In Ground Zero 1 you were Gordon Freeman. On your quest to the Lambda Lab, you find another one of the Black Mesa’s nuclear weapon storage facilities. This one is different though, a rogue group of military has stormed the building, and plans to detonate the weapon to rid the Alien invasion. You, becoming aware of this, must deactivate the nuclear device to save the innocent Scientists, and to prevent the destruction of the Black Mesa’s vast amounts of data, research and information.
Now… the Fallout begins…
Freeman escaped. The nuclear weapon was disabled, within seconds of its destruction, and wouldn’t be able to be launched again until a new generator is placed and wired. Gordon succeeded, and is on route to the Lambda Complex. Why? Were not sure. More troops will be inserted in the area in moments. Our squad has been decimated, and only me, you, and a few others still survived after Gordon’s battle with us. Our squad, and Freeman both know this — Our squads mission was to destroy the base. We are traitors to our people, our country, our government and military for disobeying orders and trying to destroy the Black Mesa facility.
We will be killed by the new troops coming in if they find out what happened here. Me and you both know what to do now, kill the only witness of our rogue intentions — Gordon Freeman.” the Lieutenant said. “But…how? We have no idea where he is..” sighed Allen Morris, ” !@#$%^&* Morris, there is no time for questions, we kill him, or they kill us. He was here about 30 minutes ago, load up, we are going to kill Gordon Freeman.”
- Title: Ground Zero 2 (Fallout)
- File Name: of-sp-ground-zero-2-fallout.7z
- Original File Name: groundzero2fallout.zip or gzero2.rar
- Size : 4.56MB
- Author: Derek McBurney Hellfire
- Date Released: 16 June 2000
- Create a copy your Sentences.txt file in gearbox/sound folder.
- Copy all the files and folders in the archive into your gearbox folder.
- Open the console and type “map of0a0”
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
I spent hours trying to get this to work with MapTap but couldn’t – sorry.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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4,146Overall
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0Today
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2Last 7 days
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22Last 30 days
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253365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 9 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 2 Hours, 11 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 45 Mins by Dmitry
Longest: 10 Hours by Filthy McNasty
Total Time Played: 21 Hours, 54 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
I really loved this map when I played them especially the rocket at the end
Good mod. Some puzzles and tricks, some killing. Some red herrings! Same level of play throughout. Then it ends. 3.5/5
Wait, so you are gordon freeman, but with soldier hands?
While there are only a small handful of maps in the Opposing Force single player category, several of them are solid, enjoyable maps. Ground Zero 2: Fallout, by Derek McBurney (aka HellFire), is the latest addition to the Opposing Force list, and it is another strong entry in the OpFor section.
Ground Zero 2 picks up the story from the end of Ground Zero, HellFire’s first Half-Life single player episode (and an impressive one at that). This time, however, your role is that of a soldier ordered to find and kill Gordon Freeman to prevent anyone from finding out what really happened at Black Mesa in Ground Zero. You must try to track Freeman through new sections of the Lambda Complex. To complicate matters, new troops are being inserted that will not take kindly to your unethical behavior (killing innocent scientists, trying to nuke the base, swearing over the radio, etc.)
I felt GZ2 was a slight improvement over Ground Zero in terms of design and gameplay. I truly enjoyed the original, but OpFor has more variety available in enemies and weapons, and GZ2 was designed with this in mind. There are a good number of grunts to do battle with, as well as a wide variety of aliens, but you do get some assistance from members of your original squad. And HellFire keeps you on your toes with good enemy placement and occasional surprise attacks.
The level design and architecture were very good, with a good number of clever puzzles mixed in to keep you thinking. Also, GZ2 was very playable – r_speeds were excellent throughout the episode. HellFire demonstrates that he is a proficient level designer by including some ‘sleight-of-hand’ tricks to circumvent some of the limitations of the Half-Life engine, such as fog hanging over a pool of water and some reflective surfaces.
Ground Zero 2 does have some room for improvement. First, there are a couple of areas that should have been redesigned, and this should have been obvious in playtesting. Near the beginning there is a door that you could easily jump to across a pool of glowing slime. However, there is an invisible wall (known to mappers as a clip brush) in front of your landing area, so you fall into the slime. This is rather poor design; if the door is not meant to be opened by the player, it should simply have been moved out of jumping range. Another area that comes to mind is a long, dark hallway beyond a fire door. It is very easy for the player to get trapped in here permanently, along with infinitely spawning grunts. If this trick of making enemies is used, it should be in a place inaccessible to the player. The matter of permanently trapping the player in an area is debatable, but these types of areas should usually be avoided in my opinion.
There are a bunch of new sounds in GZ2 that convey hints and, to an extent, the story. Unfortunately, the voices sound very amateurish and detract from the immersion into the episode. It was a valiant attempt, but I hope that HellFire considers using experienced voice actors in his next map. Also, GZ2 can be challenging in parts. For the most part the combat isn’t too tough, but advancing through the levels can be frustrating. I don’t really consider this a drawback, but if you’re the type to get stuck easily, GZ2 may not be to your taste. However, HellFire has posted a complete walkthrough on his web site to help you along.
Despite the criticisms listed above, I really enjoyed Ground Zero 2. It was a well-designed episode with a good plot, interesting puzzles, and quality sequences, and it makes superb use of the extras available in Opposing Force. If you are thirsty for an OpFor add-on, look no further than this solid episode.
Notes
This review was originally published Saturday, 9th September, 2000 by Unquenque.
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.
Well, after all the trouble I had trying to get this to work, I asked myself, was it worth it and the answer is “almost”.
Whilst I did have fun playing it and the early parts are very simple, the design became more detailed and better designed.
I had one error, where I had to “noclip” and that was when I had to push the barrels into the liquid. One was stuck.
Anyway, it’s a clever puzzle, so fingers crossed it works for you.
As with many mods the changes between areas is a little abrupt and the location of items and enemies seems a little “forced”, it still played quite well.
Overall, I would say you should play this.
Manually
Easy
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
I thinks it’s meant to be stuck; I tried pushing the others up the passage way, but they stopped before the door at the end. I couldn’t find a ‘thinking” solution, I suspect you just have to take the acid damage & be quick. It’s not too bad unless you’re really low on health…
Anyone have a better idea?
Also, after the final battle – seeing as there’s so much atomic ammo lying around, displace one last time for a mini “bonus” zen cave!
Hey Phillp i’m totally messed up with the installing can you provide some more detailed instructions please?????
I just updated the page.
OK thanks man!
Hi, maybe this could be useful. I remade this mappack into standalone mod compatible with Steam.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jzC-G0aSxwemWxMfSkbnEue04UjWGRCH/view?usp=sharing
For “Ground Zero 2” You must have installed Half-Life and Opposing Force on your Steam account (also you can use non-Steam)! For “Ground Zero 1” You must have only Half-Life.
[sorry for my english]
Over the years the shine has unfortunately come off this one a bit. A pain to install, and a major bug that requires you to cheat past it if you encounter it make this a middle-of-the-road Op4 pack. It’s still quite fun to play, but didn’t offer much challenge overall, and was a little frustrating with the bugs. Another problem is that you can get the long jump module (although you don’t need it per se) but it doesn’t carry if you save and reload a game, since in Op4 it was designed for use in multiplayer and Op4CTF only, not single player.
The maps themselves are passable. There’s nothing that really stands out but there are some minor puzzles you have to conquer (hint: not all buttons are obvious, try using some computer consoles if you’re stuck). The combat was decent, but rather on the easy side since there is a lot of health and HEV available, not to mention tons of contact grenades and a bunch of sniper ammo. You probably won’t be hurting for ammo at least.
I liked this pack because it made pretty good use of the Opposing Force assets (including the displacer). Curiously, the Black Ops don’t show up and you’re fighting marines quite a bit.
Using Gauge
Medium
1 Hour, 4 Minutes
Hey Unq, how did you get past the acid water/locked door? The explosive crate won’t drag, the barrels won’t go through the doorway – I’m stumped, give me a clue please?
So without the module, how do you get to the upper walkway with the shocktroopers, that leads to the retinal scanner door? The lower service lift button is disabled, and even if there was a grapple point, the barnacle is still ahead. I could only get there by long-jumping from the ledge accross the gap onto the upper floor..
This is where I had to use noclip. You have to go back to the flowing water stream and there you can noclip through to the room with the bullsquid (screenshot #19). Beware, the water (acid I guess) will still damage you here. I expect if the NaOH barrel did work, it would neutralize the acid and you could swim into this room without taking damage.
You can jump across the open area right to the ladder (you can see the ladder to the right in screenshot #31) without needing the longjump.
Ok, you too, eh? Very well, noclip it is. Thanks
I tried to jump to the upper platform from the ladder ledge, but couldn’t make it without the module, but maybe I just wasn’t trying enough. Doesn’t matter as I like displacing to what’s left of the assault course, anyway! That hologram’s in a bad way..
Just found the author’s notes on the ModDB d/l page..
Pushed, pulled, squatted, jumped on it, cursed it, shot it, noclipped inside it & reappeared – no joy. FAIL.
The author’s homepage is not even a memory and mail to the specified address just bounces back – I was hoping for a savegame with it moving. Oh well, we tried..
I found that you could put the two barrels in, go back to the part of the map with the flowing water and the open gate, and quickly swim through and get up a ladder. You lose a lot of health but you can make it. Not sure if that was what the author intended
Pretty sure that is what the author intended. But if one NaOH barrel gets stuck, the water is still too acidic and you can’t make that swim without dying.
Well I have to say this was a funny and decent sequel from the previous Ground Zero 1. Actually you face many areas where gordon freeman steped in the first mod.
Overall I have the feeling this mod was fun, tough some puzzles had a good intention to be clever and enretaining some of those were acrually hectic and I think they were layd out kind of bad… I had to use noclip about 2 times, but apart from that issue it was ok.
The combat was fine, and I had the impression I was in some real areas of BM one or twice. The goal is just simple: escape in a military truck at the end of the maps.
Voice acting was fair enough conssidering its a HL1 era mod and you can’t expect a master piece about that.
Finally I guess the worst part of this mod is the installation part, I totally was messed up with it and took me some time untill I figured out I had to charge the map manually, tough I just paste all the files in the gearbox folder and all the original OpF maps were overwritten, so when I acced to op force and launched a new game it launched the first map of this mod.
After I finished the mod I deleted all the maps and my original OpF maps were there agin so I solved that but use my experience in order that you won’t overwrite all the maps once you atempt to install it.
Manually
Easy
1 Hour, 20 Minutes
Just to confirm, this “Ground Zero 2” is unrelated to the previous Ground Zero that was in the OFNF? Is it a sequel to something else?
Also I think there’s something wrong with this page because all the text is in italics.
That’s right, no relation to the Op4 Ground Zero.
This is a sequel to Ground Zero for Half-Life, at http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/ground-zero-half-life/
An enjoyable effort! A nice balance of exploration, combat, puzzles and secrets/caches. It’s always gratifying to have exploration and thought rewarded with bonuses, although there are more than a few sneaky twists and dead ends. For example, a junction box that blows your head off, a deathtrap “bonus” room (for the overly smug), dead ends and various progression puzzles that need a bit of effort to solve. Not to mention countless grunts and a good showing of Zen/Race X creatures to battle – thankfully, no assassins.
As well as the usual knife, assault rifle, shotgun & d’eagle, it’s possible to get hold of the shockroach (yay!), barnacle, longjump module (briefly), heavy machine gun, sniper rifle, RPG launcher and displacer as well as all the explosive ordinances. These weapons are just so much more fun than the HL2 offerings, and are a sad omission from future releases. Did anyone find the spore launcher? It’s about the only one missing! The arsenal is what makes OF such a pleasure to play; there are just so many cool ways you can dish out justice. *Nostalgia*
Phillip mentions a stuck barrel; it’s apparently sodium hydroxide that is seemingly placed there to neutralise the damage-inducing acid water, however it appears to be another trick; I think you just have to accept the damage as the third barrel doesn’t move, and the pH “gauge” is clearly non-functional. There are plenty more tricks waiting…
Look on top of things; this guy loves to plant caches right on the very top of piles of crates; some crates are breakable but many that look as though they should be, aren’t. Caution pays off; haste often has nasty consequences!
All in all, a fun mod to play, with the bonus that it’s OF as well. Good job!
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
I’m Stuck at screen 19. I’ve tried to move the barrels around and as another player stated. it will not go through the door leading to the flowing acid area with the squid. I even tried to noclip but it goes nowhere. HELP!!
Hm, I had to noclip just to get to screen 19. I don’t recall but I thought the path forward was clear once you reach that bullsquid room.
If you’re having trouble getting to screen 19, you have to noclip just above the flowing water into the next room (not from the room with the NaOH barrels).
If you’re still stuck I can check the map later on today.
Do you mean 19, and not 18? Because 19 is the room you have to noclip into; it’s where you would have surfaced, if you had been able to swim through the tunnel. If you mean 19, go through the next small door, dispatch the two zombies, and then walking forward take the big door on your right, uphill into the labs. That’s shown in screen 20. There is a puzzle/sequence next, so watch out…
I think you have to chase the scientist back to where the door has the scanner. The only thing is that there is a loading at the door before you get to the area where the scanner door is and it doesn’t stay open long enough for him to go through. The room with the electrified rails. Even if you try the noclip there, you go nowhere. Am I right about getting the scientist to open the door with the scanner?
No. All the scientists are useless; they just run away from you – ignore them. Are you referring to the retinal scanner in image 37? That’s the only one, and you need fatguard to open that for you.
Image 10 – where you meet first machine gun grunt (image 9) – you need to noclip through that small door by flickering light. That will take you to room in image 19, and then on into 20. At image 20, take the right hand double-door first; you need a certain item before you can proceed much further through image 20 left-hand double-door.
Yes, I’m referring to the door with the retinal scanner. I noclipped through the door under the flashing light, it just leads to the corridor with the red light and 3 aliens that shot lightning bolts at you which leads to a door with an explosive crate. If you shot the crate the door gets blown open. I’ve been chasing the stupid scientist who does appear by an eariler door with a soldier (screen 14). I’m trying to get to screen 21. I think I’ve tried to noclip through just about every door. They all lead to nowhere. How do you get to screen 21?
Ok – last chance. Forget the scientists, they do nothing. Forget the NaOh barrel room, the red corridor & explosive crate, that puzzle is broken. You’re noclipping through the wrong door; if you pass through the one on the right hand side of image 10 (lower middle of image 11) you get to the walkway around the water, image 19 at exactly where Phillip took the screenshot. Just a few steps forward is the level change trigger which you won’t trip if you noclip all over the place. You need this map transition to continue. (At this point, the ‘red corridor” is right over on the other side of the map!!)
So, find the correct door, switch off noclip as soon as you’re through, kill the bullsquid and walk through the transition to the next map.
Now go through the next small door (far left of image 19 not quite in shot) into image20. Kill the two zombies, and then walking forward take the big door on your right, uphill into the labs. When you’re done in the labs, come back here and this time, take the other big door.
YOU ARE THE MAN!!! (I know, that was so eighties) I didn’t even get that far. From what I can see, at some point the NaOh barrel needed to be used to neutralize the acid water so you can travel in the water under the wall that connects you to that part of the area. Obviously this is a mapping flaw or something. Time to move on and see how much more trouble I can get into. This has the potential of being a very good mod if everything played out OK. Thanks you so much, I was about to give up on it.
No problem! It’s fine as I have fond memories of the 80’s – the music, girls, skool (arg!) & Molly Ringwald in ‘the Breakfast Club’, & no I don’t care if my age is showing!
Anyway, keep going. There’s a couple of ‘red herrings’; don’t be led astray. Read up on the other comments in this post, they may help too. Tip – when you find the displacer, displace yourself! You’ll see why.
Made it to screen 38 without noclip (which I can’t seem to make work anyway, even with sv_cheats 1 enabled). Need help at this point 🙂 Getting embarrassed having to come here and do this! Is there a walk through?
It seems I need to get someone to activate the retinal scanner. I got Barney out of the room next to the green slime floor covered room without getting killed, and standing close to the scanner but above where it is. Now he won’t move further. Then I got the grunt with the blowtorch up via the elevator but he won’t enter the room that has the retinal scanner and I can’t even push him. I then got the claw for getting up on the next level in the green slime floor room but that looks like a red herring, as no doors will open and I have to take damage getting back out of there. Screen 39 suggests an underground tunnel or outside environment completely different to the inside. How do I proceed from here?
By the way, Phillip, the notify of follow up comments by e-mail doesn’t seem to be working.
You’re doing it right, it’s just that Barney/fatguard has a tendency to stick there. From the author’s notes:
Happened to me a few times; just reload & retry. Try running past the top of the stairs & wait for him to overshoot – I think he has a better chance if he passes that spot on the run; maybe it’s just chance. Note that reloading at this point will deactivate the long jump module, but you’re done with it anyway so no loss.
To get noclip to work in HL & OF, you have to enter sv_cheats 1 then quick save & reload, then the noclip command will work. Without the reload, although “sv_cheats” will return a 1 value, cheats simply will not activate (no console acknowledgement) – just how it is.
Yes, the sludge room is a mousetrap. Even if you grapple onto the ceiling-bogey, you can only drop down arse first into the goo, & nobody likes it when that happens! The door is locked; there’s nothing there.
Get fatguard to open the scanner door for you, the rest will be obvious. Take him with you, he can be a handy Human shield/decoy, albeit briefly.. Onwards!
I really enjoyed this mod, interesting variety and puzzles, and decent enough combat. Although everything seemed to die rather easily compared to pretty much every other mod.
The red herrings were mostly interesting, but a few were more an annoyance than anything. My only real problems with the mod for me were “mechanical glitches”, such as trying to get a squad member or scientist to follow me, or to push them, or getting stuck. I know sometimes they were red herrings, not important or meant to go into different areas, however on occasion after plenty of work they moved past “sticking points”.
Still overall I call it a solid “Play It Now”.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
If you have played Bootleg Squadrog, make sure to delete skillopfor.cfg from the gearbox folder before you play other Op4 maps, it changes the strengths of enemies and allies.
Thanks UNQ! It was there, deleted now.
Good job for ‘sticking” with it! (Groans..) Credit for perseverance – good, wasn’t it? Remarkable, considering it’s nearly 13 years old!
How true! And thanks for your help with stuck Barney, I never would have figured that problem wasn’t part of the plan of the game, because it happened in the same place 3 times.
Well I finally finished this mod (with alot of help, Thanx guys!). Minus the area the confused me, I think it was very good. I think the author had great intentions in the area I had the most trouble with be executed it badly. Also, I could not get to the area in screen 52, that kinda explains what I’m talking about when I say bad execution. I looks like you paid a little visit to zen or something, but couldn’t figure out how to get there.
For the most part the combat was great and there was plenty of ammo and weapons to give you a good fighting chance. I would definitely suggest you “Play It Now” but read all the commits and input first.
Manually
Easy
10 Hours
Yes, the stuck barrel is a game bug. But the Xen caves are not! There are (at least) three “bonus” locations you can displace into; the training course & two separate Xen caves. Different maps displace you to different locations, so to be fair the “image 52” issue isn’t bad execution, you just missed it! Try it on the next play-through..
Very good mod! If you know something about entity patches, there is a solution to fix the problem with unmovable barrel. Before you begin to play you need to extract gzero2_2.ent from gzero2_2.bsp and open it with Notepad. Then look inside a text for the entity “model” “*56” and change “health” “9000” in it for something like “health” “30”. Save the file and apply entpatch to the map (you can use a special program from ZHLT to do this). If you playing the mod using Xash3D Engine you only need to put updated gzero2_2.ent file into the “maps” folder. After this you will be able to break that unmovable barrel easily and this will do the trick. Another solution – break this barrel without making of entpatch, but this will take the time too, because it has 9000 health, LOL.
Manually
Hard
2 Hours, 30 Minutes
gonna reinstall OF and play again.
Good mod. I enjoyed the previous mod and this is mod is fun, too. I like the mod uses the barnacle gun not only for going upward, but also going downward.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
I have fixed the stuck barrel issue via entity editing – https://gamebanana.com/dl/1058779.
Here is a web archive walkthrough by author for those curious about author’s original intention for playing the map – https://web.archive.org/web/20000818120214fw_/http://www.planethalflife.com/dmcb/halflife_gzero2walk.shtml
Just an addendum, I just thought of browsing ModDB and it seems PsyWarVeteran has also made a barrel bug fix. But he has also found out and fixed an animation related bug. Here is the link – https://www.moddb.com/mods/ground-zero-2-fallout/downloads/barrel-fix1
BOLD: This time it’s required the use of cheats
to complete the remaining of the level
It’s true, both barrels are completly useless. They look breakable, and breaks only with contact of acid water, but nothing happens, the water doesn’t become normal. Why? There’s no such configuration in the game, you can’t turn on or off the water, only to choose acid or normal beforehand, once it’s placed, no changes.
How on earth you get to the second floor? You can’t reach the stair, so why not just placing a box to move and climb. He forget to place that box and ruined the entire room. That debri near the wall is very unstable and I think it was not designed to climb the wall. So technically you are stucked there.
Manually
Hard
45 Minutes
Ground Zero 2 picks up where the original left off, albeit around thirty minutes later, playing as a completely different character… I must admit that I am much less familiar with this one. I actually did not know that Ground Zero got a follow up, especially one where you switch sides.
So, has Hellfire learned from their rookie mistakes over the course of a year? Well, the visuals are certainly an improvement, especially in the caves and brief outdoor sections. The gameplay however, not so much. In fact, I would say that some sections in Ground Zero 2 are horrendously vague to the point that I had to look up a video play through TWICE just to get through the whole thing. Then after getting hopelessly stuck for another fifteen minutes I found I had to noclip past an obstacle due to a bug. Hell, in one case when it turned out I had skipped a small section of the level by scaling a rock wall, it seemed preferable to going via the intended route because I had actually conserved my health and a large amount ammo.
It is also much easier to softlock yourself in Ground Zero 2 for a number of reasons. Progression often requires the use of a finite resource, be that ammo, breakable crates or even your health! That being said, there are moments where Opposing Force’s utility weapons like the barnacle and transporter gun are given a chance to shine, but these are infrequent at best and can sometimes come without warning. You may sometimes be killed outright before getting chance to survey your surroundings and realise that, “Oooh, I should be using the barnacle here!”
Overall, I enjoy seeing the continuation of any story, especially when I can run around in sections of the first map pack and see the aftermath of my previous actions as the crowbar wielding physicist. However Ground Zero 2 falls just shy of the previous entry’s charm in my opinion.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 5 Minutes