This mod continues the story where Half-Life 2 finished and offers one possible scenario.
After the big explosion you fall to the ground and are very badly injured.
Some people find you and take you home to a small village outside the city where the citadel was built.
After 3 months you’re strong again and want to fight on.
You have never seen Alyx or any of the others since the explosion. But you try to find new people that will fight with you against Breen.
Nobody wants to help, some are afraid, others think that Breen has learned his lesson and won’t start again.
It also seems that most of his organization was lost in the explosion.
Then you hear that along the coast Breen is starting again and trying to take control again. So you decide to go to the coast.
There you take a little boat and go along the coast so the Combine won’t notice you coming.
- Title: Leon’s Coastline to Atmosphere
- Author: Leon Brinkman
- Date Released: 06 August 2006
- File size: 146MB
- File name: hl2-sp-coastline-to-atmosphere-fully-updated.7z
Download to your HDD [146MB]
You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
- Copy the Coastline_to_Atmosphere folder into your …\Steam\SteamApps\sourcemods\ folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Coastline to Atmosphere should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
The playthrough below is part of the Source of Fame Event, run by Dan Jordan AKA The Rabbit.
The playthrough/walkthrough below is provided by PlanetPhillip. See more of his playthroughs on this site: VP: PlanetPhillip.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a medium size image.
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9,551Overall
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5Today
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21Last 7 days
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50Last 30 days
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505365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 22 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 4 Hours, 40 Mins
Shortest: 2 Hours by silver8
Longest: 15 Hours by ubilada
Total Time Played: 112 Hours, 8 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
the release date will be in the next 2 weeks, the mappack did grow from 7 to 13 large outdoor maps, (about 80% of the maps are outdoor that is). the maps are done and now I have to repair severel little errors that are found by the 2 beta testers in every maps. so, the final version is nearly done.
leon
Leon does an execellent job of mapping. I look forward to seeing his games. They are very good and I correspond with him from time to time. I hope he gets hired on at Steam. Regards a friend.
I just hope that I don’t hold thing up, because I have to wait until Leon has finished a map before I can build my things into them. But I am certain that everyone will enjoy playing LeonHL2-2 once it has been released.
Peter
wow here it is into another mo.and no new map,hope its posted soon.keep up the good work,its graet. gunner
Hello everyone my name is Bob Howsier and I am the main project lead on the HL2 Episodes project. As you all know Episode 1 is near release and will be a sure success. We were looking for new talent for Episode 2 becuase one of our main guys had to leave the company suddenly. We have seen Leon’s work and would love for him to send us a resume so we can get the ball rolling. (Contact info removed)
Thanks,
Bob Howsier
Whey-hey! This guy must be good, getting offers from the folks at Valve. I saw the screenshots and storyline, and I thought this guy was good from that. Can’t wait for this one to come out!
I’m very pleased with that comment of Bob Howsier and have mailed him. Of course can’t I say that I’m that good, but I can say that it is for sure worth to download and play this second sp-mappack that I made with HL2. The release date is just a few days away now.
leon(SPY)
And there’s me thinking the Bob Howsier post was someone playing around. You deserve every success Leon. I just hope this isn’t someone jerking your chain.
Me too, that would be pretty sad. If it is ahoax I may ban the IP address of the sender.
i didn’t get an answer back yet, well, all I can do is wait. joke or no joke.
leon
aaah… delayed again. Oh well, Leon – we trust you will make it worth it 😀
i did mail him a second time, and still no answer. it a shame that someone tries to be funny in this way. o well, who laughs last, laughs the best, (we do say in Dutch).
we just forget about “our” bob and go on.
leon
Sorry to hear the Bob guy was a hoax, but I was kind of expecting that. Although I am still looking forward to the mod you are making. Keep up the hard work.
Hi Leon, I’m just wondering what’s the latest news on the map pack, have you any more idea when we can expect it, I’m eager to play it!
I can speak for Leon when I say that it is VERY VERY close. Possibly within the next few days.
Phillip is right, just a few days more, what means 2 to 3 days. still can’t say it exactly because it didn’t happen already to much that I had to delay it, but for sure that it doesn’t take a week or more now. I think I can say tomorrow a exact date. thank you all for your interest in this new sp-mappack and willing to play it!
leon
My senses are all a-tingle with anticipation, Leon!
?? ?????? ???! ???????! ????!
Planetphillip: Well when? I await! I hope! I believe!
i’m so sorry that you all have to wait so long, again and again for months now I tell you all to please wait a little longer, with the message that it will be worth waiting for. the last month or so I haven’t been telling anymore to please wait a little longer because that is what I have said already more than 20 times or so. better was it to never start talking about the release date in the first place so no one can get disappointed. every time when it looked like the release date was near some new trouble did come along what made that it would mean again days or weeks of delay.
the mappack itself is now finisht, that’s why I have decided to write again and tell you about it. still, downloading it is not possible and I will explane why. all maps have been tested a whole lot of times, and there bug free. Baltic. Forever makes 2 zip files of the mappack,(the files that you will download). one is the whole mappack in one big zip file what will be between 250 MB and 300 MB big, and the second zip file is the same mappack but without the Core files, (sound, scripts, models, etc). because we decided together with Phillip(PalnetPhillip) a month ago or so that we could upload most of the files without of course the map files (bsp’s), so people that have a slow internet connection can already start with downloading these Core files. what means that when the maps(pack) are(is) released they won’t have to download for hours to be able to play it because they already did download the core files.
i hoped that yesterday all the maps would have been compiled fully, (because until now they where only compiled for testing them). for those who don’t know this, a map/level is made with an editor in a certain file format, HL2 mapping uses for this vmf files (ValveMapFiles), instead of most other fps game editors who work with .map files. ones the map is made you convert them in to .bsp files so they can be played with the Hl2 game engine. changing them from .vmf in to .bsp is called compiling. large maps take about 2 to 10 minutes to testcompile. when there are no bugs anymore in the maps you will give the vmf the final compile what is a full compile, and with large maps they can take up to more than 2 hours. when there are 15 maps, than you understand that this just takes quit some time to do so. so the maps are not fully compiled yet, but that will be finisht today, than we play the final mappack together to see if all levelchanges work like they would. and than the time is there to release it.
and I realy hope and think that that will be tomorrow at the end of the day, but please don’t be disappointed when it takes one more day of work.
we do all what we can, work 10 hours per day on it to get it all done and believe me, no one wants to release them more as I do, haha.
i tell you this all now, so you know what is going on. please check this site tomorrow again if you have time because than I will let you all know what is going on and how far we are for the release.
i promise you all, it’s worth waiting for.
leon
like I promised will I give a new update on the things that are done now or that are still worked on. because Baltic and I have a normal day job we can’t spent to much time on the mappack, after work we have to do it in the evening, what makes that the progress is a bit less as normal. suddenly we noticed in the 4th map a combine flying in the sky,
and a prop_static that was black, a pipe that was half under water.
(screens can be seen here;)
http://www.sp-mods.com/home/php-files/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=11&thread_id=130#post_667
it happens some times that models appear in large detailed maps, when you look in the hammer editor there not there, but when you play the map you see it. i’m now sure if this is the case with this flying combine or that it has something to do with optimization of the map. but I understand that Baltic has fixed it now and the combine is gone again. also the black pipe that stick out of the water is now colored right, seems that when the origin point of a model is under water it makes that the model looks like it is in the shadow, black. also did we realise the message that is given lately in the HL2 console, that blend texture on brushwork will not be supported any longer.
this is all technical stuff and I will not bore you with it anymore. but this are things that can make a map look very bad, or at least not professional. and we have done the best that we could to make them look as professional as possible.
i can hear you all think how long will this all take before release. my guess is that this weekend will be finally the day that the mappack will be released. most maps are looked after and finisht for the zip file of the mappack, and as far as we see will there not be any more of these unexpected errors to show up.
leon
it’s now saturday evening 8 minutes before midnight, have worked on the mappack from 8″30 this morning with only 1,5 hour time off. it seems that we now get every hour a new problem, and it starts to make me realy crazy. what is the case; before map1 was alright. there where just no shadows to be seen of the prop_models, (wooden crates etc). so baltic has lowered the light_environments value what I did set to high(didn’t know a year ago how this worked, I made the map than). after compiling map1 again suddenly the sound went death when I played the map, this happened 3 times, the same with map2 where also somethings where changed for the final compile. baltic doesn’t have this problem and I do, what is also strange. but this can be happening because he has 2 Mb ram and I only have 512 ram. baltic has looked over the maps again and is changing some things with the way the levelchange takes place, because suddenly some items are also copied for some odd reason from one map into another. in map1 are 2 wooden crates placed near the end of the map, never did they gave any trouble but suddenly they are copied in to the start of map. to make it even worse are some text that should appear on screen in map1 are now also showed in map2, the same with text out of map3, that is now suddenly showed in map4 for no reason. the last few days we have received a steam update, and i’m afraid that this could be the reason of all the trouble. wouldn’t be the first time that a steam account makes some errors. do still remember very well the update of 23-9-2005, did take 2 weeks before a new update made that we could map on.
but this isn’t sure all, I have sent the first 3 maps to a dutch friend of mine that has tested all maps to see if he has also errors in the maps.
to keep it short, again it doesn’t look like I can keep my promise of release this weekend. it’s all so frustrating and whatever we do, it doesn’t seem to help.
a good night sleep will make me see things clear again, and release we will shall the mappack, and it is just a matter of days. because even when we can’t fix the problem with the wooden crates for instance that are copied in to the next map, than I have decided to just delete those wooden crates out of the original map. doesn’t matter how we fix it, but fix it we shall.
that’s it for now people, can’t say anymore than i’m sorry to bother you with this all. seems all so pointless, waiting on a mappack that doesn’t seem to be released. but again, like always. please wait just a little longer.
will write tomorrow again on how we are getting along…..
a frustrated mapper,
leon
We have had problems like this before which were cause by a STEAM update to the editor and game engine. Now it looks like it is happening all over again with the latest STEAM update. These problems are the fault of STEAM and are beyond our control. I am working on a solution to fix this problem and I will know by tomorrow (Sunday) whether I can fix the maps or not. We appreciate your patience while I try to find a solution to this problem.
Sorry to hear you’re having such hassles. I’m experiencing problems with Steam’s latest update – I’m constantly having to retrieve and change my password to log in. I’ve told the Steam support people but they just reset my CD key and password then assume I’m happy with that!? I hope Steam sorts out these wrinkles soon, for all our sakes. I’m waiting for this map-pack!
this morning I did get a mail back of Jurgen, that Dutch friend of mine who did all the testing of the maps, and he has played the first 2 maps, the ones where my sound crashed totally like I described yesterday. and he didn’t had any troubles at all with the maps, just didn’t work the levelchange sometimes between the maps, and sometimes they did. so, it seems that there is something wrong with my computer and or hl2 installation(?). maybe it can all be explained by the ram that I have. I do have 3 Ghz, but only 512 ram, and Baltic and Jurgen have 2 and 1 Mb of ram, maybe that would explane the troubles. but still, that would be weird because before I could play the maps. I will keep you all up to date about the progress.
leon
(i hate false updates)
I appreciate the your updating us on the progress you are making. Hang in there and things will come out ok. Better to have a good mod than a bad one regardless of the time it takes.
Baltic.forever wrote yesterday to me that it is a miracle that all the maps are working at all, even with the many errors that are showing up the last few days, because there are made over the last year with a whole lot of different hammer version, (because of all the updates that has been released). what made me scared even more, because that could explane the sudden errors that are showing now, because they are happen to appear it the earliest maps.
baltic.forever looked over the first 2 maps again, and changed a lot of things, and because of some errors in the level changes I decided to rebuild the end of map1 and start of map2 totally. again they where compiled and you can guess how surprised I was to see that I now didn’t had any trouble anymore with the maps. the problems are fixed!!! that is, for me and for Baltic, but Jurgen still had one problem aria in map2, before hl2 and his computer crashed big time in one small gate opening and this is still happening. the strange thing is that Baltic and I don’t have any trouble here, but because he has it proves that something seems still not right, so again we are going over the map to see what could cause this error. because when Jurgen crashes there it would mean that still a whole lot of people could have the same troubles there.
so, it starts to look all ok again. It’s just this error that keeps the release of the mappack away, but we should be able to fix this also. The maps are tested a whole lot, still did Jurgen find one fence where he could jump on to a roof what made that he could go to parts where he shouldn’t be able to go to, so that roof is clipped what makes this jump now impossible.
The final conclusion, it looks all very well again and the release should be very nearby now. keep you all up to date as usual!!
leon(SPY)
for a few days I not given a update, because most of the things that needed to be done on the mappack where not interesting enough to write down. so I thought it’s better to write again when I know some more info about the release. and that I have now. it took us some extra time like you all now to check everything in the maps so we would be sure that it all would work like it was supposed to. and now we have reached that point. the maps are all done and again they have to be compiled fully, (until now where some of them fully compiled and other only as a test, a full compile takes much more time, some outdoor maps can have a full compile time between 1 and 2 hours, that makes x 15 maps). tomorrow they will all be fully compiled, and than they will be placed in the final version of the mappack, that is the .zip version. of course do we have to play this .zip file first ourselves so we are sure we didn’t leave anything out, (some custom models, sounds or textures). and when that is happened, what will take about 5 to 10 hours I think. because even when we have played the maps at least a 1000 times ourselves, there still pretty large what just takes quit some time to do. I think and asume that the normal play time of the whole mappack will be between the 15 and 40 hours or so, depend on how fast you play.
this is what I wanted to tell you, please just keep hanging on…
leon(SPY)
Baltoc.Forever
Good things come to those who wait!! Thanks for taking your time and doing it right!
Cool – 15 to 40 hours is like a full game! Thanks and well done for your effort.
I know your working hard and I dont mean this in any offense but…
Planetphillip-“I can speak for Leon when I say that it is VERY VERY close. Possibly within the next few days.”
Leon/SPY-“Phillip is right, just a few days more, what means 2 to 3 days. still can’t say it exactly because it didn’t happen already to much that I had to delay it, but for sure that it doesn’t take a week or more now. I think I can say tomorrow a exact date. thank you all for your interest in this new sp-mappack and willing to play it!”
Leon/SPY-“i can hear you all think how long will this all take before release. my guess is that THIS WEEKEND will be finally the day that the mappack will be released. most maps are looked after and finisht for the zip file of the mappack, and as far as we see will there not be any more of these unexpected errors to show up.”
Leon/SPY-“a good night sleep will make me see things clear again, and release we will shall the mappack, and IT IS JUST A MATTER OF DAYS. because even when we can’t fix the problem with the wooden crates for instance that are copied in to the next map, than I have decided to just delete those wooden crates out of the original map. doesn’t matter how we fix it, but fix it we shall.”
What is taking so long? I know you are having problems with the maps but you are pulling a major Half-Life 2; you keep setting the release date back really far. I am still looking forward to playing this, but please hurry with it!
Sincerly,
A Concerned Gamer
Finally the time came to test the .zip file of the mappack, it was placed on a secured site by Baltic so we could download it from (beta tester Jurgen and I)to test it. I just managed to download it but before Jurgen could do the same the site was hacked. I don’t know much about sites, hackers and stuff, but he made quit some damage. seems that he deleted all the files after looking around on it for one hour to hide his track, could be I describe it wrong but that is what I did understand from it. Glad to say that he couldn’t steel the maps, still, he does delay the release a day or 2. so we have decided to release the mappack on;
Saturday 27 May 2006 !!
Leon Brinkmann. (spy)
My website was recently hacked which has caused big problems with completing the mod. The downtime has meant that Leon can’t download the maps that I have been working on. I have managed to gain access to my website from http://www.alphaomega-online.co.uk,
so that we can continue with the mod. And I hope to have the SP-Mods.com site up and running again tomorrow.
The good news is that we are still on target for releasing the Mod on Saturday. It is going to be close, but I am sure that we can still make this deadline (providing I can keep the hackers away from my website).
Do you have anyway to trace the IP address??, acct. everyone leaves a footprint! Hope all is well.
?????? ???????? ?? 27! ? ??????? 28! ??????
Release is assigned to 27! But today 28! When?
I’m also desperately waitin! 😉
We had some last minute technical problems with the final map which caused us to miss the deadline.
I am pleased to say that I have just finished uploading the files to the PP server.
You shouldn’t have to wait for much longer before you can download the mod.
Peter
Leon Brinkmann
It’s available. What are you waiting for? Download it!
Waitin for my slot at filecloud… 🙂
thought this moment would never come, it’s released!
Hope you all have fun!
leon(SPY)
baltic.Forever
Got it! Installed and ready to rock!!!! Sorry about your problems!! and to the IDIOT who hacked your site STUPID!!!
Downloaded and loaded slick as a whistle and is playing the same. So far, well done and thank you Leon and Baltic.
Im confused, what do I need to download? Do I need Core or Levels if I get Full?
A really tough add-on: the combine just keep morphing in. After playing through the first map, I decided to switch from Hard to Easy (I always play HL on Hard), and it’s still challenging! One thing’s for sure, you won’t be able to charge through it even on Easy. In any case, so far it’s very nicely designed.
Well done you two!–many thanks for all your hard work. It’ll be interesting to compare your baby to HL2 Episode 1. The next step is to write the code that makes “C to A” a SourceMod.
Len
Hurray! (Now to find the time to play it]. Thanks Leon, if it’s as good as the last one we’re in for a treat!
Where am I supposed to put the folder (to hold the files) and what do I name it once the files have been extracted from winrar?
For half life 1 mods I usually put the folders in C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\[steam id]\half-life
Is it different for hl2 games? Someone please help!!!!!!I really want to play this game!!!!!!!!!!
Leon&Baltic you did good.Its a great game and was worth waiting for.Have to agree wilh len though would be better as a soursemod with an icon for the desktop so you can jump riht in the game faster.Again well done.//gunner
the way this this mappack should be extracted in the HL2 folder, and played is clearly mentioned in the read me.txt, so please read carefully the part in the read me .txt on how to install!!
Leon(SPY)
heyzors, its all said in the readme, you put them all in …Steam/SteamApps/accountname/half-life 2/hl2 and open HL2 and type “map leonHL2_2″(without “”) in console and press enter. WhoZeDuke just dl the Full Release. =)
@Leon: In your readme you say to use map leonHL2_2 to start the game but the first map is actually leonHL2-2 (hyphen not underscore). This difference may confuse some people.
I agree with everyone else above, this should have been packaged as a mod. It would not have been hard to do and would have eliminated any confusion about how to run the game.
I have gotten to the fifth map and so far I’m impressed at the scale of the project. The outdoor areas were always my favourite parts of HL2 so I’m glad to see someone has developed this idea. However, due to the overwhelming number of enemies (and all of the same type), progress is very slow and the excitement of the game is much diminished by having to stop and start so often.
So far, absolutely awesome – as your mods for half-life and others will attest.
Valve….are you listening? HIRE THESE GUYS! NOW!
I found a bug. At the point where you enter a small dark room and find a combine console (you know, the type with the lit-up blue panels), I “used” the console and turned towards the door, and the whole game locked up with looping sound. After several seconds the screen went blank and I got a Half-Life Has Encountered A Problem message, so I had to exit. Maybe it’s my machine? (P4 2.6GB, 1GB RAM, Radeon X800 Pro 256MB, WinXP Home SR2).
Len
I’m sorry to hear this Len, still, I have sometimes the same problem, main problem i’m having is that my sound crashes totaly, I have to restart my computyer (most of the times this happens automaticly when I close down HL2 in such a case). but this is not a mappack problem but a hardware problem, (Baltic and Jurgen duidn’t had this problem). please read this, maybe this can solve the problem for you;
Steam Support Thread
leon(SPY)
Thx
look at my news on vossey.com 😉
As a retired person, I have plenty of time to play mods/maps!! Leon/spy I think when HL2E1 comes out in a couple of days, you will have given it very good competition!! This map has given my Nvida 7800gs VB a good workout! The only error I saw was at the begining map. The gaurdhouse and two lights before the first fence were just floating in the air with no support!! The “funny gas” room reminded me of the “60s” hehe! and of course “revenge is sweet” BTW the map runs very well with FakeFactory’s mod installed!!
You’re right, Leon. After reading the page you recommended, I see it’s definitely a problem with my on-board SoundMax chip. In any case, I played the spot where it locked up again, but this time I didn’t move for several seconds after I “used” the console, and everything worked fine. I’m now at the beginning of the combine’s new base, and I’m really impressed with your mapping skills. This is easily one of the two or three best add-ons that have been made for HL2.
Thanks for your help, and thanks very much once again for all your efforts.
Len
This was a great mod. Very difficult, even on easy. The only hardware error I encountered was a low virtual memory warning, but simply restarting the computer fixed that.
I’ll try not to spoil it for anyone, but one thing I found was in the cutscene just before you eject was target #1 running to a consol then down some stairs. When I got control I found Target #2 dead write in front of me. I died and had to reload, this time both targets were in the cutscene and noone was dead, in front of me. Was this a bug or a poorly aimed grenade I tossed in the room before triggering the cut scene.
Aside from this I had no problems. Great Work.
Very top of the line level design & very challenging gameplay Leon/SPY outa all the HL2 single-player mods ive played this year the only other ive played with high replay value was Menvera Metastatis 2 as the best mods to be downloaded this year.
I did notice in map 3 with the sky in certain angles blurred & distorted.
I also have 1 question im nearing the end of the mod I think at Sattilete station & I go through 1 of those take all your weapons away scanners my question is is suppose to take away your HEV suit as well? because it made gameplay alittle more harder from there.
Anyways ive been following your Mod for along time & yes it was worth the wait & Congratulations to your Team.
Made it to morning now… very cool. Difficult, yes. But cool. Nice one Leon & team!
I have noticed that some of you think that this should be turned into a Source Mod. This is something that I am currently looking into.
I have set up a forum on SP-Mods .com (YES… it’s back online) so that you can post any bugs that you find in the mod if you wanted to, but please keep posting your comments here at planetphillip.com. Unfortunately you will need to register because there are no options to allow guest posting.
@Rom1
Thanks for the news, and I hope that enjoy playing the mod.
@ Nodikus
I know exactly the place you mean in the cutscene and I thought that we had fixed that problem. Thanks for letting us know about it.
@fragmaster
You are at the halfway point in the game. The player does loose the suit at that point, just to make it a little bit more difficult. The player does get the suit back later in the game, but you will have to fight hard for it.
@ Passerbywhoplayshalflife
Thanks. It took over a year to make, but it was worth it.
@Baltic Forever: Here is a prototype that gets your map pack up and running as a mod: http://www.amphibian.fsnet.co.uk/HL2/Coastline_to_Atmosphere_mod-ification.zip
I made this for myself for my own convenience and amusement, but you are welcome to use it as a starting point for a proper adaptation.
There is much you still have to do, specifically chapter images, chapter titles and groupings (in this version each chapter is one map) and a menu background map or image, but this at least gets you started. You can also consider custom fonts and icons.
You should also make manifests for the sounds in each map, this will greatly reduce the size of the soundcaches and improve performance overall. Full instructions on how to do this are here: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Talk:Soundcache#A_new_Soundcache_system
I have not encountered any bugs so far, but there are a number of very questionable gameplay decisions, such as over-use of invisible clip brushes to control player movement (for example, railing heights you can and can’t jump over in the mod are very inconsistent) and over-abundant, monotonous enemies not matched by available health. Other strange things include the yellow poison gas vent – after just barely surviving the room full of manhacks, the mapper hits me with a damaging, unavoidable gas vent and no counterbalancing health. What purpose could that serve other than to make me do it again?
My experience of the mod improved greatly after toning down the difficulty to “normal” from “difficult,” but there is a difference between interestingly challenging and absurdly overwhelming. Do you really want people to experience your hard work 5 seconds at a time?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great effort and you and Leon should be very pleased with the result. I hope you will continue making maps for HL2.
Great minds think alike
😉
http://www.forumplanet.com/planethalflife/topic.asp?fid=6550&tid=1899333
I posted mine last night after quickly testing it to make sure it works properly
what a great game,i did use fitzroy_doll add on and the game works well in soursemod.One thing though,the console will not work,and am stuck,dont know if`s its a bug or what ,cannot find switch for the elevator so can load the jeep on it.Have been all over the place looking for it.????
I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to respond yesterday, but had to do some normal daytime job, (am still a illustrator as profession but hope to change this soon in leveldesign).first I want to thank you all for the compliments, it’s always nice to hear because when I made the maps I always had just one thing in mind, and that is what will the player now think and do when he is here. because I build the map I know exactly where the hard parts will be, where the healthpacks are and how to get through it. so it’s very difficult to think like if I wouldn’t know these things.
i forgot to mention this before the release or in the read me.txt that the mappack should be played on easy or normal and not the most difficult setting because that is indeed impossible, (i think, but I haven’t tested it though). the strange thing is that I always play a new game at normal difficulty setting, because easy is of course to easy and I like it a bit hard. and difficult is most of the time to difficult, and like with some other games is Hl2 also a game that can’t be changed during playing, so when you start a game/map(pack) on difficult you can’t change after a while to normal when it is getting to hard to play. for some strange reason did I play HL2 on easy, (what also could explane why I thought it was to easy) and I promised myself that I would make the maps harder to play than the game itself. that’s why you have to play it on easy or normal. the same thing was the case with Call of Duty (see mappacks leonCod1 and LeonCod2 sp-mappacks). personally I thought that the original Call of Duty was surprising easy, even on the difficult setting I couldn’t play the whole game without getting killed more than 1 or 2 times. when I make a mappack I always try to make something that I personally would like to play, and I like nice firefights. a lot of people complaining that I did use the combines to much as enemies, there wasn’t much variation between enemies. again has this to do with my personal taste, I like the zombies and head crabs, but just for a little while.
i don’t like therefore zombie maps. that’s why you don’t see them much in my maps. this has also to do with the scary factor. things are only scary when you use them not to much, and when you’re making a mappack you can’t start throwing in all sorts of enemies in the first few maps. therefore do you only have to fight against combines the first few maps,(and again, because I like firefights best). than the clipping part, it’s true that you can jump over some railings, walls, etc and others not. have to agree that this is not how it should be, was a bit to lazy to do this better and there where just sometimes places where a player shouldn’t be able to walk, because he could skip a part of the map or because he would otherwise walk out of the map into the skybox what would make that he would see the map out of a whole different angle. I mean, this would give him a view into the void, people who do make maps themselves know what I mean with this. Fitzroy doll, you asked me if I wanted you to play that part with the manhack over and over because you did get killed in that yellow gas cloud so many times, haha. no, that wasn’t what I wanted. again is this such a point in the map that shows that it is sometimes hard for me to think of how many health a player would still have left after a difficult part. I agree that those manhack part in the satellite is a very hard part, even for me it was always sitting in a corner and wait until I killed them all.
That you loose the HEV suit 2 times is indeed what I wanted to happen Fragmaster. there are 2 entities in HL2 where I could choose from, one that strips the player only from his weapons and one that takes also the suit away. the most difficult thing of loosing the suit is, like you of course know that you can’t choose your weapon anymore later one when you start to collect weapons again. you just have to loose all the ammo of a weapon when you want another one that you have. ones I made the mistake of also added a crowbar to a place with weapons, this is in the satellite, when you go through a door and in the wall opens a sliding door with behind it a shotgun and a SMG machine gun. before there was also a crowbar laying there, and sometimes you ended up with the crowbar as weapon. what of course doesn’t help when you have to fight against severel waves of combines later on. only in the last stage of putting all the files together in the mappack I decided to ask Baltic ot wait with that map because of that crowbar problem. It’s a shame that you had that problem with that cutscene Nodikus, that you did find Dr Breen or the Gman death. most likely it was Gman because Dr Breen can’t get killed in the cutscene. this happens indeed when you throw a grenade into that little hallway at the end of map leonhl2-2m. it happened ones to me that Gman was death in that second cutscene of the map, and that was after I had fired a fireball from that A2 weapon in to that last hallways before I stepped in there. but when I made that part of the map Gman always died. the problem was that the combines looked because of there hl2 coding to Gman as an enemy. therefore are there no scenes in the mappack where you will see Gman together with a combine, simply because the combine would open fire emidiatly at Gman.
Especially with the last cutscenes was it very difficult to keep those 2 guys alive. I can’t tell you many time I did rebuild and compiled the map again to get them not killed. every time when one of them was killed because they did walk to close or even in a explosion I had to change there path, or the time that the explosion should occur. than I had to compile the map again and test it again, just to see that they didn’t get killed at that spot anymore but now they did die a bit further on. I think that I have test-compiled and played some of the maps mare than 400 times. but this is the same for Baltic, he took on himself the task to optimize the maps. what meant cutting up the maps in portals without them having a leak, and he assured me what I believe emidiatly that this was the same case. because of my mapping, specially with the first 6 or 7 maps, I never did think of how it would be build best for optimization. I just build something and he had to see how the hell he could optimize it. famous are the problems therefore with the optimization of the first outdoor maps. took him months of getting that all into portals with a fps. therefore do we all have to thank him for the fps and high as they are, specially in open outdoor placed with a lot of action. because without him it would have been a mappack that couldn’t have been played without having in a every map places that would play like a slideshow.Len, i’m glad that you could play on, nothing so frustrating as playing and crashing. An AI, you’re right about that guardhouse with the searchlights, that they float in to the air, when you jump on the railing in front of it and jump, or when you walk/climb on a grass hill beside it. noticed this at the latest moment, just before release. but because you only could see it from these 2 places I described I haven’t fixed it. the last 3 months before release where a real pain in the ass. every time I made a promise that it would be released soon and every time new problems showed up or fixing the problems we already knew took more time than we thought. specially the last 3 days where realy crazy. slept 3 hours the last 2 days, the rest of the days and nights I worked to get it finisht, same with baltic. late at night we closed the day ‘talking” through the Friends Steam account (sort of MSN), and first thing in the morning was starting the day again with Friends Steam to see if we could finish it that day. it all started to look more like a real not payed job as a hobby.
but it was all worth it, that’s for sure. like with all the other sp-mappacks that we made for SOF2,COD and the first HL2 sp-mappack was this also a great project. People start asking me when I will release a new project, (i just have finisht one,haha). but seriously, I realy don’t know. last 3 days I haven’t mapped one brush, what is for me extreme because normally I spent severel hours every day. but already I get restless, I need a new project again. the main question is, with which game will I go on. I decided I week ago that I would go on with COD2, but I decided not to do that. because cod2 starts to get old now (released 25 oct 2005) and when I put so much time and effort in a mappack I also want it to be played by as many people as possible.
and this happens only when I game is not older than 1 year, after that you do see the download rate go down every month. HL2 will have a add on release with episode1 like we all know, what will make that people will come back to HL2, because also HL2 is old already. the question just is, how much people will start playing hl2 and episode1 the next half year. because a new project will take at least a half year, that is when you want to make at least 5 maps or so. and than there are the new games, that also would be fun to map with, so I haven’t decided what to do next.(do forgive my add English, but i’m Duch)
did forget to add these links, should you be interested in those other sp-mappacks, I have made more, but I never placed them on internet, most where for to old games like Mohaa, Napalm, Shadow warriors, Duke Nukem.
halflife2 sp-mappacks;
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Leons_SP_Map_Pack;39881
sof2 sp-mappacks;(those who have Leon in there name, and Mortal Coil)
http://soldieroffortune2.filefront.com/files/Soldier_of_Fortune_2/Maps/Single_Player;2391
cod sp-mappacks;
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/Leon_CoD_2;35833
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/LeonCoD1;29622
@gunner: The console is in the advanced options in the keyboard layout settings, just like in regular HL2.
@Leon:
First, I’ve taken down the mod conversion. Like I said at HIT, it didn’t sound like you were going to do it, so I released it as a public service. Sorry if I caused any offence.
Second, on the clip brushes. I know exactly what you mean. I have been working on some outdoor maps for HL2 for months now and getting the player to go where you want him to in a world without walls is very difficult. But you should not have this difficulty inside. There were rooms, like where you last see Barney, where there are two identical railings, one you can jump and one you can’t. And in the last map you can jump through the door but not the windows. This is not good. In fact this problem was pointed out in the review of your first map pack at Ten Four: http://tinyurl.com/pldh2 , so I hope in your future releases (and I hope there will be some) you will try to think of other ways to guide the player. The worst was the mysterious trigger hurt to keep you from jumping into the room without activating the plug first. That got me very frustrated.
From my own mapping I also know how frustrating it is to find a problem you thought you had fixed ages ago. This is part of the “joy” of mapping. Well done for making it all work in the end. There is definitely a problem with your doors still, nothing that keeps the maps from working but an error message comes up every time. I suggest, if you’re not already doing it, that you play through your maps with -dev -condebug in the launch options, as this will give a console log you can look at after you run the map.
Knowing that you play HL2 on the easy setting explains a lot. Like many people, I play on Hard because I want each enemy to be a good challenge, but this quickly sours when there are 15 of them charging me at once. On the easy setting they go down like bowling pins and it is less satisfying to play. Unlike many games, in HL2 you can change the skill setting as you play so after struggling with difficult I switched to normal and then easy when it really got rough.
Seeing that only 2 people playtested the map pack (and one of them was Baltic himself) also explains a lot. Next time, get at least 3 people not connected to the project to play test and give feedback. I’m sure you would have no trouble finding volunteers, and this will improve your work greatly as it will give you some idea of what is working and what isn’t before you release it to the general public. This is one reason people are doing episodic releases now, to get feedback between episodes. I would have been happy to see this as Coastline and then a few months later Atmosphere.
So your next release should definitely be for HL2, with all the new entities that will be in Episode 1, but get some feedback before you release it and go easy on the clip brush.
@Leon, here’s a suggestion: withdraw your add-on (remove it from the servers), and then code it so it’s a SourceMod; remove about half of the enemies (especially in the spots where they keep morphing in); shorten the satellite section (despite the eye-candy, all the confusing hallways, doors, etc. remind me of the boring spaceship maps in Unreal); reduce the damage caused by fires, explosions, & gas/steam vents; and keep the hazard suit on the player after his weapons are stripped. At the same time you could make manifests for the sounds in each map like fitzroy_doll suggested, and sort out a few of the clip brushes.
While you’re re-coding it, all of us who have already downloaded it could tinker around and offer suggestions for further improvements (sorta like an extended group of beta-testers). I’m sure fitzroy_doll and others–self included–would be glad to help.
I say all this because your add-on has the potential of being a really great one, but it’s held back by the above problems.
Just a suggestion….
Len
Well I am in the jeep parking garage. Where to now?
we, that is mostly Baltic is looking for a way to make a real mod out of the mappack, but I won’t take the mappack down until the mod is released because that will take at least weeks or even a month or 2, and lots of people want to play it and than they have to wait again. for sure some people will start to host the mappack on some other site. about deleting some of the combines out of the maps, that could be a good idea though. because lots of people do find some places is some maps a bit crowded with combines, and I have to agree with that. about making the satellite part shorter, that will never happen. personally I like that part as it is, and also is it a nice change of scenery. your the first you says this, so that is more a case of personal taste, what is ok. why you want me to take out most of the fires and explosions I realy don’t understand, when you blow up a place you need to show damage, fire and destruction. so, that’s not logic what you suggest. and about that I could go over the maps to work more on the clipping or railings etc, that just would take me again a week or more, and I don’t realy see the point in doing so. ok, I agree, it would make it all a little bit better, but again, also with this point your the only one that says this. don’t get me wrong, I read all comments on all forums very well to see what people would like to be changed. and when the majority says it I will listen, but it’s impossible to listen to all personal issues. still, i’m glad you offers me these suggestions, that’s for sure!! nearly forgot the suit, I understand that it’s hard to play without the suit, but that is why it is so nice to put this option in a mappack. and there are only 2 small parts in the mappack where you don’t have the suit, and do have to fight. it’s not only that you can’t choose the weapon of choice when you haven’t got a suit, it is also that you don’t have a flashlight, and you can’t see how much health you have got, and batteries is something that you haven’t got at all. that’s why I did make use of the option of taking the suit away in these 2 places. when I am done with a mappack I want to go with a new project. after so much time working on one project the fun starts to disapear. so I won’t change much about it anymore. just make it into a mod, take some combines out of it, and that will be it. I have to many ideas to keep hanging on just one project, and there willa always be something that could be done better.
Dufferx, can you please explane your question a bit better? which garage do you mean, witch map?
Leon(SPY)
Actually breen was the one who got killed in the cutscene. It was a fluke, seeing as it never happened again to me.never happen
Hmm.. I have played this few maps now. Must say that you have a talent do design nice layouts for maps. But maybe you are too rushy, because some maps looks very unfinished. For example doors have no frames etc.. Also there are some strange texture usage in some parts. But like I said most of it feels and looks good.
I have to agree with most people about those combine armies. There wasnt very interesting places to fight, in most assaults combine didnt had any cover to use so they just charged against you. Maybe less soldiers but more scriping?
Thats for now, I can comment more when I finish it.
Keep up the good work mate!
—
http://www.vicegaming.net
little content for your games
—
FRank Smith asked me to tell here how you can get to the jeep (actually it is a VW, but who cares, I also call it a jeep)in map2, and how to get the jeep in to the elevator, (and I asume that you mean that elevator in mapE I believe it was). let me first tell you all that I am working hard on a walk through document(page) with screens that explains everything, also the easter eggs. now I will explane how to get to the jeep in map2 first. when you have found the jeep and are still at the other side of the fence just in front of it. walk back outside and when you stand with your back to the jeep than go to the right, walk towards the wall at the end (near that damaged tank vehicle) and than you will see that there is a little walkway that is between the wall and the building that gives to access to a little office near the water basin. in this office you find a button that when it is pressed opens a gate (called A7)that gives excess to the water basin. to find this A7 gate you have to walk all the way back towards the crossroad where you had to fight against those npc vehicles that fired rockets at you. standing on that crossroad you go right, not in the direction where the playerstart was but in the other direction. at the end of the road you will find the second npc_truck that fires rockets at you. after you have destructed that one and killed all combines that you find there you go up a stairs, and there you will find gate A7. you through it and follow your way through a small prison towards the water basin. go through the water to the other side and climb on the land strip that there is. From there you go right, over the roof of that small office where you where before and opened the gate A7 with that button. on to a wall behind it, and from there you can find a vent, damage the fence in front of it, and climb through it to the other side, and from there you can go through a door at the back of the garage to the jeep, (don’t forget to take extra health and suitcharging and the gravitygun that lays on a table.
Jeep in elevator;
to get in to that elevator is much easier. when you’re at the elevator in mapE, get out of the jeep and walk in to the little office beside the elevator, there you will find a button in a corner that lowers the elevator, drive the jeep in front of it and than on it. now another button will open in the elevator that takes you up.
hope to have the walkthrough released by tomorrow.
hope this will help you for now, if not than please let me know.
Leon(SPY)
I got out of the jeep (my mistake) and walked into the garage. Corrected myself by doing what I was told to do which was drive the jeep into the garage. The next level then loaded and away I go. All is well.
Leon, thank you so much. This game is jaw dropping beautiful and has kept me entertained and on the edge of my seat for hours.
I have to report two technical glitches and wonder if its just me experiencing it, or if there are any ideas on how to proceed.
1: I’m in 2i and see there are still 2j, k and l to go. Right after hearing “wake up Mr. Freeman and smell the ashes”, without any mouse control working at that time, the container I’m in moves to the right and stops, and I’m looking at a wall. And so it stays like that, forever! Reloading any previous save doesn’t change that.
2: Despite cntrl/alt/del showing no programs working after exiting the game and shutting down steam, my computer will not shut down. It freezes requiring power down. Happened yesterday and again today. Never happened before. Now this could well be the recent Valve updates.
Dougjp, first I want to thank you for your compliment and about closing the game with clt/alt/del, I wouldn’t know about that, that you computer doesn’t want to close down anymore after that. but like you mentioned yourself, that could easely be an effect of an steam update. those updates do sometimes strange things. I can just suggest that you close the game the normal way by pressing Esc. and than close the game down with the option menu.
about map i, well, to get out of there is very easy. you just jump of that container thing that did move you forward, and walk up that little stairs that is at your left side. and stand in front on those big windows, in fact you will now see that one of those windows is in fact a door. but this you will see for yourself when you go up that small little stairs that has only 3 or 4 steps. should you not know what I mean and still be stuck there than please let me know and I will be glad to help you furhter.
you mentioned that you did see that there are also map j,k,l behind map i, but there is also a map m that comes after map l.
leon(SPY)
(am still working on a full walk through and this will be releases as soon as possible, maybe tomorrow and otherwise the day after. know I said it would be today finisht but because I had to spent all my time on the release the last few months therefore I had to do less with my normal daytime job and now I have to work a bit harder so I had a bit less time for the walk through. but as soon as it is finisht I will mention it here, and also will you be able to get it from here, PlanetPhillip)
Thanks Leon. I didn’t explain myself properly. I did shut the game down the right way, by escape and quit, which it did. Then I closed down Steam, which appeared to do so, however the computer’s controls were slow. Cntrl/Alt/Delete is to bring up the Windows Task Manager to see what processes are running. None appeared to be, however the computer froze when trying to open another simple program. Didn’t do that this time. Conclusion? A problem with Steam not releasing memory or something.
The problem with the container thing in 2i was, no keys or mouse worked after the container moved to the right. I didn’t try jumping as the other move keys didn’t work. The activity light on my computer case was not on, just nothing happened or could happen.
My work around was to start up 2j and play on 🙂 Hope I didn’t miss much!
Thanks again for the great game. Sure, I could find the few little problem things that others have mentioned, however nothing has seriously distracted from playing the game.
if you cant be bothered to buy episode 1 play this
Dougjp, now I know waht you mean with using Ctl/alt/del before. about map i, I would like to suggest that you try playing map I again, (just if you want to,) because you did miss quit a bit by going on with map j. map I rather big and has some nice elements in it. maybe you can play it after you have finisht the whole mappack. that you’re mouse and buttons didn’t do anything after being moved with that container, that is new to me, no one has ever had that porblem before, very strange indeed !!!
leon
(thanks Bumtown!)
I’ll do that Leon. I’m in L or M now, still enjoying it, however starting to find the continuous combine spawning a bit annoying.
I’m thinking the freeze in 2i was also caused by Steam updates – will test when I get to it by first running a save, then running 2i from its start. Ran Registry Mechanic which found a number of errors relating to Steam….
Therefore I suggest everyone do some basic computer maintenance. If you don’t own Registry Mechanic, then CCleaner is a very good free one, you just have to configure its options to do what you want (and not want) first. Pretty simple to understand:
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Its a good thing to do regardless.
Well I finally got the HEV suit back & now into the Area where The message says this room is a safe place to go back too.
although I had 1 problem in the 2-2h section that loaded but was a totality black screen this was after the combine vs city17 rebels duking it out on the streets I passby it then drop down I see I picked up the machinegun with ammo & health pack but nothing on-screen although an auto-save is made for that section showing a white walled lite area with a door but when I load up the auto-save I still get a blank screen is this a bug? anyways I loaded up the next map through console & everything was ok there.when you lose your HEV suit if you consider this as a suggestion when you port this into a SourceMod to change all the small health kits into Normal ones & add them even in the room where you get the HEV suit back because I Tellya I had only 20 health left & was wishing for a health machine or several Normal size health Kits. The Stealth sections were cool except the part after I break the lock I had tried several times getting in there with the troops in the next room spotting me & my health was low because I died alot there after the 4th try I made it through but I wish theres was health kits around on the floor when I entered. Il comment more later on.
looks a good map pack
on another note try your new image viewer in firefox!
i have the same problem with mine
I use FF and everything works perfectly for me. I test all new features in the latest stable verion of IE, FF and Opera.
What problem do you have?
@fitzroy_doll
Sorry, just realised that I forgot to thank you for the prototype mod files. You were right when you said there was much to be done, especially when I have never tried anything like this before. But I am making good progress.
I did make the manifest files for the original release, but I decided to leave them out for some reason.
I think that Leon is already planning on making changes to some of the maps. There will be more health packs (or health chargers) and the constant spawning of enemies will also be looked at, and maybe a few other things.
@Baltic
No problem. If you need me to post it again let me know. Glad to hear the conversion is going well, just about everything you need to do is documented thoroughly at the Valve Developer Community Wiki, so all it takes now is time.
I’m also glad to hear Leon is making some gameplay changes. It’s a shame this all could not have been done before release, but in the end I hope it will be a better product for all the feedback you’ve gotten.
Hey this page is getting really long!
I hope he can change the reactor level after you blow it up I tried several times to make a run for it the stairs breaking & the fires I can see that happening but the nasty explosions killed me even with 100hp & 42armor.Does anyone know how to navigate this part? & why did I get the RPG in that level?
Well after I got the HEV suit back the levels of gameplay became more awesome & the health & armor from “safe place” there on even the reactor were nicely done.
Keep up the good work!!
What’s the deal with the endlessly spawning headcrabs in the mountainside place when you hear Breen’s voice for the first time? I thought I was clever by bringing in the turrets and using these to deal with the headcrabs – but they just keep on spawning and I have no idea as to how I should proceed?
they do eventaully stop spawning if you have grenades throw them into the center office & around the corners then crouch down beside a corridor & whack the headcrabs off with your crowbar til you hear Breens voice again.
I was scratching my head on this one too but after the 4th try I got it & ohya the crate with the medkit leave the kit after all the headcrabs are dead.
How to play map i:
This is the map after the map where you get toxicated by that hallucinatic gas, (where you fly over those combines fighting in the street below). The map starts all black, and some people have asked me if this is a bug of some sort. No, it’s not, but I agree that it is very hard to see what you have to do next. The fact is that you spawn at the start of this map (i) in a very dark room. You will see a text on the screen something like; am I awake now, or something simular to that. Just don’t move after the map start, other than look a little bit to the right site. You could also walk 1 meter forwards, now you will see a opening in the wall where you could crouch out from in to some kind of garden. (You see this hole in the wall better when you take the crouch stand. So, after the map spawns walk 1 meter forwards and look to your right. Crouch to see the hole better in the wall. You will see than 2 hole in fact beside them, it will look first if you could climb out of it through the left hole, but in fact you have to crouch first and than a little jump through the right hole of the w holes in the wall.
You will ask yourself why I made it so dark that you can hardly see where go climb out of there. Before I did use a much brighter sky outside, so there wasn’t any problem with seeing where you where after the start of the map. But just before the mappack was finisht I did find a much better looking skytexture and I decided to use that one. Never thought though of the possibility that this would make the whole map more dark what would lead into that you couldn’t see clearly anymore after the start of the map where you where. This has to be altered in the mod itself, and i’m sorry for the inconvenience.
And I can imagen that you have difficulties to get through that part of the reactor level Fragmaster, it’s indeed quit hard, but that is also supposed to be like that because you’re now near the end. What you should do is after you have pushed the button on that console in that small office below, (after of course you have been up and down again), is run like a madman all the ways upstairs again. You have than just enough time to get up alive, all the explosions will take than place around and behind you. but should you hesitate one moment than you get right in the middle of all the action what will kill you for sure. Try to get where you did see the Gman and Breen escape before.
leon(SPY)
I know I was told to use the read me but this isnt explained in it!
After I type “map leonHL2_2” in the console and I can play the game…how do I make it so I can play Half-life 2 again? Do I just reopen half-life 2 from Steam or do I restart Steam or do I just type something in the console? Please tell me because I do want to play this game, but I won’t if I can’t ever play Half-life 2 again. I actually plan to play it over!
I have released the first and final patch for the LCtA mod. There was a problem with map leonhl2-2h which prevented the scripts from working correctly. This has now been fixed. I have also fixed the problem with the player freezing in map leonhl2-2i.
I did try to upload the patch to the PP server, but I was unable to complete the upload.
You can download the patch from the following link;
http://www.sp-mods.com/LCtA/LCtA_Patch1.zip
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Baltic Forever (Peter)
I’ve added the patch to the list of downloadable files near the top of the post.
Hi
I was just curious about whether any of the files will be downloadable (excluding the LCtA_Patch1.zip) from any other servers (eg File front).
Thanks and keep up the great work Leon.
Heyzors, don’t worry, you can play this mappack/mod if you want, and still will be able to play Half life2 itself whenever you want. To start HL2 itself, just start the game, and you see Options, Load/Save, New Game, etc. the normal stuff. When you want to play a new HL2 again, or for the first time, just press Load or New Game. In between you can play this mappack/mod when you want by starting it in the console like described in the read me txt, or when you already started it and stopped after a few maps, just open Load and load the last autosave of the map that you played last of the mappack, (or you can start a map from the mappack manualy by typing the mapname in the console.)
leon(SPY)
Currently the files are only available from the Filecloud server but once Leon’s CTA has been released in proper mod version then I’m sure it will be uploaded to at least FileFront.
ARe you having any problems with Filecloud Wraith_Snow?
Hi again.
Just not register with Filecloud, planetphillip and no Australian servers (if I remember correctly, then again there aren’t any on filefront either unless you go through Half Life 2 files.). Just curious thats all. Looking forward to seeing the final version so once again, good luck Leon and Baltic Forever.
Hi Leon, I’ve played a few maps now and I love what you’ve done, this is the most fun I’ve had playing HL2 for ages, I love the armies of combine it’s fun fighting them all, although I have to have it on easy at the moment or I get killed all the time. I think it’s cool that there are so many combine to fight, I love fighting them. Helps to hone skills. Pretty intense stuff!
I’ve played a few more maps and I have to add that the map design is absolutely excellent, I don’t think anyone could design better maps! And the enemy placement is also excellent, I love the way the enemies keep coming, and I’m glad there are always sufficient weapons and ammo to take them all out! Thanks for making this mod, it’s amazing, definitely a lot more fun than episode 1, and a lot bigger!
Unfortunately, this brilliant mod doesn’t play well on my low-end machine (AMD 1.7, 1GB mem, Nvidia 5500 256DDR). Including and after maps 2-2e, am experiencing very frequent crashes and sound stutters. Have tried all updates and tweaks suggested on the Valve support page. Have turned everything down to lowest levels.
Will save the mod till Santa Claus decides to upgrade the old clunker. If anyone has ideas in the interim, please advise. Its a great mod!
Well, I played this little map pack now and I have to say that I really wasn’t enjoying it. Some of the several problems were already mentioned, but I will clearly point them out again.
A mistake that mappers intend to make is the spawning number of enemys. Large enemy numbers don’t stand for fun in an ego shooter, especially not in Half-Life 2. After some time I recognized the same pattern over and over again: I pushed a button and five till ten Combines were spawned at the same place and wanted to get a piece of poor little Gordon. My point is that the balanced and intelligent placement of enemys counts and not the amount of enemys the map is capable of. If I would be really offense, I have to admit that this is a poor way for stretching the play time. What was the sense about that area with the ridiculous large amount of headcrabs? Please?
The next problem that accured was the variation of enemys. The author said that he likes to fight military forces. That’s great but what really counts is the demand of the end consumer, if you are going to release your work in public that means.
On the other hand the author showed some really creative thoughts during the end of the pack with that halluscination scene. I really liked the allusion to Max Payne, and the music was also well placed. But even on that scene the problem was that it was to long and unfortunately got boring really fast. I had the thought that the author wanted to use every effect available in Hammer which in my opinion overloaded his addon.
I hope I was not to harsh. My goal isn’t to take away the authors joy of mapping, I just hope thate he doesn’t make the same mistakes in his next release to. He really had showed potential in some parts so I hope that he will think about the criticized aspects I pointed out.
Finally finished playing LCTA I liked how it ended & was surprised after the credits ended that theres was more gameplay it was tough but I managed alright.
The best moments I got were the earlier levels before getting on board the Sattilete.
The driveables of Airboat & Jeep were the best outa the mappack it seem even longer than HL2 offered :))
Gameplay was also good almost like serious sam in some aspects the forest greenery level reminded me of FAR CRY & the finding the Jeep level was awesome for its many routes in 1 level & the 1st level for such a massive map & finally for the mountain cliff level from top to bottom.
The Sattilete levels were more diffcult to get through & the inside the dam after using the 1st key card could had more health because it was such as struggle but managable after several tries.
The gas illusion levels remind me of Max Payne.
good use of weapons & ammo wish some parts had more health & some puzzles better indicated on what to do.
I had to skip 1 level leon2-2h because of problems.
overall a very awesome experience I give LCTA a rating of 80/100
Also nice timming on the music cues :))
I’m sorry I couldn’t reply more soon but I have had Internet connection problems. I’m sorry you didn’t like this sp-mappack/mod Tankbandit, can’t please everyone. Am already glad that almost everyone is pleased with it. I understand most of your comments, and agree with a lot of them. Just your first comment of; “…this little map pack …”
I don’t understand. Because when this mappack isn’t one thing for sure than it isn’t a small mappack. But ok, when you think it’s a little one, than that’s fine with me. I do care about all the comments that are made by everyone, and like I said before, I will remind that most people don’t like it that there are so many combines at one place to fight with, (although I am glad that Danny did like the amount of combines). About the comment that I didn’t make use of different enemies, and that you only have to fight against combines. About this I want to say that I don’t agree totally, in this mappack you find nearly all the enemies that can be found in HL2. I did use combines a lot more than other enemies, that’s true. Still, I don’t agree with the comment that I should make what the people like because I release it on the net. I make my maps like I would like to play and see them, and not how people would like to see them. Don’t forget, I didn’t get payed the last year for all the work, the same with Baltic.Forever. And I also have to say that it is hard to like what the people want to see, because what some one likes isn’t liked by others, what makes it impossible to make what the people want. And again, mapping is a hobby of mine, it’s still not a profession of mine although I hope it will be one day. And until that day I will make what I like to make, I just hope that people will like it to. This all doesn’t mean that it doesn’t care when you didn’t liked it Tankbandit, I hope this will change with a future sp-mappack/mod of mine.
Senator33, I’m sorry to hear that it was impossible to play it with your hardware. It’s true that you need a little bit more power to play this sp-mappack. Personally I like maps as big as possible, but that means that you need quit some power to play it. But like you said, maybe you will be lucky with Santa Claus.
And Fragmaster, thanks for the high rating that you give the sp-mappack/mod. Am glad you like it so much, should you still want to play map H, than please read Baltic’s comment, he has released a patch what solves the error. (It seems that one trigger is sometimes not activated what makes that a camera mode isn’t turned off. But the patch fixes this, patch available on PP)
leon(SPY)
To leon/SPY:
No, a misunderstanding appeared. I didn’t meant that this mappack was short, it definately wasn’t. In fact, I really appreciated the work you put into.
I didn’t want to barrier your creative movements in mapping when I pointed out that you should look on the demands of the players. You should know that game company mappers can’t design all the way they want and like, they have to look at the gameplay to and have to think about how the gamer would react in some situations and areas. Of course mapping is just a hobby for you, but this argument is no excuse. If you are going to release your maps in public, you have to face reviews that may show you as a designer what you eventually made bad.
About the variation of enemys: Sure, you had many HL2 enemys included, but when you’re facing only combines in the first maps, then you, as a player, don’t recognize anything about “variation”, espeacially in these large spawning numbers. I have to say that I really was happy when i’d encountered the first zombies, that comes from a player who isn’t a natural born zombie killer. I also don’t mean that you should put in every HL2 enemy available in the editor, that can be as bad as including only one type of enemy.
It surely is true that you can’t satisfy everyone, but to find the balance is the important and rather difficult part of mapping. But that is necessary and can’t be ignored.
But I will look forward to your next release and hope that you have thought about the negative aspects I pointed out, so that I will to find my enjoyment in maps released by leon/SPY.
Leon- excellent maps more fun than episode 1 hope you get a job with Valve, might speed up their output! I have one problem, in the reactor, press the button, see the cutscene but then no matter how fast I go to get back up the stairs I allways get killed on the second flight of stairs where there are 2 guys lying and a stair step missing. Keep up the good work, I’ve played most of the mods/maps out there and this is top of my list overall
Stuck!!
hey leon I’m loving the map but I’m stuck.
its hard to say where I am except that I think I have to start a generator of some kind. There is a hall and at the end was a hidden door which led me into a small room with 3 or 4 computer monitors on the right and 2 orange glass cannisters and a machine on the left. I have done all the hallucination levels which were fantastic. thats all I know.
wheres that walkthrough?
cheers
stinkmaster general
Finally managed to get up the stairs, the next map& cutscene are awsome and just when you think it’s all over – there’s more. You really should be at Valve – absolutely superb work!
I’m sorry to hear that you have so much problems with playing that part of the sp-mappack/mod Zeeek. Still there is enough time to get back up again, but it’s true that there is just enough time when you run and jump like hell. Best thing to do is when you are at the point of pressing that console button in that small office below (after you have been up the elevator and stairs the first time), that you first save the map before you press the console. After that you get to see the small cut scene of Breen and Gman running away, and emidiatly when this cut scene stops you have to start running like crazy. When you do so you will have enough time to get out of there. For sure the broken stairs will make it harder, sometimes you don’t jump right what makes that you fall down again. Still, this is all I can tell to help you. It’s the only way to get out of there, and it can be done. But only when you run like crazy from the start right after the cut scene.
Hope you will manage eventually. Let me know when it realy is impossible to get through…
Leon(SPY)
Leon, I just completed both your Call of Duty SP maps and greatly enjoyed both of them, (I have to say) better than this HL2 map.
Regarding this one, I got fed up with the ending after numerous tries, went back to “i” and couldn’t do that one either 🙁 And I’ve played just about every SP map for most games. Eventually I quit out of frustration.
Personally I think difficulty levels should always provide ample leeway so that anyone who has a good amount of experience playing games and can complete other maps without cheating, can do so. Just my 2 cents.
Stinkmaster general, it’s a bit hard for me to see in witch part or map you are of the mappack. But I think I know, and when I’m right than you have just see Barney (who is death) being picked up by some kind of machine with a coffin. Should you be there than you see a computer console standing in the middle of the room. You have to press that one (E/use button), what will make things happen and from there you will find you’re way. Should this not be the place where you are stuck than please tell me a bit more about the place where you”re ad and what you just have seen before you did get stuck. The making of the Walkthrough does give me a whole lot of more work than I originally thought, that is what makes that it does take me a bit more time. (Not to mention the heat of the last week, 30+C. Whit this heat it’s hard for me to work on my pc because I live in a house whit a flat roof, that makes it always at least 5C hotter than outside. My computer has special heatsink and as much fans as it can have, but still, when it’s already 37 C inside than my computer gets easely up to 70C+ when I use heavy or more than one program. But i’m working hard on the walkthrough.
Leon(SPY)
Thanks for answering me Leon
I actually managed to figure out what to do. there was a sneaky vent access with a plug inside. I had to find the gravity gun so I could lift the plug. very clever. I am now stuck again somewhere else but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. thats half the fun right?
anyway I really think you did a great job. yours is one of the best SP maps I’ve played. I’m trying to find more, can you or anyone else recommend any more good ones?
cheers
stinkmaster general
Leon, I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this mod. Excellent work. I’m just having a slight problem which is probably nothing more than something I’ve missed. I’m at the point in the game where my jeep runs out of gas. The pump explodes and opens up the crater in the ground and I head to the next section through the gate. I kill all of the combine and get up to the buildings on the right and in front of me. Where do I go from here? I can’t find an exit from this section.
I’m glad to hear that you both like it some much. In some maps I have indeed place some kind of puzzles, so when you can’t find a way out somewhere than just look carefully around. And always look in every corner, because otherwise it could mean that you miss that one thing that is so important to get further.
When you have jumped down to where those 2 red containers are placed than you will also find 2 of those maintained machine guns that fire at you. Beside them there is a small wall where you can jump over, and behind this low wall there is a small broken, wooden stairs. You can jump on that one and from there you can go on.
Leon(SPY)
great mod.havent seen one this good for a very long time.
Thank you Leon, but I have already made it up the broken stairs and have cleaned out all of the rooms. I have even tried using the empty bin with the wheels and the chair to make it over the wall to the catwalk. I have gone back to the place where the jeep ran out of gas and have also managed to jump on top of the cylindrical tank by the stairs. Help?
IMPORTENT!!
In comment 89 Baltic.Forever already explained about this, but maybe people didn’t read it so I will explane it here again;
“There was a problem with map leonhl2-2h which prevented the scripts from working correctly. This has now been fixed. I have also fixed the problem with the player freezing in map leonhl2-2i.”
Look above for his comment nr 89, and use the link in that comment for downloading that patch so the errors will be fixed.
leon(SPY)
Gramps, I hope this works. Click the thunmbnail and it will become large. It shows exactly the place where you have to go to. Jump in that little box right in the middle of the screen, there you find a hole in the wall where you can crouch through, from there you can go on.
Leon(SPY)
EDITED by PlanetPhillip to include the images.
well with that screenshot heres where you go:
in the screenshot walk past the yellow railing to the low slate building you notice a ledge infront of it well jump onto that & then face the ledge wall croch down & youl see a black crawlspace or window you crawl under that be sure to turn on your flashlight & youl come across a narrow passageway with some headcrabs kill them & continue on.
To Leon/Spy
Do you have any Call Of Duty 2 single-player maps already released?
I read above you also released some Call Of Duty 1 single-player maps & could you please give a download link for them I would like to give them a spin Thank You!
thanks Fragmaster for explaining it better, i’m Dutch and my english is not bad, but also not that good that I can explane everything like I would.
and thanks Phillip for making the screen work!
and yes, I have made 6 sp-maps in 2 mappack, specialy the last one is very well, if I may say so myself. You can download them from here, (should you have trouble with that you can’t get ammo for your weapons that please delete or remove some mods from your cod folder, some people do have this problem);
my first hl2 sp-mappack with 4 maps;
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Leons_SP_Map_Pack;39881
sof2 sp-mappacks;(those who have Leon in there name, and Mortal Coil)
http://soldieroffortune2.filefront.com/files/Soldier_of_Fortune_2/Maps/Single_Player;2391
cod sp-mappacks;
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/Leon_CoD_2;35833
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/LeonCoD1;29622
(have made lots of other sp-mappacks for older games like duke nukem, shadow warrior, napalm, UT
Now I’m getting killed all the time, in my own map, now I need your help! No, this is not a joke, please read on, (Leon-SPY)
Unbelievable, but I have to ask this. I am working like you maybe know on the walkthrough, and have nearly finisht it, am working now on map K, (the one at the end, where you have to blow up that huge system, with all the explosions and effects).
I play the mappack again so I can make screens of all the difficult places, to show them in the walkthrough. I just have played map K, and was nearly done. Did go upstairs and back again into the small office below, where you have to press that computer console, that starts that cutscene of Breen and Gman running out of there. Than the cutscene stops and you have to run like crazy back up again, the same path as you did before. I have played this map maybe 200 times, while I made it, for testing every time when I build something to it. And never had this problem before, but now I do. What is the case, when you have pressed that console below in that office and run back. You have to run outside the office and go to your right side, there again that stairs on, that straight through passed the installation and at the end to the left to go to the doors that give excess to that small elevator upstairs. Just when I have passed the installation and go left to the doors I get killed. Have opened the map again in Hammer editor and looked at this point. When you press the console in office it activates a whole lot of stuff, one of these things is a trigger that is just in front of the door of the office, this one was disabled and is enabled by the console pressing. When you walk through this trigger you activate the hurt triggers that will get enabled after 18 seconds. I run like crazy and am sure that I don’t use 18 sec. to get to that hurt trigger, I think I use 7 to 10 sec. Still, have tried it at least 1o times, and did get killed all times. Like I said, have played this map so many times that I can dream it, and I had this never before.
Now my question; are there people that did succeed with this part of the map, better said,, are there people that did get passed this point without getting killed. Of course do I mean this without cheats. So now god mode or whatever.
leon(SPY)
Game – Leon’s Coastline to Atmosphere. Level -(map leonHL2-2j)Help play!!!!
@Pavel
We need more information. Which point in the map do you need help with?
yes, like Baltic said, we do need more info about where you are stuck in map J. Still, I can imagine one place where you are stuck, or in fact this is one place where you get passed twice. I think that you mean you are standing in front of this;
You’re task is to close the circuit of the laser, on the middle of the screen you see a small opening where you can crouch through. When you do you find on your left below again a small opening and behind it you find a health and suit charger, but also a plug.
Try to get through this part first and play on, I’m still working on the Walkthrough of this mappack and it’s nearly done. In a day or 2 it’s finisht and you can find it here on PP.
leon(SPY)
leon/SPY: Thank.Best modification.
Final map leonHL2-2m: Step by step, G-Man and Breen door closed. Help fire!!!
Hi Leon.Have the same problem on the map your refering to,still cannot play all the way through as I keep getting killed all the time,only way can get past it is god mode.so have decieded to wait until you come out with the walkthrough.regards gunner
First I want to compliment you that you did get so far, was a hard fight he? After the big fight with the combines in the main hall you go through that door where you did see dr. Breen and Gman run through before. A new cut scene starts there that shows them run in to a small office where one pushes on a console what will open the door beneath, after that they run down the stairs and the cut scene stops. This you all now because you’ve played it but did get stuck when they did escape through that door below before you did get there. I just tell you this so I can point out exactly from where you have to do what. The point is that you kill both before they can go through that door below, than you have to get up again, fast as possible, and run in to that small office where they where before. Press the same console as dr.Breen did, and than go down again, now you have opened the door for yourself. You will see what happens when you get to the ship.
leon(SPY)
and please play on after this mail, it’still not the end, just play the whole map that comes after this one also, because you’re still not back home, earth I mean.
success!!
@Pavel
You need to be run VERY fast after the last cut-scene where you see Breen activating the console.
Sprint up the stairs and take your first left when you see the glass walls. If you are fast enough then you will be able to kill the G-Man and Breen (some weapons work better than others to kill them). If one of them makes it through the door, then the door is locked and you will burn in the fire. If you manage to kill them both before they go through the door, then you can run back up the stairs and use the console to open the door. You will then need to quickly run back down the stairs and through the door to freedom.
I have almost completed the Source Mod version of “Coastline to Atmosphere” but I can’t give a release date just yet. This version will include some minor bug fixes and Leon has also reduced the amount of NPC’s in some of the maps. Leon has also been working on the walkthrough for the mod which he has almost completed.
Baltic Forever (Peter)
G-man and Breen are dead, but I can not open the door. It is hard level.
You’re right Pavel, but it’s also the final stage of the mappack, before you leave the satellite. but I agree that it is maybe a bit to hard. therefore will I delete some combines for the mod version that will be released very soon.
when you have killed Breen and Gman on the stairs, than you have to go back up the stairs and in to the office where you did see them running in to and out again before they went for the stairs. In this small office at the end of the hallway you could see Breen pressing a button on a console that stands in front of the windows.
so, go back up the stairs after you’ve killed them, go left and into the office, press on console in front of windows, and run as fast as you can back again, down the stairs, now the door will be open,.
leon(SPY)
@stinkmaster general – I’m stuck at the same place with the 2 organge glass canisters and the flickering light in level 2-2j. You wrote about a sneak vent access – but where, I don’t see. Please help …
@Leon – this is a really great work, truly hard. Thx for coding this.
@Gordon at home
Have you seen post number 121?
There is also a room to the right of the screenshot where you will see a loose floor tile. This will give you access to a different part of the map which you MUST complete first to progress further.
Arggh! I’m really blind! Thx for the hint
No, lots of people had this problem, in the new made (by Baltic) Mod version Of C.to A. a cut scene will show where people have to go to.
leon(SPY)
Philip, I can’t find a link to this mod on the HL2 mods page.
I have just played your mod, and I must say I am very impressed.
Mike, you can find a link for downloading this sp-mappack on this site above. look for download Full Version. but I have to tell you that when you decide to download this sp-mappack you also have to install the patch that is also available on this site just below the option of downloading the Full version. because there still are some bugs in this sp-mappack. after hard work of Baltic this sp-mappack is changed in to a mod, the mod is now tested and will be available in a day or 2 to 3. beside that all the bugs are taken out in the mod version, there are more changes in it. for instance have I brought the amount of enemies down in a few maps. because severel people complained about the many combines that attack you. there is still one huge error in this sp-mappack that isn’t fixed with the patch, this is in map K (the 12 th map). just before the end of this 12 th level you have to follow dr.Breen and Gman over stairs and catwalks, and before you can follow them you get killed by a hurt trigger. I have looked for this problem in the map but the hurttrigger isn’t activates, still, you get killed without having a change to get through it. so, should you decide to still play this sp-mappack, than please start the next map (map L)manually in the console when you have found this error in map K. or you could decide to wait a few days and play the mod. I will let it know when the mod is available.
Youstolemykill, for now I am working on one cod2 sp-map, just so I put it to the collection of mine of games that I have mapped with. I will not make more sp-maps with cod2 because of all the scripting. am thinking about starting to sp-map with Prey, but this is not sure yet. I have sp-mapped with doom3 and quake4 (the same editor), and didn’t like that because of how the engine works with lightning, it’s impossible to make bright maps with it, without losing fps badly.
so I don’t think that we will need mappers, because we don’t work yet on another big project. but maybe in the future.
leon(SPY)
thanks anyway leon
Leon, I know the download link is at the top of this page… I was drawing Phillip’s attention to the fact that ‘leon’s Coastline to Atmosphere” is not listed on the Half-Life 2 released mods page. It’s finding the page you’re loking at now that’s the problem! Anyway, I was a quarter of the way through the map pack but I’ve put it on hold. I’ll wait for the debugged mod. Thanks!
am glad to hear that you wait for the mod, later this week it will be released. I know what you mean with that this site is hard to find, the download rate shows this clearly, although I am glad with 3000 downloads. this mappack will not be released on HL2 files.com but the mod will be released there and here. I decided to give PP a exclusive release so this site would get better known by the community, but I am not sure if it has helped. also was it very helpfull for us to hear all the comments about bugs unknown to us. we have fixed them all, and now the beta stage is done you could say.
as soon as the mod is released I will place a new comment about it here in this comment section.
leon
@leon: The reason you did not get as many downloads as you were expecting is not because you gave PP the exclusive, it’s because the product you delivered was not ready for release.
If you had waited, tested the product more thoroughly and packaged it as a mod from the start, the reviews on other forums may have been more positive and you would have had far more downloads.
i don’t agree totally with you, of course would it have been better when the mappack was tested even more, (because it is tested and repaired for 3 whole months!) I don’t say that the low download rate is PP’s fault, I could have placed it a long time ago on other sites to, but it was better to change it in to a mod, and fix the bugs that where still there. so, I am glad that the download rate isn’t as high as I hoped because now we had extra time to fix all the bugs (we hope). the mod will be released on PP and also on HL2files.com sp-mod download section. I know that a whole lot of people will still not be able to find it between all the sp-sound,
sp-skinn and sp weapon mods on hl2files.com. therefore will we release a demo version of the mod (the first 2 maps of it) as a little sp-mappack on hl2files.com sp-maps download section, (because this is the place where you get the most downloads on your sp-maps!!) this is also the main reason why it was first released as a sp-mappack and not a sp-mod. because most people look under sp-maps downloads when they want to look for custom made sp-maps.
leon
I just finished play this last night, with some bugs in the files I had downloaded but a really excellent map, with the bugs – more intense fight scenes than Epsiode1
Got them – dead
http://nairbnoswal.tripod.com/halflife/index.album?i=26
In map 2-2j I’m supposed to follow the blue laser but I can’f figure out how to do this.
I have played this mod and overall was disappointed. After Leon’s first HL2 mod which I rate as one the best HL2 so far put together. Coastline to Atmosphere came to me with far too many bugs, first of all there was no sky in the openning map which made it impossible to play, then two levels had ERROR signs posted all over the place, I also witness a load of crashes and freeze ups, guess a got a bad download. I had mixed feelings about the game play of this mod, the Coastline part was great with all the hall marks of the authors first maps LeonHL2_1 series, but when we got on to the Atmosphere part then the game just lost it for me, all game play went out of the window and we were just left floating and watching off beat seens and sets, not for me, so gave up any interest but may go back and play the last couple of levels that’s if they load which was another bug.
Mel / comment 143: Leon has said that there is going to be a mod version soon which will be (hopefully) bug free. I’m hanging on for that rather than play through the maps in their current state. I think Leon and Baltic gave way to pressure and released the map pack too soon — we were all pestering them to release it! — and also Valve make periodic changes to the Steam platform which can introduce unforeseen problems with maps and mods… well, so read somewhere. I’m not a mapper myself, I just read of these things. (c:
no, i’m realy sorry to say this, but you just did play the wrong file!!!
before the mappack was released we did release the core files, (the mappack without the bsp files). we did this because the mappack is quit large, and it would take people with a slow internet connection a whole lot of time to download it. so we did release before the core files, and when the bsp files would be released it would take those people much time anymore to download it.
you have downloaded only the core file with the maps(bsp’), what make that you miss all custom made models (those places where ERROR stands in big red letters), all scripts, custom made skytextures, etc etc etc.
it’s realy a shame, because without that all it is hardly to play. the Mod and a short and long walkthrough is now finisht. tho mod can be downloaded from here;
http://www.alphaomega-online.co.uk/home/php-files/downloads.php?cat_id=10
and the walkthroughs from here;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
(Phillip, would you please download the mod, and take away the sp-mappack with both core files, and the patch. because it clearly makes problems as shown now. then it was a good idea, but now it starts to give problems.
the mod is free of bugs, it is tested fully. it took 2 extra months of hard work but finally it’s done!)
The Coastline to Atmosphere source mod is now finished. I wanted to wait until the file was on hl2files.com before making the announcement, but you should be able to download the file from that site soon. I no longer have access to the planetphillip server so I can’t upload the file. Phillip (or anyone else) can download the file from http://www.sp-mods.com/home/php-files/downloads.php. I can’t give a direct link because that may have resulted in a “page not found” error.
We would just like to apologise for the length of time it has taken to complete the project.
It looks like we got the mod finished just in time because the latest Steam update could have delayed it indefinitely.
@ Mike
Believe everything you read about these Steam updates, because they are all true. This last update causes problems with the 3D view and it also causes all of the entities to fall through the displacements.
@ Mel
Did you download the Full version, or the Core files and Level files? I don’t suppose it really matters now because I will be asking Phillip to remove the other files because they are now outdated.
Peter
I liked the way the levels progressed from night to dawn, followed by day and so on. There was a sense of progression. Some of the levels were too hard; it’s just that the amount of Combine troops pissed me off – not that I had any major difficulties beating them – I didn’t – just that it’s not fun if you overdo it. Some Combine spawns were a bit sloppy – you could see Combine spawning out of nowhere. I also had some framerate issues but that’s no wonder considering the size of the levels. I got stuck in that one location mentioned in post #121 and it took me two days to drag myself online and check for help.
I really liked the pack and enjoyed playing it – for the most part. The framerate & Combine issues kept bothering me from one level to another.
What a cool game, I had a lot of fun. I think, the large amount of enemies makes it exceptional. What`s the problem, as long as there is a realistic chance to kill them all without using cheats? Searching 10 minutes ore more to find a way out of a room stuff, is boring me. Some want to fight, some have more fun unraveling riddles, you never can please everybody.
Further to my some what negative view posted comments 143 Aug 5th 2006, I have since heard from the author via PlanetPhillip that I did download incomplete files not intended has stand along playable maps. Thanks to planetphillip I have now downloaded the correct, final and bug free source mod and will be looking forward to playing through and posting a positive view. Many thanks to planetphillip and the author for their understanding and help.
Whilst I would like to take credit for helping, I’m afraid I can’t! It was Leon and Baltic that have made the real effort. All I do is try and help promote their exccelent work.
Thanks for changing all the “old” files in to the final Mod version Phillip!!
The mod is as far as we know now, (after extensive testing) bug free, and I have listened very well to all comments and have taken out a lot of combines and have placed on some places where people did had troubles with where to go next to a small cutscene that shows where people should walk to next. It took some time before this mod was made, but that is just because it’s realy hard work to make a Mod (making background screens, making the .zip file, etc). The credits for making the mappack in to the .zip Mod version does all go to Baltic.forever. I just deleted combines and added a few cut scenes.
hope you will enjoy it!!
leon (SPY)
I think that it would be fair to say that this project was a team effort. Even Phillip was part of the team as our promoter.
Is any one having freeze-up problems on level LeonHL2-2h, played up to and including LeonHL2-2g bug free but now I am just inching my way through map 2h with freeze-up after freeze-up.
Leon(spy) this new sorcemod plays smoooth as silk now, “real big improvement” thanks so much for doing it this way! I run Fakefactory’s graphics only mod on HL2, and it kicks in very nice with this mod! Mel, have you checked your Vid settings and looked at your background proggies that are running (ctrl-alt-del) on XP?? They eat so much memory, even with alot of RAM, I have 2gig and still shut down all I can. Hope ya have better luck!
Leon & Team – what an amazing achievement this puppy is. I’m not even finished yet & can’t believe how much gameplay and cool map design is in this pack / I also love the music files added and the atmosphere they add / taking some of the best gameplay and areas from HL2 and incorporating it into this / and ect. Congratulations on this & thx muchas for giving us a great game to play!!
Great Mod! Thanks for putting it out. Now I am stuck on Map 10 getting my butt blasted by combines because I have almost zero health and no ability to switch weapons. After I woke up from the gas, I made it to the weapons storage and survived the combine onslaught. Then, I took the elevator down and get not get any further becuase there are too many combines to blow me off the catwalk and I can not use the right weapons at the right time because none of my keyboard controls work. I can only switch weapons after burning off the ammo from the previous weapons. To get to my grenades, I have to burn off every other weapon. It is silly. It would nice to have more health but the weapons switch is more critical. Up to this point I had no glitches, just good challenges that I eventually overcame. Please any suggestions?
let me first explane about how this sp-mappack (beta version) with still some minor bugs turned in to this Mod, the credit for this goes for the full 100% to Baltic.Forever. he worked 2 months very hard on it to turn it all in to the Mod version. I just made some small changes in severel maps and added some cutscenes. Garrett, you said;
taking some of the best gameplay and areas from HL2 and incorporating it into this.
don’t know if you mean that gameplay and areas are copied from original Hl2 maps because this is not the case. every map and the layout of the NPC’s (non playable characters) is original made by me and Baltic. Really nothing is copied from original maps. I see it as a compliment when you thought this would be the case.
Frederick, I know where you are stuck. That is indeed a hard part, but you are near to the place where you get you’re suit back with a lot of healthpacks. You’re not the only one that complains about not having the suit in some places, what makes that you can’t choose your weapon yourself, (and can’t see how much health you have left). Other people liked it, just because of this problem. I added this future a few times, just to make it a bit harder. I suggest that when you realy want to change your weapon you shoot your ammo till empty so you get a new weapon. Just before you enter the big hall with a lot of comebines you can find a crate with extra health, (see walkthrough please;)
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/map10.html
Just enter the big hall very slowly and take them out one by one. after getting killed a few times you will know where you can expect them. When you have killed them all you will find in the back of the hall at the right side a ladder that can be lowered by a button. when you do so you open a door behind you what will give excess to 3 combines that attack you. after killing them you can go through that door where they came out. there you will find a place where you can find the suit and health back. Just please keep trying because after this it gets easier again, (for a while).
thanks’all for the nice compliments.
leon(SPY)
Wow, no weapon choice; that is a challenge. Well then, if that is how it is to be played, then so be it. All the more fun and challenging. Glad I found an answer here: it’s not a bug.
Congrats to all, there are really nice maps in there.
I have to admit, the 3/5 rating gave me pause, but I’m damned glad I Dl’d it and played it: excellent mod. I got stuck at the point where you have NOTHING, and had to reply on the walkthru for help; but beyond that, it was enjoyable. The final section confused me a bit: first, the cut scenes that led to a final battle with the combines, then the closing cut scene: I wish that the final scene had a bit more “closure”, but that’s just me.
Good job. More? 😀
Okay, I backtracked a little to improve my health status in the fighting for the ammo room. Then I went back into the catwalk room from the elevator with more health. This time I beat the combine troops there and later made it to the room with the spiffy new suit.
You win this time, Leon! But I think you should rename the mod “Naked Against the Combine”.
I haven’t finished yet but I have to say you loaded this mod with so much. It makes me think of the HL2 episodes as a ripoff by comparison.
Thank you Leon and everyone who contributed to the making of this mod.
Outstanding work. I very much appreciate your effort.
Phillip, I recently found your site (while looking for Leon’s new mod) and as a SP- FPS fan, what more could you ask for. Your one-stop-shop has it all. I greatly appreciate all your effort to put this site together. You’ve opened a whole new world for me.
Speaking of effort…
Leon/Baltic.Forever, it’s hard to believe that entertainment this magnificent is FREE! I’ve now played both of your HL2 mods. Thanks for harnessing your extreme creativity for our benefit. What will you do next…
You are welcome sir. I’m glad you like it.
am glad you all liked it so much, and indeed is Planet Phillip the place for us who love SP. there is already to much mp going on, but this is just personal.
before I worked with HL2 I have made lots of other sp-mappacks for other games, I will place a list below. about what i’m doing now, I have made a Cod2 sp-map and a Prey sp-map, and am thinking about a new sp-project.
leon
cod sp-mappacks;
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/Leon_CoD_2;35833
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/LeonCoD1;29622
sof2 sp-mappacks;(those who have Leon in there name, and Mortal Coil)
http://soldieroffortune2.filefront.com/files/Soldier_of_Fortune_2/Maps/Single_Player;2391
i have made sp-map(packs) before these for games like Mohaa, Quake2, U.T., duke nukem, shadow warrior and napalm. but they are still not placed on internet, still I could sent them to you should you be interested.
Based on Leons reply #164, can you give him my email or vice versa? Thank you.
On another matter, has anyne done a mod/map for Chronicles of Riddick that you know of?
This has to be the best mod for hl2 I have ever played. It took me 10+ hours or so to finnish it. Great mapping, cool music, lots and Lots of combines!, you gotta love it!
Gameplay:
This one has a lot of variety throughout the mod, these being some simple stuff to interesting moments. Most of the time I felt a little tiresome running through some of levels but at other times a bit immersed. The flow of each level is good, a few can take several times to accomplish though which is a good thing to have to think up a strategy but eventually gets annoying. You first travel along a coastline, then drive some vehicles, travel through some city areas, enter and escape combine bases and eventually towards the main location, with a nice hallucination too add some fun in there. First off, the starting levels are rather simple to complete with some easy tasks, but eventually gets harder as you get closer to the vehicles with more enemies to get in your way.
When you find the first car you then realise you have more to do before getting to it, was a great idea as it lengthened that section out a bit longer. This is where some levels get a bit more tiresome as you constantly have to make stops, and open gate and such every time to proceed further while fighting the same enemies each time which got boring. Eventually you’ll be driving the boat about halfway or so, but then back into you car. During that time I never really enjoyed much of it as it felt plain throughout. However, the second car section was a lot more better than the first and remained fun throughout which made up for it. I found the combine sections to be the best parts of the mod as they always had something different throughout although sometimes confusing and other times really difficult, although I won’t spoil anything from this section, neither from the hallucination too. Overall, it gets repetitive and tiresome even though you’re given plenty of ammo and it does have a few fun moments, the author needed to vary the action out better.
Design:
Some areas are fantastic while other sections needed more work or looks too random. From the first levels towards the end of the driving locations the design remains strong with great texturing and structure although a few weak places here and there. However, the combine sections were random in throughout sometimes such as the lighting as it did have some intense colours and a few bad usages here. Previous level lighting was a lot better than in these areas. Also, the texturing needed a lot of work with a few good ideas though. Structure in each level is good with a few basic pieces here and there, the layout looks linear but plays out different than expected in some maps. Other than this, every map keeps within it’s theme well, with wide enough areas for most combat but some places lacked some detail which was a shame. Most of the landscape and nature style levels looked the best out of the mod.
Conclusion:
Can be both enjoyable and tiresome at times and has a great design throughout.
Rating:82%
Help I’m blind! I’m on map 2-2h after all the maps you float through and your in contol of yourself again, but I can’t see. I can see my crosshair but eveything else is black. Is there a way to fix it or skip the map? As far as I know I’m playing the full mod version.
I just realized that I forgot to mention how I rated it, which was a 5; despite the jaded reviewer’s views, I think it was a well-thought-out mod, with many excellent sections. It is very immersive, and makes you work for your solution.
Leon, excellent job.
thank you all for the compliments,
Wolf_7669,
please look in the walkthrough, I could exlane it here again but it’s better you read the full walkthrough for the start of this map. please look here;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
leon
Thanks for the walkthough link but my problem is not not being stuck on the map, my problem is that I can’t see anything. It’s the section after the movie theater and floating over the street watching the combine fight head humpers.
I can’t see anything on my screen but the crosshairs. When I save the game and go to the load section, the little screenshot shows what I should be able to see, but when I load the saved game all I see is a black screen. I can hear Gordon moving around and picking up stuff when I press the movement and use keys, I just can’t see anything. It’s more than likely a bug with my hardware setup. I found how to skip to the next map and everything worked fine after that so it seems it’s just a problem with that specific section of map 2-2h and my machine. I was just wondering if there was a console command or something I could try so I can play that section of the map.
Great mod by the way, took me awhile and alot of ammo to figure out that the Combine were never ending in the reactor room but other than that it was great to play. Only got stuck a couple of times and your walkthrough came in handy. Thanks.
about map h, you’re not the first one that couldn’t go on right at the start of this level. and when I knew then what I know now I would have made it different. the thing is, you start map H in a dark room, and after you have seen 2 text lines (or maybe 3, am not sure anymore) on screen a hole in the wall at your right will open and you can crawl out of there in to the open air. so after the map has started please walk 1 or 2 meters forwards and look to your right. you will see daylight through a hole in the wall. you have to jump and croutch a bit to get through. I think you looked at the small walkthrough I made, I made 2, one small and one large one that explaines the whole mod from a to z. in the large one it clearly explanes;
“The level starts in a black room, at you right side you find 2 holes in the wall, and you can jump/crouch through the right hole outside.”
but don’t worry, i’m glad you had so much fun playing it.
leon
I have been monitoring this problem very closely and it has been almost impossible to track down the bug because of lack of information. But I have finally figured out what is causing the problem from the comments on this website and other websites.
It would appear that one of the overlays in map leonhl2-2h can’t be rendered by a very small percentage of users. I am assuming that the problem is caused by old graphics card drivers or a video card that can’t handle the visual effect.
Make sure that you have the latest drivers for your graphics card. If you are already using the latest drivers, then I could release a very small patch that may fix the bug. But I would need a few volunteers who have this problem to test it first to make sure that it works.
Peter
@Wolf_7669
I forgot to mention that you were almost at the end of the map and you can continue to the next map by typing the following into the consol;
map leonhl2-2i
Peter
Hi
Can anyone tell me how to get the suit back with a cheat in this mod???
I have tried and get errors and something about shading….
I thought I had played this mod through then I reinstalled it and found that it didn’t end when I was gassed but my game did, all I had was a black screen.
That’s the trouble now, I ran because I had no weapons, so my health must be poor and dropped into a room and instantly recieved ammo and whatever.
Now the problem is the same as above the screen is totally black, I can save and when I try to load I see a thumbnail and saved my way to a door right next to me but once I open it and step through I’m being attacked in another compleatly black room.
How can they see me???
I have a feeling that we should see what’s in the thumbnail but we are not.
Help
Mike
no good, please read what baltic.Forever wrote about this problem. see comment 173/174
leon
I finish this mod with a blue screen. I think I am stuck here. What is the true end of this mod and why I have blue screen?
Try sv_cheats 1 then give item_suit. I actually thought it was interesting to play without it. I had to use whatever weapon was out, resulting in some nice nade fests, and me finally seeing how good the pulse rifle really is.
As for the black room, the combine have glowing eyes, meaning probably night vision.
Also, these are some of the best SP maps I have ever played for HL2. A bit over-challenging at times, but most of the challenges are still fun to play again when you die. Extremely impressive mod overall, the one thing that would’ve made it a clincher would be having custom voices and VCDs. (I’d be willing to help with that if you’d want to rev up for a 2nd version!)
Kool though I’d settle for a weapon. Thank you
Mike
Hi Leon, I love your mod and I’m dying to reach the end of it!
Unfortunately, I’m stuck : my PC keeps loading when I’m being teleported. I’m falling from a great height, then I see the “Light Speed” effect, then the word LOADING, and that’s it. My computer keeps stuck there.
Can you help me please?
Map 2-2i (map 10)
at the beginning of the map after walking out of the dark room and going to the balcony I see the flying character blowing everything with a laser. I cannot get away from it, have no weapons and I always burn to death. The walkthrough does not mention this part at all so I am lost.
thanks for your attention
Hey,
I have enjoyed your mod but there are some probs that I ran into. On many of the maps the weapons fall through the floor and now I am stuck on where Gordon gets drugged and is fighting the soliders @ the end and his vision is orange and blurry. I killed all of the soliders but when I go to load to the next map it stays loaded for a long time and crashes.
Any help?
I figured it out. I had to have some health to continue. Without the suit I had no idea I was very low.
i’m very sorry you all have suddenly so much problems in severel maps. why this happens I realy would know, but I will give a solution. the strange thing is that most player don’t have a problem in that spot, so the answer is hard to give.
PLEASE LOOK FOR YOUR NAME AND PROBEBLE SOLUTION;
BOB;
the end of the mod is after the end- credits title movie. in map 14 you see a movie of a combine running through the satellite that explodes. when this cutscene (movie) stops you have to play again, and fight your way through damaged buildings with fires. at the end you fight your way through a garage. at the other side is a gate, when you reach that one you see the HL2 logo on screen, and you hear your self taking to yourself. you will know when it stops, for sure. can you tell me what was the last part you played. you can answer here or mail me at my emailadress that is in the read me.txt file, there you also find a walkthrough link, (or see below for the link).
::CALIBER::FLAPPIE;
again, why this happen with you I don’t know, this is the first I hear someone is stuck here. best thing for you to do is to start this new map manually. please open the console by pressing; ~
this will open the console. type in it;
map leonHL2-2g
ENTER
it can happen that when you press ~ nothing happens, then you have to first enable the option of using the console. I always forget where you can change this option exactly, but it is somewhere under the Options menu. please open Options and look a bit around, somewhere you find; enable console, activate that and you can use console.
FLYERX;
i’m glad that that was the problem, indeed is a very low health deathly there.
MEGAZELL;
why this happens to you at this place, I realy don’t know, but because it’s happening why the new map loads it’s not that a big problem. best thing also for you is to start the map manually. please open the console by pressing ~
(should the console not open then please read what I wrote in my comment to
Caliber::Flappie about how to open console). so, open console with ~
and type in console;
map leonHL2-2i
ENTER
please be aware of the start of this next level. lots of people had trouble with it, not knowing how to get on. you start in a total black room, 2 lines of text show on screen and than a strange overlay(colors floating over screen) starts. please keep standing still untill this has happened. then walk one meter forwards and look to your right side, you will see a opening in the wall where you can jump/climb through.
my emailadress;
LeonBrinkmannATemailaccount.com
(change AT with @)
for walkthroughs please look here;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
Your mod rocks, it finally gave me the challenge I was looking for. I almost beat it completely while leaving it on hard, the only area I had to turn down the difficulty was in the dream sequence when you get the machine gun vs the man hacks, not enough ammo. Other from that, I loved playing without a suit, it’s just sadistic.
This is the best mod i’ve ever played however I still encounter a few bugs. The first occured then I teleport to the atmosphere; when I move during the cinematic when I am falling from the sky in the outside area, I do not teleport to the correct space. I teleport somewhere outside the map where I can see far away objects and rooms but I cannot do anything. I got past this simply by not moving during the cinematic.
The second bug stops me from finishing the game. When my weapons are conviscated in the satellite, my HUD (hazzard suit) dissapears. no displays of ammo, health, I can’t sprint or use flashlight. nothing. just the central crosshair, as in the cinematics. once I pick up a weapon I then cannot swap weapon, even once ammo has run out, leaving me helpless. I can get a certain distance without use of the HUD, but completing the game seems impossible. Is this a problem with my pc or is there a patch….?
Hey,
Thanks for the tip Leon when I did the map manually the first time it worked…everytime after that it load perfectly.
I am @ the part where “I have to go after them” I keep dying as I make it to the double doors. I read your walkthrough is there something I am missing?
Peace,
Megazell
Hey Leon your mod is awsome I really enjoy playing however there is 1 part 1 just cant get past,
I’ve read the walktrough a few times but it doesnt help me,
Its the part where I have to go after g-man en dr breen
When im gettin all the way up where they escape(with the halflife logo at the wall) the door just wont open.
Is there someting im doing wrong I cjust cant figure it out
grtz Timcredible
first I want to thank you all for wanting to play this mod and i’m glad you all like it so much. I want to add that specially baltic.Forever had a big part in making this mod, he did all the optimization of the maps, fixed about every bug that there was to be found, and without his help in technical matter, (when I thought of a special way how to make something he did find most of the times the way how I had to make it all work). and then there was lots more he helped with, not to forget that changing the sp-mappack (beta version) in to the mod version was entirely his work.
that said I will now get to the problems you have. first I need to say that it is very difficult to say why some bugs appear. thousands of people have no problem and suddenly someone has trouble with some bug that no body else has. why this happens can have severel reasons. or it is the computers hardware that it is played on (video cards), or the drivers of it, or some part of a map is so complicated made(lots of triggers in small places) that sometimes problems occur because there is just to much going on, (in some places are severel triggers placed that each activate at least 20 tasks or so. when the player goes to quit trough them there can occur some bugs, (have never seen this before with other games, but HL2 has problems with triggers when they are activated when the player runs fast through them).
i will answer again personally;
ED;
glad you liked it so much, not to have the suit all the time, at least 2 to 5 times a week I get the question of not having the suit is a bug of some sort (for instance the comment below of Ollie), others understood it was meant to be this way but simply thought it was stupid to do so. glad you liked it so much!!!! (and your a very good player when you can succeed on the Hard setting, congratulations!!)
OLLIE;
i’m sorry you did had problems with teleporting in to the atmosphere, why this happens I don’t know, (read what I said above some bugs above please). That the player looses his suit is no bug, (although lots of people thought it was), you loose the suit at the same time that dr. Breen takes all your weapons away, (the part where the floor moves and you see all your weapons below you, under a glass floor). r. Breen takes at the same time all your weapons away. you are trying to kill him is his satellite, the smartest thing for him to do is to disarm you, right? but don’t worry, you get weapons when you go on, and take them from your killed enemies. that you can’t see your HUD, (health and weapons) and change weapons to your choice is just an extra difficulty to the game. but don’t worry about having to finish all the other maps without the suit, you get it back. taking it away for a while is fun, but getting it back is even more fun.
MEGAZELL;
i’m not sure which doors you mean with double doors? do you mean map 12, 13 or 14? with map12 you just have to run and jump as quick as you can back up again, after them. the exploding of the reactor core is set on (when I remember right) 18 seconds from the time you get near to the doors that lead to the elevator. wait, now that I think of it, that are double doors. because I could not remember double doors in the maps 13 and 14, (beside the elevator doors where Breen and Gman go through in map 14). o think I know now what you mean with getting killed all the time before you get to the double doors. that’s indeed the way you have to take, you have to get back up. and at the end you can go up 2 other small stairs and get to where they did get out. after you have finally activated the console button in the lower office, and you see the cutscene-movie- of seeing Breen and Gman the first time together and running out of there. best thing to do is save the game as quick as you can on that point and then start running like crazy back upwards. there are only so many seconds before the place starts to blow up. when you get killed before you are at the double doors just means you didn’t run and jump fast enough. (don’t forget that there is a RUN button, normally you just walk, but I believe when you press shift you can run, maybe you have this function under another button. by using this Run button you will be able to succeed. should this not be the place where you are stuck then please write again and I will help further .
TIMCREDIBLE;
i never had heart before of that this door doesn’t open, but like I said before, some have bugs in some places where others don’t have bugs. am not sure why this happens though. (never had it before with other games but with HL2 mapping some triggers don’t activate when the player runs fast through them, this is just a game bug that can’t be helped.)
still, no problem at all!! right after you go through that door above where Breen and Gman go through in map 12 the map ends and the next map loads. so the best thing for you to do is just start manually the next map, you won’t miss anything and you will still have all weapons. because every map can be loaded also manually with having all weapons that you should have should you have played the map before.
just open the console with button; ~
type;
map leonHL2-2l
enter
(should the console not open after pressing ~ , then look under Options for the option of enable the console).
success to all of you and thanks!!
Leon(SPY)
Hello there!
I’ve just finished this mod. Exactly 5 minutes ago. I needed approxematly 20 hours to do so. I’ve been playing 3d-Shooters since DukeNukem3D-Times, thus since a really long time. I liked both Half-Life & Half Life 2 a lot. After finishing the second part of HL I was searching for a nice mod to play – and I found “Coastline to Atmosphere” – thanks in heaven.
What a fantastic peace of action!
Thank you very, very much Leon & Friends! I loved to play this great addon.
Here’s my “summary-review”:
Story: 10/10
————
very well built up thriller.
my favourites:
– the drug-section – this was amazing!
Mapdesign: 10/10
—————-
– throughout great composing of elements and formerly crossed sections around. very well designed.
my favourite parts:
– the combine-mountains
– the exploding hall (where you’ve to put the switch in the container…)
Sound: 10/10
————
– without a doubt the best soudtrack a game can offer. That’s the advantage of mods – you don’t need the copyrights of some fantastic game sounds… ;o)
my favourite “sound-moment”:
– the place where you have to get the jeep through the villa (before there’s a small lake)
There also where some great puzzles inside, all well described with text-hints. So I didn’t need to look in the Walk-Through the whole game – but only until the last section before the flight in the space-ship. This point was really hard to master. Only a few seconds to kill them both – that was tough. But as Leon said in the WT: “It’s hard, but you can do it!”
So I finally fought my way back through this incredibely peace of art! I made it!
Thanks again Leon & Friends
Michael
Hi. I just finished the mod 4 minutes ago. Took about 15 hours on medium setting. It’s been an excellent experience. Considering you’re pretty much a one-man team, it’s fantastic. The gameplay is far more intense and addictive than Episode 1, Puzzles are difficult and battles aer intense. I ahd to use quicksave a lot, and focus on headshots. That last puzzle with the door that shuts behind the Gman and Breen had me scratching my head until I realized I was just too slow so I realoaded from the previous room and it worked out fine. Love the limited health/ammo aspect. Actually makes you care instead of rushing through and missing things.
If you ever need a concept artist, send me an email. I’m not half bad and would love to contribute. I’m a professional illustrator, graphic designer and have done some work for an HL2 MOD that never flew.
Would love to send you some samples. ([email protected])
Again, Thanks for the effort and for sharing your talent with the rest of us.
i’m glad you both liked it that much. before this mod I made 4 other HL2 sp-maps with the help of Baltic that can be found here, (maybe you didn’t know this);
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Leons_SP_Map_Pack;39881
leon
(for now i’m not working on a new project, I have made one cod2 and one prey sp-map but that’s it. i’m not sure what game now to use for a new project, i’m waiting of the release of Crysis to work with that.
leon
Hi, Great site! I have downloaded ‘the coast to atmoshere mod” and have installed as per instuctions but there does not appear to be an “Coastline to Atmosphere” icon to run the mod.
Any help would be appreciated.
The first thing I would suggest is to restart Steam. Mods won’t show up until it is restarted
If I rememeber correctly I think Leon forgot to say that it requires its own folder. When you extract the files they are not in one folder but loose. Try creating a folder, I called mine “CTA”. MAke sure that is under SOurce Mod and contains all the files from the zip file. Now restart Steam.
If that doesn’t help I would suggest deleting the folder under Source Mods and startiing again.
IF that doesn’t help (Phew!) perhaps you can post you installation path (Minus eexact username).
Good Luck
How I get my car in door. ->
http://kotisivu.suomi.net/lahteenmaki/addons/leonhl2-2da0001.jpg
in map ->
http://kotisivu.suomi.net/lahteenmaki/addons/leonhl2-2da0002.jpg
bedfordromany,
i’m very sorry for you, but when it doesn’t help what Phillip suggested to you, then it seems you’re one of those that have problems due to the last valve/steam update. ones in a while I get simular questions like yours, the mod simply doesn’t show up in your steam console, no matter how much you try. this happens just to a few steam accounts, about 98% does work well, why it happens to you and those few others I realy wouldn’t know. it happens not only with this mod, but with all mods. it’s simply again a case of steam updates f*cking up thing. there is no simply solution for this, other then placing all files and folders manualy.
i’m very sorry, but this is a steam bug, no mod bug. hope it will be fixed soon thought.
Lahtis,
i’m not sure what you mean, and what to ask. do you mean, how you’re car did get there? because I think that you know that better, I realy wouldn’t know. when you mean, how can I get it away of there, then I suggest; use your gravity gun, and shoot at it untill it’s removed. should you get stuck then please consult the walkthroughs;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
leon
WOW! I just finished CTA and I can’t believe this was a MOD! I have played many mods and they are usually just a time killer. I got immersed in this thing. I couldn’t wait to get back to where I left off. Music, puzzles, challenging battles, atmosphere…this game has it all. I would not feel disappointed had I paid for it. Thanks for all the effort Leon, you are a Master!
This is a best mod. Thanks…
Please help, I’m stuck at the blue laser. I follow it but can’t figure out what to do next. Thanks
Somthing to try. To keep form loosing my mind trying to find my way out of the blue laser room…. If you keep knocking the energy ball thing so it bounces around the room eventualy it gets recaptured into it’s holder now you have two. keep doing this until you have more than you can count. Then drop the floor plate from the room next door into the holder thing. This frees the energy balls and they float free around the room. Very cool looking.
I hope episode 2 is as good as Leon’s Coastline to Atmosphere. Very nice!!
thank you very much excellent mod, thought it was a valve test release it was that good. enough said!!
i want to thank you all for the nice compliments!!
Pete, I could explain here how to get on, but that would take a lot of text, best thing to do is look please in the walk through I made. there you can read and see exactly how to get on. please see walk through;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
(please look for map 11.)
leon(SPY)
PS;
Baltic and I have made 4 other sp-maps for HL2, before this Mod. please download from here;
/posts/leons-mappack-1-single-player-half-life-2-mappack/
and I have made lots of other sp-mappacks for games like Cod,Cod2,Sof2,Quake2,Mohaa, and older games. let me know if you’re interested in those.
Hi,
Firstly I would like to say what a fantastic massive experience. I am thoroughly enjoying this. It’s better than episode 1 in my opinion.
Now my question: I am stuck on map 11 when you enter the room with the glass effect which is a teleporter. According to the walkthru you fly up and then teleport. When I go in to it nothing happens? I have tried jumping and I just float back down to the ground. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?
Many thanks
Phil
did you activate the computor? it didnt work the first time I tried it so I reloaded the last save and did it again.i killed the 2 npc first then activated the computor and walked in.
thanks for the compliment!!
it’s strange why you don’t get teleported, untill now I don’t think anyone else did had this problem. the thing is like you already said, you get pushed up in that teleporter untill you nearly hit the roof, and then you should be teleported. I asume that you first pressed the console that is outside the teleporter at the left side? but I asume you did, otherwise you wouldn’t flow at all. when it realy doesn’t work there is only one solution, and this is by starting the whole level 11 again. sometimes triggers don’t work when there activated to quickly in HL2, other games don’t have this bug, but HL2 does. and once a trigger_once is activated (or not) there is no way to get it activated again. so please open console by pressing ~ and type in it;
map leonHL2-2j
enter
and the level will start again.
sorry for this inconvenious, but I can’t think of another way to fix this.,
leon(SPY)
Hi Leon,
Thanks for the quick reply, I was getting withdrawal symptoms:-)
I will try it now. I don’t mind repeating it, it’s a good level anyway 🙂
Regards
Phil
I will try this first though, thanks Andy
HI again,
IT WORKED!!! Luckily I tried going back to the previous auto save and then when I stepped in this time I went straight to the top. 2 hours later and I’m still playing.
Thanks for the help Leon and Andy.
Now where does that blue laser go to I wonder?
I was hoping for some help on one of the maps as I seem to be stuck, After hallucinating and the G man walks out of the door and says his speech (map 2h) it loads another map, unfortunatly it’s pitch black and all I can see is the crosshair, has anyone else got this problem, and does anyone know how to fix it? and help is greatly appreciated.
tigga
The problem is caused by your computer not being able to render one of the screen overlay effects in that part of the game. You could try updating your graphics card drivers, or you could bring down the console and manually start the next map (leonhl2-2i). There was only one more fighting scene left in that level, so you won’t be missing much.
you’re right Baltic, that problem is also happening to severel people. but I think that this is that other problem that makes that people can’t play on. it’s no bug, it’s just that the room where you start in is to dark to see what is going on. point is, in map I you start in a total black room. when I remember right you see right after the start 2 lines of text scrolling down the screen, and some strange, green overlay effect scrolls down the screen. at that point a hole in the right wall appears where you have to climb/crouch through. so after map I start, keep standing still untill the text lines have appeared. now step 1 meter forward and look at your right side. you will notice there is now a hole in the wall visible, go through it.
leon(SPY)
I think this is the map where you come round and it says “Am I still hallucinating”? If so then the reason you can see black is cos you are looking at the ceiling of a dark room. Pull your mouse downwards and you will see a hole in the wall. Took me a while to figure that one out. I thought my pc had frozen for a while 🙂
You’re compleatly right Phil Ducker. stupid that I made it like that, when I knew then what I know now then I would have made it different. I hear you say, why not change it now? but to be honnist, after 1,5 year of hard work (4 to 10 hours a day!) on this mod Baltic and I don’t want to work on it anymore. we have fixed so many bugs that we think it;s time to leave it alone. but again, I would have liked it when I made this dark part different.
leon(SPY)
Best Mod I have ever played!! I love the ending, especially during the credits. This was every bit as good as many GAMES that I have payed $$$ for! Thanks Much for your hard work! Absolutely AWESOME!!
Regards, Willy
If the lost HUD isnt a bug, then how the h*** are you suppose to change weapons?? you cant use the mouse scroll, and you cant use the number keys!! When you run out of ammo you have to run around like stupid with an empty gun even if you carry weapons with ammo! And if you pick up a grenade then you have to throw it before continiue shooting! The problem occures after you find your weapons again in the satelite.
Leon’s right, tho: it’s no bug. Just part of the challenge. Don’t need that grenade yet? Don’t pick it up. You just have to be careful with what you do have, and try to protect yourself, you take WAY more damage without the suit than with.
you say that when you’re out of ammo you keep the weapon. I think this has to do with your game settings, because normally when you run out of ammo the weapon is switched to another weapon. the challenge of playing a small part of this mod without a suit is indeed like you mentioned yourself, that your not able to choose a weapon of your choice. but you just have to play along with what ever you have in your hands. but, like I said, when the ammo is gone your weapon should change automatically in to another weapon.
leon(SPY)
ps; I think you need to click for the option of changing weapons fast under game Options.
Yepp, I understand that now Leon. I managed to play further on and found my suit again (phew). Loved that drug-dream btw.. amazing! Now Im stuck in that powerplant (after everything exploding) and Im about to start complaining again 🙂 Only seconds after I push the button and everything explodes Im killed by a shockwave.. Even if I manage to dodge the shockwave then there is a second one killing me right after.. Since everything is on fire I though the water would be a nice place to be, and it goes ok as long as Im under water.. but as soon as I go up for air, some electric lightnings seems to kill me in one stun.. I have no idea how to get past it, and since my savegame doesnt show after a saved when I arrived at the room (probably a bug on my machine though..) then I can eather try 1000 times to get out of the water alive (dont think so) or I must play the level again (will the supertroopers ever stop attacking, or is it a neverending wave of them?) Oh well.. better start looking for the walkthrough.. 🙂
Kim
no need to look for a walkthrough just select the properties tab in steam for the mod and click the link for the manual.
you’re right Andyb, there you can find it also, to be sure I will add the adress of the walkthrough at the bottum of this comment.
Kim, best thing to do is indeed to read the walkthrough because in the full walkthrough version (there 2 of them) I have explaned fully how to get out of there. indeed will you not be killed in the water, but as soon as you get above it you are killed. you have to get back up where you came from, go after breen and gman. best thing is also to save right before you press the console the last time in the office below, so you can start from there when you get killed.
leon
Hi again Leon!
Wow, I’m not used to getting such quick and good answers. And from the creator 🙂 Im honored! Not gonna bother you with more “complaining” about that scene. I will solve it one way or another. I’ve started the map again, and wont try to take out all the soliders this time (they never stop coming, do they?)
Anyhow, fantastic MOD, Leon! I guess you heared it alot allready, but one more cant hurt. 🙂 HL have been my no. 1 game since the first release and Im really looking forward to the rest of the “Episodes”. Due to the delay on Episode 2, I searched the net desperatly for a singelplayer MOD, and found yours. I didnt expect much from it, but man was I wrong! The result is just as good as the “original”, and probably better. There have been some rumors that you’ve been hired by Valve for working with the HL serie.. Dunno if thats true (they should hire you though..). If not, then I hope this is not the last MOD we see from you!
Thanks for this fantastic release, and good luck with further productions!
-Kim
thanks, please look at comment #64 of mine above, there you find a link to 4 other sp-maps that I made for HL2 ( !! ) and that can be played, and other sp-mappacks for other games. have just released my latest Cod2 sp-map, and am about to release my first Prey sp-map.
leon
(please see #64 above and;)
COD2 sp-map;
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/Leons_CoD2SP_Map_1;70667x#1031574
leon
ps, in that map the combines keep coming indeed, on severel places in that map there are triggers that activate/stop the spawning of those nasty guys, haha. and I don’t find it any other thing as normal that I asnwer, i’m glad people like it and ask, but you’re right, there are a lot of guys who make something and when you write you simply don’t get an asnwer. and about working at Valve, no, that was some sick jocke of a guy, who offert me a job at valve, he said he was project manager or so from Ep 2, did write him 3 times, ever heart from him sinds. (sick)
Wow, you are productive!! I just finnished Prey, so Im looking forward to test your Prey sp-map when it is released!! I will download the other sp-maps for HL2, really looking forward to that! Finnished the C-to-A MOD yesterday. Finally understood the fire part. (running like hell was the key :)) Again, excellent work!
Regarding the Valve job.. Either its them or any other company.. They really should hire you. This is 100% quality work. If you can manage this without getting paied for it, then I wonder what you could create with this as your job!
Good luck! And keep those excellent MODs coming!! 🙂
/Kim
I have downloaded the map, but when I put it in the sourcemods folder (in a folder named CTA) it copies most of it but when it gets to some it says that they already exists and asks whether I should replace them. I say yes to all and then open Steam. The name comes up on the Steam games list but when I play, all that comes up is the Train Courtyardd background with some random icons floating on the right (such as the machine gun icon) and when I go to New Game, there are no levels to select. What is going on and how can I fix it?
i’m not sure what is going wrong, but I also don’t quit understand how you installed this mod because you’re talking about copying. the way to install the mod is by Extracting ( with Winzip – free to download, make search with google for it )the .zip file of this Mod. when you choose for the extracting option Winzip will ask you where to install all the files to. then asnwer the SourceMod folder. ofcourse could you make your own C to A folder in the sourcemod folder and copy all files in to there. but I think this is the best and most easiest way to do so. when you do so it should work all well because you said you don’t have troubles with seeing the C to A folder in your Steam console, (this is a known bug to some due to a latest steam update). so, please try how I discribed the extraction of the zip, then it will work. if not please let me know again and I will help you furhter to get it to work.
success,
leon
Thanx leon. This is a phantastic mod and for free it is unbelievable. You deserve all respect. And I was thinking about buying Episode One from Valve… Not while talents like you are out there to spoil us…
Thanks again!
thanks for the compliment, although I don’t deserve all the credits. Baltic Forever was a great help with all kind of technical aspects of this mod. we are working like this for a few years together, before this mod we made 4 other sp-maps for HL2. when you’re interested, please look for links to all previous work here;
leon
LINKS;
4 other HL2 sp-maps
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Leons_SP_Map_Pack;39881
COD2 sp-map;
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/Leons_CoD2SP_Map_1;70667x#1031574
cod sp-mappacks; 6 sp-maps
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/Leon_CoD_2;35833
http://callofduty.filefront.com/file/LeonCoD1;29622
9 Quake2 sp-maps;
/posts/leons-quake-2-maps-quake-2/
sof2 sp-mappacks; 20 sp-maps (those who have Leon in there name, and Mortal Coil)
http://soldieroffortune2.filefront.com/files/Soldier_of_Fortune_2/Maps/Single_Player;2391
Stunning – in the top 3 all time best mods of any game – Valve should release this via steam – it’s brilliant!!!
Thanks to all those who made it.
I played this mod after finishing “Episode One”. This mod is tough, challenging and very good. The puzzles are very clever and I had to play some segments many, many times to finally solve the puzzle on how to move on. I’d buy this mod if it was for sale! Keep up the great work.
It IS avaiable for download in Steam. 🙂
Kim
i think he tried to say that Valve should have bought and sold it through Steam. but about a place in the top 3 all time best mods of any game. I never knew this, I made a search for it with google and did find our mod on the 5th place of best mods on the Hl2 wiki, could you show me where you did find that info Codex?
leon
wiki info;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Half-Life_2_mods
I believe he is just saying that in his opinion. Notr an offical list or anything.
yes, now that I read it again I also believe he ment that. mistake, still, didn’t learn about that wiki list untell he mentioned it, was is a good thing, haha.
leon
hi im stuck
well the part I am stuck on is where to find the second key card im just having the hardest time finding the second keycard you havf to find in the whole game. Thanks for the help in advance
Frogman, the 2nd keycard is found soon after you receive the message saying you need to find it. You drop down through 2 grates from the water/power plant. Go down some corridors and then up some steps to a big fight with lots of combines. You’ve done that, right?
Okay, when all the combine are killed, walk around that perimeter again till you see a single combine guard in a revealed room. Kill him then look at the opposite side of the corridor. The wall has come down and there are some wooden cabinets… and the keycard!
Now go back towards the steps you entered by and wait for more combines to attack…
thanks Mike S., couldn’t have said it better.
i have made 2 walkthroughs, one small one and one compleat one. maybe you already knew about these, but if you didn’t then please look here, (but ofcourse you may always ask also about something).
success,
leon(SPY)
walkthroughs;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
Re. #236
Leon, I’m playing the mod right now — I read Frogman’s question just after I’d played that section with the keycard. Minutes ago I took the jeep though the cargo lift and entered the forest section…and I’m having a great time!
So I wanted to thank you and Baltic for creating a FANTASTIC SP mod. It is the best mod for HL2 in my opinion, and I doubt it will ever be beaten. I love how the various levels weave around each other, so the player often finds himself back where they started, but with a new objective to pursue. Many maps offer a slice of what you’ve designed, but none that I can think of have successfully welded so many aspects of gameplay into one package. And you’ve tweaked it just right. The difficulty is similar to the original HL2, maybe slightly harder.
Brilliant.
And again, my thanks.
Thanks for the reply!!!!!!!!!!!
Dude,
Thanks for the Mod/episode/game You are the Max. The game played like a dream,I hated being suitless and the non-weapon switching feature made me want to cry. But I survived..Booyaah!! I am the FREEEEMAAANN and there is no distance between us..(uh sort of sounds gay when an alien is not saying it huh? Valve should be calling you, ya got the chops..
thanks !!!!
leon
c’mon, people, VOTE! Y’all voting will be the ONLY way Phillip can make this whole olace work right, and the only way other people will find the *GOOD* maps and packs.
VOTE!! NOW!! DO IT!!! 😉
We now return you to our regularly-scheduled programming…
Scratchy,
Vote for what? Choo got de link 4 voting…TIA
btw.. in the mod.. The Closed off head crab room…you Biatch… many many freemans became deadmans there… I had bad dreams about that section.. complete with screaming out …” Get them off get them off…AAHHHARRGGG!
Again
Awesome SP (single player – dont confuse it with a DP)..great design and feel.. reminded me of the old DOOM days were you had to think just a little…and kill even more…..
RoadKill
PS.. I volunteer for any Beta testing on any new project…
The headcrab room was pretty easy once I realized that I could “steal” the combine’s turrets and set them up in the hallway – lol. Right now I’m stuck somewhere in the level where the G-Man and Dr. Breen are running away. They run through a door that closes when you go near it, and I can’t find any way to pursue them…
it’s funny that you also did find the solution of using a combines turret to kill those headcrabs, this is the second time I hear of someone using this solution. funny thing of it is that I personaly never thought of that, I always stayd at the door at the entrance and killed them all with all the ammo i’ve got right there. still, even when I made it I did get killed many times.
Gavin T. it’s not compleatly clear to me where you are right now, I don’t know if you know that there are 2 walkthroughs that I made, one short one and one compleat one. please check them first out, when they don’t help you to get out of there then please let me know and I will help you further.
here are the walkthroughs;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
and about beta testing my new sp-projecs, let me first tell you all that I made 4 other HL2 sp-maps before this HL2 sp-mod. and after this HL2 mod I have made 1 Cod2 sp-map and 2 Prey sp-maps, i’m currently working on FEAR sp-maps. I have placed links to all my sp-maps before, please look above at comment #227 for those links. the Prey sp-maps wheren’t finisht then so I will give here the link to them;
http://sp-mods.com/home/php-files/news.php?readmore=20
but about beta testing, we have to talk some more because beta testing is not just playing a map, there is much more to it, so when you’re serious about this then we have to talk more about it, let me know.
leon(SPY)
I tried that (using the combine turrets) – but the headcrabs went into an infinite spawn loop 🙁
Glad to see Leon fixed the bug. It’s this sort of thing that makes me curious to perhaps give the mod another spin (I got fed up with the endless waves of combine last time round).
maybe it looks like the headcrabs spawn infinite there, but this is surtenly not the case, there comes an end to end, realy. otherwise you wouldn’t get through that part. just stay at the entrance, (with or without a turret and best thing is to through a few grenates as well to them to kill them all much quicker. but even without a turret or grenates it can be done, just stay put and be aware of every headcrabs that come you’re way. some people think that there are severel maps with nifinite spawn places, but I only have used this ones in all the 15 maps, and that’s at the end where you have to blow up that huge generator.
leon
good going so far,nice mod,so in map h,the dark room at the end of the gas trip nothing happens -get a gun,sounds but no images? got this from the console
*** ERROR: C_ServerRagdoll::InitModel: models/soldier_stripped.mdl missing vcollide data ***
Error: Material “effects/tp_refract” : proxy “TextureScroll” unable to initialize!
my pc f ing up? gonna go back an replay afew maps maybe that will help ,good fun though.
Please see post number 210 above.
thanks for the reply,did the drivers a few times,the game keeps tells me to update,the pc says ive got them,so for now on to the next level,
thanks again
sorry for my very late reply here, but the last 10 days my computer was broken, terrible!! am glad that Baltic could give you the answer although it didn’t seem to help. best thing to do then is indeed to start the next level manualy through a console command.
leon
Okay, I love the new maps, especially the outdoor ones – nice Far Cry feel to things. The cut scenes are a nice touch too, and it shows that your team has put a lot of work into this.
But the thing is, there are a few things I disliked about it, even though I tried my hardest to like this mod. For example; the Max Payne-esque psychaedelic-trip mode towards the end. So many tries and so many wasted reloads trying to figure out what was going on. Sure, I can see that you were trying to add depth to the story, but it came off as a complete set of random encounters.
Not being able to change weapons in the “Breen’s Backup” bit, whilst having no idea of ammo or health (thank god for quick info) and no sprint is less enjoyable – more of an annoyance. YOU HAVE WEAPONS ego YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO SWITCH BETWEEN THEM.
Also, the encounter with the two striders was flawed; they could charge and fire their super lazer attack thingy through obstacles and walls so I had to play on easy mode to be able to survive the attacks, even though I was dodging them properly. Meh, never mind.
I know I sound too much like a ranter, but I really did enjoy your mod. There’s a lot of attention to detail in there, and the fight scenes tested my reflexes far more than the original Half Life 2 ever did, which is just what I love (OMG room full of almost never-ending headcrabs had me hooked trying to do it). I’d love to play more of your mods, so keep it up!
ok ive got a problem here. ive got to lvl 10, and right at the start all im seeing is this: http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3606/leonhl22i0002ad8.jpg
i can hear rain in the background, but I cant even move or anything. and ive waited like 3 min and its still the same thing. ive even restarted the lvl but no change. please help!
nm I didnt know I was in a dark hole. thought I was stuck or something lol.
Southern,
am glad you still liked it. it’s hard to make something that everybody likes, some people thought it was extra challanging not being able to have the choiise of weapons and seeing your health. other people thought it was a bug, but this is simply caused because Breen took your weapons and suit away, (in that small chamber, you see your weapons laying below a glass floor under you). I put it in because it would be fun, but it does anoy a lot of people, that’s true.
on the other hand, lots of people thought the many headcrab part was bad, glad you liked it, I personaly also still like that part. it takes you to the edge, even when you play it many times it never gets easy! about the trip scene, I wanted to put it in the mod because I wanted to use the most of the HL2 editor, see what I could do with it, and also I thought it just would be fun to make some kind of bad trip. it doesn’t realy has a story line or so, it’s just strange things one after another.
Max,
am glad you did find your way out of the dark room, many people did get stuck in that room. never realised that it would be so hard to undestand when I made it, but now I see that it’s badly made that part. I would also be stuck there when I didn’t know it, better said, when I knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have made it like that.
leon
WALKTHROUGHS;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
Hi I downloaded this mod from another halflife2 site yesterday, traced it here to you guys. mod looks great in screenies, however after following install instructions to the letter, the console does not pick the mod up?. I notice that all other HL2 games are in the c/steam/steam apps/ username folder, I placed the mod in there still nothing, Please advise, would really love to play this mod, and help appreciated, cheers
HL2 mods go in the sourcemod folder not the username folder.HL1 mods go in username\half-life folder.
Leon,
Dude I just finished your LeonHL2_1 maps… again nice, not the “MOsphere” I have come to love sooo much but still a fun diversion.
Thanks again for taking the time to make HL2 even better..
RoadKill
andyb thanks, however the console does not show the mod when I install/unzip in the sourcemod folder, and as stated the other games are in user folder, no matter where I put the mod the console does not show it? The version I have is “halflife2 episode1” any other suggestions welcome
it’s a real shame but from time to time some people have problems installing mods. they follow the instructions to the letter like you said, but it simply doesn’t show up in the green steam window. why this happens is not clear, and the last half year I did get about 8 to 10 mails from people whi had the same problem. they can’t install this mod, or any other for that matter. some of those people could install it a few days later so it did show up in the steam console. why this happens I realy don’t know, but it’s not a problem with this mod, but with steam itself. for now you could play then the other HL2 sp-mappack baltic and I made. it’s from the same quality and has to be installed not as a mod but as a mappack (read read me.txt please), so that you CAN play, download here, (and please try installing the mod at a later point again);
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Leons_SP_Map_Pack;39881
leon(SPY)
Thats the problem.HL2 Episode 1 is not not HL2.You need HL2 to play this mod.Episode 1 is a standalone game.
As I understand it, it’s a Half-Life 2 mod — it needs HL2 not episode 1. Same goes for all the HL2 maps.
i thought I already had asnwered on this new comment here, i’m pretty sure about it but can be wrong or made a mistake while sending it, phillip?
but indeed, it’s a HL2 sp-mod, so it needs indeed the game HL2 itself, and not the ep1.
still, in the last half year I have had about 10 mails from people who did have HL2, and installed the mod like it should, (extract it in your sourceMod folder) and still it didn’t show up in there green steam windows between there other games, (after re-starting steam ofcourse). seem that a few steam account have trouble installing mods, because those people did had this problem not only with this sp-mod (C to A), but couldn’t see any mod they installed in it. and there is no fix for this problem, (although one guy wrote me back with the message that a week later he suddenly could see the mod between the other games in his steam account.)
leon(SPY)
ok, thanks guys, was confusing me because the game title is actually “halflife2”
“episode1”
again thanks for help and patience explaining this
You did indeed allready post but it got caught in the spam filter as did your last post.Sometimes this happens but I try to check it everyday.
when that’s the case then it doesn’t matter, I was already afraid that I was loosing my mind, haha.
by the way, didn’t know you’re helping Phillip out with the threads and comments Andyb. or do I make now a very stupid remark, and have I missed something that is already commen knowledge for months?
Phillip could use some serious help because he runs it all by his own for years, what is simply unbelievable considering what Planet Phillip all does.
leon
(i have noticed that sometimes when I typ a comment I see the same text apear while I type under the space where I typ it in, but sometime like now this doesn’t happen?)
I try to help Phillip out when I can.As for the text appearing while you type,that was a feature added awhile ago but since the move to a new host some feature’s have become broken.Phillip is working on them.
So it was fun for the first couple maps until I got to the airboat, drove out, half the sky went hall-of-mirrors, I fell out of the level and the game crashed.
I tried redownloading it. Now this was a while back and I didnt read all 267 comments on here but……what the hell. Did you fix it?
Mirrors sounds like your video card is heating up.If you move does it go all tiled mirrors as you move around? I know its possible since mine does that so I save my game and shut the game down for a bit.If it comes again to soon I take it out to the work shop and give it a blast of air.Mine’s a 9800 pro.
Never happened on my 4600Ti but thats a developer card so was built better but cant put it back in cause I think if not mistaken thats the one one boxed up for Afro Dude that as soon as I get rid of this flu I can get mailed.
If I’m not mistaken Baltic helped make this mod? If he did can we lose the Leon’s part so I can find this mod when I search the mod folder. May not mean much to you but when your looking for something that starts with a “c” you don’t look in the “L”‘s. Just maybe a thought you could look into since we may have to rename a lot of mods so they have the makers name in front on their title 😉
Correct
No, sorry. That’s it’s official name. I didn’t add the “Leon’s” part, Leon did.
It does mean something to me but there is nothing I can do about it. I couldn’t change “Half-Life” to “Full-Life” just because it would make it easier to find. 😉
i am making sp-maps for years now and I always gave them a title with my name in it, for example;
LeonSof2-4
LeonCod2-2
LeonPrey
LeonMohaa3
LeonQuake4-1
HalfLife_2_Leons_SP_Map_Pack
etc.
it’s not that I think my name is so beautifull that I want to add it. but I did this because I make so many maps and I want people to find them easy. so, best way to do so was to add my name in it. with this latest Hl2 sp-mod we decided to give it a title and not just;
HalfLife_2_Leons_SP_Map_Pack2
therefore the title is like it is, so people can find my work as fast as possible.
leon
I doubt its my vid card, though Im gonna dl a new copy again and load it up tommorow, would do it now if it werent for the large glass of milk residing between the shift and a keys on my desktops keyboard
i got a 7950gx2, which wouldnt be slowing it, buut is supposed to have heat issues (which ive never had thanks to a big case)
still I fall out of the level, which to me means a an incorrectly stored clipping plane in the bsp
since he says released a “bug-free” mod (lol at him thinking thats possible, but still its of fairly good quality) I think my copys corrupt…………. although I dl’ed it twice
anway did he ever release an update, I got it months ago
this is realy new to me, that you fall out of a map. before these 15 sp-maps where released as a mod it was released as a sp-mappack. and that one had severel bugs and errors. we took 3 whole months to fix all those (worked 10 hours a day on it or more), and now bugs like these are not in it anymore, that i’m sure of. so, I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t caused by a bug, maybe a video driver needs updating?
hope you can play through, and like it,
leon
Hey thanks for responding personally. I thought it was a really great mappack up until that point, really fun. That was the only bug I found, too bad it prevented me from playing farther, I was really dissappointed. Great mod so far, I love it. Ill see if I can get it working when I get home. Hope I can finish it!
Can you save the game just before that point and either send me the save file or atleast give me the name of the save point?I like to trouble shoot stuff and help people out.I dont personally believe its a mod issue and think something else is factoring in to make it do that.Your video card is very outstanding.I also believe it maybe part of the problem.Does it have a setting to run on one core?I’m thinking they dont like DX9 since it doesn’t support dual core video cards.Maybe vista will but who the hell knows with MS.
it could indeed be caused otherwise by your outstanding video card, maybe it’s just to good.
still, when you can’t solve the problem then there is a way to play on, by starting manualy the next map. I’m not sure in which map you now are, best thing to do for you is look for it in the walkthrough here;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
and then look for the File Name of the next map, open the console by pressing;
~
type in the console;
map leonHL2_2a or b/c/d/da/e/f/g etc
enter
let me know if you have problems with this,
and Andyb, should you find the problem then i’m very interest to hear what it was.
thanks, leon
hopefully someone can assist me with my problem with coastline to atmosphere. I dont know the name of the level but here is the scene.
I am floating and I have no keyboard or mouse control . I float past what looks like a playground , a computer console with barney on the screen . I now come to a walkway (I’m still floating) surronded by fire and the man in the bluesuit standing there and says somethingabout” wrong place wrong time” I float past him and then I for and intance see a wall and know by sound and sight I pick up some life and ammo. Now here is the problem room is dark and I don’t move tried numerous time but to no avail. It seems to me there is a glitch in the gameplay. Do you know what the problem may be?? If you could help I would be please…………………….than you
this problem is caused because you probebly don’t have the latest video drivers installed for you video card. you’re not the first one who has this problem is the comments above there are severel comments like this one fo you. but I understand that you don’t read all
277 comments.
the problem is that in this part of this map, and the next map I used a lot of overlays (simply said is this an entity that shows different images or makes the screen look different). but to see these you need the latest video drivers.
here you can find a walkthrough by the way;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
when you still have problems after installing the latest drivers then please let me know and I will help you furhter.
success,
leon(SPY)
Thanks for the replies, sorry I havent responded yet….I got it working!!!
I recently had to reinstall steam because my SDK was acting up, not saving game configurations, crashing when I set my MOD’s steamappid to 215. Anyway, it fixed coastline too!! yay!
By the way, I’m a fellow level designer which I think give me a much fuller appreciation of your work Leon. Its great!
****SPOILER*****
I loved how after getting the first couple keycards the level circled back around to where the buggy was and then brought you back to the end of the airboat sequence. It was a triple whammy, hey theres my car! Hey theres the lift that got closed off before! HEY IM BACK AT THE END OF THE AIRBOAT SEGMENT! So cool.
*****SPOILER******
Anyway, I’ve played for hours upon hours and still havent finished the first chapter, no wonder this took you a full year of hard work. I’m also playing on difficult. Which truly is…difficult, but great! I understand why you put the warning in now.
Anyway great work, I’m looking forward to playing some more tommorow. Maybe one day soon youll play “Citizen Recusant’….. if I ever finish ; )
Thanks for a great and long HL2 SP mod, there arent enough!
Mr Happy
Thanks Mr Happy,
i’m glad you liked it so much. I hope you’re able to finish the C to A mod on difficult setting because it will look in some maps if it is not possible to play it on that hard setting. to be honnist, I never could play it on difficult, but as far as I know have at least 2 people played it on difficult.
beside this sp-mod I have made 4 other sp-maps for HL2, that you also could play when you’re done with this one, you can find a link to it in comment #260 above. should you want to see a list of all my sp-mappacks and mod for games like Sof2,Cod,Prey en others then please look in the download section of sp-mods.com, there they are all placed. or look on my site (that is still in development, but the links work;)
http://www.leon.triplebit.nl/
leon
Leon,
Add me to the Difficult players list, a pain in the ass during the suit-less parts. The crab room took me nearly a week to complete because I kept running out of ammo (I really hate those mini MF’ers).
***Spoiler
I wish I had thought of the turret…
**** end spoiler
Difficult is very hard but doable and again your sp are awesome.
RoadKill
thanks, so now there 3 persons that I know of that played it on Difficult, well done!!
leon
Thnx for the brillant Mod, I am currently at the level where I am about to find a way to go to the sattelite, where all the headcrabs come at you.
I must be a noob, I die there evry time :-)… I will get it eventually.
I tried downloading the walkthrough, but the link you provide (http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/), doesn’t work.
Belgarath
thanks for the compliment, and you have played about 2/3 of the 15 maps.
that part is indeed quit hard, but it can be done, (even when you play it on setting Difficult, although that is nearly impossible. this mod is best played on Easy, or when you’re very skilled on Normal).
you can find a walkthrough with info about how to get through every map here;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
success,
leon
Hi Leon, I’m also very much enjoying your great cta mod. Unfortunately the link of the walkthrough doesn’t work. It says that this link can’t be found on that server. Maybe you can check that? However this is truely one of the best mods I’ve played so far, great work Leon!!
sp-mods.com is experiencing a few problems at the moment and will be back online in a few days at most.
For us dweebs- we rely on that walkthrough…
No way to post it on a newsgroup or somewhere as a text file?
We give you Godhood- all we ask is a walkthrough.
as Yoda would say
“There is no walk-through there is do or do not, young Padawans er dweebawans, to succeed there is only to use the force and save a lot…:)”
I’m very sorry, but it’s like Phillip said, sp-mods.com has some hacking problems and the site needed to be put off untill things are fixed to make sure they can’t be done no more harm. still, I understand the need of having a walkthrough and I will see in to this and come back on this today with an answer.
sorry for the inconvinius,
leon
I would like to apologise for the problems accessing the walkthroughs which was caused by a hacker.
I have uploaded them again and you can find them at the following links;
The short version
http://alphaomega-online.co.uk/C_to_A_manual_short/
Long version
http://alphaomega-online.co.uk/C_to_A_manual/
Peter
thanks a lot guys for the quick respond!!
Coastline and planetphillips team rulezzz!!
What can I say, wow. Not to sure about the wacky middle bit but that was better than Ep1. Brilliant. Calling it a mod just does give the game justice.
Thankyou to you and your team for making something so superb, and free.
Hey guys,
Does anyone know what to do when your halucinating, after the first time you see the Gman, he says ‘the right place at the wrong time” or somthing like that, then you suddenly land in this dark room where you get a health pack and ammo, but the room is dark, and you cant move anywhere, there are some funny brownish lights in front but you cant really move anywhere in the dark, even though you can hear combines in the background…Can anyone pls help wut 2 do next???
i tried looking in every direction, even the walkthrough doesnt help!!!
hi
the problem is not with the map or Mod but with the driver of your video card. a lot of people have had the same problem. thing is that from this place on this map and the next 2 maps have severel overlays (some kind of screen effects) in them. to see them you need to update your video driver to the latest version. without it you not only see those overlays not working, but for some odd reson it also makes it impossible to move on.
so please update your driver, should you still have problems after it, then please comment again and I will help furhter.
success,
Leon (SPY),
at the time I made the walkthroughs this wasn’t already noticed, otherwise I would have implemented it in them.
Damit, I have a laptop and cant upgrade individual components! Even if I did, i’d take forever to get as far as I did 🙁
Well thanks anyway…I was planning on commenting on the MOD after I had finished it but since this is pretyy much the end, I might as well give you my feedback.
The gameplay in this MOD was considerably different to other 3rd party MOD’s I had played, the different maps were very enjoyable, although the gameplay was a little repeatitive through the first few maps, it picked up pretty well, I never really got the reason behind giving the time at various intervals (mind you I didn’t get all the way through) anyway I really enjoyed being in Gordons halucinations, I must be honest, it has been a long time since i’ve actually played HL and gotten a little bit freaked out (i must have been 15, when I first played HL, hanvnt really been scared since) I guess it must have been the unpredictablity of having no weapons, not knowing what happens next, and the feeling of being trapped in, makes you really enjoy a good horror game.
anyway, overall nice job, thanks for a few hours of decent gameplay (that I personally would rank higher then episode one) But please next time set out the minimum hardware requirments so that players are able to determine wheather thier machines are able to run the game.
Thanks again!!! 🙂
Shaz,
i hope you still read this second comment of mine, even when you think you have played nearly all the maps. let me first tell you, that when you can upgrade your video cards driver you don’t need to play it all again, you can just pick up from the last auto save, or your own save. so, that wouldn’t be a problem. and you still have 6 maps to go from here, ( !!! ), so you have played a bit more then 2/3 of the mod. when you liked it a suggest you play on.
i never had a laptop myself, so I don’t know anything about driver updates. but when it realy isn’t possible, then there is still another solution to play on. you where near the end of map 9 (leonHL2-2h). so you just could start manualy the next map by typing in the console;
map leonHL2-2i
and enter. but also in this map I used those overlays, but not all of them give this problem, and I have used many different ones, about 20 of them. so you could play that map and when you get stuck anyway you could just load the next map manualy again. should you not want to try this and only want to play knowing for sure that you will not get stuck, then I suggest you go on with;
map LeonHL2-2j
then you still have 5 maps to play on with.
but, that’s up to you.
i want to thank you for playing this mod, and am pleased with the compliment.
thanks,
leon
http://www.leon.triplebit.nl/
Your welcome,
How do I type things in the console?
This is a lilttle embarising as im probably the only one who is so clueless around here…
BTW does any1 know where driver updates are available for radeon graphic cards??
And thanks for the prompt response Mr. Leon.
You can update your graphics card at http://www.ati.com
To bring up the console, load HL2 as normal, then when hit the ` key to bring up the console. The ` key is the one above the ‘tab” key.
this is the number 300 for comment just make a look at download and CtoA seems to have been more than 50 000 times downloaded…If you have just asked 1 eur per download you could by a beautiful car…or even create you own company for mapping…
i would value it as more then a euro.
tried to download the driver but got an error 🙁
shhh….stef, dont give him any ideas.
next thing you know we’ll be paying for furture ones!!!
lol
Shaz, if you got a page no longer exists message or an error message when you try to download the latest driver, try again. I got that a couple of times but it worked eventually.
Thanks Mike S. for explaning things. although you made maybe a small mistake with explaining how to open a map in the console. you said to use `, but that has to be ~. it’s the same key but then with SHift together. I also have a Radeon video card (Radeon 9700 Pro), and I also have quit some difficulties with installing the latest driver. should you need the driver for the 9700 Pro then please look here;
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeonx-xp.html
the download rate goes indeed very well, still, I have to say that Baltic and I are a bit spoiled, because we made severel sp-mappacks that had simular numbers. still, i’m glad with every download!!
(i hope Valve will notice this sp-mod and place it between the other mods on Steam, the more so because there all MP and this is a sp mod).
I get an message saying `A.I. Disabled` whats this mean and how do I fix it?
sorry for being so stupid….
duh…
Open the console and type AI_Disable 0
I think thats the right way.Been awhile since I used it.
I did manage to download the driver for my radeon 9800 graphics card, but when the software was on my pc, I could not run it, it gave me some kind of error message
Hello Leon,
Just finished Coastline to atmosphere, and all I goota say is WOW – you belong on the halflife developement team. An awesome mod . . and I’ve played them all! Tough but fun – and as for the critics out there – all I gotta say is if you jump over a rail and kill yourself, well, thats reality.
My only question is when do we get to see more? I read somewhere you where working on a Cite 17 extension to your mod. True? If so when do we get a peak! Soon I hope.
Great work and I hope you have mere planned!
i’m not working on a extention to this mod, but, I am working on something, can’t tell you what right now but will do so after this weekend here.
thanks for the compliments,
leon
Haha secrets secrets 🙂
Looking forward to it. Thanks for the tip, Leon
We have a lot planned. 😉
I really hope we can reveal stuff soon. 🙂
hmmm, this seems to be a good mod. I really gonna download it. The screenshots look great.
Ah! More Leon mods! It’s music to my ears! Who needs the HL2 “episodes” when we got Leon & co!? 😀
1. A Real Storyline ™
2. Tough, but reasonably placed enemies
3. The hallucinatory scenes are disturbing. Extraordinary!!!
4. Fine selection of music
‘Nuff said. 6 out of 5. This is my Half Life 2 part 2.
thanks guys !!!!
leon
Schoolboy error. The vent just before getting to jeep in stage 1 is too small to get in. My install is vanilla. Playtest properly.
“Playtest properly, Schoolboy error”?
If that means what I think it does maybe you should learn how to play a game.Ever think of crouching and hitting jump?
Yes you can now open mouth and insert foot.
I have to say this mod has been tested very well.
PS: LOL, open mouth and insert foot.
Glad you understood all that andyb. I’m still trying to figure out “my install is vanilla”. ???????????
I think your tone is a little rude. Please consider asking questions and making suggestions before making these kind of statements.
Only in the sense that it has been played by many thousands of people.
Simply means that it is a standard install with no customizations made.
Phillip said “Only in the sense that it has been played by many thousands of people.”
I was talking about before release. Leon tested it Baltic tested it I tested it and I think maybe a couple others. And they fixed all the bugs that were found. Leon made sure there were as many bugs fixed as possible before release.
I tested one level as well, but I personally don’t think a few people testing a mod of this size is enough. However, as far as bugs are concerned this mod is bug-free.
Gee, I learn something new everyday (although I don’t think it’s something I would say).
I remember playing this mod & I loved it. I also remember that I had absolutely no problems with it whatsoever.
I have a problem getting into map 11.
I am at the end of map 10, took the middle elevator to the top and went into the hole.
when I walk on, I come to a gate and get the message that a new level is being loaded.
After about 20 secs of disk access the game quits to the desktop with the following message: Internal driver in [Direct3DDevice9::Present()
Strange that I made it to level 10 without any problems at all….
Belgarath
Hi Belgarath,
i’m not sure why you say;
“Strange that I made it to level 10 without any problems at all….”
don’t know what kind of problems you did expect to see, maybe you refer to the problems that people write above in some comments, but those are caused because of that they don’t use the latest videocard drivers. as far as testing this mod, indeed have Baltic, Cubedude, Jurgen and myself tested the map throughout the whole year, and 3 months after the first (beta/mappack)release we have tested it as good as we could. more testers would have been fine, but testing a game/mod/map is not something that everybody can do well. that’s why there where not many more testers to be found.
Belgarath, about your problem, as far as I know are you the first one that as this problem on that place, and i’m not sure what the error message mean. but, you can easely load the next map manualy. please open console by pressing ~ and type in the console that lowers down on screen;
map LeonHL2-2j
Enter. and the next map will load.
have fun
leon
This is a question for Leon.
Hi Leon, I am almost through your C TO A mod this being at the third attempt, one using a bad download, two giving up with running issues around levels H & J, this third attempt was achieved by manually loading around any major playing problem. I am at the point where you need to shoot the two baddies before they get through the door, but have not yet managed to do it quick enough. However, the point I wanted to make is with reference to your comment about update drivers. Having experienced similar playing problems with some of the above, I find it difficult to see how it could be driver issue. How is it that we are only having these problems on just a few levels and not else where in the mod, also I am not having any problems running the original HL2 and others like SMOD HL2 and all the other top ten listed HL2 custom mods including Leon’s other maps?
Thanks to you and the team for a great game and looking forward to your next adventure.
Good points there mel.
Its weird so many people have had problems. 🙁
But every computer is different. Ive even had weird problems that no one else had when I beta tested c to a.
I think updating video card drivers is always said as a precautionary solution to most problems.
This is also something that “mystifies” me. I don’t have very good graphics at all on my computer, but some mods/maps I play, I have no problems whatsoever; where as, more people do.
the thing is that I used a lot of Overlays in 2 of the 15 sp-maps in C to A, (map H and i). that’s why you only exprereince these video car driver update problems in these 2 maps. I did find these Overlays between the original Hl2 files, I didn’t make them myself. and when I knew then that they would cause these problems I proberly would not have used them. I think that Valve also didn’t use them themselves in HL2 for this reason, (there are many sounds, overlays, models to be found in the HL2 stock files that weren’t used in the actual game, don’t know why they still added them to the stock files, but they did).
leon
Ok Leon, that would appear to make sense, the fact that there is something unique within the structure of these few levels points to being the root cause of the problems experienced by some. Thanks again for all.
Hey.I ve downloaded this mod and I hav to say that is number one mod ever p’layed on my comp.Th best chapter in this mod was the one full of trees and stuff.just freaking great;o and ididnt experience non of the above problems on my comp
Glad you enjoyed it.
Hello Leon
Ref. message #310, you mentioned you planned to have “something” coming out soon. Ya big tease! Can you offer any more tidbits yet??
What ever you have planned, I’m looking forward to it.
Joho
🙂 The question is Do we have something else planned or are we just yanking everyones chain.
Well I cant say much but just hang in there a little longer and you will find out. 😉
A “little” longer?
Come on, tease me some more!
ok,
a little as in…
more then 1 day and less then 1 year.
And, a tease you are!
I await, somewhat patently. . .
Don’t get your hopes up to much. 😀
Mwahahaha
lol
Hi. I like to mod, but a question. Am I supposed to not be able to use different guns? Once I pick one up, I’m stuck with it. I can’t switch weapons. I’m still picking up the ammo, but can’t switch. What up with that? It is annoying as hell.
That is only for part of the mod. it was ment to be that way.
But if you really want to, you can put these in the console
sv_cheats 1
give item_suit
Even after you get out of the “gas chamber” (more like LSD trip) and don’t have any weapons till you do a little Sam Fisher and get to the armory? Because there are a bunch of guns in there and I can’t use them all.
when I made those levels I thought it would be extra challanging when the player had to play a while without the suit, but when I knew then what I know now, (that so many people don’t like this not having suit future)then I wouldn’t have taken the suit out.
the only way to change from one weapon to the other is by shooting up all ammo of it and then hopefully you get the next weapon of choise, if not, then you have to shoot all ammo up again. you have to agree it makes it all extra challanging, but it also can be quit frustrating in some parts, that’s true.
success,
leon
I know that it’s out of context but I will just let flow my angry against Leon… I really like is HL2 release but in comparaison his two call of duty 1 release where disapointing especially the second one that came out called leoncod2. Even designand architecture are brilliant, there is nearly no possibility to get weaons or ammo from enemies it’s a set of 4 maps and you don’t get any recharge from the starting place so ammo dicrease with progression and lead you to a intermediate place were you don’t have nothing left…I really hate you for this leon it took me more than 3 hours to reach the cave where I have nothing left to finish I try to cheat (give ammo) but it didn’t work. It’s really the most frustrating map I have played ever on more than 1000… a real pitty…click my name where you can find some review related to ww2 releases I will certainly make a review of this one really soon
Dude, that was really uncalled for. If you need to complain why dont you complain about the 1000 mods that Dont get released rather then someone that actually releases stuff.
and as for the no suit thing, if you don’t like it, learn how to use the freaking console.
That’s a little strong stef.
That’s a little strong stef.[/quote]
You know Phillip when you try to play a level paying to spare attention to everything and you don’t want to cheat to finish and realize that it’s unpossible after playing 3 hours then your inside is really boiling and you want to spare your experience…the reflexion is that if you are making levels it’s for the community to play and enjoy if it’s not the case you complain perhaps a little too far. When it’s hard but you have the weaponery to finish or not it only depends on you but when it’s not the case it’s like wasting your time… If you go and see a moving and there is a cut for the last ten minutes you sure ask to be payed back or won’t return to this movie theater ever… At least I do so. I’m really angry on Leon or perhaps Baltic (which seems to be more the coder)that runed such an experience Even if I still consider him as a fantastic mapper I could now without no doubt call him the Mickael Schumacher of mapping…
I normally leave SPY to reply to questions, but this time I have no choice but to intervene.
@Stef.
This is not the place to discus problems with CoD mods, but I will reply to your comments this time. The problem with the weapons pickup only affected a very small amount of players. The majority of people who play the CoD mod has no problem whatsoever with weapons pickup. Unfortunately no one was willing to help me find a solution to the problem, so a patch to fix the problem was impossible to make.
I just thought you should be aware of the facts before you post a review and make a fool of yourself. Because I WILL be explaining these facts on any website you post to.
The mod was GREAT, except from the nuclear explosion on… I had no idea where to go or how to get there. I tried for an hour, but I’d just randomly get crushed or burnt. It wasn’t until I turned on Godmore and noclip that I was able to figure it out. It just seemed like random explosions and various barriers that just killed me instead of blocking me. Tone down the shaking, explosions, and burnings and it would have been a little more enjoyable. Kinda silly to make the destruction “realistic” if I can’t move “realistically.” It is a game after all.
You just needed to learn the path to go.Also need to use the Run/Shift key.You must do the same as Breen did in the video clip.Use the button on the console.I myself have never had any problem with Leons/Baltics maps.I love em and will try the Doom maps once I get it installed again.
even when this is not the place to discusse the Cod sp-mappacks baltic and I made, I still will answer it. let me start with saying;
To Stef;
why didn’t you mail me about this problem???!!
i realy don’t understand that, I ALWAYS answer every mail in a few hours to a day. that said, like Baltic said, a few people had that problem, and we didn’t know how to fix it, have asked around but nobody did help us with it, finally there was nothing else to do as leave it like it was, (even more so because only 5 % or less of the players had this problem!). another problem was that people didn’t had any weapon at all, and couldn’t pick them up from death soldiers either. I did get many of those mails either, and that was caused by having to many mods placed in there cod directory. after removing them the sp-mappacks played fine.
the suggestion that I would release a mappack where you can’t get ammo is a bit strange of you, do you realy think that after spending months or hard work I would release something like that??
please, just ask me next time when there is a problem, I ALWAYS put my emailadress in the txt file, and I ALWAYS answer.
leon
(this in compairison to some other modders, that most of the time simply don’t reply to questions and comments)
Leon most of the time I contact people but since I know that you come here quite a lot and that , in fact, had problems contacting other releaser make you sometimes saying ” this time I don’t send an email and get directly in contact with the developper” I won’t spaw this topic and email you about future question and answers
ok, good to hear. still, even when we couldn’t help it that you had these problems I still want to apologize for it, and want to thank you for playing all the maps/mods.
thanks,
Leon
I still don’t believe that warrants hating somebody. Be angry with them or frustrated but not hate.
Anyway, Baltic was right this is not the place to talk about Leon’s CoD maps (I misread Stef original comment), especially since you (Stef) have your own website to rant on, but it seems everybody has said what they needed to say.
So, no more off-topic please.
I don’t know if anyone else has had this problem with the mod or not (and I must say, Leon & Team did a great job) but ever since I got to the point in the game where you lose your weapons and confront Breen, the get gassed, etc., I cannot change weapons after I pick them up… I’m stuck with whatever weapon I last picked up until the ammo runs out, then it switches to the next one… I’ve gotten to the level where the Combine guard is walking around in a circuit, you have no weapons and you have to find the crowbar to break a lock on the weapons storage area… I’ve gotten the crowbar, broken the lock, and got into the storage area, but keep getting killed right and left because I can’t change weapons after I pick them up to take out the three soldiers and the buzzkill that keep coming after me… any help would be appreciated… BTW, dunno if this makes any difference, but never found the Enviro Suit up to this point either..
Resonator, read from post 343 down a few.
many people had problems with the fact that you loose the suit there in the mod, (many comments above handle this subject). when I knew then, when I made the maps what I knew now, then I would never have take the suit away form the player. you loose the suit when you loose all weapons, (Breen takes them away of you in that small room, with the glass floor and under it all your weapons). I thought that it would be extra challenging to loose the suit, what makes that you can’t see how much health you have, and you can’t switch between weapons. the only way to get another weapon is to shoot up all ammo from the weapon that you have then.
but, you will get back your suit, just hang on. best thing for you to do is, when you have broken the lock on that door from the ammo room, to make sure you get not a grenate as last weapon to catch, but instead the shotgun, or what it that small machine gun that lays there around. once you have done that take cover behind something and take out first the 3 combines. from there it will be easier again. I have made a walkthrough that can be found here, if you still have trouble;
WALKTHROUGHS;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
I am thoroughly enjoying playing the mod. I’ve played HL2-Episode one but I have enjoyed this mod more. However, I am stuck at one point and cannot get any further. It is on map 10 where I have trouble. I am on the otherside of the glass wall, where Barney was taken away. I see the vent below the ledge from where I came from, but when I go into the vent, and jump down, I die when I land (I hear the cracking of my legs), and then the screen has that wonderful red tint. I have tried to jump, rather than just falling, but this does not work. What am I doing wrong. Thanks for any help.
I just wanted to say that this website and community is awesome. I posted on the general forum orginally, and received email the very next day from Phillip giving me the info I needed and where to find additional help, as well as letting me know he had moved my post to this specific forum since it was about this mod in particular. When I was going through the lists of mods looking for the right place to post, I missed it, because I was looking for “Coastline to Atmosphere” instead of “Leon’s Coastline to Atmosphere” – and instead of getting some reply as to how I was an idoit, n00b, etc., like I’ve received on other forums, not only did get a direct reply from Phillip via email, but Leon repsonded right away in this forum as well. All I can say is thank you, kudos, and keep up the excellent work! BTW, I persevered long enough that I was finally about to get past that point I was stuck at… it only took about 20 tries since my health was so low that only 1-2 hits killed me, but I eventually got past it. Thanks again!
Res
I’m glad you like it.
Don’t forget the search, it’s not perfect but it’s okay.
Well done. It’s so satisfying to finally get past a section that causes has problems. Almost better than finishing a game or mod!
Lenny, I am afraid that you just have to less health when you jump/fall down through the ventelator shaft. and I don’t think that many times trying will help, best thing to do is I asume to go one saved point back and try again from there. but, then try to not get damaged to much, so that when you reach the vent again you have more health. let me know when you keep having trouble and I will help in another way if possible.
Resonator, I agree that Planet Phillip is much more friendly as many other forums. I also hate those forums where people can’t reply in a normal way, (gaming and everything that comes with it should be fun, right?!)
leon
4 other HL2 sp-maps;
/posts/leons-mappack-1-half-life-2/
WALKTHROUGHS;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
Verry nice one, thanks for making it ^^
Leon just dropped by to seriously commend you on this rather large and intricate single player mod. I’ve been a avid downloader of single player mods since the original HL and I think this map pack deserves the highest honours. Action packed, extremely well designed, sometimes frustrating with the amount of enemies but overall an amazing experience. Have you recieved word from anyone at Valve because this is some highly worthy of their own mappers. This is definetly in my eyes the best HL/HL2 single player mod of all.
Thanks for the experience.
geoffreyfleming
let me first apolotiace for my late reaction, but I have just been relocating to another home and that was a huge task to do, (also took it about a small week to have internet on my new location/home).
thanks for the kind words about this CtoA HL2 sp-mod, i’m glad you liked it.
about Valve, it’s strange but CtoA was never noticed by them, (they have writen about other mods but not this one), don’t know why. when it was released I have mailed Valve about it, but never did get a reaction from them.
beside this 15 sp-maps mod, (that I made together with Baltic.Forever) we did release another HL2 sp-mappack with 4 sp-maps, (see download section of Planer Phillip, and look for Leon SP mappack. should you be interested in other sp-mappacks/mods of us then please email me or look in the other comments above where I placed links to them, (sp-maps for Cod1+2, Sof2, Prey, Quake2, I still need to release my Fear sp-map,)
leon
To be honest I wasn’t expecting a response really just to commend you but this is seriously the best mapping/coding I’ve seen for a single player mod and it was fun as hell to play. I notice you’re a Max Payne fan judging from the music snippets and possibly the drugged out scenes near the end with all that trippy map editting which was quite possibly some of the coolest scenes I’ve seen in Source mapping. I’ve played those other maps too and they are great too. Keep mapping you’re bound to get recognition sooner or later.
My problem is map 9, believe I am at the end of MAp 9, after I am automatically carried around and left in a pitch black room with a machine gun, well, it is pitch black, and no matter how much I run around in circles, it stays black, and I cannot see anywhere to go, I have even uninstalled and redownloaded and replayed again, but the same thing, so what am I missing, I read the walkthrough, and can find no hole to crouch and walkthrough…. Do I have a glitch? the flashlight does nothing, then when I save it, and try to load it(there’s ususally a little pic to show where you are), I can see in the little pic in the load screen but when I start from that point, it is pitch black, what is wrong
PLEASE HELP ME
hi Chris, i’m not sure if this is the place where you are stuck, but i’m pretty sure because you say that you are at the end of the map, (9).
then the problem is with your video card driver. many people have commented about this problem above, but I understand that you don’t read through them all. thing is, I used Overlays in this mod, simply explained are overlays photo’s or moving images on screen. I used original HL2 overlays that can be found in the original HL2 files, but they (valve) didn’t use it themselves in HL2. I gess I now why, because it would give these problems. so, please download and install the latest video card driver that you can find for your card and install it, and please play the same level again. and you will now see some strange effects on your screen. don’t know why, but without the latest drivers you find yourself there in a black room, with the drivers you will see normal, with some screen effect.
please let me know if it helped, otherwise I will helpm you furhter with it.
leon (SPY)
Spy is correct about the video drivers, but you may also have an old graphics card which doesn’t support the overlay in that part of the level. Please see comment number 210 and I apologise for the inconvenience.
We are also working on a new Mod, and you can get more information about this in the forums.
Peter (baltic forever)
Thx guys, but heres the deal. im running nvidia geforce fx 5200 and have updated,
still black, I open the console and get
“error: Material “effects/tp_refract” : proxy “TextureScroll” unable to initialize!”
I went to #210 and 211, and put in leonhl2-2i and get unknown command, so I am not advancing to next map, also, when I enter the map, I assume 10, it goes black, I get the display that I receive machine gun, ammo and health, but I get no text as discussed here.
I see absolutely nothing but black, occasionally if I move around, I het a flickering across the screen, but still see no hole , for that matter no wall to find a hole, im stumped, why cant I advance manually to next map?
you need to type
map
to load a map. So that’s,
map leonhl2-2i
thanks Mr Happy, for explaining that, it’s indeed;
” map LeonHL2-2i ”
without the ” ofcourse.
but, like the walkthrough explaines do you start in a black room and should you see text on screen and a hole in the wall at your right side. but because he I also used a overlay (when I knew then what I know now I would have used them, because of this all!!!!)
so, I am afraid there is nothing else to do for you as start the map that comes behind ” I ” , what is ” j “. because I used overlays in map G,H and I.
so, please open console and type;
map LeonHL2-2j
and you still can play the last 5 maps.
i’m really sorry for this inconvinius!!
should you want to play more of us, then look also here please (below),and very soon a new HL2 sp-mod will be released of us.
4 other sp-maps;
/posts/leons-mappack-1-half-life-2/
leon
(should you be interested in the many other sp-mods/mappacks that we made for other games then please let me know)
Well, I was enjoying this mod, and had a number of positive things to say about it, until I reached the point where it completely gave in to the overused “Hard = Fun” and “Harder and harder and harder = really, really fun” design flaws.
I don’t mind mods that are simply difficult, if the mod gives a taste of the overall difficulty level early on. If I choose to try such a mod, I can at least tell if I’ll be able to finish it before I’m 80% of the way through it.
Some mods are for better gamers than me, and I have no problem with that.
But it’s a totally different story when I play a mod that starts out at a typical level of difficulty, and then gets progressively harder. What happens in this case is that I start out enjoying it, only to have that enjoyment turn into frustration much later–and as in this case, I don’t get to finish it at all.
Very annoying.
The scripting bugs didn’t help. In one spot, I was in the buggy, shooting Combine that were repeatedly appearing. I was taking advantage of the buggy’s infinite ammo, which I like to do when I can. But the Combine kept coming and coming…and coming and coming. After a ridiculous length of time and number of Combines slaughtered, I assumed I had encountered a bug, so I exited the buggy. As soon as I did that, and took out three or four Combine with standard weapons, they stopped being generated.
In another spot, text appeared on the screen telling me to look for an air vent. As soon as that text appeared, I suspected where that air vent would be. The problem is, I had already been there! (That’s why I knew where it would be…) When I went to the air vent initially, it was impassable. It didn’t become a “breakable” air vent until I went elsewhere in the map, and triggered it to become so. I fail to see why this was necessary.
The part of the mod where I finally gave up is where a slew of headcrabs are dumped on the player. After being killed again and again in that spot, I started wondering if the mod was programmed so that the headcrabs would keep coming indefinitely. If that were the case, a “stay and shoot” approach would obviously always fail. But by this point, all the fun was gone for me, so I didn’t bother trying any other way.
I’m very sorry you’re so disapointed Chianti, even morer so because you have played about 50% of the mod.
about the mod getting harder the further you get in to it, that comment really surprices me Chianti, because as far as I now are nearly all the games made like that.
let me ask you first on which setting you played CtoA? because we added to the difficultie window that this mod wásn’t ment to be played on Hard, and that the Normal setting should be considdered as Hard, (what makes the setting Easy in Normal). still, as far as I know are there yet 3 people who did finish it on Hard, but i’ll be honnist, I can’t play it myself on Hard. so when you choose Normal then you should have played it on Easy.
about the other comments, where you ended, with all the headcrabs, a solution to it is pick up a floor turret and take it with you in the hallway,. so it helps you with killing the headcrabs, (didn’t think of this solution myself!) but even without it it can be killed all when you reload carefully and save ammo as much as possible. about the text and the airvent, it’s more then a year ago no that I made it, so i’m not sure where that is. but sometimes it can happen that I made a mistake, I tried to make 15 large sp-maps as good as I could.
leon
sorry you didn’t liked it, should you or anyone else want to see walkthroughs of CtoA, then please look here;
WALKTHROUGHS;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
Spy and his overuse of NPC’s lol
Sorry about this. We are (trying) to hold him back on our next project. 😀
Please dont quit the mod. If all else fails bring up the console with ~ and type in
sv_cheats 1
then press enter, then you can put in either
give item_healthkit
then press enter, or even better you can put
impulse 101
and press enter. that will give you all the weapons and you can enjoy blowing all those headcrabs up! haha.
The comments made in #375 go for me too. I got tired of finding doors or air vents that opened only after you had walked around the block a few times. They didn’t make narrative sense. As for the difficulty, I noticed a big step up once the player went to the satellite.
I didn’t finish this mod. I finally gave up in exasperation after I’d wasted all my ammo trying to defeat an army of elite combines in the nuclear reactor, only to find (after engaging Buddha mode) that they were respawning infinitely. According to the walkthrough, I was close to the end, but after that section I simply couldn’t be bothered.
Oh, and I absolutely loathed the drugged sequences. They were just plain frustrating.
So to the makers of this mod, I’d like to say thank you for your hard work (I enjoyed most of the mod, despite these negative comments), but please, don’t make the same mistakes with the forthcoming Strider Mountain mod.
I agree, Leon, many games get progressively harder, but not all of them do. And even the ones that do, don’t get as hard as this! I feel comfortable saying this because I have so far never played a game I couldn’t finish.
I was playing CtoA on Easy mode.
I tried enabling god mode, but the command “god” does nothing. Is god mode purposely disabled in this mod?
Thank you for the comments, MikeS. You mean it actually gets even harder than this?
I want to say something positive, so let me say that I loved the classical music. It was very surprising to hear it in a HL2 mod, but I found it beautiful and somehow…appropriate. I’m sure some people didn’t like it, but I really did.
Leon, thank you for creating this mod, and please don’t take my comments the wrong way. I have an idea how very hard and time-consuming it is to make this sort of thing, so I feel a bit bad commenting negatively on it.
Ah, never mind, I see–the command sv_cheats 1 must be entered before the god command works. Strange; I’ve never seen that before, since I have sv_cheats 1 in my autoexec.cfg file. (Always used to have sv_cheats 0 in there, until I began playing third-party maps/mods, where “harder = more fun” rules the day.)
I finally got past the headcrab portion. Being low on ammo, and knowing how hard it would be to continue, I purposely put three guns in the elevator with me. But when I left the elevator, fought with some Combine, and went back to the elevator, the guns were mysteriously missing. Can’t catch a break.
This mod is simply too hard–far, far too hard–to be any fun for me. Sorry, I’m just being honest. Uninstalling now.
Thank you for trying.
Lucky you stopped now. before you got to the part where you have to run after breen and gman.
That was the hardest part for me! haha.
you are right Achanti and MikeS, this is at the end indeed a bit to hard. personaly I like to make (and play) maps that are hard, very hard at times. but, they have to be playeble. there is nothing so frustrating as playing and getting killed over and over and over again. cheating can solve this, but doesn’t fell right in some strange way, (at least to me). about 60 to 70% of the players of CtoA did find it to hard. and I always read all the comments very carefully, and then keep them in mind when I make the next project. so, for sure that SM (Strider Mountain) wil be hard, but not so hard as this mod. And don’t mind giving negative comments, when they are ment serieusly, then it’s ok.
leon
well, I think I at the end. but, dont know. I was under the affects of the gas and saw the gman then the screen goes black and if I face a certian way its kinda yellowish but dark. I can shoot the gun jump but no walking sounds. their is music. any hints? thanks
turns out I aint at the end. the dev console shows a error loading a texture file. I found the walkthrough mentioned in the readme. have loaded next map and am on my way. unarmed and woosie but progressing. great mod very hard. but, not hard enough hehe.
wow John, not hard enough he???
and that when a lot people complain about that this mod would be impossible to play because it is so hard. am glad someone likes hard gaming like I do.
thanks John!!
leon (SPY)
thanks leon for the nice complement. will wack a few zombies in your honor. cant waite for your next mod. almost finished with this one less then 4 maps to go. wack wack
I don’t know if you can help me but I’ll try:
I am playing the “Coastline to Atmosphere” mod and it is just great! Now I seem to be stuck and I am wondering if I have reached the end?
I am in the place where I destroy the plant, I have been all the way to the top of the room to activate the console downstairs, I am now downstairs and have activated the console. I get a short film showing me how my biggest enemy says: “this is where I get off” and the building gets destroyed! I tried a lot of things to escape and/or to follow him but I get killed on the way!
Is there a walkthrough or is this really the end?
I am greatful if you can answer/help me
Walkthrough is in the properties section of the mod or here
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
thank you for linking to the walkthrough Andyb. there is just one way to finish that map (you’re still not right at the end), and that is as soon as that cutscene of them running away has ended you start running like crazy, (press run button, shift I believe). you run back all the way you came the stairs up and elevator again. and at the top of the stairs you find now that a gate is opend that was before looked. but the explosions are so placed that one error and you’re to slow, and get killed. still, you can do it!!
leon
the new sp-mod, “Strider Mountain” is released this summer).
This is an in-depth review of the gameplay and content of the mod from a player’s point of view.
If you don’t have time to read the main body of the review now, but would like a quick synopsis, then go to the ” Summary Points” section near the end of this review.
Storyline:
After the big bang ending of the first epic encounter with Breen, Freeman is pulled and saved from the wreckage. In time he recovers to learn that Breen is plotting a return to power, and is based somewhere along the coast. He sets off alone along the coast in pursuit, yet again, of the Combine leader.
Known Bugs:
The vast majority of players will have no technical issues with the mod; however the unfortunate few, like myself, may encounter problems with levels 2h and 2i. The author has explained that he used ” Overlays” not previously used by him or the Valve team and these overlays have proved troublesome to a few players. They appear to be triggered by graphic cards and drivers, so updates are advised but are not a guarantee for solving the problem in every case. The problem for me takes the form of repeated crashes in the two levels mentioned above. You have the choice of either moving carefully through the levels, or skipping and manually loading the next level. But please be aware this is an issue affecting only a few players.
Gameplay: Unorthodox Content
In some ways the author pushes the boundaries of normal game play and includes what may be termed by some, as experimental, levels that advance the playing experience and player’s willpower to greater limits. Without giving too much away, you will experience some unorthodox scenarios in the later stages. So if you lose something like suit power don’t think it’s a bug, this and other scenarios are meant to vary the gameplay. Reading the posted comments here on PlanetPhillip, many players have been confused with these levels and expressed a dislike for the step away from the norm. Having played through these sections of the game I believe that they add to the experience, and the author was right to include them even if he has since said, that he now has doubts about their inclusion due to the mixed feedback.
My view is that if authors with the talent of Leon do not try different and new ideas then gaming will not progress, and in any case he was right to include them.
Gameplay: The Journey.
The Introduction is seen through the flight path of a seagull as it emmerges from the ocean sky to cross the coast and continues over the terrain of the Combine outer defenses. This intro and the first level are set below a star-studded night sky and amidst these surroundings your journey of pursuit begins.
Your journey follows a similar pattern to the original HL2 storyline, one of Combine engagements as you travel for the main part using the road buggy, to face your first encounter with Breen in his mountain headquarters.
The Combine knows who and where you are as your reputation precedes you, and they commit all their heavy weapons to an early elimination of the Free-One. You will face Combine Gunships including the helicopter, dropships, armoured vehicles and Striders. Combine troops and scanners are ever-present, with the elite core called into action in another desperate attempt to stop you.
The game flows well through the early stages with quick and intense Combine engagements often accomplished with attacking scanners. You find the road buggy early into the campaign. Also, there is a brief use of the water buggy as you make your way through the foothills. The buggy ride never opens up fully, and you are not afforded the chance to hit the accelerator and keep it there. it’s more a stop/go ride to deal with Combine and search to find the next button or keycard to open the next door or gate. The Combine encounters are among the best I have experienced to date, with the authors deserving much credit for well constructed and orchestrated combat throughout these early levels of the mod.
Gameplay: Breen’s HQ and beyond.
Having reached Breen’s Headquarters the gamyplay at first becomes more restricted. As you pursue the Combine leader through his metallic structured base you encounter only troops and attacking scanners. The scanner attacks are very intense with swarm after swarm sent to intercept you, for the most part you fight them off with your back to the wall, with all escape routes blocked. When I first played through the mod I considered these sequences to be over the top, with the number and frequency of the attacks being excessive. However, with subsequent replays I have come to enjoy these encounters using the shot gun for good target practice.
Puzzle solving is not a strong feature of the mod, tasks take the form of finding the button and navigating paths through a maze of corridors in some areas. One memorable sequence involves shutting down a power source, this necessitates lots of climbing about an intriguing layout to finally disconnect the controls.
Breen has more than troops and weapons to stop you, and soon you are to be subjected to more than just physical forces. The gameplay now takes on new forms and as previously stated, your powers, resilience and mental stability will be tested to the extreme, with a degree of stealth also needed in a few areas. You will need to experience these for yourself, you are not getting any more from me!
Gameplay: The Final Encounters.
The story has a few more twists and turns as Freeman closes-in on his adversary, or is it now adversaries! The chase heats up with the full force of the Combine elite core deployed at key strategical advantage points. The overall gameplay is much as before, predominately pitch battles against the Combine set within their strongholds. This is mixed with typical HL air-duct navigating, along with increased use of cut scenes depicting the flight of Breen and his companion. Time now becomes one of the major factors making up the gameplay, with the Combine complex exploding and disintegrating about Freeman and foe alike; the chase takes on a frenetic pace.
Summary Points.
The mod is best played through first time around on easy setting, with the combat being intense enough on this setting, normal setting would be for the brave, with hard level only recommended for the dead.
Apart from intense encounters with the combine and their support weapons, the mod is not that hard. Navigating, task solving and some decision making is made all the more easy with use of both ingame messages and cut scenes.
This is an extensive custom mod and by far the longest of it’s genre released to date. With 14 playable levels you may find it best to play through in 2 hour bursts, spreading the play over 3 or 4 nights, but that’s just my choice.
Set design is good throughout with the early outside, coastal and road way encounters seeing the best of the mod’s architecture. The middle to later levels are a mix of varied set design from very good complex layouts, to the more straightforward enclosed corridor format.
Textures and attention to detail is good throughout the mod, without looking too familiar. The settings and architecture are based on the original HL2 concepts, and the mods real strength is in the way the mappers have used these environments to base the gameplay.
Overall the mod is very much a gun feast and once you enter the enclosed world of the Combine and their leader, the gameplay mix is restricted. Although the unorthodox levels (sorry can not give much away here) enrich the gameplay and playing experience. I feel that there was a need to vary the environment mix more, giving more options to enrich the gameplay and content.
The best of the gameplay is undoubtedly the early levels where the environmental setting affords full utilization of the Combine hardware. You encounter all the might of Breen with gunships, helicopters, armoured vehicles and Striders pitched against you, as you pursue their leader by both road and water buggies. Here the balance of gameplay is maximized, by this I mean the author has include many different elements of gameplay for the player to undertake and experience. Whilst there is plenty of intense gameplay to follow later in the mod, I don’t think the balance of the early levels are surpassed or equaled.
Puzzle and task solving is limited to find the button or key to open the door or gate. A few well designed layouts add interest to the task solving with a few intriguing climbs. To some extent this element of the gameplay is negated by the over use of the ingame message system.
I did not encounter any new stuff in the way of skins or weapons, with most of the hardware being seen before.
The musical soundtrack is an interesting choice of action game themes and drifts neatly into the mod in a reassuring way, as opposed to a dramatic background to the action. This worked for me and while there were a few cases of the music not quite fitting the gameplay, such as a slow-foxtrot at the beginning of minor Combine shoot outs, overall I enjoyed the author’s choice.
Having played through the whole mod again in preparation for this review, I am please to say I did not encounter a single technical issue from beginning to end. The problems of freeze ups in a few levels experienced in previous plays, seems to have been fixed with the recommended graphics and drivers updates.
Negatives
– Lack of different environmental settings
– Overuse of ingame text massages
– Overuse of cut scenes
– Partly restricted gameplay and flow
Positives
– Hours of fun and playtime
– Some great balance of gameplay
– A complete story and playing experience
– Innovative parts
– Great pitch battles throughout
Conclusion
This is the bit I have not been looking forward to, how to conclude one’s views of a mod of this undertaking. it’s difficult not to get carried away with all the enthusiastic comments posted here on PlanetPhillip. I guess it comes down in the end to whether you enjoyed the experience, overall I did. For sheer playing experience and intensity it has no equal among HL2 custom mods/mappacks, but there are drawbacks and some aspects could be improved.
Too much of the mod takes place within enclosed environments and midway through the later two thirds of the mod, I was calling out for open space and sunlight. I think the way the HQ and Combine complex sections of the mod flowed into one, was too much of the same enclosed stereotyped gamdeplay. This could have been better structured by the introduction of say, a City 17 section or any other environment that releases the player for a few levels from his enclosed surroundings. This could have been achieved without lengthening the mod, as there is scope to shorten some of the levels with repetitive enclosed settings.
The ingame text massaging did not sit comfortably within the mods storyline. It never appeared to be integral to the story, being more like an after thought. You are not aware of the origins of the massages and they came across more like excerpts from the author’s walkthrough. Also in many cases they were unnecessary and only negated the gameplay.
If you think for a moment that I am not going to highly recommend this mod, then you are wrong, the playing experience far out weighs any negative issues I can list.
Thanks to Leon and his team, good luck with future releases, if they come close to our expectations we will all be richly rewarded.
Make sure you play the ” Final Credits” to the full.
My Recommendation
I’m not sure when Leon says that Valve never used then env_screenoverlay, but that is a rediculous comment. I doubt he is trying to dodge resonsibility for the graphical errors, but I cannot think of another reason why he would make such a bullshit statement except for one comment I read before expressing how he “has absoultely no idea how the entity system works.”
But perhaps these are both misquotes, to say Valve didn’t use the overlay entities is to say you haven’t played the first half of Half-Life 2, or at least you don’t know how to map. Two things which are obviously not true of Leon.
But this is inconsequential. I agree with a great deal of this review, except the “well balanced gameplay” part. Hard != ingenius gameplay mechanics, the battles are in no way balanced and are rarely creative showing nothing more than a sudden overwhelming rush of enemies without various tactical situations taken into consideration.
Also, the environmental quality is not of a high or exceptional level. There is alot of attention to detail, however, there are also a multitude of areas that are plain ugly, poorly designed (in regards to the merger of form and function), or show beginner mistakes. For example, the very first thing you see, a huge rock face, Leon has left the texture scale at default making it look like crap, this is just one of thousands of errors that make me wonder “why would someone with this much skill but this little effort in?” But that’s ok.
As one early example of where the merger of design and gameplay fail, is the entire buggy ride, in which there is barely enough room to navigate, and you may be forces to load a saved game several times simply because the car is stuck. There are others, but I don’t want to give too much away.
Take this with a grain of salt however, I have been mapping for nearly a decade and so have a more critical eye for design than most.
A+ for effort, C- for result, not at all what I expected from someone of his experience.
Leon probably didn’t worry a lot about the “beginner mistakes” as you call them because he had to map all those levels himself. Now maybe if he was working on a larger team with more mappers he would have time to worry about more of those mistakes.
Well MrHappy, Thanks for your response to the PPT review. I was pleased you “agree with a great deal of this review.” The comments you make are a bit strong in places, however, that’s fine by me. The gameplay I will agree is varied with long spells lucking imagination; I am not a mapper so you have the advantage with technical aspects of design and game layout.
At the start of the review I state that the review is from a “players point of view” and attempt to keep clear of aspects I feel I am not qualified to comment on in depth. I am sorry if I did not keep to this intention, but made a point of quoting the author on some of the issue raised which maybe termed technical, please see earlier posts where Leon replies to my bug questions.
Overall your comments are not those of the average player, no way are players going to be aware of, as you put it, thousands of errors, we tend to consider the overall playing experience and dwell little on the fine detail.
The negatives I have remarked on plus the ones you have posted here, will not deter players from gaining hours of fun, free fun at that.
i like this mod very much and would love to play anyone’s else’s, you know for comparison.
i also look forward to leons next..
jab688, have you played Leon’s Mappack?
thanks Mel, I made (together with baltic Forever) indeed another Hl2 sp-mappack, simply called Leon’s sp-mappack, it has 4 large sp-maps. beside these I have made many other sp-mappacks that all can be found on sp-mods.com or ;
http://www.leon.triplebit.nl/
and we are working now on a new HL2 sp-mod that will be released this summer, please see for more info here;
http://www.stridermountain.com/
leon
GUYS! Now you’ve done it!! I knew u guys was working on a new mod, and I was really looking forward to it. Somehow Ive missed out on the stridermountain.com webside. I finally had some time off to look through the forum mails that pops in daily, and there I found the link..
So… Now I really cant sleep before this mod is finnished!!! 🙂 It looks amazing! Any idea when it will be done? (I guess you’ve answered this 1million times before..)
Again, thx for all the joy u guys put into the HL universe!
We are hoping to release August. September at the latest. Because we are going to mod for crysis when its released.
Here is an interview if you are interested.
http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/BlueWolf72/strider-mountain-half-life2-modification-interview-33365.phtml
also, thanks for the support kim, we really appreciate it.
i would like to comment more on the last comments, last comment of mine was made when I had very little time.
first I would like to thank you Mel for the excellent review you wrote, I am more then pleased with it. what can I say, it’s for at least 80% positive. then the comment of Mr Happy, I did find some of your comments a bit strong indeed. we’re just talking about a mod, a game, nothing serious, (although it took us 1,5 year of hard labor for many hours a day).
what surprises me always again is the personal taste of people, what one likes is “hated” by the other. I guess I have had around 1000 or more comments on this mod in the last year, (here and on other sites, and all those mail that I did get). I’m glad that about 80% or so like the mod very much, some did find it even better as episode1 and any other mod they ever played of HL2, (i can’t wish for a better compliment). therefore it surprises me so much that there are also people that really don’t like the mod, find it badly made and a waste of time to play.
this is not new to me, had simular expereinces with other sp-mappacks that I released before, from other games.
the biggest lesson that I have learned from this is that I never can make a mappack/mod that pleases everyone. there will always be people that don’t like what I make, (i always listen very well to every comment and try to learn from them). am just glad that the majority does like what I do.
about the rock texture in map1 not being sized right (to small). that is indeed a big mistake, but when I made that first map I never had worked before with the HL2 rock textures (i didn’t use them in that 4 sp-mappack that I made before CtoA). so I didn’t know I had to blow up the size of them. and there will be many more things in the mod that could be improved. still, it was fun to make it, and I think it isn’t all that bad. all I can say is that I hope that “Strider Mountain”, our next sp-mod, that will be released soon is hopefully better, and also liked by you Mr Happy.
leon
Your comments are very gracious Leon and you’re right. You’ll never be able to please everyone.
However, I really enjoyed playing your mod. I’ve played it several times and still enjoyed it. It’s without a doubt one of THE best that’s available.
thanks GoddessAlyria,
before CtoA we made a smaller sp-mappack with 4 sp-maps. think you will also like to play that one, (see link below). and should you be interested to see more of my work then please look on my site, even when it’s still in development you can find many other sp-mappacks that I made for lots of other games. maybe you or someone else is interested;
leon
LINKS:
/posts/leons-mappack-1-half-life-2/
Sleep easy Leon and be assured that you have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure.
Thanks for the kind words on the review.
I just discovered CtA and I am blown away. Huge props to the creaters. I though Minerva was good but your mod is like a whole “nother game. I’m playing through on normal and it’s perfectly balanced. Just as I think I’m toast with only 20 hp left, a health cache shows up.
I’ve come near the end of map 8 I think, after all my weapons are taken away, but when I find the weapon cache I’m not able to switch weapons nor see my remaining life. Is this a known glitch? Anybody else affected by this bug? Other minor bugs have not detracted so far, but this one is a game stopper for me I’m afraid.
All in all sweet mod guys!
thanks for the compliment Catalytica.
let me first tell you that I made 2 walkthroughs for CtoA, a small and large one, they are linked to at the top of the main post.;
many people have asked the same question as you do now, it’s no clitch, I just thought then that it would be funny to take also Gordons suit away for a while. so he can’t change weapons and he doesn’t have the protection of the suit. but did I know then what I know now then I would never have taken the suit away there. to many people didn’t see the connection between suddenly not showing up anymore of the HUD and not having your suit on, and the consequence of this.
but, no worries, you get your suit back later on.
before Baltic and I made this mod we made 4 other sp-maps for HL2, you can find those here;
/posts/leons-mappack-1-half-life-2/
leon (SPY-maps)
Just finished playing this very enjoyable mod. Though I think the term “mod” doesn’t do justice to this. It gave me many hours of fun gametime. Nicely balanced, amazingly little bugs and problems. Leon and team I thank you for all your efforts and I’m looking forward to your future work.
Leon: bedankt!
Our next project is coming before you know it. 🙂 Hopefully in the next month or so. Hopefully no big delays.
Our next project is coming before you know it. 🙂 Hopefully in the next month or so. Hopefully no big delays.
indeed we are working hard on our next and last (!!, after that we start Crysis modding).
we’re nearly done with the mapping part and hopefully we will be able to release the new sp-mod within 4 to 6 weeks.
leon(SPY-maps)
(and thanks for the nice comments about CtoA!)
Strider Mountain mod team member.
I realise I am rather late finding this mod (been spending too much time making my own!) but I played through it today and, overall, I am VERY IMPRESSED.
I haven’t read all of the 400+ comments because I simply don’t have time, but I hope I don’t go on too much about things that have been discussed before.
There are positives and negatives to this mod, but from the viewpoint of a fellow mapper, I was very impressed by some of it.
For example, the sequence where the player is hit with the hallucionagenic gas. That bit impressed the pants off me. I was literally sitting there thinking “THIS IS SO COOL” through the whole thing. I’d love to see the VMF for that bit, I really would.
Lets break this thing down into sections:
——-
1. Architecture & Lighting
The architecture needs to be split into two parts. The first half of the game, it was about 50% great, and 50% average. While playing I expected this trend to continue, but I found that the architecture actually improved as the game went on. The second half is better in this respect than the first half.
In the first half I did find the occasional area where I thought “this looks pretty dull” — but I did not find a single place in the second half where I thought this.
2. Gameplay
The gameplay … was good in parts, OK in others, and just damn irritating occasionally. It has some major positives, but some negatives too.
The biggest negative for me personally, was that it was FAR TOO HARD. The fights were INSANE. I don’t know about you, but I get tired quickly of being trapped in a room with 50+ headcrabs. The number of soldiers in many of the fights was also stupid. This only got worse towards the end.
While the end sequence (which is pretty long!) was a triumph in many ways (and again, I’d love to see the VMF!) it was also mind numbingly stupid in terms of how many enemies you had to fight at once. I must have died 1,000,000 times during this bit. I very nearly quit, but I felt so close to the end that I had to push on.
There was nothing in the mod that I’d call a “puzzle” and so the whole thing is about finding out where to go, and killing the enemy along the way. This is fine, but it won’t make me come back for more after finishing it once.
3. Music
I was disappointed to see music stolen from many other games. One of the ones you didn’t credit that I recognised, was a theme from Heroes of Might and Magic. You did credit some of the other games in the ending credits, but I dont think that’s enough, really. You should have at least credited every one of them.
With that said – the music works well and really adds to the mod.
4. Story & General Atmosphere
There was no custom voice acting, which was a little disappointing, but only because I like custom voice acting. The text prompts did their job, but were rather soulless. However I was impressed by the way the author has extracted and re-arranged some of the speech from the original HL2 to make it fit this mod, and the way that cutscenes were used sometimes to make the path to progression more obvious. Good job!
It all gets very good when the chase of Breen and the Gman begins, and when the whole place is disintegrating around you. That was all VERY well done. I thought it a little disappointing when I didn’t actually get to kill Breen, but I sort of half expected that too.
The “cutscenes” are all very well done and add a lot to certain parts of the game. Especially when you get hit by the trippy gas. I REALLY loved that bit.
6. Level Design
Very good. The author clearly thought HARD about how the maps were going to work, and they do work well. I did find a few bugs which stopped me, but when I loaded a saved game and did those bits again, they seemed to work fine. One thing I will complain about though, is that at many points during the mod, I clearly saw enemy soldiers spawn in my view. Sometimes this wasn’t so bad, as they were not right next to me. But more than once, they were right next to me.
Despite some minor problems, I would overall rate the entity setups in this mod as exceptional. I want to see them! I WANT TO SEEEEEEEEEEEEE THEM!
——-
Overall, this is a fine mod which everyone should try. It’s far too difficult in parts, but this will suit some people more than it did me. It actually has a bit of a plot, and it’s certainly exciting. It even has a grand ending, which will leave you feeling both thrilled and confused at the same time. That is of course, only if you manage to kill the 950 elite guards just before that bit happens.
Congrats to the author for pulling off something this large on his own, and making it pretty damned good throughout. That’s a tough thing to do. I know.
This mod gets 5/5 from me. It’s certainly not all perfect, but it’s so big – and some bits are just SO good – that I can’t give it any less.
Dunno why, but my name appeared above as anonymous……?
we will use voice acting in our next mod. 🙂
Fixed it for ya Chris
Thanks andy.
One thing I remembered, which I forgot to write above, was that I did find several places where the player was clipped off from going.
This was obviously to facilitate the gameplay, but sometimes it was plain annoying.
For example, there were a few walkways which you could jump over one side – but not the other. Personally, I would have altered the walkway so that it was more obvious that you weren’t supposed to go that way, rather than just clipping it off.
A minor thing. But one which I personally would have addressed.
It still gets 5/5. 😀
let me start with apologising for my late reply Chris Fox, but my windows XP crashed fully, probably due to a virus, so I needed to install everything again, took me 3 days because I first tried to fix it. but, now i’m back and gladly I didn’t loose anything of the new sp-mod that will very soon be released.
i’m glad you where so excited with playing this latest sp-mod of mine and Baltic. Forever. Because I didn’t make it totally on my own, although I did do the mapping and the layout of every level, without baltic I couldn’t have made this or any of our dozen other sp-mods for hl2, or other games. Baltic was and is my trouble shooter you could say, he made the maps bug free, although some people do experience some bugs still. and not to forget, ALL the optimization of all the maps was done by him, and some maps where a total hell to optimize!!
should you be interested in all my other sp-mappacks/mods, then please visit my site, (see link below please).
Like Cubedude89 said are we now working for over 10 months on a new hl2 sp-mod, (this is our 3th, and last, after this new one I will go on with Crysis sp-mapping). on this new sp-mod my task is again the level layout and the mapping itself. baltic again does the optimization and some modeling, further more he is project leader and ofcourse trouble shooter again. Cubedude does most of the modeling and TB B takes care of all publicity and takes care of our new website, specially for this new mod called “Strider Mountain”.
you say your a fellow mapper, so I am very interested in your work. of course I can’t sent my maps (vmf’s) to everybody who asks for it, I have very bad experiences with this,. ( 5 yeasr ago or so someone asked for them, and I was still naive, so I gave them. a bit later he released some of them under his name and or released beta versions even before I could release them my self. still, when you want to contact me through my email address (leonbrinkmann AT emailaccount PUNT com) then we can talk further about this, and maybe I will give you then the vmf, we just have to see. like I said, I have bad experiences with this, so we first have to talk further about this.
Baltic and I made before this big sp-mod a small hl2 sp-mod with 4 large map, that can be downloaded from PP also;
/posts/leons-mappack-1-half-life-2/
and here is my webiste;
http://www.leon.triplebit.nl/
Leon SPY-maps Brinkmann
Hi Leon
I wasn’t seriously asking you for any VMF’s (I wouldn’t do that) I was only saying that I’d like to see them, as a funny compliment to how good the maps are. 🙂
Sorry for any misunderstanding.
o, ok, that is indeed a very good compliment!
thanks. about that mappart with the hallucinatic tripride, that wasn’t that ahrd to make, it was just a inviseble textured small box where the player jumps/falls in to, and emidiatly a func_tracktrain is started and this makes that the player “flies” through the map, where he triggers from time to time events. the strange part is that many liked this part very much, but there where also many people that did find this part un logic, no fun at all, or even simply quit stupid!! shows again that it simply is impossible to make a map(s) that pleases everybody.
the gastrap part for instance in 11 (j), that one was for instance a real burden to make. took us days to get it all triggered/buttoned right.
still, I ment what I said about being interested to see your work, or one screen or so, i’m always interested in other mens mapwork.
thanks again Chris!
leon
Spy check out his mod here
/posts/the-citizen-half-life-2/
Now the second most commented on planetphillip!
I will finish playing it as soon as my new motherboard/processor arrives.
Thanks for describing how the gas part worked — that makes perfect sense to me, and I think I will try something like that in a future map! 😀
If you’d like to see some of my work, check out The Citizen —
/posts/the-citizen-half-life-2/
Citizen was made by me and another mapper (Kasperg), so I didn’t do it all on my own.
It is quite a different style to [i]Coastline[/i], but I hope you like it. 🙂
To see some of my other work (which I did do on my own), have a look at these:-
/posts/day-13-half-life-2/
/posts/day-14-half-life-2/
/posts/day-15-half-life-2/
Those three are all quite old now, but hopefully you’ll get some fun out of them 😀
Hee hee, cubedude beat me 😀
Whoa you did the day mods!!!
haha I love you
and my 2 gb ram and 8800 GT graphics card juat arrived!!!
but my motherboard/processor hasnt come yet so I still cant finish the citizen mod. I WANT TO PLAY IT haha
Chris email me at cubedude89 at gmail dot com
If you dont mind I would like to add you on msn/aim/yahoo or what ever you use 🙂
strange, I thought I already had aswered here again a few days ago, seems something did go wrong.
what I then said was that I already thought that your name sounded so familiar Chris, now I know, because ofcourse I did play your Day mods, and your latest Citizen one, loved them all!!
forgot to write my comment down in your Citizen page here on PP, but will do so soon. (very bussy with finishing new mod ourselfs)
Leon (SPY-maps)
Love the mod, beat it a few times but, where is the magnum??? I can’t find it anywhere (no mention of it in the walthrough either). I keep coming across magnum ammo but not the gun.
PLEASE HELP.
it’s quit long ago that I made this hl2 sp-mappack (CtoA is not a real mod) together with Baltic.Forever. therefore I can’t remember realy if I did place the Magnum gun or not, but as far as I remember it I think I did place it somewhere. this is something I always keep track of, that I place the right weapons, and there right ammo. and I can’t imagen I forgot to place it 15 maps long. but, it’s all quit long ago, and beside that are we already working for a full year on a new Hl2 sp-mod, Strider Mountain(that will be released in january’08, you will read more about it here on Planet Phillip when it is time).
so, i’m sorry you couldn’t find it, and maybe it is indeed not placed at all. but, I am afraid that you didn’t find it, because this is the first time that I hear this comment.
Leon(SPY-maps)
Marry Christmas and a Happy New Year to every one here on PP !!!!
Its there.I’m not sure if its there when you leave your buggy for the airboat,but after you do the key card sections and come back for the buggy I got it.Played all mornin to find it lol.
thanks Andyb, I thought about looking for it myslef, but like you said, that takes all morning, (at least). and I need every free hour that I have for finishing our new hl2 sp-mod. but glad you did, and did find it, although I was already pretty sure that I didn;t forget to place it, but its better to be sure.
leon(SPY-maps)
Thanks Andyb. Using your tip, I replayed the map and found the magnum on the floor, in the garage where you get the airboat. It looks like I kept parking the buggy right on top of it, after entering the garage.
Thanks again. I can’t wait for Strider Mountain.
i’m glad you liked it so much and are looking forward to playing our new and latest project strider Mountain. before CtoA I made 4 sp-maps for HL2 that you also could play and I made many other sp-mappacks, should you be interested then please look on my site for more info;
http://www.leon.triplebit.nl/
leon (SPY-maps)
SPOLIERS REMOVED – PlanetPhillip
thanks leon it was the best fun ever, it took a long time to finish. if I was to rate it I would give it 5 gold crowbars. hehe.
and to all the warriors of the pink bunny slipper clans, yes you can make it with out them cheats.
looking forward to strider mountain. have a great 08 leon.
Thanks John, and you to a merry 08!! (and everybody else here ofcourse!!
am glad you already heart about the SM mod that is coming very soon (within one month plus/minus).
leon
Played this mod 6 months ago and I loved it so much I just played it again. I never play a mod more than once and there is no way that it isn’t long enough. A little buggy though but all in all 9/10!
Thanks Apply, that you just played it twice, that is one of the best compliments a mapper can get !!
it will please you to hear that our new HL2 sp-mod (11 large levels) is nearly done and will be released within one month.
you will hear soon more about the new Strider Mountain sp-mod here on Planet Phillip !
leon (SPY-maps)
Wow! I don’t remember seeing such a lengthy SP mod. Well the fact that I played it on the hard setting probably made it longer… Overall, I’d say it’s a kickass and quite innovative mod. Sure some maps need some polishing and it’s hard as hell but if u are open-minded about gaming you will enjoy it for sure.
When you play this, you will die a lot, always trying to find new ways to defeat that next big wave of soldiers when u only have 30 hp and 4 shells left. I found it really challenging and refreshing in that sense cause usually SP games are a bit too easy.
Also, the “SPOILER REMOVED” level is a gem, so much better than Max Payne’s. The last level was great to especially that part with the SPOILER REMOVED
There some things tough I did dislike a bit like the random dying for reasons totally out of your control and also that part where you don’t have the HEV suit (I dunno if it is possible but I didn’t find a way to switch weapons, making this very inconvenient) but these aren’t enough to deter from the fun.
Like it was said above, it’s a very unorthodox game and personally that’s what I want to see in mods, developers taking risks that professional game developers can’t take.
So, play it now!! but be prepared for a challenge, this wasn’t made for newcomers.
Keep up the good work! I can’t wait to see what’s coming in Strider Mountain.
There is so much to say about this mod…First there is the mapping – Leon does an amazing job at that. Then there is the gameplay and here I’m afraid Leon is really overdoing it.
I played this mod on normal difficulty level. First part – the Coastline – exhibits solid gameplay that is really fun. There is plenty of ammo and not so much health but I found that this helps immersion a lot – your job is to sneak around, try to locate the combine forces from far away and take out as many of them as you can before you get engaged in close quarter combat – if you establish this mindset then you’ll be successful and have fun! The enemy placement is very good – you’ll find combine shooting at you from the back, from above and from underneath – you will die a lot and have to backtrack in a few places but it’s all good in the end.
I also want to mention that after completing every map I also read the detailed walktrough to check if I was missing anything. The APC battle on the map where you get the Jeep went completely different for me – the APC didn’t went at all where the walkthrough said it should go, LOL! If you ever need beta testers I can help I’m always able to get these kind of things in games 🙂
Through the end of the Coastline section it gets increasingly difficult to make progress. Leon does a very good job at making the map progressively harder and again this helps with the immersion and you feel that the combine are trying their best to see you dead. However this is also the part where frustration starts to creep in. An example: when you are already quite low on health from very challenging previous encounters you ran into 3 combines with shotguns – they are located at close range, run towards you and you really have no place to retreat. Had no other way to make it past them but replaying a previous section and saving a different kind of ammo. And my problem with this is that the previous engagement that I replayed has been so intense that the first time I found it absolutely natural to use the heavy weaponry against them being sure that I will find supplies immediately after that. But it didn’t work out that way – no supplies, no health so frustration started to creep in.
The head crab room I found annoying but managed to get past it relatively easy – just that again I wasn’t concerned about saving ammo. I should have learned my lesson the first time – when I got out of there there was enough health and small weapons ammo available but nothing in terms of crossbow or magnum ammo. And those that know what comes after that room will understand my conundrum immediately – so yeah, had to replay that part again – not so much fun anymore.
And now it gets to the Atmosphere and here things get really bad in terms of gameplay. I didn’t mind the suit being taken away and the stealth portion – that is actually very good. But really what is the point of 30 or so manhacks followed by the poison gas? When things get so tedious and you have to replay too often to get it right it really becomes annoying. And the fight right after the elevator and before you get to the garage where you will find the suit almost made me abandon this mod – you have no suit, you already had to kill a shitload of combines that only dropped about 20 or 30 health points before the elevator, now you get out of the elevator and take out everything in sight with almost no health left and what next? A combine with a shotgun after a corner? – this is really nuts – I don’t know how many times I had to play that section to finally make it through – as I said I played on normal and I never use cheats and it felt to me on the same level of difficulty as the final boss fights in other games. Past that point I basically lost interest in this mod, the fun factor was gone and I only played it through the end to see what next. All I can say is that it gets even harder at some points.
However I am glad that I finished the mod as there are some nice sections afterwards – I liked the part right after you get the suit and go through the air vent and get into the cramped space where you have to shoot the combines but you cannot get out to where they are – that battle was far better balanced than others.
I also want to comment on the adrenaline rush at the exploding reactor – it seems to me that Leon did it that way to enhance immersion again – you have to run and run quick, there is no time to waste. While the concept seems sound it didn’t work for me unfortunately – it is still too difficult to make it trough and it took me too many tries and by now the immersion factor was long gone. I do believe that this idea works but only if you can reasonably achieve it in the second or third run – as was the case with catching G-man and Breen at the end – that was doable in a second or third try and it worked well.
To make this review complete I want to comment on the additional sequences that in my opinion are completely pointless and don’t tie in at all with the rest of the mod. The hallucination sequence was relatively easy but pointless in my opinon – I could have done without it. And the final sequence after the credits back in City 17 really took the cake – by then I was always counting the dead combines at the end of each encounter to see just how much Leon thinks it’s fun – in the very final scene in the garage you get to kill 15 for absolutely no reason at all. I was able to count more in a previous sequence I forgot exactly where in was in the mod where I had to kill 17 combine in a relatively small space before I got to any supplies. To me that many is a bit overdone really.
On the positive side worth mentioning is also the voice acting – the way that Leon was able to piece together the dialogue from the original to get something meaningful for his mod was nothing short of amazing.
So what is my final rating? Play it now, of course 🙂 Leon really is one of the best mappers and this mod is very good and solid work. I’m certain that if you play it on easy is good fun throughout – except for the 30 manhack sequence and the exploding reactor sequence that in my opinion could really be improved. Apart from that the frustration that I experienced was largely my fault because I didn’t wanted to play on easy.
And my hope is that in Strider Mountain Leon does the mapping but the whole team decides on the gameplay 🙂
thank you both for your comments, glad you liked it. and I agree CtoA was in many ways much to difficult. I have learned a lot from all these comments here, and really try to listen and learn from them while i’m making the 11 sp-maps of Strider Mountain. This new mod is now mostly done, we’re now testing it and fixing bugs. It will not be that hard, that’s for sure. and I really tried to make the best game play that I could make. still, its always hard to do this well, because even when I try to think like the player, and try to understand which moves he all can and probably will make, then it still always surprises me when I hear what players all could do and also did. only beta testing can make the game play better, and that we do.
can’t give a date for the new release, because it never is accurate. but, it will not take much more time. hope you liked the latest teaser movie (nr.3) of SM.
leon
(SPY-maps)
Agree with kalkin’s comments. Great adventure, excellent map details, gets harder as you progress , excellent storyline. Hallunications and city 17 I could have done without. All the levels were extremely well done. Great eye for details.
Hey MAN…
Thanks for letting me re-live the Psychedelic 70″s…
Your FAR OUT man.
The Flash as in Flashback
Thank you both for your kind comments, am very pleased that you liked it so much.
Don’t know if you already know but very soon we will release our 3th HL2 sp-mod, called “Strider Mountain”(.com). Hope you like this one even better.
leon
(SPY-maps)
The link “http://www.sp-mods.com/LCtA/LCtA_Patch1.zip” is dead. There’s another?
hello Wedzet, I am not sure but I guess this is a patch that we made and released after we release CtoA (Coastline to Atmosphere) as a sp-mappack (the beta version). after 3 to 4 months we fixed all bugs and released CtoA as a Steam mod, (so it could be started from the Steam menu).
So, you don’t need that patch anymore, when you download the ctoA mod you have the full mod without any of the bugs that where in the beta version.
that’s why we took that patch down.
I’m realy interested where you did find this info about the patch, because I thought we took all that info down ones CtoA was released again as a mod.
leon
(mapper CtoA)
by the way, we are nearly finished with our 3th HL2 sp-mod, called Strider Mountain (.com).
you can find more info about it here or on our site;
/posts/strider-mountain-half-life-2/
I thought this patch resolved crash of a problem at “leon hl2-2da” but if you have another solution that will sympathique Thanks
now I am not sure anymore. I will ask Baltic, he knows these things best.
leon
i have a big problem with the final of the game… when im following breen adn gman. a door close to me and the fire kill me and a message say: yo let the escape, you loose. I cant open that door whta I neess to do?
best is you read the walkthrough I made for CtoA (Coastline to Atmosphere), I made 2; a small one and a larger one. I could explaine it here again, but I can’t explaine it better as I did in those walkthroughs I guess.
please see walkthroughs here;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
when you still questions then please let me know.
and Wedzet, I have asked Baltic and it is like I already thought it was, its an old patch that was needed for our beta of CtoA, but when you have the mod version then you don’t need that patch anymore. i’m still surpriced where you did find this link to it, because that one shouldn’t excist anymore for a long time. so, just forget the patch and I hope you have fun. should you have any problems then please let me know!
leon
A superb mod, good enough to be an official release. It’s so professionally done I’d gladly have paid for it!
Recommended!!!!!!
Thanks Resident Weevil,
when you liked this one you will also like our new sp-mod called Strider Mountain that is about to be released. we started working on this new one after we finished this one, and have been working on it for 1,5 years or so.
it will be released very soon,
leon
Wonderful mod.
Longer than you dream possible.
Tons of thought and creativity went into this.
Sometimes, player is blocked by unexplained invisible walls, or killed for no visible reason – frustrating.
But mostly, it’s great – memorable locations, high quality new sounds (borrowed from other games), and more explosions and fire than you can shake a stick at.
Cut scenes are nice. But occasionally you can die while watching a cut scene. Not so nice.
Bravo! Looking forward to Leon’s next one very much.
Look, these are pretty well built maps. Why “consider it”? For me, it was annoying as hell to kill so many enemies. Not saying that the experience was bad either. But, for a player like me who doesn’t like killing a huge load of enemies, some parts like in the atmosphere spaceship in the end that you needed to kill constant combine elite coming, I just couldn’t stop using godmode. Was pissing me off, even on easy it’s diffucult and the enemies are too damn constant. Anyway, I give your map a 5 points thanks to the great design, unique thing, never seen it in my entire life and you were original and creative. But the constant enemies make me say “consider it”, check the reviews and may the other player enjoy more than I did, as I had kinda an stressful experience to handle too much combine.
Anyway, congratulations on the halucinogenic part, was my favourite through out the entire map.
Thanks Hovy and Lars for your comments, and I hope you will be playing our new HL2 sp-mod with 13 sp-maps that will be released pretty soon. I can promise you that I have listened very carefully to all people and there comments and suggestions, and I have learned a lot of them. one thing is that I made the maps less full with enemies, so that’s probably a good thing. still, they will be challenging enough.
for more info see the Strider Mountain post here on PP.
Leon
(aka SPY-maps)
Coastline to Atomsphere is amazing. Just want to thank the creators. A ton of work went into this. It is atmospheric, intense and really well planned and put together. I enjoyed this more than EP1 or even ep2!
brilliant work
thankyou!
Hi, well thanks for all the work. The mod is quite impressive. two minor points. I quit when it got to map 10, after hallucination the control of weapons choice and the displaying of health information is no longer available. Getting into the cage with the weapons wasn’t too bad, I had to adjust the game top easiest those first three guys pour into the room quick and I have no control over which weapon I get to use, and no idea how much ammo or health. That was very very frustrating. I appreciate the designer of the level is trying to make it challenging, but I lost all interest in trying to complete level ten, it was just too hard even on easy setting.
Now before that I had a lot of fun. The one canyon where you spiral around and work your way up was great. Then after that the part were you
get trapped in and Breen is harassing you and drops all the head crabs in. Great. I was laughing at how fucked up that was. In all I had a lot of fun.
I like the puzzles with the dune buggy. But wish for just one level you opened it up where you could drive like a bat out of hell for a while. Other then that I was very impressed and if I didn’t get so frustrated in level 10 I’d still be playing cheers
indeed, with this info its to hard to answer. I made back then 2 walkthroughs for CtoA, a short and a long one. maybe you can first check here how to succeed. but, you can always ask again, just let me/us know.
WALKTHROUGHS;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
leon
Mod is crashing at startup. 🙁
I’m very sorry to hear that Lackoo, and I asume that there is something going wrong because the mod itself is well working. I believe this is the first time that I hear of this problem. maybe its best you try to install it again, and should it still crash then you need to download it again, I asume that the download corrupted the mod in some way, the mod itself is really well working.
please let me know if you need any info about installting it, (or you can read about it in the read me.txt file that is included).
leon
(you did install the mod in the Sourcemods folder, right?)
Yes,i installed it in the Sourcemod folder.I will redownload,and reinstall it again.
WELL DONE Leon !!!
Just finished the Mod, as playable as the original… if not better.
This is an extremly good, mod. The best one so far for HL2.
Design is top notch, its hard! and its wow.
But sadly it crashes when the Overwatch says taht I am in violation of blabla 200 stomething at the place in the screenshot. Its just a few seconds after I pusehed the button to open the gate. Anyone else had this bug, Help since I want to continue.
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/4844/leonhl22da0000qm8.jpg
I started this playing this mod back in June 2008, I just started again today a 4 pm it is now mid night and I have beaten it. I have to say GREAT JOB! This mod was excellent, I’d put it up there with my favorites. The same team should release another mod with the dynamic lighting from the episodes. It was awesmoe guys thanks so much!!!!!!
They are releasing a new mod very soon and I believe it’s using EP2 code.
/posts/strider-mountain-half-life-2/
Orange Box SDK Base to be exact. which is a free download on steam (in the tools tab) No Ep2 required! 🙂
Leon! Come oooooon! We’ve been promised that the new mod Strider Mountains is “right around the corner” for ages now!! When WILL it be released?! I cant way to play it! Dude, dont do this to us!!! 😀
Your forever fan
Zedster
the last 10% is 90% of the work.
Fantastic Mod but I am totally stuck on Map 4 according to the walkthrough guide “Walk over the catwalk towards metal doors, one will open, go through it and you will find yourself behind the wooden doors now, and at the same time they open.” The doors don’t open they remain closed…very fustrated but LOVE the game.Please Help if you can.Adey ;o)
Phillip the above reviews link to ‘mel” does not appear to be working.
Arhh poo!
It seems to be due to having to add the “paged Comments” feature. I had to do this because the number of comments on this page cause the load time to almost crash most browsers. It look like I will have to remove the link and just add the comment number, sorry.
This mod was an awesome achievement, but the endless (literally, in some cases) waves of combines and occasional unforgiving maps and time requirements made it a chore.
More than once I took a shortcut that the designers didn’t like and killed me for my trouble. The expository text, camera grabs and sweeping cutscenes were also a consistent source of annoyance.
These gripes aside, this was an excellent epic adventure with a few rough spots. I have high hopes for Strider Mountain!
It just don’t get much better then this. Now, I don’t want to pour it on too thick or Leons gonna be hard to live with and his friends won’t even know him if he can’t get his head through the door anymore but this mod is easily one of my favorites.It has great story, great sound effects, fantastic lighting,beautiful maps that must have taken a very long time to make. So much detail in every room. I saw very little bare areas and it made for a really good experience. Anyone that likes HL2 should go straight from that game to this one.If the main people in HL2 were in this one it could have been another chapter of the original. There is certain people who are making this type of mod and they are rare. These people spend twice the time and effort making them look real and full of action. Out of all the HL mods, this and maybe 2 or 3 others are worth a second or third play IMO-This was my second time around on this one as I wanted to try the updated version.
My computer was not doing so good in the end maps. I started getting stop and go glitches and it was breaking up real bad during the parts with the explosions. All the extra bombs and things blowing up messed the game up for me but I know the problem is my video card and not the mod. I need a new card. So, I will play this again once I get one. I need one before he releases Strider Mountain. I know that taking down alot of Striders is going to require alot of the resources. Leo, you da man! Thanks for a great time! You and Adam are the best!
hi Robspace1 !!
we have mailed each other severel times, so I am allready aware of that you like CtoA so much, still thanks for telling it here too.
i’m glad that people still download and play it, after a few years, most of my other sp-mappacks/mods for other games are only played 1 to 2 years after they are released, (for games as Mohaa,Cod,Prey,etc).
but, HL (2) is differently, it has a real tide community that keeps following the hl2 modscene, probebly the release of the hl2 episodes have also something to do with this.
i didn’t know your videocard is not that powerfull, and your right about our next project Strider Mountain. this will need a bit more powerfull pc/videocard as when you play ctoA. and even CtoA is not that demanding qua pc power, its a bit the same as HL2 itself.
so, hopefully you are able to update your card soon, so Strider Mountain will give you no trouble, pc trouble that is, (because you will have to fight for live though, lol!)
thanks,
leon (SPY-maps)
Thanks Leon-yea, the card is shot! It played HL2 with no problem but that was a long time ago. Actually, it was working good on this one right up till the last map then it started slowing down. I was able to finish this though and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cheat a little. It was tough, no doubt, but the overall game was exellent-keep em comin!
I’m stuck in a little plaza with no weapons and no suit. Surrounded by Zombies,Fast Zombies and Headcrabs. After running around being chased by these monsters,I manage to go up a ladder to fine one headcrab trying to get me. I manage to walk around a ledge and avoid being killed. Just watching whats going on below me.
This is after chasing the dude with the white hair and being attack and killing the combines with only a shotgun with no ability to change weapons.
Black Dog, use combine’s machinegun to kill zombies.
I am stuck at map 11: in low gravity room, when I activate computer console and jump in fluid shield, it’s impossible to get the top. Is a bug?
Great job Leon!
To: Markitus
I did try the machine gun the 1st. time and it would not work. So I tried it again, it worked!
Thanks!!
I just got through playing this mod after giving up on it a year ago,it is a well made but HARD to play even in the easy setting. Was not bored at anytime, kept me on the edge and my alert level was high. Did a lot of game saves. Could not have completed the mod without the Walkthrough.
Thanks!! Leon,Baltic Forever & Phillip!
P.S. This mod would have done very good as a game if sold at retail!
P.P.S. Now don’t go retail on me Leon & Baltic Forever. lol
OK, I need to play this again. I got here from the modwall I think and reading the comments makes me neeed to play again, cannot remember some of the things folks are commenting about. just that I LOVED this mod.
i have writen a walktrough, in fact there 2 of them, a short one and a long one. its best you look there for when your stuck (again). that you can’t choose the weapons, and don;’t see your HUD is because you miss the suit for a small while. don’t worry, you get it back soon.
hope you have fun, and please read here the walkthroughs;
WALKTHROUGHS;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
leon
this is one of the best mods I have played it ranks higher thin coast line I have played a lot of mods for halflife2 this one tops the best you guys are great keep up the good work cant wait till the next one comes up keep me posted please thank you
terrific work and time and effort put into this mod and I appreciate that and congratulate Leon and those involved. This mod was near perfection until for and older(in age) casual gamer like myself became to hard and frustrating shortly after the hallucinogenic gas part. Half Life is about a story with chapters, episodes and exploration which I found I couldn’t do because of the overwhelming attacks that came non stop. Half Life is not about high scores and amount of kills in single player mode so while I understand the concept of the final escape and all out combine trying to prevent it, it took away from being able to enjoy the terrific mapping that went into this mod. I can appreciate the extreme gamers whose skill level is such that the more the merrier but I just thought the last third or so of this mod was too far to the extreme. I’m not one to use cheats as I feel I cheat myself but I must admit I needed to to make it to the end of this. I hope I haven’t come across as being over critical. again the talent that went into this mod is first rate
thank you
thanks Brett and Tom, for your kind reply on CtoA !!
let me start with saying that CtoA is indeed insane difficult, and should I make it now again then I wouldn’t make it that hard. but, thats after talking. still, CtoA is ment to be played on EASY !!!! (we even added a small text in the beginning as far as I can remember, that it needs easy instead of normal or even hard.). still, some people did write to me that they compleated ctoA on Difficult !!!! an unbelieveble good achiement!!! don’t think I could do so.
that said, I hope you don’t mind me pointing out to our next project Strider Mountain. I say this specialy to Brett because you asked to keep you updated on any new projects.
glad to say SM (Strider Mountain) is almost done. it took about 2 years and 5 months or so to make it, and it has 17 large sp-maps !!! so, when you liked CtoA, then you will like SM to.
and, its not that hard as CtoA, I listened very well to all comments and suggestions on CtoA, and really tried to learn from them and implemented them in SM.
SM is very soon compleatly finished, but in the mean time you could allready play SM pre release. this is the first 5 maps of SM, you could allready start with that, and ones your done you probebly can go on right away with the other 12 maps, because by then we will be done with the full mod.
you can find it here on PP;
/posts/strider-mountain-prerelease-half-life-2/
and we have our own site with much more info and movies/screens, etc, and… a walkthrough, (now for the pre release, and as soon as SM is full released we place the full walktough);
http://www.stridermountain.com/
thanks,
leon
(before we made CtoA Baltic and I made a smaller HL2 sp-mappack with 4 maps, should you be interested in that then please check here ; I can’t find it PP because the HL2 maps/mods are not anymore in alfabetical order, therefore I will give for now the filfefront link to it);
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Leons_SP_Map_Pack;39881
This is really nice. You’ve gotta understand though, that this is supposed to be an alternate sequel to hl2. The maps are atmospheric (!), extremely fluid (!!) and I don’t know what to say anymore. It was a great experience playing this.
One critical point: I see a lot of mods having this problem. If you intend to make a serious mod, make sure you’re not anybody but Gordon Freeman to pick up the Gravity Gun AND make sure you find it where it should be. In CTA it’s in the garage next to the car which was patrolled by combine soldiers. That made it unbelievable. Often in other mods it’s just to easy to find, but that doesn’t belong here…
Oh and careful when playing the part in the jungle, where the helicopter attacks you! Make sure, the parts don’t fall on your car, as it is pretty difficult, to get it out of the mess! 😀
lol, I laughed when the helicopter fell on my car.
didnt you use the gravity gun to get it off? to me it was easy…
Sniper-when parts of anything get in the way, just use the gravity gun to move them. It’s great for housekeeping!
NICE mod! I’m stuck on map 4, the same as “Adey 25th October 2008 at 14:57.” None of the metal doors open on the catwalk, so I am unable to progress. Did I miss something?
let me first thank you all again for the nice comments !!
let me start with helping out Naughtymonkeyboy, to be honest did I have to read the walkthrough myself to see which place you exactly ment, after reading that one comment from 25 october.
its quit easy to get through there, but I think you just did miss the trigger.
thing is, you drive your jeep in front of that large wooden gate, then get out of the jeep and walks a few meters backwards were you fidn a ladder atached to the wall. climb on the catwalk and walk on, its just one path/way, so it can’t miss. when you walk on you will get on a catwalk behind the gate were a small stairs goes down again. somewere there is a trigger, that opens the gate. it just when you walk past the gate at the other end, it opens and combines on the catwalk at the other end will shoot at you, can’t really miss.
or, did you walk up to there, and not bring the jeep along with you, becauyse then it could be that the trigger for the gate isn’t activated.
let me know if you succeed, and should you not be familiar with the 2 walkthroughs for CtoA, then please look here;
WALKTHROUGHS;
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual/
http://www.sp-mods.com/C_to_A_manual_short/
and its true Sniperjike that you can get stuck by the brooken heli parts, had this problem ones myself years ago. then I didn’t knew all possibilities of the hammer/hl2 editor and gameengine. now I know I can give such parts a setting that makes that they are not solid to the player and or jeep, and other options that do simular things.
and although I am not a fan of the gravgun you are right there Robspace1, it can help clean up places, lol.
leon
Thank you, SPY-maps, for your reply. What I ended up doing was going back to an earlier save point and replaying that part of the level. This time the door at the end of the catwalk opened. I guess I did miss a trigger somehow, but replaying made it work.This is a wonderful, fun, and great looking mod! Thank you for your hard work, and for sharing this.
Hi everybody, it seems I’m stuck here, when I attempt to open this gate (http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8526/leonhl22da0000.jpg), using this (http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/8195/leonhl22da0001.jpg).
The gate opens without a problem, but then an ingame voice starts telling that I incurred in some violations and the game crashes when it reaches 148, 243, 24…
What should I do? I’d like to go no with this mod which I think it’s really entertaining.
can I read anthing in english in the game like what weapons and ammo and the key config
can you read anything in english? what? to me this mod is all english…
hello is anyone still working on this or what?
omg wall of text O.O
**SPOILER**
I found a bug? I get to the end of lvl 9 which is: SPOILER** after the hallucinations where your flying over streets and looking at combines below etc and you get to the end where it turns black after the walls rotate and are black…. (if this makes sense) but on a walkthrough (to check what went wrong(i dont use walkthroughs)) it said I have a battle with some mroe combine but for me the screen just went black, I was given ammo and health and music played and I heard distant noises of manhack.. and maybe combine isk, but everything was black… I loaded back quite far and replayed it and the same happened.. so I waited longer than 5 minutes and the music finished nd it stayed black…. grrr I wanna playyy!!
ps: GREAT GAME.
I can’t get past the sequence where the first car is found, as my computer freezes when one of the APC’s explodes. I played that section twice, attacking one APC the first time and the other the second. Both times I was left with a frozen image as soon as the explosion occurred. The mouse cursor worked but the keyboard didn’t respond. I had to shut down with the power button. Blowing up APC’s in the original Half-Life 2 games and other mods has not caused this problem.
The cut scene in the same episode, relating to the discovery of the car, was poorly implemented, as I continued taking health damage while I was flown around over the scene with no control of my character.
Mabilis:
I have the exact same problem…
tried to reinstall the game but that did not solve the problem..
I saved my save-files to get back to that place after installation.. maybe I have to start from the beginning..
Anyone else got this problem or maybe a sollution?
I’m having the exact same problem as Daniel posted on
8th July 2009 at 12:32 pm :
“Hi everybody, it seems I’m stuck here, when I attempt to open this gate ( http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8526/leonhl22da0000.jpg ), using this ( http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/8195/leonhl22da0001.jpg ).
The gate opens without a problem, but then an ingame voice starts telling that I incurred in some violations and the game crashes when it reaches 148, 243, 24…
What should I do? I’d like to go no with this mod which I think it’s really entertaining.”
Anyone know a solution to it? The error message Winblows generates in the error log says something about datacache.dll being the wrong module? The mod is really good and I like to be able to play it through without having to resort to using the console to noclip through buggy areas etc.
Coastline to Atmosphere is the BEST mod I’ve seen so far. Story line, characters, action, and the hallucinatory segment were all expertly done. Found that it didn’t like me cheating during the hallucination (i.e. shooting the stalkers.) and would crash if I tried that. Lots of fun and the problem-solving required made it more interesting. Keep up the great work.
one of the greatest mod and HARD REALLY HARD! mod I have seen! I finished it in hard mode but sadly I had to cheat at the end 🙁 (god mode) cause holy headcrabs lets admit it was impossible with the hundred combine elite and fire everywhere :O… at the end this is a really rockin” mod
I’m having the exact same problem as Daniel posted on
8th July 2009 at 12:32 pm
and Igge posted on 7th October 2009 at 1:03 pm:
“Hi everybody, it seems I’m stuck here, when I attempt to open this gate ( http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8526/leonhl22da0000.jpg ), using this ( http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/8195/leonhl22da0001.jpg ).
The gate opens without a problem, but then an ingame voice starts telling that I incurred in some violations and the game crashes when it reaches 148, 243, 24…
Exited steam, removed & reloaded the mod, started again, still the same problem. Any ideas anybody? Great stuff up till this problem.
I have actually played Strider Mountain BEFORE playing this mod. To be honest, I actually avoided this mod for a while because of how much I disliked Strider Mountain. However I actually found this mod to be far MORE enjoyable than strider mountain was. The pacing felt better, the variety of gameplay was better, and I felt like there was far more room to play the game the way I wanted to play, rather than being forced into playing it a particular way.
I did what amounts to a full review for this mod when I was telling someone else about my impressions of it. I only just now realized that I should probably edit it a bit for context and put it up here where others can see it:
The impression I get from Leon’s work so far is that he creates his maps with the intent of forcing you to play a specific way. In forming this conclusion, I’m looking at where invisible walls are, the fact that the buggy acts as a passkey for no conceivable reason, various spawn triggers that wait until you get almost right next to them to fire, items that disappear (even if you’re carrying them) during a map transition, and also the one area (where the gunship shows up) that if you fall into the valley under the house, it instakills you, only to do nothing if you go to that same area through the tunnels.
If anything, I’m feeling like I’m enjoying CtA simply because Leon hadn’t yet learned to enforce his expectations effectively, which has been leaving me more room to work around and find other ways to play than what he specifically expects. (Hint: That’s a GOOD thing)
If it weren’t for needing the buggy to get through various doors, then he could have probably gone through the entire mod without using those stupid mission hint subtitle things. The only thing he would have needed to do is have the various keycard readers bleep at you and say “keycard required” Heck, he could have even had the various doors that require you to use the buggy and had them painted with a big sign that reads “vehicles only!” or “No pedestrians!” (or both) It’s not gamebreaking, but it just feels cheap.
CtA remained incredibly good up until the point where you lose your HEV suit and weapons. Once they did that, even when I got a weapon, I couldn’t SWITCH weapons. The only way I could switch to a weapon I wanted was either by picking it up new or by burning through my ammo in all the other weapons I happened to have. It feels like it HAS to be a bug, but I couldn’t tell if Leon might have thrown it in there just to be a bitch. If it is a bug, it NEEDS TO BE FIXED. If it’s not a bug, it STILL NEEDS TO BE FIXED. I was still able to beat it (mainly by doing whatever I needed to do to get switched to the pulse rifle and then NEVER allowing myself to run out of ammo until I got the HEV suit back) but that’s definitely going to keep me from playing again.
The Hallucinogenic gas felt utterly contrived, but the scenes themselves were handled pretty well. There was one part where I couldn’t see because there was an effect that only works properly in DX9, but I have to run in DX8.1 in order to get decent framerate. It was only one scene though, so that part wasn’t a deal breaker. I still feel devs should take the time to consider how a game looks and runs at the lowest settings as well as the highest settings.
The one section, where you need to get the gravity gun back to activate the blue laser to follow, annoyed me. Actually that part was fun, but the part that pissed me off was the instant kill if you dropped to the floor below.(AGAIN!) I realize Leon wants you to play the way he wants, but that just comes across to me as a severe lack of creativity. I could have thought of at least 3 different ways that could have been better handled. Instakill shouldn’t be used anywhere except for either where there is specifically a reason for you dying (soul sucking monster, pit of acid, hit by lightning, etc), or where there is an area that you aren’t EVER supposed to be AND can’t get back to where you need to be from.
The worst part is that I found another SORTA instakill section that was actually somewhat warranted, but it didn’t work properly. It’s when you’re up at the broken combine bridge right after you escape from the huge mass of headcrabs that are dropped into a sealed room with you. If you jump off the ledge down into the water, you can’t get back up to the bridge, and the drop is high enough that you SHOULD die, so having the instakill spot here is reasonable. Instead you only take half HP damage from the instakill section and the water breaks your fall the rest of the way.
The section at the nuclear reactor with the endlessly spawning combine was annoying until I verified that they were indeed endlessly spawning and just raced past them. Shooting the final badguys was kinda satisfying, but it also felt rather cheesy/anticlimactic to just gun them down as you caught up with them. Oh, and when the room FELL I actually ended up through the ceiling and stuck outside the map. I had to reload and try a couple times to get it to work right.
I felt the “after credits” section was actually a bit of a letdown, since it wasn’t terribly challenging, didn’t really resolve anything, and it put me through that same damn “can’t switch weapons” issue since it apparently didn’t give you your HEV suit.(I had it when I left, so why didn’t I keep it?) I mean, just setting the suit power to zero and disabling flashlight, zoom, and sprint would have worked fine. It’s not like there was any suit power laying around during the sections where you weren’t wearing the HEV suit.
This COULD have EASILY been a Play It Now if not for the majorly game-enjoyment-breaking issues. For now, the most I can give it is a Play It Later. I would happily change that to a Play It Now if Leon fixed the unswitchable weapons without the HEV suit issue, and took out every instakill spot that is in a section where you will eventually be going to. If he addressed all the other specific issues I brought up, it would probably be a Personal Favorite of mine.
Help please. I am stuck during Map 9 the “hallucination” part. I am standing behind Dr. Breen on a floating flagstone and I cannot find a way to proceed. Tried using noclip but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.
I actually played through Strider Mountain before this one. Both are excellent pieces of inventive story telling.
it has been months and months when I was here for the last time, this because I have been mapping like crazy for the last 3 years on Strider Mountain sp-mod. and totaly forgot about looking here, (by the way, I am now working on my last Hl2 sp-mod that is a bit smaller as these 2 sp-mods, after that one I will go on with newer games).
it’s a total mistery to me why people have crash problems with that one gate;
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8526/leonhl22da0000.jpg
this ALWAYS worked fine, but it seems that some people now have problems with it, why this is I really wouldn’t know. maybe some new updates in steam that makes this happen/
about loosing the HEV suit, and not being able to change weapons. this is not a bug, but simply the way Hl2 works. when the player doesn’t have his suit on he isn’t able to speedrun, change weapons or see his HUD. this is programmed in to Hl2, and we didn’t had any programmer. it does happen because just before you loose the suit you stand on a glass floor, and when you look below you you see you’re weapons laying ona floor below. when I made it I thought it would be extra challeging, but I know by now that most people only hated it, so should you have made CtoA now then I would have left that out.
about the inviseble walls, I fully agree with that it’s not done anymore to place them. in older games it was commen, but not anymore. still, I did place them so players wouldn’t be able to get to other places we’re they would only cause troubles.
Pictish1, should you still have that problem then please update you’re videodrivers. the crash that you have is caused by having not the latest videodrivers, or DX9. in those hallucination sequences I used overlays that do need them, otherwise you have indeed a crash. because this is a really old project of mine I don’t look to much anymore here. not that I don’t want to, but I am many projects furtheron so to speak. so please do mail me so I can help,
(leonbrinmann AT emailaccount.com )
or viset sp-mods.com.
should you have liked this mod, and still not have played our latest big project with 17 large sp-maps called Strider Mountain, then please do look here for it on PP;
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/strider-mountain-half-life-2/
thank you all for commenting
I wrote the following July 2007.
Gameplay: Unorthodox Content
In some ways the author pushes the boundaries of normal game play and includes what may be termed by some, as experimental, levels that advance the playing experience and player’s willpower to greater limits. Without giving too much away, you will experience some unorthodox scenarios in the later stages. So if you lose something like suit power don’t think it’s a bug, this and other scenarios are meant to vary the gameplay. Reading the posted comments here on PlanetPhillip, many players have been confused with these levels and expressed a dislike for the step away from the norm. Having played through these sections of the game I believe that they add to the experience, and the author was right to include them even if he has since said, that he now has doubts about their inclusion due to the mixed feedback.
My view is that if authors with the talent of Leon do not try different and new ideas then gaming will not progress, and in any case he was right to include them.
What a coincidence Mel. Like you, I’m a great fan of Leon’s work.
I replayed this and finished a few days ago and wondered whether I had commented. I don’t think I have but with 500 (!) to go through I might be wrong – about 200 by Leon I reckon.
Not much point bothering with pros and cons as they have been well discussed. For me it was all pros but 2.
1. I abhor endless spawning as happened in the area of screenshots 53 and 54. Not that it mattered that much, just get out of there rapidly.
2.
I think Leon was right to do them but not to include them with this mod.
I would have preferred the mod to end at the end of the power plant map (more spawning but there’s no time to bother with them as you need to get your bum in gear).
After that the maps detracted from the mod for me and I was left deflated and disappointed.
The following maps would have been better as a separate mod which we could have judged for what they are.
I see your point Jasper but it’s a bit like asking the author to delete a couple of chapters after you have read his book. Even though you may not like the chapters in question others may, and such are always open to speculation on what the author intend or not, so to separate them would surly be more meaningless, that’s if you think they are meaningless in there present place.
I don’t know what Leon had in mind when he first compiled these levels, and I guess from his reaction from subsequent criticism his not too sure either. I still think he was right to experiment and include them, any author only has so much time to give, and as we see Leon is close to finishing with Half Life.
Without Leon, the so very much poorer we will be. We and all those who like his work can but hope that he finishes his SM follow up and that EP3 is so good that he becomes inspired to return.
As wit hthe very first post “the control of weapons choice and the displaying of health information is no longer available”, I also have the same problem. On level 10, I can’t choose weapons, my health does not show, etc…Is there any fix for this?
Afraid not. Leon ‘spymaps” Brinkman deliberately designed that way.
Irritated me too. On replays I stop at the end of the power plant map.
That’s stupid. The game was GREAT until that point.
Sorry smallengineguy, I got that wrong. I thought you were near to the end.
At level 10 you get re-weaponised and suited so play on.
It’s only at the last level, 15, that you permanently lose the HEV.
This was a really really good mod, and I can’t wait to play Strider Mountain now that I know it’s by Leon as well. There were sections of the game that I found frustrating, but there were others, such as the duel with the two striders, the hallucination scenes, and the room filled with headcrabs, that made me keep playing.
However I seem to be stuck on the 14th map where you kill G-man and Breen. I’ve killed both of them, and I found the walkthrough that tells you to go back to the terminal in the office and use it to open the door, but the terminal doesn’t seem to work. When I try and use it I get the little locked console beep, and when I run down the stairs again the door is never open. So what am I doing wrong that I can’t get the door to open?
OK! Made it to the end, now Im in the room in the city. Is there more to go? It wont let me out of the room.
Chris, that console should open that door!
Well, I just did a little cheating and nocliped through it. The last part was pretty good even though the HEV disappeared for no given reason. I wish that last part had been a bit longer. I couldn’t tell if the ending was setting it up for a sequel or if it was supposed to mean that you had killed all the remaining combine?
While I’ve played this mod twice all the way through, I would have preferred THREE mods to come of this:
The “coastline” portions were thoroughly wonderful. I LOVED them. The maps were beautifully constructed and a pleasure to wander around. Good puzzles, good fights, very balanced.
The “Hallucinogen” portions were worthy of a side trip mention, but weren’t really in keeping with anything in the rest of the mod. They were fun, entertaining diversions, but not what I’d want to include in a “pro” mod. One thing that really harmed this was that I had fallen off one portion of the “floor” at one point, and was unable to return to the proper location. I had to start over since there was no “oops” correction anywhere. Also, losing your health / hud was very, very unnerving particularly when you did have a weapon later, I guess there was a reason but it didn’t appear anywhere in the game that I could tell.
The “Atmosphere“… here is where it unfortunately falls apart for me. SOME of it was good – again the map making itself was good, but there were things that bothered me:
Why does a space station have concrete walls and cells? The efforts on the ground portions didn’t seem to carry through on the ‘space” areas with the same thoughtfulness. Where are all these guys coming from? And again, there were areas where if you wound up landing somewhere you shouldn’t have been there was NO way to correct it, having to start from a save again.
I enjoyed some of the puzzle-type areas in the Atmosphere section, but both times I’ve played, I’ve had to noclip around and try to beat the ending. I’ve read that yes, its theoretically possible to do what’s needed in time to finish properly, but… seriously? I can’t see myself being able to do so, pretty much ever. That kind of steals the wind from my sails and gives me a bad taste in my mouth about the whole mod. I wish that the ending portion wasn’t so very, very very hard just for timing, since it would otherwise be a terrific end to the mod.
So definitely PLAY IT, but be aware that it’s got its share of difficult flaws, though that won’t stop me from playing again.
This is overall… an incredible mod : it’s long, it has various environments, a great finale, many weapons, many explosive and thrilling moments…
But :
1) TOO LONG!!!! My god, it was almost longer than HL2 itself!!!
Sure, it could be good for a mod to have a great lifetime but :
a) The whole buggy level was just having a great weight chained to the feet… I mean, for near 100 times, we just advance 10 meters, then have a rush of Combine, then after their death, open a door for the buggy, and doing that again and again!!! I would have gained nearly an hour going through the road at feet…
b) What the hell with this system to go through??? I mean, I’m blocked at point A, and the only way to open it is to go back for Combine to open a door at point A…!!!
But still, there a numerous points of action, and despite the overall boringness of fighting hundreds, perhaps thousands, rush of manhacks, the overall apocalyptic tone of the final, and the pleasure to kill 2 of the “important persons” of Half-life, was fun…
There is also the genius sequence of the “dreams”, Max Payne-like, really crazy and entertaining…
Soooo many defaults, but also soooo unique qualities… But, overall, too long… A fan should play it while having many nights free… Cuz’, it’s long, but addicting…
a) The whole buggy level was just having a great weight chained to the feet… I mean, for near 100 times, we just advance 10 meters, then have a rush of Combine, then after their death, open a door for the buggy, and doing that again and again!!! I would have gained nearly an hour going through the road at feet…
K, you or what I did and still do is go it on foot where the combine is thick, stay down and pick’em off.. Like at the bridge where you have to open the gate and they are like flies on shite?.. Also you can spawn an airboat…impulse82 &83 is the jeep and the airboat.
CTA Game crash since steam update.MORONS!.. It wasn’t broke why did they fix it?
I can get to where you steal the jeep, get through the gate, but when the next level change comes it just stops responding. Any ideas? I’ve loved this mod and played since it was released. Seems many mods no longer work at all or run poorly, crash and now have a plethora of problems. FRUSTRATED! ANY help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
LONG term Leon fan
Dusty
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/get-mods-working/
Same problem for me! I can’t play it after this moment 🙁
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1289845
The above link can be deleted. I forgot that the Planet Phillip link which Gray Acumen posted has the fix at the top! (I was thinking about the post by andyb further down the thread.) Sorry.
I lol’d at the stripped soldier with the jetpack, shooting lasers out of his head.
This is EPIC.. I’ve played this one too many times….working through it again now that it is working thanks to the fixes posted.. This mod is a keeper so burn it to a disk (can be done in the zip file) and store it just in case.. MOTY material!.. Download it now if you haven’t and play your freakin arse off!..
Will give this Leon’s map I played recently, (yep I know it was from 2006 but till now I played it!) a play it now recomendation, because this map I could say it was like “reading” Leon’s autobiography, I mean, in this mod we can see lots of elements that leon’s improoved on their further mods SM and FPD mods.
The mod started ok but in a personal opinion just ends in a horrible complicated way and besides kind of awful I hate the thing of seeing the last scene sequence and credits and just after be into another battle… but I mean this is leon, he likes to put us as players into his head and just follow it!
Anyway, if u like to understand some glimpses of how leon started his moding “carrer” this mod is just ESSENTIAL, also very in a clasic moding style of Cmb and HL schemes, leon still didn’t have his kind of canon modding style back then, about new textures and skin weapons.
So this is a basic mod but not a classic, so if u haven’t played it u could do it anytime
I have the same problem with the jeep, I’ve edited the file as suggested, but it still won’t play past that point…oh well…
GREAT MOD!
[spoiler]
Some of the areas you’re gonna be at in the game is gonna be in Final Project Diary mod.
[/spoiler]
One more thing, it’s pretty cool to have music from different games in here! I haven’t seen a single citizen in the city of the island though.
This mod is crashing for me when loading the map leonHL2-2c (when I drive off out of the first little combine town area). I have replaced the SteamAppId in gameinfo.txt and it is still doing this. Does anyone know how I can get it to work?
I am having the same problem, also June 2011. I wonder what changed?
problem still not fixed
whay can I say …. leon is in my opinion the best modder/mapper of half life 2 there is….. and coastline to atmosphere is proof of this …
the amount of work thats gone into this is astounding…. however when I recently played this mod it crashed mid way …. this has nothing to do with leon… and is probally due to one of valves updates ( which has destroyed other excellent mods )
knowing this wouldnt you think valve would release another update to fix these issues…. I mean these mods and maps were made using their hammer editor so they are responsible in a way
( does anyone know how you can fix this error/crash ) ……
apart from that this is a amazing mod …..
Not my cup of tea. The driving sections are ridiculous, some of the routing is much too “busy” for vehicles. Some of the maps archtecture was plain, and some of the construction made no sense. A touch of Combine-ites as well. My advice: pass
I really like Leon’s work and thoroughly enjoyed this mod. I’ve played it twice so far, but will replay in the future.
I haven’t played this for a couple of years, and now it crashes. Yup, I changed the SteamID thing to 215 in gameInfo.txt but it doesn’t help. The crash comes after you get the car and run it up the mountain between map 2-2b and 2-2c. Anyone have a fix? I looked for other patches but found nothing. This is one of my all-time favourite mods and it’s a shame. I assume Steam screwed it up with some sort of new software.
Got the exact same thing, sad
I downloaded the mod from ModDB because I couldn’t get any of the links provided to work
Boy, this mod has not aged well. Putting aside engine problems (when I first played the HUD was broken), there were loads of things that were surprisingly dated for one of the Hall of Fame mods.
Firstly the positives. The first few levels are really cool, and they have a nice Coast ambience to them as well as a good balance to the combat. The introductory sequence sets up the plot quite well here, giving an overall goal for us. Also included is a custom soundtrack which is quite well used, although songs occasionally play at inappropriate points. Coastline to Atmosphere does provide some memorable moments, including revenge attempts by Doctor Breen and some impressive environments. The mod does definitely give a feeling of travelling a long distance.
Combat-wise, the mod relies almost entirely on Combine soldiers, which I think is to its detriment. Some more variety in gameplay would make things more interesting. A lot of scenarios involve opening a route to allow you to proceed with the car. The issue is that you drive the car such a short distance each time that it doesn’t seem worth using it. Lots of the areas you have to drive through are also very cramped, such as narrow corridors with little room to maneuver.
Throughout the gameplay we are bombarded with a range of on screen messages. They often tell you explicitly what you have to do to proceed, rather than using the environment to give clues. That seems to me like lazy level design, not to mention that it makes no sense from an in-universe perspective. Pressing buttons also causes some odd cutscenes which are usually unneccesary and just disrupt the flow of the levels.
Graphically, Coastline to Atmosphere is pretty good for its age but some things let it down. Some maps are lacking a 3D skybox, which is very problematic in the seaside maps where the edge of the level is very apparent. The use of “cheap” water textures also looks horrible and reduces visibility of what is below the surface.
Later on in the mod, combat is made more difficult simply by adding ever larger hordes of soldiers, which occasionally spawn right in front of the player. The modder tries to add some variety by taking us to Breen’s satellite, but disappointingly the environments don’t reflect the idea of being in space at all. The mix of standard concrete wall textures and Combine areas seems far too Earth-bound. As if that was not enough, we then move on to an hallucination section. For some reason these seem to be fairly common in longer mods, but here it is just an excuse for weird environments, lethargic cutscenes and combat with stupid overlays covering the screen.
I stopped playing shortly after this point, so I cannot comment any further, but from what I gather there is a fair bit more to the mod. Perhaps it improves later on, but by this point I was just tired of playing.
I know it may seem like I am being too harsh to this mod, especially as many consider it a “classic”, but personally I just didn’t like it. There were some enjoyable and memorable areas, but there were just too many niggles for me to really have fun.
Manually
Easy
3 Hours, 30 Minutes
I’m having a consistent crash in map 2da, immediately after opening the gate near the “thumper”. My gameinfo already had 215, so it’s not that.
Pity, I was enjoying this (more than Strider Mountain…)
Web search shows a few people having this problem. Completely unrelated to the 215 thing, neither is it fixed by dialling the graphics settings down to minimum.
Fortunately it’s right near the end of the map, so skipping to the next map is not too unacceptable:
map leonhl2-2e.bsp
give weapon_rpg
give weapon_frag
Mini review:
* Enjoyable gameplay for the first half,
* Some incongruities on the satellite (smashed up toilet block???)
* Original but perplexing and drawn-out hallucination sequence
* Ending sequences too hard, confusing, and hardware-taxing
The first HL2 mod I played and boy did I enjoy it!
At first I got frustrated with the intro and it didn’t leave me a good impression although that changed the moment I was dodging bullets from combine patrols
(which the environment made a little tricky at times).What I loved the most was the frequent skirmishes with soldiers in nice and realistic environments (somewhat bland areas are not absent but fortunately they’re not so common either).
A few puzzles here and there to take your mind of the constand bloodbaths/shootouts which were pretty easy
There’s a few things that I didn’t like in the mod:
The difficulty:
On Easy it’s pretty hard with so much soldiers seeping in from all directios and in the closed spaces and the modest ammount of supplies,let alone playing on the other difficulties.
The cutscenes:
Unskippable and pretty annoying,rarely any real sense in them except the ones that show you your objective.
The driving sections:
Cramped roads that are sometimes blocked and having to stop every once in a while to clear/open the way for your buggy.
Story/Ending:
A little mediocre and boring,matters only at the beggining and the end of the mod because between them there is little to no development.Nothing inovative and interesting in the ending either.
If you’re someone who enjoys frequent battles in a variety of environments and enclosed spaces,ammo management and long shootouts – than this mod is for you.
Manually
Easy
3 Hours
Very good mod. Entertaining and with continuous action. Buenos landscapes and an extra hour of being under the influence of hallucinations experience.
Manually
Medium
5 Hours
With such a long mod, it can be hard to put into a concise review all ones thoughts and feelings. For those that are interested, you could watch my completely playthrough videos in the main post.
Overall, I did enjoy the first two thirds of this mod. It has its issues but the scope of Leon’s work is always impressive. The question for me is whether those issues out weigh the positives.
I have given this a PLAY IT! recommendation and I think that’s a fair one. It’s not a Personal Favourite because it’s too long and there are too many problems but everybody should play it.
Leon’s layouts are always complex and detailed, but I feel that lack realism. Not in the sense that a place couldn’t exist but in the sense that his builds thing quickly and with little regard to detail and polish. Many of the areas would have played just as well with dev textures. There were a couple of areas that looked great but not enough in such a long mod.
Over the years, Leon’s output has been more about how much he can make not how good it can be. Yes, having over 8 hours of gaming is great but too much of it felt like filler. A solid 3 hours would have been better.
Now, let’s look some of the other issues I had. Firstly, it’s the way Leon uses enemies. Too often there a just large amounts of Combine soldiers all thrown at you at the same time. This often happens in places where they are in a straight line and can be killed quite easily. That’s not to say his mods are easy, because they are the opposite – they are hard.
Not because of intelligent or creative placement of enemies but because of numbers. No where is this more evident than in the final battles.
My next issue is the use of cut-scenes and screen text. The cut scenes last too long and more importantly interrupt the flow of gameplay and the screen text tells me what to do and think – I thought that was my job.
The final third was visually the most interesting but I died in places I had no control over. There is one spot where you are in a toxic gas induced dream and find yourself with no weapons and surrounded by about 6 combine soldiers. The shoot you and you can do nothing about it. I might have been able to load an earlier save and try to keep my health but the whole idea is bad and I am punished for something I can’t control.
It was at this point I had to “cheat” to pass this section and it wasn’t the first and certainly wasn’t the last. Episodes like this just increase a player’s frustration and desire to quit.
I’ve reached the point where I don’t want to continue writing. There’s only so many negative comments you can make before the purpose is lost and it just turns into a rant.
Leon can claim that this is one of his first Source releases and that’s true but something things are not about engines it’s about understanding what players want. A mod this long should have had 200 hours beta testing and not just from Leon.
Will I play his other work? Yes, but I won’t be as eager as I should be. I will approach his mods with some trepidation in the knowledge that Leon’s work is very similar throughout his modding career.
Should you play this? Of Course. You only need to look at what most people think to know that many LOVE his work. Play on EASY and expect a marathon session.
I do hope that Leon’s latest work, called The Closure< will be beta tested to hell and back and more importantly he listens to the beta testers feedback. This is without doubt a tremendous piece of work and Leon should be congratulated for it, but it could have been so much better.
Using Gauge
Medium
8 Hours, 30 Minutes
Hey Phillip, do you know If this upcoming mod has something to do with the “rooftop retreat” project of his??? As far as I know Leon was working on that rooftop retreat project, but I never knew if he finished it and release it.
My understand is that Leon continued the map he made for RooftopVille and it became The Closure. He hopes to release it at the end of December, but that’s not a fixed release date.
Hey Phillip, does this work on the Mac. I’ve got the SDK installed within Steam but it still fails to launch :/ A bit gutted.. TIA:)
I have no idea Steve. I don’t have a Mac and can’t test it. Any other Mac users can help?
Does not work for PC either, asks for Source SDK 2013 Singleplayer and when installed still does not work, tries to load then chucks you out??
Not sure of a way forward…………….any techies out there?
Totally the same experience. Nearly 5 Gb of SDK download just to have it keep trying to launch, then crashing out a few moments later to the desktop. Disappointing!
I believe you need the Beta of the SDK 2103. I had it already and didn’t realize until another comment further down mentioned it. The Readmes in the archive give full information.
Leon’s work isn’t my cup of tea, really, but I have a 2011 Mac Mini at hand and thought I’d take a crack at this.
First things first, Paul and any other PC players will need to opt in to the Source SDK 2013 beta by going to the SDK’s Properties page, clicking the Betas tab, and choosing “upcoming” from the list. Let Steam download the updated files, and you should be good to go. This requirement is mentioned in README_fix.txt in the CtA distribution, though I think the main “C to A Read Me” could stand to be updated to point players in the right direction.
Mac users might not need to bother with the beta, as the solution seems to work without it, but you may want to opt in anyway just to be safe. The big solution here is the client and server libraries. CtA ships with the Windows DLLs, but not OS X versions of the same thing. Where Windows uses .dll for its dynamically loaded libraries, OS X uses .dylib and Linux uses .so (the differences go beyond the file extension, of course). Since CtA doesn’t use any custom code, as far as I know, you should be able to just use the stock Half-Life 2 binaries. Just grab client.dylib and server.dylib from SteamApps/common/Half-Life 2/hl2/bin and copy them to SteamApps/sourcemods/Coastline_to_Atmosphere/bin alongside the existing DLLs.
I’ve tested this in both Windows and OS X as far as starting a new game and watching the opening cinematic, then loading a random map from the console, and everything seems to be okay, but I can’t guarantee it’ll work start to finish, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Thanks for the detailed info.
Thanks Rob, much appreciated, I wouldn’t have known where to look lol.
Works now apart from the node building thingy coming up.
Glad to hear you got it working.
That worked fine thank you.
On a related note, do us non-mappers really need over 15 Gb of various “Source SDK” content just to play mods & maps? I presume so……
I played it on HARD, not only because it is Hard November, but also I like to play HL2 mods on hard. I don’t know where to start, but I can say that it was too long.
For those who haven’t played it yet, there might be some SPOILERS, please READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
STORYLINE
The beginning of the story was quite interesting. You start playing in a coast, and you have no one to help you. The loneliness is well made in this mod as I usually like in HL2 mods. As you play a few levels, sometimes you may forget (especially in cinematic visuals) what you were doing because of lack of storytelling, and the mod is just too long.
ATMOSPHERE
The story takes place mostly outside and I enjoyed it a lot. I like outdoor and big places, and love to explore every corner of the area that I’m in. I don’t know why, but maybe It is because I am very interested in finding Easter Eggs (if exist) and hidden messages & places in HL2 universe.
MUSIC
The music choice in this mod is very good. Although it does not have its own music, it fits to the atmosphere. During my gameplay in some levels, I just stopped fighting, sat back, listened to music that was playing and enjoyed the view. That is a plus for this mod.
COMBAT
It was quite hard. Maybe because I played it on hard, but usually it was annoying at times. I had to save a lot during the gameplay because of it. It was not balanced at all. In some levels, combines keep coming unless you keep going forward. That can demotivate you to keep playing.
PUZZLE
As a Portal fan, I like puzzle elements in HL2 universe. There is not enough puzzle elements on this mod. There are a few places that you need to think about what needs to be done, but usually you are told what to do or where to go. I think, the instruction messages kind of spoil the moment for the explorers.
OVERALL
It is obvious that Leon worked hard to make this mod. There were some glitches (especially in the final level), but it was acceptable for such a big mod.
Every single level of this mod is well thought out. An alternative scenario, cinematic storytelling, differentiating HL2 universe by his way of approach and adding new small elements… These are what I expect from a mod.
It could be my Personal Favorite, but due to the issues I mentioned above, my opinion is PLAY IT NOW!
Manually
Hard
15 Hours
Leon’s Coastline to Atmosphere is a huge mod, and I don’t think that is good, the mod starts off decent with some good enough story premise for a 1 to 2 hours mod, but it just keeps going on, and it doesn’t stop at any moment, there is repetitive gameplay after repetitive gameplay, boring fights, boring vehicle driving, boring search for hidden key cards, and it really just keeps going on, by the time I hit three hours of gameplay I didn’t even remember what mod I was playing, didn’t remember even what was my objective.
The map design show huge problems by not being very intuitive and it being consistently uninteresting to go through, it has a few areas of secret objects but nothing too amazing, and it consistently uses the Lambda logo for areas that are not hidden items.
And there is the constant non-stop immersion breaking white text on screen to tell you what to do, the mod can’t rely on its own map design so it has to tell you all the time what to do, and the more you go through it the more it shows up, it’s terrible in a gameplay perspective and it’s terrible in story perspective.
There is some weird weapon placements too like only finding the crowbar like 30 minutes to 1 hour into the mod, nothing too important but it felt very weird.
All the objectives that you have in the mod feel very disconnected, it does not feel like a consistent experience and almost all of it feels unnecessary, there are locked gates after locked gates with a button in a house to the side and it does that at least six times within three hours of gameplay, the key card just felt like non-sense from the start and overall it felt miserable to go through it.
I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t able at all to bring myself to continue it, it was just that bad.
It’s obvious that the developer put a lot effort into it, but it just started out bad it just got worse, I think the developer should maybe start doing some smaller mods to refine some basic elements because he at least shows a lot of perseverance and dedication by making a mod this big.
Manually
Medium
3 Hours
This mod started out good. And the as it progressed it got worse and worse. The end is buggy, and sometimes you need to cheat your way trough just because something is broken or you have to restart the map. I loved the beginning. It was fun, sometimes a bit too challenging. But it was the part that really made this mod shine. As I was fighting trough the first few chapters I got closer and closer to getting to the atmosphere.
It was an enjoyable experience , until you got into the atmosphere, my hopes and dreams, crushed by broken maps and swarms of combine soldiers. Saving is necessary to progress, unless you want to be stuck for an hour on a small arena.
There is one big complaint and that is the swarms of shotgun wielding maniacs charging to your position. It isnt fun when those red eyes stare deep into your soul when your dead body is lying on the cold wet sandy beaches, or hard metal floors.
As a mapper, this mod has inspired me to make my own mod. It is currently in the works and I cant thank Leon more for making this mod.
It is a true source of inspiration, and shows what time and effort can lead to. It is sad that all that time was wasted on maps that we’re broken. Or unbalanced.
Started out as one of my favourite mods, quickly went down the drain of doom.
Manually
Medium
3 Hours
I don’t remember writing this review.
An intresting read to say the least!
Wait wut, I didn’t finish this mod in 3 hours!
Follow my journey as I go down the list of source mods at http://www.runthinkshootlive.com/hl2/
This is the 1st mod on the list.
I heard this mod is pretty hard from one of the streams, and also I just finished final project diary, which mentions this mod at the end of the game. Cant wait to see it!
…
…
Crashes at startup. Moving on the the next one!
Does Half-Life 2 run properly?
verified hl2 integrity and it fixed an error. however, this mod still crashes on startup. I deleted it an will be moving down the list of mods, so thanks for the concern
I will confirm this is unable to start using Gauge. Installed the newest version linked above. Clicked play and it went to the valve loading screen (albeit not at the correct resolution which is typical for everything i play now for some reason), then went black and back to the desktop. No ‘would you like to fix this mod’ message on play or install, and no error message visible.
Sorry for the multiple posting Phillip, but i keep reading here and there and i would like to comment also on one other subject that is said many times. Really feel the need to also adress this last one point, (have said this also on Moddb);
“People who disliked this mod have never played any other mods of leon”
I am quit surpriced to read so many times a statement like above.
First i want to thank those who feel the need to write statements like that. I fully understand what you mean with that.
When you have played any of my other mods you would have known what to expect. And that is true !
But, to be honest do i also fully understand the opposite side who says that that shouldn’t matter. You don’t need to know previous work, but it does help. When i see a movie of Woody Allen i know up front that it will be a movie full of talkin and without action. Also when he makes a part 20 of Rocky so to speak. So when i make a Ep3 you can expect it will be more of the same, (meaning earlier work). Personally i really don’t see it but a lot of people say i have a own style. And i see that as a huge compliment because as a “artist” that is the highest form of self expression.
So, to complain about it not being a worthy follow up of Ep2 is in that light not right. Its a custom made Ep3, wich says so much as it will be a Ep3 as how the developer would like to see it, or at least would like and is able to make.
So yes, it does have it’s advantidge when you know previous work but it is not a must. Still, you always need to look at a mod in the light of the mod maker. Because it is his mod, not Valves. So, why people keep complaining then that it is not a Valve mod is a real mistery to me. Its a SPYmaps Ep3.
leon
Hi, try as I might I cannot get this mod to run. I’ve tried running it from MapTap and Gauge and also Steam. It consistently throws me out at the loading screen. My skill level is low-medium, all clues welcomed.
UPDATE: I got it! Skill level now “medium-ish” : )
I get stuck in the ‘tripping’ section because I get killed after falling through the floor.
After re-installing the mod on top of the existing folder, suddenly the AI is turned off and I get stuck again.
I would put a “Think Twice” on this one based on what I’ve seen so far.
Its no good for me it launches and immediatly closes before the game menu, tried every fix, downloaded source sdk 2013, verified the caches, and nothing, well thx anyways. –Crashes At Startup!!!
can’t get this mod to run at all in steam. everything is installed but no luck.
Exactly what happens?
I found out the problem was I didn’t have the updated version of the mod. I downloaded the updated version. It loads and plays but every time I use the windows button to shell out to windows10 the game crashes white box with blue text like “hl2 is closing” allow or cancel. This is the first time I have ever had this happen in a mod. I’d sure appreciate a fix if anybody knows one. Oh I am playing in Steam. I almost forgot I have no HUD or crosshair in the game.
I didn’t finish this mod because I didn’t care to after about three hours of game play. This is a long mod — too long in my opinion. It started off quite nicely and I’d say I enjoyed the first 1.5 – 2 hours. Toward the second hour the game even began to resemble and feel like a Doom 1 and 2 remake (which I actually liked since I grew up on Doom). But this quickly turned into some rather sloppy, poor, boring, and confusing level design/game play. Really. It gets pretty bad, unfortunately. I rate this mod “maybe” because I think the first half is worth playing, but not the latter half.
Using Gauge
Easy
3 Hours
Wow! I first played this mod about three years ago and, in the absence of much new stuff lately, I decided to play it again. Boy am I glad I did. I had forgotten just how truly brilliant the mod is. So many different areas, scenes and scenarios plus a boat and a car at various points.
Yes it is very long and can be quite hard in parts but it is hugely enjoyable for the most part so the time flies by. The only thing stopping me from giving it a PF is the dreaded fantasy section. I am not a fan of the fantasy stuff at the best of times but in this mod once you get a whiff of the gas you are off on a trip like no other. You keep wishing for it to be over but it just keeps on going and going and going. Maybe it’s just me but I found it literally quite nauseating at times and because it has no bearing on the plot, quite pointless.
The only other minor irritation was the loss of the HEV suit at one point so no flashlight and no ability to switch weapons or monitor health. I guess it’s quite novel in a way but I was very glad to find another suit further along.
The end game was pretty tough and the final race against the clock almost impossible but I managed it eventually.
All in all a staggeringly good piece of work from Leon so many thanks and keep up the good work.
Looking at the positive reviews this mod had, I went and take a look at it. I was surprised on how “meh” it actually is.
Combat is a bit stiff. It’s more like, come to an arena, fight like hell, do a little puzzle here, continue. And it goes like that for the entire mod.
Something that I really didn’t like is the cut-scene’s. It’s half-life darn it! The entire thing about Half-Life is that it is all from Gordon’s perspective right? Well, this mod gives that concept the finger and give’s you unnecessary, overdrawn cut-scene’s that sometimes come out of nowhere. The mod would have a much better phase if those weren’t there.
Level design wise it’s pretty decent. At least for 2006 standards. The time the mod was released is why I can’t judge the graphics. Source Engine wasn’t as complex as it is now back when the mod was in development. I was even stunned that I got the game to work on Steam the other day. Obviously, that isn’t Leon’s fault. It was Valve that did that Steampipe thingy in 2013 which broke many mods. But I’m getting sidetracked here…
If you wanna check out this mod, that’s fine. I won’t recommend it though. But that is just my silly opinion. You might find some enjoyment in this.
Manually
Easy
2 Hours, 30 Minutes
It has been years that i did visit this CtoA page here on RTSL, and i am amazed and very pleasantly surpriced to see that even till this day (10 years after its release) people play it!
Never thought that would ever happen!
I do wonder though why RTSL.com did take the original download amount down and replaced it with the amount of downloads from just the last year. Because now it says its downloaded only about 1600 times when i am very sure it has been much higher.
And it probably shouldn’t matter, but as modder you are proud of a high download number, now CtoA is back hanging at the bottum of the line.
Has this just to do with that a patch was released for it, why then take all downloads down?
really don’t get this.
The overall download amount was around 350.000 times, here and on other sites.
Leon
*reads difficulty* Hard mode cant be SUPER hard right?
I died a bunch of times after that.
This is pretty fun and is a nice challenge.
Despite the maps not being extremely detailed i thought it worked fairly well.
Manually
Hard
3 Hours, 15 Minutes
Have you finished playing it? The reason I am asking is that you should only use a recommendation image and meta review data when you have.
On of the best mod I every played. Thanks you very much, Leon, for this wonderful mod. 🙂
Manually
Medium
6 Hours
This mod was overall really cool.
The maps were good designed except for some flaws but that’s OK. However, the AI sometimes seemed a little bit dumb and what I mean by that is that the combine guys sometimes don’t react to anything. The ending part was way too hard in my opinion as you got no weapons to defend yourself at first and then there are too many enemies. Also the last section was extremely buggy and I had to noclip my way through as I got stuck twice. But besides these mistakes the mod was really enjoyable, the scenery good to look at and the story pretty good. I’d say it’s not really a “play it later”, but more a “yea, that’s nice, play it if you want”.
Manually
Medium
5 Hours
Reading a few of the comments above, it’s clear people had mixed feelings about this cracking “mod” but I’m obviously siding with the ones that loved it. This is a massive collection of beautiful maps which tell a story so well and it’s always fun and interesting to follow. The action through these places is always exciting with a very engrossing atmosphere too – I personally loved the entire adventure and it was brilliant to see so much of it was outdoors. The driving scenes were also so good to play and I always felt the game was well balanced and never OTT.
However, nothing is perfect and I felt the game flipped into something else – from the two Strider scene. I dunno why, but something didn’t quite feel right afterwards and the gameplay styles seemed to change for the worse with incredibly hard battles (often backed up by little health packs and ammo!). TBH, i didn’t really “get” that two-Strider scene anyhow. It was a good idea and it took me quite a few attempts but i didn’t think it worked overall. Perhaps because the rockets were spread about in silly locations? However, the game ended (for me) after the part where a load of headcrabs fall from the ceiling – wow so HARD!!! The battles afterwards, I personally thought, where too hard and let down the entire mod.
However!
Nothing is perfect and I do highly recommend Coastline to Atmosphere which I personally feel is one of the best I’ve found on this awesome website. I’m gutted those later moments are so poor in comparison to the rest, but hours (and hours) of gun fun is had before you reach them anyhow.
Download this!!!
(oh, thanks to Rob Martens’ comment (above) I finally(!) got around to playing this on my Mac)
Manually
Medium
8 Hours
Phillip wrote:
“… The final third was visually the most interesting but I died in places I had no control over. There is one spot where you are in a toxic gas induced dream and find yourself with no weapons and surrounded by about 6 combine soldiers. The shoot you and you can do nothing about it. I might have been able to load an earlier save and try to keep my health but the whole idea is bad and I am punished for something I can’t control.”
This is exactly the spot I’m stuck in at the moment. What the hell am I supposed to do here (other than die again and again)??!! Btw, it’s eight soldiers …
I’d say play this mod if you have nothing else to do and have a few hours to kill. In my eyes the look of the game just seems so manufactured an unnatural. It just doesn’t seem very polished and most of the cut scenes include bugs of some sort!
Maybe?
Manually
Medium
2 Hours, 10 Minutes
For the first half of this mod, I found it decent with scripting and combat locations. Though, the mod breaks Half Life 2’s famous points of Gordon’s prespective, instead spamming levels with Cutscenes and red texts to lead you to hard goals, but then it doesn’t. Even in one part where it tells me to go a location- the actual exit was through a now opened door on a place I went before and opposite direction.
If you play this mod, be prepared to either have a fun time or be prepared to turn on “sv_cheats 1” As the scripting is fantastic when it works- but when it doesn’t, AKA, the Space Station half of the game, it angers me, forcing me to noclip and godmode. Even the last section- Killing Breen, the Main final climax- I had to noclip! And also, there’s multiple spots in which you can see no-collided props and glitches.
Enemy placement and AI is absolutely horrible, with half of combat being shooting down some Spammed Combine Elite, all in a nice column rushing you while in cover.
Play this mod only if you’re desperate for long content, and if you do, activate Cheats in the console. The mod is way too difficult even on easy in the later segments, spamming Combine Elite in groups of Seven when you just got out of a battle.
Rating: AR3
As a huge HL fan i tried at least 50 mods. From those that worked at all most lack gameplay or are too short. This though, is one of the best. I would put it at n.2 after Black Mesa which has a huge team behid. Coastline to Atmosphere mod is long, consistent and in the spirit of the original series. As a level design there is only one aspect that could be better. In original Half Life1,2 etc, maps are so addictive because they are logical. If its a rocket base, offices, equipment etc. are where supposed to be if it was a real deal. So its logical where to go.But most of the mods lack this feature. Crashes once in a while but not too often.For one man job is just perfect even unpolished. Respect
I was enticed by the premise of this mod, being an alternate continuation of Half-Life 2. When I played through it, I was in awe at Leon’s level design, especially the damned drug trip at the end.
To me, the difficulty was not impossible, but definitely challenging, and I played on Medium. I was hooked on this mod from beginning to end…. well, almost.
The ending pretty much ruins it for me. Without going into too much spoiler territory, there is a part where you fall down through a wooden floor into a black void. You hear a voice clip, which I thought said either “Up here. Up here.” or “Appear. Appear.” You hear guns cocking, and then you are shot to death by a squad of soldiers surrounding you. I could not figure out what to do here. I thought I was supposed to look up like the voice line apparently said to somehow avoid being shot, or crouch, but I died every time. Apparently this is a bug in the map? I don’t know. I stopped playing it here.
Coastline to Atmosphere was promising, and it indeed delivered well, except for the probably bugged ending sequence. The best parts were the level design and puzzles, and the worst parts were what I just described. Definitely give it a play, though be wary that you may have to cheat to get past the ending.
Manually
Medium
7 Hours
Mild Spoilers ahead.
Leon’s From Coastline to Atmosphere is a very, confusing mod with my most mixed feelings about.
Alot of people commend it for it’s gameplay and map variety, but I find that to be quite the opposite.
For Gameplay, there’s no mixing up to it. It’s moving from room to room killing the same old Combine, with the occasional vehicle mixed up in it. No weapons have really been tinkered with at all- I understand preserving gameplay from the original series, but the thing that made Half Life 2’s Shooting special was how it set it up- Physics, explosive barrels, the Gravity Gun- all of those are tossed aside for using your SMG/AR2 ninety-percent of the time.
The Map design. It’s nothing special really, except for intresting concepts like the Combine Space Station. The journey here starts on a high-note, and ends on the lowest note possible. The beginning few maps are quite enjoyable with a fond sense of nostalgia from the earlier days of Half Life 2, but there’s nothing quite unique about it.
So, fine in the first half- but the Combine Space station. I cannot stress this enough.
I hated that section.
About every thirty minutes or so, there’s a gamebreaking glitch which I spend a hour looking up how to progress or fix, like dying during a trippy sequence from Combine, resulting in me skipping some maps entirety.
On the bright side however, this thing can blow off alot of time. It’s kind of that, stupid fun when your just blasting down Combine Soldiers with your AR2- and there’s this whole concept of a Journey, and a conclusion to Breen’s story. Not to mention like stated before, there’s amazing looking buildings and concepts in some of the maps, but half of the time, they fall flat.
Overrall, I think it’s a go if you want a long Campaign Mod, but not something to just say- “Sure, this looks decent.”
It’s Half Life 2 at it’s simplest, and there’s something special to that though.
Manually
Medium
3 Hours
For 2006, the mod was done perfectly but there are big problems with the balance. There are a lot of opponents VERY. I really liked the music that is in this mod.
Manually
Medium
2 Hours
For 2006, the mod was done perfectly but there are big problems with the balance, there are a lot of opponents VERY. I really liked the music that is in this mod.
Manually
Medium
2 Hours
Coastline to Atmosphere
A few months ago, I made the poor decision to play this map on Hard. The mod literally told me not to do this, but I did it anyway. This led to me having to god my way through the end portion of the mod.
I also had to spend a good 30-45 minutes looking for a way to make it past a certain part, which for some reason had a tendency to break whenever its sequence was almost finished.
I found the music used in the mod pretty hit or miss. It got a bit repetitive whenever I had to reload certain parts of the game.
Honestly, it’s not a horrible mod, and for the time I guess it held everyone’s attention before Episode 1 came out. Just be aware of the amount of enemies Leon tosses at you and heed his warning.
Manually
Hard
5 Hours, 30 Minutes
I know this mod was released a long time ago and maybe the standard for modding was way different back then (which I completely respect), but this really hasn’t aged well.
The map design is quite disappointing and really detracts from the feel. Like at the start, the very first thing you see is a cliff face splattered with the same repeating texture. It immediately takes me out of the experience. Overlooking this however the physical layout of the maps are just thoroughly annoying. There is no logic as to where you should go and I just ended up wasting so much time looking for some random trigger for some door to open. How does it make sense that running down a corridor into a dead end opens the door to another room?
Enemies are added in without any care or consideration for their AI to really shine. I believe RTSL have already done a video on this. Mostly tight hallways mean the Combine just charge you and there is no restraint as to how many are thrown at you. There are so many that sometimes the scripts break and my framerate actually dipped when turning a corner and seeing 10 combine soldiers clumped in some room. Naturally, this was only the lightest of bugs I found. Several occasions required me to boot up the console.
The game is also very long but this isn’t a good thing. Pacing is important and just slogging through each stage to go to the next half baked area was a chore. The difficulty is padded out by spamming enemies and having unintuitive ways to progress.
I’m really sorry to say it but this is some of the most thoughtless shooting I’ve ever done. Even HDTF made more sense than this. The only way I could recommend this mod is to show how not to design maps and that longer is not always better.
It’s always easy to criticise however, and I do appreciate that a lot of work went into this. I hope the creator has since learned from this experience, and there is clear potential when someone who is willing to put this much effort into something.
Manually
Hard
4 Hours
Looks good. Plays good. Hate loosing my weapons.
Coastline to Atmosphere is ambitious to a fault. While the first half presents a strong experience, the second half devolves into a half-baked mess of ideas.
This is my second playthrough of the mod. My first (unfinished) playthrough was done in the space of 2 days, and I experienced frustration, possibly due to fatigue. This second playthrough was done over the course of about a week in multiple small sessions (about 40 minutes each on average). I can definitely say this mod is better experienced in the latter method; playing it all in one straight shot only served to enhance my frustrations with the mod.
First, I will address the problems many others have brought up before me.
Text
Many people have critiqued CtoA for its overuse of on-screen messages, rightfully so. While these messages might be useful for some things, such as the opening exposition, it is very often used redundantly, stating information that could easily be conveyed in much better ways.
Cutscenes
Another aspect of this mod that is often criticized is its use of cutscenes. While I don’t mind cutscenes as a conflict, even in a Half-Life game/mod (I personally enjoy it more when modders stretch their wings and deviate from the standard Half-Life conventions), the cutscenes in CtoA are often very overused. For some reason, whenever a major character goes anywhere or a major event occurs, we need to have a cutscene that lasts a good 30 seconds. This, obviously, shatters any sense of urgency the mod might have.
Spammy Enemies
Yet another oft-critiqued facet of CtoA is its enemy placement, and yet again, I must agree. Around the mid-point of the mod, enemies get annoyingly spammy, with literal lines of Combine Elites rushing towards you. While I’m all for challenging gameplay, this is definitely not the way to go about accomplishing it.
I will now get into my thoughts on the two distinct sections of the mod, this will contain spoilers! For a spoiler-free TL;DR: Play the “coastline” section, don’t play the “atmosphere” section unless you really want to see the story through to the end.
I immensely enjoyed the first half of CtoA. It combines my personal favorite part of HL2, Highway 17, with some interesting and fun enemy encunters (most of the time). Visually, the mod is very nice for an early HL2 mod. While the music isn’t necessarily my favorite, it gets the job done, and isn’t particularly grating to listen to. The sense of time throughout your journey is established well, giving a nice feeling of forward momentum.
However, all my complements fall apart near the end of this section. When you get to the snow-covered mountains, the enemy placement devolves into actual lines of enemies. I’m ashamed to admit it, but this was the first spot I would enable god-mode in, even during my second playthrough.
In short, I’d recommend stopping after beating the mountain section. What happens next is a weird, underdeveloped set of ideas that would better fit in a mapping competition rather than a normal mod.
Many of CtoA’s problems come to the forefront after boarding the Combine satellite. Overuse of on-screen text and cutscenes, weird systems, frustrating enemy designs: all these abound in this section.
The first major problem with this section comes after you’re stripped away of your suit. Luckily, since this was my second playthrough, I knew good enough to turn the difficulty to “easy” during these sections, but I can’t say the same for my initial playthrough. I’d be fine with the suit being taken away if the enemies weren’t as numerous, but once again, one of CtoA’s biggest problem is spammy enemies, so no luck there. Overall, not too much of a hassle on easy, but still annoying.
Some things that I don’t like, but I don’t see others bringing up, are the finale and the stealth segments. The stealth mechanics are only present for one map, which is good, because they simply don’t work. Even when hiding in the exact spots shown in the text walkthrough and videos I saw on Youtube, the soldiers would somehow still find me. I found it easier to simply use ent_remove, marking my second instance of cheating (I know it’s bad, but I just wanted to finish the damn mod). The stealth is awkward, not well developed, and overall just bad.
And finally, I want to talk about the mod’s finale. CtoA’s final segments (not the after-credits scene) is an annoying bundle of hidden 1-hit kills and inescapable death pits. Begrudgingly, I turned on god mode for this segment. At this point I just wanted to be done.
Overall, for the reasons I mention, Coastline To Atmosphere is a very mixed experience, with a pleasing first half and disappointing second half.
Manually
Medium
5 Hours
This mod is like the Mistake Of Pythagoras, but without pythagoras in it
Manually
Medium
4 Hours, 43 Minutes
Coastline to Atmosphere is a mod that I’m incredibly conflicted about. On the one hand, it’s ambitious; it’s trying to be a continuation of HL2 directly, and it’s pretty damn large as well. It’s also trying to do interesting things with its storytelling and breaking the mold of typical HL, using cutscenes and text to convey the story. These are things I commend for trying out. And yet, in the same breath, so much of the mod feels dragged down, from a multitude of factors that take away the fun of it or take away some of my compliments for trying something unique. It’s a mod that’s hard for me to fully know how to feel about.
Story
Like I said, I can commend the mod author for trying to do something pretty different from how HL typically tells its stories. However, this attempt also works against it somewhat; the use of cutscenes kind of kills the pacing, especially as they drag out longer than they need to for what they often convey, or are often just unnecessary to begin with. I’m not against the idea of using cutscenes in a HL mod in and of itself, but I don’t feel this was the right way to go about it.
Combined with this is the over-abundant use of text to give information to the player. Using text for storytelling I have no problem with, that’s fine, but it’s the use of it for also guiding the playing and telling them what to do I have an issue with. If you have to do that so the player knows what they have to do, it speaks to a failure in the level design, that it would otherwise be unintuitive to the player to know what to do.
Presentation
Presentation I think is probably the area where the mod struggles the most out of anything else. For one, while it’s not ugly per se, it’s not particularly great visually. Environments are pretty bland and don’t really stand out, all of it is just really serviceable to what it’s doing. Lighting is not utilized effectively, which especially becomes an issue for helping to know where to go, since the lighting isn’t being issued to help signpost where you go next, forcing you often to find the path. However, one neat feature that is used is the change in time of day, which helps to better convey not only the tone and reiterate that you’re on a journey.
However, the big issue is just how kind of broken the visuals are much of the time. I’m not sure what it was like when it was originally released and if the modern versions of the Source Engine have borked elements of the graphics in the mod, but several times walls and other visual elements just completely glitched out and bugged, or disappeared, or there would be other strange things going on like water just disappearing and randomly coming back. It feels like it’s being held together by string and a prayer at this point.
Another very strange element and one of the oddest decisions was the usage of music. There’s a lot of custom music that’s being used, which is cool to see, but sometimes it just feels incredibly out of place. Early in the mod, there’s a track from one of the Medal of Honor games being used just randomly out of nowhere, with seemingly no rhyme or reason for its inclusion. It both didn’t fit the moment it occurred and also just didn’t fit with the mod in general. This is a pattern that continues in the mod, and I have no idea why this was the route to take with the music.
Gameplay
Gameplay is also, like the mod as a whole, a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s HL2 gameplay, so it’s fun much of the time just inherently. But it’s really not being utilized in ways that benefit HL2’s gameplay a lot of the time.
The biggest problem is that the mod makes the cardinal sin that a lot of mods/games do in order to try and increase difficulty, which is to just throw lots of enemies at you over and over. So much of the mod just fighting large groups of soldiers, and it gets very tiring after a while. The other issue with this is the number of shotgunners that are peppered about; you will lose so much health or get killed so many times because one or two shotguns just bum-rushed toward you. Shotgunners are already a particularly dangerous enemy in HL2, and it’s worse here, especially when there are two or three in a room.
The level design complicates this further. While there is some variety in the locations, the vast majority of areas are pretty compact and cramped; this not only makes navigation more difficult as well as making it harder to know where you go (combined with the aforementioned non-use of lighting for signposting) but it also means that you’re forced into these combat loops with tanky soldiers in small areas where you are going to take way more damage than you otherwise should. And this loop just repeats over and over, where you will go from one area to the next, just doing the same combat with groups of soldiers, then continue on, then fight soldiers, continue on, etc. It gets very repetitive very fast.
Because of this, you’re really only going to be using three weapons the majority of the time: the AR2, the shotgun, and the crossbow. The SMG has little use outside of dealing with manhacks since there are no Metrocops and you have no real use for the revolver given you have the crossbow. And because you’re fighting soldiers you get a basically endless supply of AR2 and shotgun ammo, so there’s also no need to conserve it either.
There are a few vehicle sections to the mod, but they don’t get to shine much because the levels are so cramped and tight, and since you’re constantly reengaging combat zones seemingly every 50 ft. you’re always just getting in and out of the vehicle.
Conclusion
This is one of those mods where I want to be nice to it, because I can see the ambition with it and what the author wanted to do. However, most of what it does is either just serviceable or poorly done compared to other custom campaigns. I do think it may be worth trying out just because of that ambition, and maybe you’ll find more enjoyment than I did, but overall it’s hard to recommend before playing any other highly-rated campaign.
Manually
Easy
4 Hours