Eye Candy 2 – Map Labs #19

for Half-Life 2: Episode Two

5th March 2023

The long-awaited sequel to the original Eye Candy (which was only a Test Tube)! This one was a full-blown Map Labs challenge at last.

Mappers were charged with making a map featuring unique and beautiful visuals. That’s it, gameplay optional.

Enjoy the 9 entries!

As always, if you’re interested in learning more about Map Labs and maybe even participate in their upcoming challenges, visit the Map Labs Discord.

Basic Details
  • Title: Eye Candy 2
  • Filename: sdk-2013-sp-mlc-eyecandy2.7z
  • Size : 820 MB
  • Author: cambreaKer, ArctixSnowPup, barrelzzen, Wirmaple73, Lucia, Cvoxalury, A. Shift, Salamancer, ThatsRidonkulous, Niker107, Matt71490 AKA Event Horizon, AkAvery, sitkinator, aaaaaaa
  • Date Released: 3 September 2022

Download Options

Download to your HD [820 MB]

Manual Installation Instructions
  • Make sure you have the Upcoming branch of the Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer installed in Steam and run at least once. (Properties – Betas – select upcoming from the dropdown list).
  • Copy the eyecandy2, mapbase_shared, mapbase_hl2, and mapbase_episodic folders into your SourceMods folder.
  • Restart or start Steam.
  • Eye Candy 2 should now be listed in your Library tab.

Reviewing

If you decide to use the Per-Map Opinion Images, feel free to use the file below as a template:

EyeCandy2-Review-Template.txt

Entries

Listed as they are displayed in the mod itself:

Winter Intrusion by cambreaKer
A Dire Emergency in Space by ArctixSnowPup
Trainwreck by barrelzzen
The Bank Job by Wirmaple73
Kate by Lucia
Idyllic by Cvoxalury and A. Shift
Red Letter Day 2 by Salamancer, ThatsRidonkulous, Niker107, Matt71490 AKA Event Horizon, AkAvery
Boatgator by sitkinator
F-4 Phantom II : Sky Defender by aaaaaaa

Screenshots

WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
Each map has 5 screenshots.

1600 x 900

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3
Reader Recommendations
Avoid It!
Think Twice
Maybe
Play It Later
Play It Now!

5 recommendations, average score: 4.6 (out of 5), standard deviation: 0.24 (what's that?)
Total Downloads
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    Overall
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Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 4 comment(s) with meta review data.

Installed:
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 4 Users

Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours
Shortest: 1 Hours by TheLastBear
Longest: 1 Hours by TheLastBear
Total Time Played: 4 Hours
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
Jump to a review
Play It Now!Play It LaterPersonal FavouritePlay It Now!Play It Later

10 Comments

  1. Hello, everybody! I am trying to start playing and get the error message:
    “Unable to load surface prop file ‘scripts/surfaceproperties_mapbase.txt'(referenced by manifest file ‘scripts/surfacepropeties_manidest.tst’)”. What could go wrong?

    1. Sorry, it’s my fault. I didn’t reat the “Readme” file.

  2. Winter Intrusion by cambreaKer
    It is great!

    Playtime: 5 minutes

  3. Winter Intrusion by cambreaKer
    It is great!

    Playtime: 5 minutes
    I really like the snow theme but the map was shorter than I thought but I still like it

  4. Play It Now!

    It’s been a year since I haven’t played the first Eye Candy. Let’s see if the sequel is better.

    Winter Intrusion by cambreaKer
    It is good

    A fine start with a little combat and backtrack. The map design looks pretty decent at least.

    A Dire Emergency in Space by ArctixSnowPup
    It is good

    Takes place in space obviously, the ship/station has fair design. I’d say it’s kinda good but I’ve seen better.

    Trainwreck by barrelzzen
    It is okay

    Just a run and gun, nothing very interesting to see in the train.

    The Bank Job by Wirmaple73
    It is good

    Not interactive but an interesting narrative entry. There’s not much I can say about this.

    Kate by Lucia
    It is great!

    Very intriguing narrative story here, tragic at the same time. The map design reminds me of PTSD 2, I like it.

    Idyllic by Cvoxalury and A. Shift
    It is great!

    Very interactive environment, as if it’s like I’m playing a different game. I’d say this is probably my favorite entry.

    Red Letter Day 2 by Salamancer, ThatsRidonkulous, Niker107, Matt71490 AKA Event Horizon, AkAvery
    It is good

    Same old Red Letter Day, nothing unusual or is it?

    Boatgator by sitkinator
    It is good

    Creepy atmosphere, a simple detail in the map just made it spooky for me.

    F-4 Phantom II : Sky Defender by aaaaaaa
    It is bad

    While the visuals look great, the interface is not user friendly. I didn’t enjoy the gameplay as if I couldn’t destroy enemies without reorienting myself while flying and dodging projectiles.

    Summary

    I gave two entries the highest score. I wonder which one of them will win.

  5. anonymous

    Does anyone know how to run these mapbase mods on Linux? All I get are missing textures.

  6. Play It Later

    A smallish, overall enjoyable pack. Many thanks to everyone who contributed! My favourite maps were the ones that focused on the theme and made sure we had cool stuff to look at.

    Winter Intrusion by cambreaKer
    It is okay

    Short, straightforward map. I really liked the snow effects, I could walk around a snow-covered city all day! The second half of the map felt a bit tacked on and didn’t really do anything to further the theme.

    A Dire Emergency in Space by ArctixSnowPup
    It is okay

    Short map. I liked the idea and the environment, but the ship was a bit repetitive and the gameplay discouraged you from taking your time and looking around, which is kinda contrary to the whole point of the theme!

    Trainwreck by barrelzzen
    It is okay

    Another short map. Train design was nice but very repetitive.

    The Bank Job by Wirmaple73
    It is okay

    Impressive scripting/camera work, but there’s no gameplay.

    Kate by Lucia
    It is great!

    Enjoyable map, even the low-grav island-hopping “gameplay” was fun. Most importantly, it respected the theme and had a lot to show and look at.

    Idyllic by Cvoxalury and A. Shift
    It is WOW!

    Amazing, a very enjoyable experience! I actually thought there’d be a twist into some horror nonsense but no, just a calming day at home. Awesome custom models for the “dogs”, too đŸ™‚

    Red Letter Day 2 by Salamancer, ThatsRidonkulous, Niker107, Matt71490 AKA Event Horizon, AkAvery
    It is okay

    Not again! I didn’t know you could get actual video into a Source map, though.

    Boatgator by sitkinator
    It is good

    One of the more atmospheric experiences of this pack, even though I hate this genre. The ???body??? scared the jeebus out of me!

    F-4 Phantom II : Sky Defender by aaaaaaa
    It is okay

    Points for the technical success in getting the concept off the ground to begin with (get it?), though its unplayable. I couldn’t see anything on the island to shoot so was just dodging missiles until I inevitably died.

  7. Personal Favourite

    This isn’t the first time I’ve played Map Labs, but I don’t remember which one I played, so this will be my first review. Let me just say that I didn’t like it. Only one map was very good.

    Winter Intrusion by cambreaKer
    It is great!

    Playtime: 10 minutes
    Very Good and beautiful experience.

    A Dire Emergency in Space by ArctixSnowPup
    It is okay

    Playtime: 2 minutes
    It was okay, but lacks everything.

    Trainwreck by barrelzzen
    It is good

    Playtime: 10 minutes
    Good, but i ran into issue with ammo, so spend it carefully.

    The Bank Job by Wirmaple73
    It is good

    Playtime: 5 minutes
    Just a cutscene about The Bank Job, speaks for itself.

    Kate by Lucia
    It is great!

    Playtime: 5 minutes
    Sad story with a sound of pulsometer which signal us to an obvious ending.

    Idyllic by Cvoxalury and A. Shift
    It is WOW!

    Playtime: 30 minutes
    It was amazing, a beautiful map of a village somewhere in Eastern Europe (I would even say in Russia, because I myself from the village and I know all this). All the time I’ve spent looking at everything I can find, the swing, the greenhouse, the tool shed, the neighbor who always needs to borrow something. Winter in the village has always been full of worries, to remove snow from the paths (which was not), to chop wood to the fireplace (which was not), to heat up the sauna (although ours had a shower in the house). And this experience ends with sitting at the table with a cup of tea and sweets. 5 out of 5. The Best One.

    Red Letter Day 2 by Salamancer, ThatsRidonkulous, Niker107, Matt71490 AKA Event Horizon, AkAvery
    It is okay

    Playtime: <1 minutes
    Well just the second Red Letter Day, nothing changed from the first one.

    Boatgator by sitkinator
    It is good

    Playtime: 10 minutes
    Short experience with horror moments.

    F-4 Phantom II : Sky Defender by aaaaaaa
    It is good

    Playtime: 5 minutes
    It was not bad, although I often crashed.

    Summary

    I can’t say i love this Map Labs, but only one was great experience because it stroke my heart with nostalgia. So overall i give it a Personal Favorite.

  8. Hec
    Play It Now!

    This was pretty cool, despite being in this ugly map lab thing…

    In this release, we actually have some pretty interesting maps. The first that caught my attention was “Kate”, a very nice and even artsy entry to explore those poetic stories about the end of life.

    The second one was “Idylic” a stunning map, and also pretty cozy, which actually makes a normal group of daily routines quite nice gameplay…

    Red Letter Day was also cool and the video footage inside the tiny TV box was brilliant.

    Then, with hideous game dynamics but pretty interesting technical aspects was “Sky Defender”, as this made me think how the Source engine is quite attractive to many developers that even dare to make a flight simulator in it! It did remind me of all those flying plane packages available for the G Mod, and at the same time, left me with this bitter-sweet feeling that still today we do not have a cool fully functional, and gameplay-friendly flight simulator or even combat flight simulator for the Source Engine. I know the obvious technical reason for this is that Source Engine is built for FPS almost exclusively, and the Sky Box is quite short in height and length so we have for example the Phantom crashing whenever we reach those “physical” limits of the map-box, so IDK maybe the tech solution for this, is to do a “miniature” flight simulator, that means to reduce the scale of the plane in order to actually have a big space to fly and combat. I think this entry is a great precedent for thinking about these issues, and maybe someday, maybe one day… Some clever developers made a fully cool and functional HL2 combat flight simulator, YK which would be delightful to fly amazing combat missions on the CMB Helicopter, and gunship, or even imagine we are the resistance and as pilots we stole a Helicopter and fight with it. I hope someday someone takes this as a challenge and does a cool definitive Source flight game using the Source engine only, that may be a great technical achievement.

  9. Play It Later

    This one is more oriented to cinématic or interactivity (intended) with less attention to gameplay. Experience was short to really really short but there were some good surprise

    Winter Intrusion by cambreaKer
    It is good

    Playtime: 15 minutes

    A really good and cool layout, its a forward/backward mission quite simple even if it took me a while until a figure out what i should do/take, it was fun to play through

    A Dire Emergency in Space by ArctixSnowPup
    It is good

    Playtime: 2 minutes
    another good original layout, the mission was really fast ended but that make we laugh, the theme was perfect for that it was not intended regarding the start

    Trainwreck by barrelzzen
    It is okay

    Playtime: 3 minutes

    A train experience… make me a little think at the opening scene of Battlefield III, if I remenber right, but defenitly to short and without no surprise

    The Bank Job by Wirmaple73
    It is good

    Playtime: 4 minutes

    A cinématic experience, everything is in the title, well constuct, plesant to watch

    Kate by Lucia
    It is WOW!

    Playtime: 5 minutes

    A mix between cinĂ©matic en progression won’t tell you what happens but I really found this one great through its theme and construction for me this one had a great emotional touch

    Idyllic by Cvoxalury and A. Shift
    It is great!

    Playtime: 17 minutes

    This one was special with lots of inteactivity, some humor and a well organized and design layout it was quite fun

    Red Letter Day 2 by Salamancer, ThatsRidonkulous, Niker107, Matt71490 AKA Event Horizon, AkAvery
    It is bad

    Playtime: 1 minutes

    one room an artifact and 1 minute of…nothing, perhaps the idea was cool but I didn’t like it and found it quite uninteresting

    Boatgator by sitkinator
    It is great!

    Playtime: 9 minutes

    A short story to start then a eploration/hunt of feature that need to be collect to see what next. Design and layout were good the idea too another fun but too short experience

    F-4 Phantom II : Sky Defender by aaaaaaa
    It is bad

    Playtime: 5 minutes
    The idea was cool but the way you need to play was not fun at all I didn’t succeed in doing what was needed and quite because it was more frustrating tahn enjoyable

    Summary

    There was some great cinématic propose here and two maps were fun through their gameplay but for sure I was expecting more by this map labs but not disapointed neither

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