although some areas you could see outside the map and the AI had trouble navigating quite often a lot of the game mechanics aren’t really explained to well (I still don’t know what half the power ups do) and the baseball bat really doesn’t have as much reach as the model suggests. The announcer guy with the text in the corner is a good idea but I feel like I might have missed a few of the things he said and also ducking when an object is falling on top of you does nothing so that guy is a bit of a troll. 🙁
I also found the hud wasn’t very intuitive, there is a bar where my health used to be and I still don’t know what it does, if it’s health then it goes down over time for some reason. I also found the system where a camera feed came up after getting combos was pretty clever game design, giving the player better spacial awareness so to get more kills.
There a lot of cool ideas, but these aren’t really taught to the player very well for example I only found out by accident that by double tapping a direction I could dodge Unreal tournament style, not that I would have ever used this but it makes me wonder what other features I’ve missed out on because I simply didn’t know they existed.
I also got an A on both levels with no trick shots or anything fancy, again I don’t know if this is the top of the ranking system or if it goes up to SS, A+++ or even if I’ve only got the first letter in the word Awesome, I have no idea.
So in summary, cool ideas but really brought down by a lack of player teaching, dodgy AI, levels and models lacking finish and unclear game mechanics.
I’m giving it a 2 stars though I would love to see this mod built upon as the elements present in the mod now look to be building up to something really cool. But as it is now it just doesn’t feel finished.
Manually
Medium
30 Minutes
Yes, annoying, isn’t it? It’s fairly obvious the weapon is a re-skinned stun baton; the reach is correct for the shorter baton, but woefully wrong for a baseball bat. Win=0.
This is a amazing mod… many may disagree with me,however I dont care…
anyway what I have played is impressive stuff … and allthough im not a massive fan of mods that are different this hits the spot and if I was pauls lecturer then I would of been extremely happy with his work
ok the actual idea may be a bit unusual,but the way it was done was excellent … I really enjoyed the music including thin lizzy .. but what I thought was brilliant was the way paul created area,s of Middlesbrough… it also reminded me of belfast in the 80,s ( when I was in the british army ) including burnt out cars and rioting youths …
in summary a outstanding mod and paul should be congratulated on this work ….
well done paul .. excellent work !
Manually
Medium
35 Minutes
Been having troubles in some games lately, so I’m wondering if my Steam is unstable (highly unlikely).
Anyway, with this one, I’m wondering if anyone else is having this problem (obviously not those who have rated it!).
I have downloaded and unzipped it twice in case there was some problem with the initial download, put in SourceMods each time, and it shows up in my Library. However clicking on Play, or trying the other ways of starting it, does nothing. No error messages, no freeze.
Worked ok for me on Sunday; just downloaded it again from PP, same checksums – tried the new d/l in Steam, works just the same as the old d/l. There was a big Steam(ing pile of..) update in the last few days, but touch wood nothing seems to be badly broken at the moment (Gabe’s slipping). My “about steam” shows:
Built: Mar 15 2013 at 17:05:38 / Steam API: v012 / versions: 1363394288 / 1363394288
How does this compare?
Is that [right click]/play? I just double click the mod name..
Check [right click]/properties on the mod, check for any launch options?
I know it’s not very helpful, but as a last resort you could trawl here:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_cat.php?id=95
Is this the only wonky mod, for you? It sounds like a problem at your end. The Steam log files don’t look as though they’d be helpful with launch problems, but it might be worth a look just in case ..\Valve\Steam\steam.log
Thanks Sparks! I have the same updated Steam build but I can’t remember if I did the update before or after this mod. I found it strange that Steam didn’t let me know there was an update that time, or automatically do it. Yes I tried left clicking on Play, double clicking on the mod, right click on the mod and then Play Game.
I tried starting up other mods and there was no problem, however I did have a problem recently with an OF map which wouldn’t load, Ground Zero 2. So yes there might be something at my end.
Thanks again for providing all this detail.
No problem. Not sure what the issue is; Ground Zero 2 works fine for me and is OF whereas, Capital Punishment is HL2 so if you’re having problems with both, something common is broken. As with all fault finding, you need to start at the beginning and work through. If you haven’t already, verify your game caches & check for updates, if automatic update is not set (Steam as well).
Save clogging up the post, add me on Steam if you want, then continue in chat:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/blue-spark
Thanks again, everything except this mod works fine now. HL2 was corrupted and would not play, I deleted and re-installed and it works, but not this mod. Ground Zero OF works fine too now (except the stuck barrel).
Well I think this is nicely done in the intherphase terms, there is really nice.
But then in the gameplay is ackward and is fun just for about 4 or 5 minutes, then there are lots of glitches.
I didn’t have a heck idea of how to pass those bad guy through the hoops and even the developer havent said a thing about how to do that. Maybe is not working and is a thecnical problem.
I also get myself out of the map by getting on the roof of the wrecked train in the playground in map2 district 1.
When I ended district1or map 2, then other 2 maps were available, but I was unable to charge them at all.
Overall is an interesting concept but I feel it very low polished to be released. Many other guidhall maps are beyond better in gameplay terms than this one.
Manually
Medium
35 Minutes
Worth the download for its interesting ideas.
Love the 1930’s housing, it makes me feel right at home for once!
As for the targets, like everyone else I could not figure out how!
But smacking those “smackheads” was a hoot.
A pretty bizarre concept, some sort of Dystopian TV show in which you are meant to impossibly throw people through hoops! There is some clever modding here, but obviously there are a lot of bugs of all shapes and sizes. I would have liked to have had things explained a lot more because it wasn’t usually clear what was going on. I did like the level design, the whole thing had a nice look to it. Other than that I’m not really sure what to make of it, but since it was for a uni project it can’t really be fairly judged.
Manually
Hard
15 Minutes
To be honest, I was actually entertained by this mod.
The concept is that a bunch of enemies come to you and you have to kill them to get points or you can get three keycards to leave the level. (that’s what I think you must do) It reminds me of Serious Sam.
The mapping is actually well done, even if I wasn’t that interested about that.
Though, like Serious Sam, it gets repetetive later. It’s not bad, but when you just want to leave, you also have to go and find the keycards, which is quite annoying.
Anyway, this mod gets a Play It Later.
Hey, we have some cool stuff here! The gameplay is easy: kill people, use cool guns and take the keycards. This mod’s made with the old game engine so you can actually bunnyhop and do more like that.
7.5/10 would try to trow the ball in the basket again. (In the second map)
Manually
Hard
30 Minutes
Bat’er up.