NOTE: THIS MOD HAS BEEN UPDATED. IT IS NOW CALLED THE CITIZEN RETURNS.
Previously in The Citizen you had taken control of an important combine message relay, making the most of a failed mission to assassinate Dr Breen. It was located in a large conference building situated near a rebel safe house – the Spare Time Cafe – from which your assault was originally launched.
The Cafe was later raided by combine, and ultimately destroyed. No rebels were present at the time, but something there led the Combine to the Elvet Theatre – a more important rebel hideout. The attack on the Elvet was devastating, causing much of the rebel command structure to be seriously disrupted.
The second chapter of The Citizen picks up precisely where the first left off. You regain conciousness, and discover the extent of your injuries.
Mercifully, help is not far away. But then again, neither are the Combine.
- Title: The Citizen 2
- File Name: hl2-sp-the-citizen-2a.7z
- Size : 197.60MB
- Author: Chris “Playbus” Fox and Jose “Kasperg” Ameyugo
- Date Released: 24 December 2010
THIS DOWNLOAD IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE AS THE MOD HAS BEEN UPDATED. IT IS NOW CALLED THE CITIZEN RETURNS.
The readme.txt contains details about bugs that I highly recommend you read it.
- Copy the The Citizen 2 folder into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- The Citizen 2 should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
The panoramic and video below should NOT be considered definitive. They are pre-release but I thought you should have something to see and watch. I will replace the panoramic soon.
Below is a panoramic image from an early version of the mod, it will be replaced soon.
Please Note: Panoramic images only are available in full screen mode. You can either open one by clicking the image link above or by saving it to your computer and then opening it locally.
How to use: Once the image is open and your cursor is on the image, press and hold your left mouse button and move around the image. Use your mouse wheel to scroll in and out of the panoramic image.
The Citizen 2: Trailer 1 from PlanetPhillip on Vimeo.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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Took long enough, playing now! 😀
Hopefully, next, they will make a follow up to random quest.
Yep, RQ2 is next 🙂
Dude that is awesome!!! Can’t wait.
The .rar doesn’t seem to open…
Yes, I can’t open it either.
Checking now
Same. Says it’s corrupt.
Okay, the FileFront file was corrupt. Sorry about that. I am uploading it again. There were a lot of problems when I uploaded but I took a chance. I normally check all files but because this was a rush I didn’t. The PP one should be okay, but I am downloading that now and will report back if I have enough time before I go out to dinner.
Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused.
Okay, the PP download works perfectly.
For me in France, it is 20 PM so it’s time for lunch, and so… Merry Xmas and THANKS for this amazing Xmas gift!!! 🙂
Holy smoke!
My all time favourite mod got a sequel!
I think I’m gonna stay behind my computer until sunrise now.
Thanks to Chris Fox for releasing such a gift tonight.
A great thanks to Phillip for uploading this mod so quickly so that we can put our sticky fingers on it at Christmas eve.
I thought it was too good to be true. Al new mod on Xmas Mod loads slowly till three quarters done then
Dispinfo_load displacmemt.displacements(0 an7) don’t match
what should I be looking at to fix this?
Never seen that before. I can only assume you got the corrupt version of the mod (which is now gone). Did you download it from Filefront?
Downloading again should hopefully fix your problem.
Yeah, what he said.
I did some looking around on Google and could only find two records of this error, different numbers, and occurring in official Valve maps. No real solution was offered, however.
You might want to try verifying your Half-Life 2 installation (this mod is just plain Half-Life 2, no episodes, right?). If that fails, I’ve heard that you can Alt-Tab to switch out of the game’s window, and then click on the window in the taskbar to return to the game, and it may spontaneously work. Is this happening on any other levels for you?
Also, you are running on the “new” Source Engine from back in May, right? 🙂
Not bad so far. However… and this is more of a question to Phillip… didn’t the Asian rebel die in the intro? Is the Asian rebel you voice in the second chapter the same guy… or some other rebel?
It’s some other rebel 😀
Well spotted Vic! They are actually twins! 😉
Hmm. Interesting, but it was certainly rather immersion-breaking. No one mentions anything about it before or after that particular sequence.
It’s kind of like a joke-tribute to HL2’s limited cast of citizens and how they all use the same voice. Not really a part of the story per se.
FIleFront version now back online.
I’m stuck in the area with the 2 turrets and the strider. I just got the fuse to complete the electronic board piece, and the guy told me to put it on a combine terminal, but where the f*** is it ?? I’ve been searching like an hour for it
[spoiler]No need to fear. I got stuck in the same place, only for me I had found the terminal but hadn’t found the guy! There’s a door to the left of the gate where the two turrets are. Go through the door and past the wooden rooms and you should reach another door that leads to the terminal.[/spoiler]
There is a part in The Citizen II when absolutely everything clicks into place. You’ll know it the minute you hear the discordant music coming from a broken radio hanging from a wire. And then you’ll see a lot of other things hanging from wires. Eerie things. Grotesque things. This area is a thing of beauty – a wonderful fusion of custom assets, compelling and downright creepy atmosphere, and foreshadowing and teasing that you rarely see in mods. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, this could have been the entire mod.
But, unfortunately, in order to get to that cool and way-too-short awesome part, we have to wade through a lot of less awesome parts. While there’s nothing outright terrible – and I really want to stress that the lowest parts of The Citizen II are still better than most mods – there’s plenty of stuff that should have been more polished for a release of this caliber.
I think the biggest, most recurring complaint I have about the mod is its awkward gameplay flow, specifically, the order in which things are presented. The solution is often exposed before you have any idea what the puzzle is supposed to be, which leads to a lot of confusion. In one example, I was starved for health and finally came across a health kit I inexplicably could not use. It turns out there was this fellow around the corner who asked me to bring him the health kit so he could heal up. That’s all well and good, but why couldn’t the man be presented before the health kit?
That’s admittedly a minor example. The one megaman951 talks about above was a more sinister example that stumped me for a good 10-15 minutes, except I did it the opposite way where I found the console before I found the man he was talking about, and as such had no idea how or why I couldn’t use it.
There were a few other little things that bugged me. Having to deal with Rollermines without having the Gravity Gun is a pain. The thing that shot the Rollermines killing me because I looked at it funny. Getting stuck behind a forcefield because I had sped through that scenario too quickly trying to outrun them (which, I should add, is not what you’re supposed to do). The consistently swift and brutal combat could have used more variety. A few scenarios where taking damage seemed completely unavoidable. It probably wasn’t, but I didn’t have the patience to find the proper solution, despite looking around for a few minutes.
I’m afraid voice acting hasn’t improved much from The Citizen. And, again, I want to qualify this by saying that ultimately, the vocals and the choreography get the job done. No question there. But they could have been much more polished. More blending in the gestures. More rehearsing, coaching, and direction for the actors.
The final scenario was pretty unique and I really like how it was composed. I wound up trying all three approaches and enjoyed them equally. While the end result is the same, these were three very different and meaningful gameplay choices.
The Citizen II is a good, solid mod, but it needs more polish to be considered among the greats. It certainly has that “We had to get it done and get it out there” feeling to it. And, obviously, all of the SDK hardships and drama do not help motivation or morale. I can definitely understand that.
To counter that, I really think this duo owes it to themselves to attempt a much smaller work. I think both this mod and the previous RandomQuest kind of hint that they may be biting off more than they can handle. There are too many ideas on the table and not enough time to make sure they are all executed well. Take a cue from BioShock and make an area that is an exhaustive study of one location and everything that location would entail. Maybe a theater. A concert hall. A museum. Whatever you want. Dedicate all of your experience with custom assets to that one area, where everything must support one cohesive idea. Design and develop a vital story NPC, inextricably linked to this area – which itself circles around this one NPC – and make their choreography as compelling as you can. There’s gold in them hills. 🙂
This is interesting, as our general feeling about the combat (for the most part) is that it’s pretty easy – I’m not the greatest player or anything, but I don’t find very many parts of the mod challenging, even when I pretend I don’t know what I should be doing and mess about. In fact I spent quite a bit of my time before release worrying that it was all too easy. I guess it’s hard to know how different people are going to view combat scenarios from their owns perspectives and playing styles.
If you’re finding no healthkits, try looking around more (cough inside vehicles cough) for extra supplies…..there are infinite healthpack spawners in a few places!
The distribution of medical supplies was supposed to be a factor we used to try and regulate the players zeal – healthkits become rarer through the mod and those that are there become increasingly well hidden. Because of our thoughts on the combat, we hoped this would help by making it more about conserving health than killing everything faster. (after all, you’re playing a normal guy, not Gordon Freeman) Obviously, this doesn’t work for everyone.
You are right about the injured rebel scene. I think I’ll relocate that medkit-you-can’t-use to somewhere different when the mod is eventually re-released!
As for the variety of combat, this is probably (I’d say) the biggest challenge we have with creating new parts of The Citizen, and the reason I often find it easier to work on less constricted mods like Random Quest. When sticking to the Half-Life 2 theme and (mostly) being restricted to just HL2’s assets, coming up with new and interesting ways to threaten the player becomes harder and harder, and the further you progress the more rules you make for yourself to stick to later. It’s frustrating!
This is pretty close to what we plan to do! I can’t wait to get going on RQ2. In fact, I may start today! 😀
Anyway, thanks for the detailed review so quickly, and I’m glad you found some entertainment in the mod. Merry Christmas!
Note to phillip : sorry, I’m not sure how quoting works here now….
No problem, for future reference just use the buttons above the comment text area.
I don’t see any. It’s probably my browser, as it blocks a load of stuff. I’ll give it a go with Opera or something next time 🙂
I should clarify what I mean by “swift and brutal.” I don’t mean to imply that every encounter is hard. Like you said, I think most of them are easy and fair. What I meant is that I’d find these massive ammo and health caches, and consequently also take massive damage in the course of the battle. So, your fortunes could change really fast. Although you definitely had infinite health in various places, the AR2-toting baddies could still sap me from 90% to 10% pretty quickly. 🙂
Ok, I took what you said the wrong way at first. Fair point. 🙂
We are aware that releasing 28 SP maps in three years (not counting the 8 that didn’t get into this release) means our releases won’t be as polished as mods that have 1 or 2 maps. We’ve all discussed here at PP the balance between quality and quantity. Our work represents where we stand on that.
As it’s our hobby and not really a “‘competition'” to be “among the greats”, we will always prefer to tackle a grander scope of locations, ideas and events rather than focusing on lesser proyects with a more perfectionist mindset.
It’s what Playbus and I have fun doing and I don’t think that will change too much.
Although admittedly,[spoiler] things have gotten a bit out of hand with the +500 dialogue samples and +200 choreographed scenes for TC2 and TC3.[/spoiler]
We will keep learning from our mistakes (this will all be eventually re-released with the 8 remaining maps) and improving with everyone’s help, but never at the cost of what we really enjoy doing.
I don’t really think I’m advocating a perfectionist mindset. I’m more than willing to accept that because of the sheer number of scenes and lines of dialog that not all will be hand tailored. At that rate, you’d never get it done! 🙂
But the main criticism I pointed out doesn’t have anything to do with perfection – it’s basic flow control through the level and the order you present things. Setting up the level so that I’m likely to see the mission giver before getting the mission. To be honest, I don’t think that would take much to fix.
[spoiler]And, really, we’re talking about one particularly confusing scenario here – the circuit board / console / man / where’s-the-door thing. For a revisit, I’d zero in my efforts on that one level and try to make it clearer. Maybe the building door needs a light on it. Maybe the rotating door doesn’t activate until you talk to the man. Maybe the console plays an access denied tone to reinforce that “Yes, this is the goal, but you can’t operate it, now go find a way.” You could even run the wires from the console to where the man is standing. If all else fails, I’ll follow the wires! :)[/spoiler]
Yes, that would probably work. The cable thing is actually used in the following map (going from the downstairs forcefield to the second apartment you visit) but even that hint hasn’t seemed to work for all players. We had a lot of dialogue in that map explaining and guiding the action (more talking from the injured rebel, an explanation about the metrocop and what they’re going to do about him) but for some reason we couldn’t get all of the lines in time and had to make some modifications. The medkit you give to the injured rebel was initially another puzzle where you had to combine a couple of objects to make a custom medkit.
All of these things can indeed be fixed easily in the next release.
thanks, Kyouryuu. I did went ouside the building and check all the surrounding doors…guess I missed that blue one, probably out of frustation 🙁
I finished the mod now, I pretty much agree with Kyouryuu, espescially on some of the odd parts:
– the roller mines. when I saw them I barely had time to throw a grenade at them to blow them up. and it’s a good thing I had grenades left at that time…ugh
-the roller mine cannon: at first I had no idea what that thing was, then I hear a beeping sound, “hmmm what is that?” and BAM, rollermine in the face, and *dead*
– the medkit. I couldn’t pick it up so I thought the mod had bugged and I couln’t pick up stuff anymore. But, yeah, putting the injured rebel before the medkit would’ve been much better
-subtitles for the voice acting would’ve been nice. like that guy with the strong irish or aussie (?) accent, I couldn’t understand half of what he was saying
some places could’ve used more combat, like in the casino.. it’s all nice and creepy, but after a while I kinda got bored just strolling around & looking were to go
And until Valve decided to turn our world upside down, they were in place and working. I don’t think we can or should apologize for it more than we’ve already done in the Readme file.
Oh gosh, I echo that statement about the Rollermine cannon thing. I’m standing there looking at this thing. It’s making a funny noise. I have no idea what the heck it is. And then DOINK, dead. 🙂
I think it would work better if maybe they launched the mines through the roof above or something. The idea of a launcher is cool, but I’m invariably going to be standing in front of it like an idiot.
In this case, that first rollermine actually topples the birdcage over when it hits (unless of course, the player is perfectly aligned with it) and it’s really something we don’t want to get rid of.
On the other hand, making the other cannon launch first could be enough of a hint for players to stay away from the window and still have more or less the same setup.
The rollermines are actually quite harmless if you stay in the platform or wooden beams.
There are a few things about this which were incredibly frustrating, but overall this was a delight to play and I’d highly recommend it to anyone. Improves on the original Citizen in almost every way.
when you release the final version with the other 8 maps, will you be able to offer a patch for citizen 1? thanks
There is a patch for citizen one.Not sure if Phillip has it posted or not but I did see it at moddb
the patch does not fix the valve steam breaking of the mod. the developers have to go through 130 plus dialogue box’s. going to be a job. best of luck to them,
There is a patch in our moddb page for The Citizen made by user Silvermink which fixes the probolem of the scenes not working.
thanks I will go download the mod again and the patch. be right back.
thank you kasperg. the mod db patch and version 1.1 of the citizen does work.
I first started playing citizen when it cam out, got to the air boat. then got sidetracked then when I went back to it. steam killed it. then thier was a patch but it did not work. I am so gratefull for your hard work and now I can enjoy it. I will wack a few combine in your honor. thanks again.
What a fantastic Christmas present. WOW
Stuck in the casino.
[spoiler]Just encountered the red ghost. I’ve entered the flooded, previously barricaded room.[/spoiler]
Where to now?
[spoiler]Manager’s office needs a keycard to be opened. It’s somewhere in that flooded room. With the keycard, you can also open the way into the next area.[/spoiler]
I’d like to start by saying I havent played ‘the Citizen 1’, and that I experienced little trouble with any of the puzzles myself (maybe that’s just how I play)
I personally really enjoyed this mod. The visuals and atmosphere are great.
Extra addons such as releasing the birds, the multiple endings and custom textures I felt were very well used (to name some examples).
Combat is OK, but could use some more work, especially by being more challenging.
Admittedly at times it could have used so much more polish, but I have to admit that this is the most fun thing I’ve played since…
Umm…
The last fun thing I played?
I did find a few bugs, all being visuals (like texture fighting), but I just ignored them.
Well worth the download
THIS COMMENT CONTAINS SPOILERS
Well, for me, it’s a PIN. This working is clearly amazing from the beginning to the end. I really felt in the shoes of a regular Citizen during the Uprising.
The work done on the NPC’s is great, there is numerous characters encountered, with speeches, facial expressions, etc…
Great action sequences in various environments, various missions and scripted sequences (some epic) with that, I particularly liked the execution sequence in the streets where I re-done the beginning just to influence the events 🙂 , despite the fact that the issue is always the same the two citizens are killed by turrets even if they flee
About BUGS : there are sometimes collision bugs of NPC with other NPC, or with walls, but it isn’t really annowing.
About SUBTITLES : well, this is weird : the speech at the beginning of chapter 2 or 3, with “Breen” speaking about collaboration and trilobite, and the NPC speeches after casino : I got them, there were subtitled and in my French language! But the other speeches weren’t subtitled. Dunno why.
About NEW CONTENT : some missions include some “items” to use or retrieve, this was pretty cool.
About FIGHTS and HEALTH : the fights were well-balanced, there is often Resistance members to help. I found easly some medkits here and there, so I think the difficulty was well-balanced overall, I died a few times but there is nothing impossible.
About CHAPTERS : You did perhaps too many chapter’s, cuz” each of them was short. But I think it is because each chapter correspond to a specific mission.
The final chapter is an amazing piece of work, there are three ways and I chose the “undercover”, I will try the others sometimes later.
OVERALL : Overall, this is clearly one of the best SP mod’s so far! A “medium” mod speaking time of play, but there are so many things, the environment are various and the dev’s really try to put you in the ambiance of what could be the Resistance, there is a great job done on the story and you won’t leave this mod” until the end, the missions are amazing and some fights really epic.
It’s too bad it finish on a “cliffhanger” since we know have to wait for the final episode, but the good news is that we will get Random Quest 2 before 🙂
Well, I was clearly enchanted. I wasn’t a big fan of the first Citizen, but THIS is clearly a masterpiece. You will clearly feel in the boots of “the citizen”!
The default subtitles for HL2 still work.
However, Valve hasn’t released a version of their caption compiler that is compatible with the SDK Base version of the engine we have been forced to use.
If you replace the AppID 215 in the gameinfo.txt with AppID 220, you’ll find practically all of our custom dialogue has subtitles. The drawback is that running the game under this engine version causes unexplained NPC behaviour that makes the game unplayable.
We might not always follow a Valve-style of player guidance and we encourage exploration a bit more in some of the maps, that’s true.
As a gamer I have been a fan of several franchises like Tomb Raider and Hitman, in which whole levels work as puzzles, which sometimes have the last objective presented as the first element you see.
As such, the need for backtracking, exploration and observation has never been a problem for me. I do understand it won’t be the same for everyone.
Hi all,
Great mod indeed. Still some minor flaws tarnish that great job. Most have been detailed by others so I won’t repeat their comments.
What I like: great maps, good communication with rebels for info and explanations, real scenario. Tricks: the wounded man AFTER the inert kit, the white zombie that can only dies from EMP blasts, the trick about the stairway with zombies: you have to climb without waiting.
What I regret: Intro too long and useless. Bad voice sound, too low and hard to understand. You keep turning the sound up and down. Some illogic situations: dual health suppliers rather than HEV/Health combos. HEV refill is more realistic than life refill. No RPG for the strider. Yes you can dodge it but I like shooting them. No grav gun, which made impossible for me to cross the electrified parking lot without cheating. I believe I should have gone back for full heath stock (maybe?).
Then the final scene is confusing: Harry is a white guy in a white jacket. Once you understand that his survival depends on your path, not how well you hide, you’re told to go with him and he turns out to be now a black rebel fighter. Very confusing.
This corrected, it’s an AAAA+++++
C de M
Sorry! This is due to our poor sound hardware. It used to be worse, I spent many hours improving it to the standard it is now. It’s kinda difficult having a load of voice actors you don’t know who have different recording equipment.
I can understand why this might be confusing. But in the storyline, Larry is the black guy 😀 The white guy you mention is the guy who got executed before Larry was scheduled to be executed. If you watch the scene long enough (and do nothing) Larry will get executed too ! (Oh noes!)
Perhaps, but I spent a load of time making that and I love watching it 😀
Glad you enjoyed it overall though! 😀
Sorry to bug you Chris, but I’m stuck in the big yellow building.
I’m at the top floor with the bird cage, but can not see the way forward.
Find the other guy in there, he tells you what to do.
If you need help, it’s best to start a new comment, rather than replying to an unrelated one.
I’m interested in knowing which guy Phillip means here!
As far as I know there are no friendlies in that building…..
OH CRAP! I must be thinking of the wrong building then. DOH! Sorry.
[spoiler]First, you need to open the birdcage and set the pigeon free.
Then, escape using the rafters in the roof. There’s a spot that’s hidden by wooden beams you can smash through.[/spoiler]
The readme says that ” The Citizen 2″ (TC2) starts exactly where ” The Citizen” (TC) ended.
Pardon?!? I don’t think that’s right. Is it?
it’s a year since I played so I might be wrong.
I’m sure it ended with G-Man and I was as fit as a flea, around 90% healthy or better. Then you get the bonus map with Dog followed by the titles.
Not that it matters. Suspend memory (false or otherwise), just read the text and continuity is restored.
I gave TC a PIN but only a PIL for TC2.
This is a magnificent work but TC had great and hard combat which TC2 lacks.
For TC2 there is no need to engage battle tactics that are my fondness.
For TC, in Hard skill, I thoroughly enjoyed using tactics to my advantage and huge satisfaction.
TC2 lacks the top notch combat finesse of TC.
However, the amount of work that must have been put into this is obvious and awesome.
In common with TC, you are a super rebel soldier just doing as you are told but even more so in TC2.
The fact is that you do not need to engage the Combine at all in some skirmishes.
I played twice. Once in easy to get the lay of the land and then again in Normal.
In Normal, to experiment, up to the Ice Rink, I deliberately held back and let rebels do all the fighting. Even in the Ice Rink I took out just 1 Combine.
I think someone else has already commented that the Casino is an ideal battleground but all you get is one Zombie (a new and very well done Zombie though).
I understand the set-up and why but, nevertheless, a beautifully constructed area that is under utilised.
I actually enjoyed the few puzzles and thoroughly appreciated that you only need to be observant to solve them. Very well done I thought.
The occasional tongue in cheek humour was very good.
The 3 endings are very innovative.
Sniper was easiest of course.
Explosives also easy once you remember the Combine have tunnel vision.
Undercover was very tricky. Placement and, especially, timing has to be spot on, else you and Larry get it, big time. Very well thought out.
Bugs: I had a very few of those listed in the readme but no others.
Just one ” oddness” leading up the Ice Rink skirmish; SMGs left by dead Combine were neatly balanced on muzzle and magazine rather than flat on the ground — not important, for sure.
While this mod is not ideally suited to my gameplay preferences, I recognise the work of Maestros creating a Masterpiece.
I thank you and look forward to the unreleased Chapters.
Thanks for your comments!
You are right about the intro and where TC1 ended. We had some vague hope of re-releasing TC1 with this sequel and in that case we were clearly going to get rid of the last map with Dog, the graveyard etc.
These maps are 52% of what this mod is suppossed to be in its conception. The pacing has a lot to do with it and as such the buildup doesn’t seem as “‘organized'” as it could have seemed in TC1.
In some ways TC2 (now TC2+TC3) has a paralel structure to the first one. Besides the early missions and random npc encounters, there is a bigger base of operations later and a much bigger and important mission (yes, more than saving Larry). This release of course can’t convey any of that, but I think we broke it in a suitable spot.
Combat really toughens up in the later maps, as it happened in TC1 (Library for example). I hope we’re able to deal with all the voice synching left to do and manage to release the whole thing as was intended.
I’ve got a bug for the final mission :
[spoiler]When I take the SNIPER way, no matter what I do, I managed every try to save Larry, but he inexplicably freezes after being rescued (all Combine dead, Rebels reunited on the square, etc…) [/spoiler]
It doesn’t do that for the other two ways. It’s not really important since I’ve finished the game, but a guy who will try this way the first time, can be disappointed by that. I don’t know if others have experienced that.
Btw, I wanted also to tell you the credits music is perfect : In episodic mod’s, you are always in RAGE when seeing the “to be continued” but with this piece of music during credits, I was more enthusiastic than disappointed.
I encountered that same glitch where he was stuck cowering by a tree and wouldn’t give the ending speech when everyone was dead. I wound up reloading and trying it again and it didn’t happen the next time around. I don’t really know what causes it, but the second time around I made it a point to stay by him when he ran off and it seemed to work.
Mm, a few people have reported this, and I’ve seen it happen myself.
Judging from what drives that scene forward in the map files – there must be a combine soldier alive and hiding somewhere – Larry won’t stop cowering until all of the first wave is dead.
In the few times this has happened to me, I’ve had to scout around the map looking for the guy – he tends to hide…….
[spoiler]over where you eventually run away with Larry[/spoiler]
….and I am not really 100% sure why. 😐
Perhaps.
In the case where it failed, to me it looked like another wave of Combine was approaching down the wide stairs after the initial group was cleared out. I had come out of the sniper building and everyone was standing around doing nothing, and then this other wave of Combine showed up. Maybe it’s all supposed to be in the same wave and this group gets stuck? Maybe this helps. 🙂
Thanks,
I can hear somebody coughing, but I can’t find him.
I’m pretty sure the coughing man is just part of the “apartments” soundscape (ambient sound) that is used in that part of the level. There isn’t an actual guy coughing. 🙂
He is on the other side of the building. Go to the ground floor and across the lobby and work your way up the staircase.
SPOILER ALERT!!
I have planted the explosives, after making my choice between the three, and it’s just gone off but it drops down to under 10FPS even going down as low as 3. I can’t play.
Any ideas?
Another question for the dev’s about TC3 : you’ve said that you’ve released a big part of what was at first “TC2” (when it wasn’t a trilogy), but you’ve finished the other map’s, no??
So, have you any work left to finish the trilogy or are you just waiting some times before releasing the “end”, just for some people to play TC2 and for you to polish TC3?
No, the other maps are not finished. All 8 of them exist and have been built (there’s only one in which actual geometry has to be created to tie it to the next one) but the gameplay and much more so voice acting and synching have still a long way to go. With our personal moving from Windows XP to newer versions, Faceposer is basically unusable. We have to sort that out before doing any more mod work, be it the remaining maps or a sequel to our 2009 mod Random Quest.
Ok 🙂 Either way, good luck on your future mod’s. RQ and TC are both part of the top of SP HL2 mod’s, I will either be pleased if it is TC3 or RQ2 first 🙂
I hope TC2 will get a good feedback.
You can use Faceposer under Vista, but it’s a little tricky. The program itself can launch fine. It’s the lip synching that’s the problem. The version of Faceposer we have doesn’t know what to do with Vista’s speech SDK.
Varsity wrote up a patch that basically overwrites the Valve’s incompatible phoemeextractor. It will allow you to do lip synching in Vista:
http://www.moddb.com/engines/source/downloads/windows-vista7-phoneme-extractor-11
Not a perfect solution, but I could slog through it.
I tried that several times and was barely able to do some manual lip synching. The phoneme extractor was impossible to fix in either Win7 x32 and Win7 x64 🙁
I’m still waiting to hear Valve’s opinion on this issue.
You’ll probably be waiting for a while. 🙁
As I understand it, even though Valve does a lot of manual editing, they also use some kind of commercial third party lip synching solution that Faceposer hooks into, not the standard Microsoft one. So Faceposer is probably heavily written around it by now, and the middleware is likely not distributable. It’s well documented that Valve runs on Vista (and probably migrating to Windows 7 by now), so I suspect that the reason we have old Faceposer is something like this.
I’m pretty sure that patch doesn’t let you manually edit the phoemes very well, if at all. It would always crash when I tried. So about the only thing I could do was manipulate the sentence I was feeding into it to try to get the synching I wanted.
Yes, such a process could indeed work.
But as you may have guessed already, our unrealistic number of dialogue files left to do makes it a less than inviting prospect 🙁
Wow, downloading now. This release got me completely by surprise.
I got to the part where you jump out of the art studio and the game seems to crash right or something fails and I can’t get anywhere… so I’m stuck
Can you elaborate on that? Is the game crashing or are you just unsure of how to progress?
well, I am unsure how to progress, but something is supposed to happen, and it doesn’t, so I’m stuck
Out of the window. To your left. Up the stairs. Push the washing machine away from the door.
Open the doors. Rebel team will now follow you.
Although that will solve the problem, he’s actually reporting a bug (one other person has mentioned it too).
You don’t need to rescue those rebels at all to complete the level. At least I set it up that way (if you don’t, [spoiler]you are greeted by poison headcrabs inside the post office[/spoiler]).
Interesting. I replayed that bit.
Jumped out. Disabled forcefield. Post Office doors will not open.
Went back. Let the rebels out. Rebels stop where the forcefield was and the girl says something like “I knew he would let us down’. I opened Post Office doors and had the Poison Headcrabs.
Not what you intended for this release, perhaps, but solves the problem.
thanks I’ll try that, it’s just strange that it would do that…
Difficult problems to solve, some hard fighting, but good maps and some very inventive custom stuff, from the surreal to the high-creepy. Well worth playing – but it’s a pretty long mod so settle in. Voice acting includes these English accents: American, Scottish, London (Philip), and Jordie. May cause trouble for some.
Good news: I did not understand the possibility of three endings. I’m back to it as explosives is not my thing. I’m a natural sniper. What I really don’t get is getting thru the electrified parking lot. Hint anyone? Thx
You can get through the flooded parking in two ways:
[spoiler]
1)Assuming the whole area is a jumping puzzle from start to finish. You can jump from object to object until you reach the garage door. Since you can’t stand on the water to activate the button that will open the door, you can throw an object (plenty of cans around) at the button to activate it.
2)Get into a position in which you can hit the really small powerbox where the cable that is causing all the trouble is coming from (where most of the sparks and flashes are). When you do that, the parking floor will no longer be electrified but you may encounter some opposition…[/spoiler]
It’s even easier than that. You don’t even have to make any jumps across electrified water. You can take out the power box in at least two ways:
– lob a grenade over the wire fence protecting it
– jump upwards in place and fire the Magnum at it.
Need help desperately
[spoiler] Seriously where the feck is this hackable terminal to turn the turrets on the combine. I have the board with the fuse attached, I walk out one door and a canister makes a car flip, I heard someone say follow the wires but they don’t seem to lead anywhere I have no fecking clue[/spoiler]
The entrance to the console is in the building on the same side of the road as the turrets. Just to the left.
Cheers pip, I like the Citizen so much is was infuriating to just be stuck in my tracks like that 😛
As usual they come through with another super mod.I played all the endings and must say it is interesting.One thing I did miss though was the easter egg hunt.I liked that challenge but this is still superb.I had no problems with anything.I would of posted earlier but playing this made me go back and play all the other mods they made.Keep up the good work guys.
I still love Anne’s voice by the way.So sexy :p
I knew our Explorer of Explorers from TC1 would miss the easter eggs. The reason why they haven’t been included is because the Easter Egg Hunt has a much more global impact now and affects (for example) the very end of the trilogy. I guess we could’ve included the same egg-decal system from TC1 and it would’ve worked without problems for this release…
Forgive the delay in my writing this review, I’ve been very busy.
THIS SHORT REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS
So, the wait is finally over and we have TC2. Was it worth it?
The bets I can say is “kinda”. You can’t fault the dedication and attention to detail of TC2. It tells a story and tells it well but for me this is the problem. It’s less of a great mod but more of a cross between a mod and an interactive machinima. Whilst I was the centre of the story I never felt important.
A good example is that in the final battle my PC couldn’t handle the level of detail and dropped down to less than 10 frames per second. it made the mod unplayable and I just waited in the briefing room for most of it. When I did emerge we had won. I wasn’t needed. This was when I chose the explosive route.
The same seemed to happen with the other choices. Once I started the battle I was pretty much superfluous. With the crossbow I missed 95% of my targets and when dressed as a Combine Elite, I just started the show and huddled Larry into a corner.
This seems to be how I felt during the whole mod. I loved the large battles but they could have probably done without me.
I have not sued the “sandwich” method of appraisals here *good, not so good, good again) because I wanted to get straight to my major grievance.
There are lots of fantastic things about this mod and other mods makers should take note about how well the story was told. The voice acting is great, especially those two medics at the beginning! The layouts and sets scenes were wonderful and the way the player was presented with the finale choice was excellent.
So why am I left with a feeling that it was not as good as the last one?
I think it comes down to a big difference in opinion about what makes a great mod. Kasperg recently reviewed a mod called Sebastian and wrote “although none of the themes and locations (streets, parking, hospital etc) are really new..” and this seems to be my second gripe with TC2: the new textures,locations and models. Whilst they are brilliantly done I don’t care about casinos or ice rinks. Inf act, I’m not entirely convinced they fitted the “feel”. Of course, those places would have been in the cities but maybe Valve didn’t include them because not matter how good they look, they don’t feel right. Maybe they didn’t include them for a hundred other reasons too, none related to “feel”.
I just believe that Kasperg and Playbus have focused on these aspects to the detriment of the actual gameplay. I actually prefer Sebastian partly because it didn’t try and introduce anything new. I hate to make too many comparisons but that mod was made in a lot less time by one person. yes, TC2 suffered a lot from the Engine update and I really do feel for them, but from a player’s point of view all that matters is what I play.
I would love to see an experiment. Take the mod and replace all the new models and textures with old ones, same for any buildings that were new, like the church at the end, with standard HL2 assets. Get two groups of ten players and have one play through the current mod and the other ten through the re-engineered one.
I doubt that the group that played through the current one would express more satisfaction than the other group. What I am trying to say is that I don’t think all the new stuff really made the mod better.
of course, I feel confident in saying that without the addition of the new stuff Kasperg, and maybe Playbus, wouldn’t have wanted to build the mod in the first place. That’s one of the reasons they like to build mods.
Let’s be clear, this is still one hell of a mod and better than 90% of the mods available, but I never feel excited before or during a battle and neither relieved afterwards.
Perhaps I need to play through again, slowly to fully savour the mod, but my first play through left me feeling a little dissatisfied.
This is ins’t exactly true. What we have is barely more than 50% of the maps that compose the follow up to TC1. The amount of custom content (by that I mean models and textures) drops drastically from the 10th map onwards, and the player ends up once again being a vital piece for the rebellion. This of course can’t really be deduced by these 9 first maps.
I’m starting to think it was wrong to make this pre-release (because that’s what it is) seeing how people really do think this is what we’ve taken so long to make.
If course agree with how you present our differences in what making mods should be about. I have been playing HL2 about 6 years and one month and for me standard HL2 gameplay has a very hard time thrilling me. The same can be said for standard HL2 locations. That’s why in my mods, I will always try to:
1) Add new “gameplay” or story concepts (birdmail, different ways to complete tasks, new NPCs etc)
2) Add new locations (keeping in synch with the general style of HL2) that offer something new to see and experience inside the self repeating themes of HL2 and it’s episodes (generic street, generic factory, generic hut in the forest etc).
I want to comment on a couple of things which I don’t agree with.
The comments that so far praise the custom content and variety of locations sort of prove you wrong, don’t they? This is something we will never know because out of 613 downloads we only have 8 recommendations so far.
I don’t know exactly what you mean by the “feel”. Besides the casino, the other custom places IMO do look very integrated into HL2 and I doubt anyone would say anything other than “Half-life 2?” if you showed them screenshots of those areas.
I hate having to say this, but Valve (in HL2 much more than the episodes) tended to disregard basic building notions and layout rules in order to serve the very precise gameplay they needed. On my eighth year at an architecture school (yes, shame on me 🙁 ) I can’t build a map and ignore those “principles”. This might hurt the gameplay somehow, but on the other hand I’m sure some people appreciate it. This is a Moddb comment from a TC1 player: [spoiler]One of the reasons I like this mod so much is that I get the feeling it “expands” on the city 17 environments more than Half Life 2 acheived. You see more of the churches, plazas, stations, streets, homes and apartments than was shown in Half Life 2. [/spoiler]
I more or less agree with the other things you mention. The player might not feel as important since we are, after all, talking about a regular Citizen’s evolution from getting beaten by metrocops to finally… Well, we have to wait for TC2&3 to find out! 😉
To answer to Phillip about his feelings on the battles where we’re not really a big “part” of it, well, look at the end of Kasperg’s answer : the main goal of TC is to put you in the boots of the regular Citizen, an “anonymous” member of the Resistance (yet one of their most skilled).
I don’t want to play as another avatar of the “One Free Man”… This is explicit in TC1 where the lady in the Final Fantasy VII Church states “oh, I thought you were Freeman”… But no. Not at all. The citizen is very often part of a big team, follows the leader, accomplish some missions but nothing too “transcendant”, because, hell, he is just a man among others who one day had enough of the Combine and then join the Resistance…
For example, the mission of Breen’s assassination in TC1 was clearly the high point of this adventure : if it was the Freeman, he would have stormed the building alone and destroyed all the building. Here, you nearly never leave your comrades from the beginning to the end, follow the orders, and miss your objective.
What is interesting in that thing, is that it could be considered “canon”, which is IMHO, very IMHO, an important element when I play ambitious mod’s which are not total conversions.
I understand that, but there’s a difference from being a hero and being needed at all. If I am not needed, why play?
On a related note: While making these maps, we did discuss on quite a few occasions if certain setups would work or not given the tradition of most FPS that make the player think he alone can be a One Man Army and can and should participate in every fight possible as long as he has some suitable ammo left.
With certain enemies like striders, snipers or gunships that require a certain weapon to be used, this problem does not exist. The problem arises with regular enemies. No matter how outnumbered the player is, the option of running away as the best course of action is not really an option for some.
The fact that some battle sequences in TC2 can have an actual outcome even if the player hides, runs away or is just not there at that precise moment is just another extra step into making the game world more plausible. We always knew it could polarize players.
I have mentioned the idea of a player not being part of a fight on PP before, I just feel that I player should be given some indication as to whether it’s a good idea or not to join in.
However, not matter how you phrase it, the idea of the player not being need in the finale seems very strange to me. I get the part about not being the centre of the universe, but we are playing as that character.
That’s yet one of the problems with having released this.
Map 9 was never intended to be the finale. In the global layout of the mod, it’s the just the map where you rescue Larry. It did seem like a good map to split it, but now I’m not exactly sure.
Do you think ending the mod on the previous map (with the post office at the very end) or the one before (being stranded inside the casino garage) and leaving the actual rescue as a cliffhanger would’ve been a good idea?
What matters is that it currently IS the finale.
I think IMHO there is a “main” storyline in TC2 (which is to rescue Larry since he’s captured in the intro’) and it has to finished with Larry being rescued.
Maybe the final battle is too “easy” and you serve nothing for the battle but it is YOU who save the day by being the one who put the Combine in disarray before they kill Larry. You are the “trigger”.
Also, the simplicity of the final battle is counter-balanced by the 3-way possibility of doing it. And to finish, the undercover option can be a real challenge (I don’t know for others, but when the “disguise is lost”, Larry can be killed faster than ever if you do nothing or are not fast enough…).
Besides, finishing the mod” before the square would have been too short and with no real “ending”… Would have been too reminescent of Eye of The Storm 2 🙁 , even if I know there will be a TC3.
I never said anything about finishing the mod before the square.
But you wondered about it being the “finale” and Kasperg answered by wondering whether the finale should have been before, so I answered to Kasperg about my thoughts if the finale was before 😉
I think the point of those maps (where there are battles you can “win” by hanging back and letting NPC’s take care of things), is to give you choices. Not to make you redundant.
Sure, you can hang back and let the NPC’s take care of things – but this is a choice you made! If you decide not to do this, and instead charge ahead with guns blazing – things get considerably harder. Personally I don’t find that approach as much fun, but the option is there for those that do. This is especially true of the first city-streets map. If you leave the squad (slow buggers standing around and chatting!) they will abandon their talk and follow you, but you’ll run headlong into something quite nasty and probably have to go back to them for help. (Unless you’re l33t)
It’s not just about what is shoved in your face, you’ve got to take your own initiative – especially as part of a rebel organisation that just had it’s command structure shattered.
You know, I had the absolute opposite feeling as the ‘these locations suck” poster when I was playing the game. I liked them – a lot. I think it expanded on the setting a lot and introduced a lot of cool new areas that made it much more fun for me to play through (and honestly, “it would have been just as good with the old textures and models” guy? I think you’re, quite frankly, an idiot. I don’t want to play through another series of generic concrete block rooms. By the end of Episode 1 I was actually getting bored and couldn’t wait to leave C17.) I also appreciated that the level designs actually made structural sense. The only thing I would have changed is made a few of the locations more run-down (especially the ice rink, casino, restaurants… etc… they’re not supposed to have been used in 20 years)
I thought this release had a lot more polish than the first one. The major weak points for me were the voice acting (except for the doctor and the asian guy at the start, it’s not very good, especially Larry, who sounds like he’s mumbling the script in his sleep) and that not all of the locations were utilized well (IE – did not like the casino custom zombie, it didn’t fit the setting at all – I honestly would have liked to have to fight through some headcrabs then fend off a combine assault in the creepy setting on the way out). The ice rink blew me away, only complaint : doubt the combine would keep the ice there…I also thought the idea of the combine staging executions was a little wonky, they don’t seem the showmen type. If anything I was hoping you’d need to rescue him from one of those stalker transport pods or something.
I would have also liked to see more combine-y areas.
overall though I greatly enjoyed the mod and I hope some of these areas are tweaked for the final release, but it was a big improvement over the first.
I’m having a major problem with this mod. I did read that the 1st version on Filefront may have been corrupted. I downloaded it from there the 1st time and experienced this problem. After screen #11, it attempts to do a “Loading”. My screen goes black and the mod dies. I get a “Not Responding” error in Task Manager and have to use it end program. I downloaded the PP version and got the same thing. Is there a patch or something.
This is mentioned in the Readme. The game has not crashed and it’s taking it’s time loading the next map. We explain in the Readme the reasons why the level change had to be triggered by a pointconsole command rather than a normal level change, so I won’t bore you with the details now.
Just wait for the map to load (the second map is really quite big) and you’ll be fine. 🙂
There was no readme with the download I have. I found a different version on Moddb.com that is alittle larger than the one I have. I’ll try that one. Thanx for the quick response.
Really, no readme? That’s not good. I’ll double check later. Try in the actual mod folder itself. Should be called “TC2_Readme.txt”
It worked after about a 5 minute wait. Just have to have a little patience with this one. Thanx for all the help guys. Will look for that readme file.
I can’t imagine why there wouldn’t be a readme.
There is a readme in the base mod distribution.
For one not to be there, someone has to have taken it out.
Unless it was something to do with the corrupt file at Filefront.
Stuck.
In the area of screen shots 31 to 35, i.e roof top with washing on cloths line but can’t find away to progress from here.
Mel,
If you are on the building where the clothesline is, the red brick building with the arched windows has an open window you can jump into. There’s a small gap between the clothesline building and the red brick building you need to jump over. It’s kind of tucked away in the darkened corner.
good mod. (but) I could not find anything after the big courtyard fight. Is that the end?
Find Larry and run away with him to see the “to be continued” followed by the ending credits.
First Off Thank You Chris and Jose for all the work and hours you put into this It is appreciated.
I’m a little torn with my feelings about this mod. I absolutely loved TC1 and TC2 is a must play IMO but the game flow for me was somewhat frustrating. I blame some of that on myself as I had to play the mod over several sittings with the Holidays here but for me some of the areas were frustrating or confusing.
I never read reviews/comments prior to playing a mod but after doing so most of the areas I’m referring to have already been mentioned and mostly involve the whole rollermine area. among the things mentioned in other comments,
What was the point of the Binocular type device that auto peers down to the mailbox ? to me it told me I needed to do something involving the mailbox itself and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out something that didn’t exist.
I think this work deserves a replay by me and hopefully becomes more enjoyable than my first go round. I was somewhat disappointed.
I completely understand what you mean. I’m myself a bit dissapointed because almost half of the maps and story didn’t make it to this release. We tweaked some areas in the released maps to compensate for it and the pacing will seem odd in some of the maps. It’s something we will adress in the future. And we are getting a pretty good idea of what worked and what didn’t.
As for the Binocular device, I’m glad you mention it, as it sums pretty much what the problem has been with this release. That event had more associated to it (yes, mailboxes will be absolutely key in the next release!) and without the whole mod it was pointless to leave the sequences and interactions associated with it available. We left the binoculars because the effect is still nice. But there was more to it.
Some maps like “Well Accomodated” are missing dialogue files that we couldn’t get in time, and it does make the map more confusing.
I hope we sort all of these problems out and release the hugely ambitious mod we envisioned. Wish us luck!
Thank you so much for your response, it now explains to me that I was on the right track and I was seeing what you had envisioned. Your team has incredible talent and I credit you for all your comments and explanations to all above comments, It shows your passion for the game and I applaud you for it.
It’s sort of funny you mentioned that. In the map where you have to disable the double turrets. At first, I saw the mailbox on the map and I tried numerous Times to “use” this mailbox, thinking I had to send something to the Resistance, since I saw a particular mailbox in binoculars the map before.
I’m hoping that in #3 or at the same time as release they can put all 3 chapters into one huge release so I can play non stop from start to finish.Would help with the story too I think
The Citizen 2 has poor lighting, less than subpar (but better than before) voice acting, confusing level design, confusing puzzles, and bad scripting in some places.
The poor lighting caused me to take a lot of wrong turns and made it hard to navigate, causing me to get stuck in many places for several minutes at a time, the design of the levels is also partly to blame for this. Speaking of the levels, the basic architecture is interesting but very lacking in detail and boxy.
The voice acting was less than sub par, the actors didn’t sound very into their roles. Despite this, it was an improvement over the first mod.
Concerning puzzles, the closest thing to a “puzzle” was finding keycards or other objects, often in plain sight but obscured by a lack of attention, or a corpse hanging ass up on a table.
The story itself did nothing to suspend my disbelief, so I generally ignored the characters and ran around crowbaring and shooting things, entire scripted events took place while I was staring at a rock or killing combine, completely unaware that they had just occurred. In the ice hockey rink, I went rambo and killed tons of Combine while the rest of my squad ran away, after the 30 second gun battle I turned to find my squad completely gone, then spent two minutes searching for them. The ‘traps” to hold me in various scripted dialogue also ruined any chances of immersion. If the scenes for dialogue to take place had been a little more thought out, rather than trapping me in a clip brush, I might feel inclined to listen to what the characters have to say.
I found the scripting to be quite annoying in some places as well. Often nothing would progress unless I was right next to the character, leaving me wondering if I had done something wrong and wandering around the level searching for things I might have missed.
If you’ve played The Citizen and enjoyed it, then this mod is for you, it offers the same experience and level of quality as the original; which is to say not much improved. If you didn’t enjoy it, well; you might want to think twice.
I doubt you had any navigation problems up until the parts where we wanted you to (some areas in the casino for example). But if you really felt there were other conflicting spots, be so kind as to let us know about them so we can improve for the final release.
Looking at the almost 100 screenshots Phillip has posted (and in my of course biased opinion 😀 ), our maps don’t really look like the best example of “poor lighting” or lighting that would give players any real navigation problems. Exploration instead of a clear path was part of the idea, if that’s what you mean.
That sounds a bit harsh considering we only had two real voice actors (Mike Hillard and Tony Newton) and considering the amount of maps and mods with voice acting is still a small percentage of the total. Then again, TC2 is (afaik) the HL2 mod with the largest amount of dialogue files so far, so both our quality of delivery and quality of recording were going to suffer in the long run. The cast is also quite big for a mod and the disparity becomes more evident because of it.
Not the most intelligent way to approach this mod, as you probably learned by the time the credits rolled!
Meaning you weren’t worrying about your squad-mates at all and decided to fight on your own (a valid choice).
However, it doesn’t excuse the fact that in a single 360° glance you should’ve seen the ice rink was empty (it’s quite a big open space) and a forcefield that was previously on had been turned off. If you took two minutes to notice that, I think it does say a bit about the problems you encountered while playing the mod, no offense.
The clipbrush thing happens twice in the whole mod, and both of those times the player has just recovered from serious injury or loss of consciousness. You make it sound like its a gameplay mechanic used throughout the mod and you might confuse other people.
This is something we will adress, for sure!
I might take you seriously if you actually provide examples of what you mean, or explain what you think is wrong with the lighting. All you’re doing is making a broad sweeping generalization without backing it up with anything.
I agree that suspension of disbelief is important to a good story.
When a movie fails to do it, it usually makes it a bad movie. Sure, I get that.
But this is also highly subjective.
If you are able to point me towards some other story-based mods which you felt did achieve this well enough for you, then please do. I’d love to play them and see how things were done.
Yeah, I can understand why you didn’t enjoy the mod.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
So you wanted me to be confused and stuck and wondering where to go? I’m sorry about that then.
So by labeling it as an accident you hope to avoid necessary criticism?
This statement says more about your resistance to criticism than anything. If you think I’m just going to circlejerk this release like many others, then you are wrong. Your resistance to criticism is why the quality has improved little between Part 1 and Part 2.
Insulting me for not clearly understanding where I was supposed to go is rather unethical, as a level designer it is your responsibility to make these things clear, and you have failed that responsibility numerous times. I don’t have some sort of vendetta against you, I am merely attempting to bring these issues to your attention.
I didn’t enjoy the mod because of the dry and misdirected lighting. I didn’t enjoy it because of the cluttered and cramped spaces and lack of general flow.
The worst offenders in the mod by far were the casino and the building with the annoying revolving door. The casino had adequate lighting but it was bland and only served to light the level itself and not act as any other visual aid. The other building simply lacked any useful lighting at all.
The environmental lighting of the city didn’t have much through put into it either. I constantly felt like I was fighting in a room designed to be a city, and not actually fighting in a city. There is a precious balance between making it look like it had some sort of past purpose, making a place look alive, and being good for gameplay. I do feel that you did well concerning the former. The last two could use some work.
I felt no obligation. I didn’t feel like part of the world. I didn’t feel like a mere cog in the resistance machine. That along with everything I’ve said previously is why I simply ran around smashing things with a crowbar.
Well, I do accept many of your criticisms and I thank you for actually backing up your earlier statements with examples.
We will have to agree to disagree on many things, I am sure. But you’ve got your point across – there is much room for improvement. There always is, and always will be.
We try our best. We’re sorry you didn’t enjoy the mod.
Right now, I really don’t care what you do, to be honest. You didn’t enjoy the mod, fine. But I still think it’s more because of what you’re accustomed to playing (professional games) than the mod itself. Are all maps and mods listed here at PP so perfect in the way they guide you with lighting?
I welcome criticism from anyone and always balance it against what I feel is right, what I know is right (sorry, I’m studying architecture!) and what I like to do. That’s the way do things. I’m not going to bow to you and accept your wisdom just because you got lost in our virtual ice-rink. You raise some valid points, yes, but you also try dress up your personal and subjective nitpicking as stone-hard facts. Just the way as no-one forces you to download and play our mods, no-one forces me to like your tone or to agree with you, am I right?
I appreciate Phillip a lot and that doesn’t mean I’m going to stay away from creating custom themes and locations. As he says in his review, that’s one of the reasons why I have this as a hobby.
No, I have no responsability to do anything at all, sorry for breaking the news to you. I could right now delete all the files for The Citizen Part 3 and I wouldn’t be incurring in any fault or be in any debt of any sort other than a purely symbolic one. Exactly as symbolic as the cash we’re getting for all the hours, days months and years we put into mapping.
Expecting proffessional level content from us is not realistic.
Oh, you mean the building where all the meaningful talk takes place in a room that is powerfully and differently lit from the rest with floodlights?
The same building where there’s a window where sunlight shines through, outlining a vital NPC and at the same time letting you see the barricade he’s talking about and the objective of the actual map?
See? How can we really take you seriously if you sometimes seem to have played a different mod than the one we’re discussing?
Sheesh, man. Just because you disagree with it doesn’t mean you have to post a whole tirade about why it is or isn’t legitimate criticism. Stick it under your hat and move on.
You are right.
It’s just the “I hold The One truth about gaming!” people that can always get on your nerves.
Be careful if you ever respond to their irrefutable statements on your work or if you ever tell them nothing forces you to heed their advice in what you do as a pastime.
Fantastic! Beautiful! But some scenes that you saw in the trailer and screenshots won’t be in here I’m afraid. Does this mean there will be The Citizen 3? =O
There will be Citizen 3 as it is announced in all the posts from Chris Fox and Kasperg 😉
You didn’t think the entire mod would finish on a cliffhanger?
Chris? May I ask you a few questions?
1. That guy who rescued the player from the beginning, was he the same guy you “borrowed” a TV from back in Part 1?
2. Also, Susan is one of my favorite characters (that chick from Part 1 that got you to join the rebels, and rescued you the 2nd time you were wounded from Part 2), she’ll return right? As well as the other alive characters from the past?
3. Can there be more synths in Part 3, like Dropships, Gunships, and more Striders? We hardly fight any bosses at all, except for the Strider in Part 1, and APC in Part 2.
4. Are my questions stupid? XD (joke)
5. What’s the players name? All this time I just called him Grant Harrison, a cousin of Frank Harrison from the mod called Dangerous World.
Thank you for making great mods, Chris! I wish you luck on the next one!
1. Well, it’s the same guy in that both of those characters have my voice. But apart from that no, we hadn’t really intended them to be seen as connected.
2. We don’t have any firm plans in this area at the moment, but that’s not to say we won’t do something in the future. Since much of the unreleased second part is already planned, new characters are unlikely to make it into the main story. But we do have some sidequests to fill out.
3. Maybe…..
4. Herpa Derp Derp
5. I really hadn’t thought about it. Grant Harrison sounds fine to me.
I had fun with it and there were neat moments that made the trip worthwhile for me:
– Meeting the wounded (and wisecracking) rebel. I wish he was the head character instead, his voice actor seems to really relish his role and had me chuckling at the things he said. Precious few characters in mods elicit that response and are so personable as he is, so it’s kind of a pity he isn’t a main character. That said, I’m not much of a fan of this detachment’s leader (Larry, I believe his name was?). The voice actor seems to struggle through lines on multiple occasions, falling very quiet or drawing out words. At some points it almost sounds like his voice has been run through extensive post-processing, as if it has been sped up or been subjected to heavy pitch changes.
– The whole scene with the Metrocop on the brink of execution. Pity that there wasn’t any buildup to the choice of whether to let him die or free him (I certainly didn’t catch there being a choice in my first play) and followup to that choice. Freeing him inspires no reaction from him or his captors, they just part ways without a word said. Really cut off any lasting effect that scene may have had on players, though I do understand you intended to do more with it.
– Of course, I did have some irritation with presentational aspects. Sometimes the transitions between scenes would be abrupt. Combat scenes would often segue into travel scenes with no discernible transition, no-one would talk and you would eventually move on after you waited around long enough to figure there was nothing more to be done here. Jarring, to say the least, and the antithesis of good segueing that would be seen later on.
The excellent casino section built up to its spectral zombie type enemy, you clearly understood that “something wicked this way comes” by the way the dead filled the rooms and by how a suspicious waterfall of noises preceded the player as he moved forward. When the zed appeared suddenly behind me as I moved to ease a board away from a blocked door, it wasn’t a cheap shock moment or anything of the sort: it was a plausible conclusion that followed from intelligent and thoughtful foreshadowing.
The casino and theatre struck me as an allusion or tribute to Bioshock, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to notice. The tone, the colour palette, the locations and props, it felt akin to the beloved Fort Frolic chapter of Bioshock. The way you move in and out of the theatre booths in particular rung a lot of bells, as did the fact that centre stage was once more the central focus of our attention as players. This locale would have been stunning had there been more polish ladled out, its visual palette unified and given a consistently tense atmosphere.
– The next major section that sticks in my mind is the one with the office building and the patrolling Strider. I have some serious misgivings about the progression here. Aside from a single line from the Omega squaddie that told us we should be looking for a panel near the gate, the designer’s hand essentially deserted the player here. The way forward is mired in a visual singularity, it’s virtually impossible to spot it unless you know exactly what you’re looking for or are shuffling along the wall and wearing out your Use key. Something ceases to be exploration and begins to be a chore after you’ve retraced your steps a dozen times through the terrain and still can’t find where you have to go next. There’s a right way and a wrong way to encourage exploration, and this unmistakably landed in “wrong”.
I explored every square inch of that map multiple times, all because nothing was done to draw my eye in the slightest manner to a door that melted away into the wall it was set in. Only after consulting these very comments (and after 20-30 minutes of fuming) did I learn what had happened. This is a problem that typically plagues the average mod, so it’s fairly disappointing to see something so flagrant such as this creep into something that clearly strove to be more. A mere door handle or light would have virtually erased this problem.
[Conclusion]
Whether it should be played or not, that depends entirely on the temperament of the player. I played part 1 of the Citizen a good while ago, remembered the general events well enough, and wanted to see how things continued. I have a lot of patience, so I was determined to see this through to the end no matter how frustrated I got. Few players will feel similarly, I would wager most would be all too willing to put the mod down and never pick it up again.
In the worst places, I’m reminded of the “good enough, time to move on” design philosophy of most mods, with their high-water mark essentially being expressed as Strider Mountain (a mod unrivalled in length, but never shooting higher than average in virtually all other departments). At the best places of Citizen 1 and 2, I’m reminded of the potential in the makers, the sort that makes Research and Development, Human Error, and Minerva: Metastasis. But that potential will only be realized if this yawning scope is reeled in and quality be allowed to decide your course. As it is right now, your TLC is spread over too much content, and as a result many of your creative and inventive ideas fall short of their full potential. The decision not to hold off on release hurt this as well.
I can only speak for myself personally, but the release of The Citizen 2 has hurt my excitement for future instalments. Improvement from the last release was negligible, and in some cases the presentation seems to have worsened by a fair margin. More time in the hands of the devs would have helped, and it is precisely that what was needed. I can only hope they hold onto their finale for as long as they can and make sure it doesn’t release half-cooked.
Summary: I think The Citizen II was a premature release, and the dev comments seem to confirm that this is the case.
Okay, so I really wanted to like this mod.
Certain parts were brilliant. The whole casino area and office building were beautifully designed and it’s obvious the makers put a lot of work into looking the area look both nice and relatively realistic. They put a lot of hard work into the visual aspects of this mod. Kudos. I was constantly marveling at the layout, lighting, and architecture throughout the whole thing. Fantastic attention to detail and consistently good looking and believable environs. Professional work really when it comes to those aspects.
I absolutely adored the opening sequence. Falling off the train, being carried by the rebels, waking up to a grieiving woman, etc. So few mods attempt sequences this elaborate and I must commend you for taking the effort to really involve the player in te world this way.
I loved the beggining of the casino area and the atmosphere it set. It would have been nice to get some explanation or followthrough of what was occuring there and why though.
In addition they were some extremely clever moments placed throughout the mod. The BEGINNING of the final battle was awesome. That was cool. Being briefed about the last battle, casting your vote, and then watching the execution take place. Very sweet. Loved it.
But the final battle itself with seemingly ENDLESS combine coming through a SINGLE passageway. Horrible. This mod really ended on a sour note for me which is why I’m giving it a play it later. There was so much more that could have been done here. Rappeling combine. Combine bursting through doors. Dropships. APCs. Choppers. Striders. Enemies sniping from rootops. ANYTHING. But instead it’s a tedious slog against a never ending horde. I’m not sure why the designers made this decision to have the last battle be like this when they showed so much more imagination in other aspects of the mod. Suffice to say I really hated it. Also there’s a severe shortage of ammo as it seems the combine don’t drop usable ammo. A few item boxes and weapon caches would have been GREAT. Perhaps you guys ran out of times and wanted to end the level on an “epic” note but I just got plain frustrated at this part and it severely hampered my experience of this mod as a whole.
I would also like to note that the area with the rotating door and turrets needs a little but of an improvement. It took me forever to figure out I had to go to the door to the left. This part was plain frustrating as others had mentioned. Just a few hints or perhaps leaving the door an open passageway instead of a nondescript door that looks like a million other nonusable locked doors would have been great. Perhaps placing a light over the door and giving the door a handle. A small change but it goes a long way.
The fact that the building itself and the square were beautiful and well designed helped but nevertheless I must mirror the sentiments of other reviewers in that you could have given much better directional feedback in some areas.
There was a host of minor issues that never really bothered me but are nevertheless worth noting. The infinitely spawning fast zombies in the garage for example. You can easily sneak in there and have them spawn in front of you. A patrolling strider literally walks through several barriers in one area.
Voicework. Voicework ranged from excellent to mediocre. Some voices sounded professional and really brought me into the game while others were just plain awful. To be perfectly frank, I didn’t care for the rebel leader’s monotone voice. But notably others like the fat old british rebel and a few others sounded really nice. The contrast between the two in a single scripted sequence was frankly jarring. I have to commend you on the sheer number of sequences and the attempt to make you a part of this big resistance and bring you into the game. Someone though mentioned earlier making a mod focused on a single unique character. I think this is a great idea as it allows you to really fine tune and get the most of a single good voice actor.
Gameplay for the most while is pretty good though. There’s a variety of scenarios. Usually it’s pretty clear where you have to go but there’s a good amount of exploring and sidetracking to do. Some exploring with a decent amount of combat and it never felt too hard or too easy. An earlier reviewer mentioned the puzzles are nothing really new. Maybe, but they were naturally and intelligently implemented.
A mod of this length is a fairly epic undertaking for a team of just two designers. Invariably quality suffers as length and scope increases. However I think if you had beta tested this mod more, perhaps using the fine folks at the beta testers collective(obvious plug), you could have hammered out the issues that prevent this massive project of yours from being polished perfection. As a level designer myself I could easily tell this project was a work of extreme passion, love, and dedication. It’s amazing a mod of this length is released within a reasonable time frame. So it’s such a shame that such amazing work is undermined by certain unfortunate design decisions.
Yeah, the voice actor for that character is really talented. Unfortunately, he is an extremely busy man and we were not able to get all the lines we wanted for him in time for this release.
If the choice for the lead character’s voice was based solely on acting talent, then this guy would have gotten the part. I realise this is how it should have been done in ideal circumstances. However, our circumstances with The Citizen won’t allow us to do it this way.
However, future mods (which are not connected to TC) are definately going to be voice cast on acting merit as the first criteria.
This is a little amusing, as many of the character voices have been quite heavily processed (mostly to compensate for the awful recording equipment) – except for Arthur, and the injured rebel we just talked about, and Larry.
I know Larry’s actor personally, and that’s really how he sounds. And he has a reasonable microphone. The injured rebel guy is a pro voice actor and quite obviously has a great setup for recording. Arthur’s guy has a semi-pro audio setup. Everyone else is using PC mics and integrated soundcards 🙁
Yeah …. I wondered how long it would be until that got mentioned.
It annoys me too – the way we left that for this release. But we had little choice.
That scene is going to be far more important in the final release. It will be a decision which affects events later in the game.
We set a lot of it up before we realised that we were going to have to cut the mod in half. We couldn’t easily remove it from the map, even though the meaning is lost without the levels after it. We would’ve had to redo the whole level, and we didn’t have time to get it done and playtest it, etc.
I agree. Some instances of this problem (mainly npc’s not talking to you) are again caused by the mod-slicing-in-half, though.
I’m glad you didn’t see that as cheap. I worried about it.
There are two different ways you can meet that NPC, if you don’t try and open the door and look around more first, it will happen differently. Just in case you hadn’t replayed and noticed 😀
I don’t think Kasperg had Bioshock particularly in mind when he made those areas (he is 99.9% responsible for the architecture, texturing and lighting there) but, to be sure, you’d have to ask him.
I definately see where you’re coming from though.
Yes, I agree. It’s the same issue as with the metrocop scene, though. That level I think suffered the most from the cut, as it had its later meaningfulness stripped away. That, and we couldn’t get all the compensatory voice acting done in time.
Is compensatory a word? 😀
You’re right – but I would’ve felt worse personally about not releasing something.
This is probably mostly because I originally promised everyone the whole thing a year ago. To not give them anything for two years? That would have bothered me more.
Okay onto bschou’s post….
Thankyou. The intro sequence required much effort, and it’s nice to hear it being appreciated.
It’s supposed to be a battle the rebels can’t win – and technically you shouldn’t be there. We left the player some option to hang around (who doesn’t like seeing combines getting hit with RPGs?) but the mission here is to get Larry out of there as soon as possible. The fight is just something for you to run away from.
I agree with what you said about it not being a good combat setup – but it’s not really intended to be that either.
But I get how it might have seemed that way, especially if you missed out on a voice briefing or something, which does happen from time to time. That map is rather complex and I’d expect more bugs there than anywhere else, really.
That’s also because you’re supposed to be running away from that battle rather than joining it.
In earlier maps we also made some ammo quite scarce too, but for different reasons. We tried to make it impossible to get secondary AR2 ammo (without cheating) before the Casino … but we failed. There’s one out there. I know – facepalm time.
Duly noted and marked for improvement in the final release.
Strider legs have minds of their own! 😀
I do, too. 😉
Thanks to both of the above posters for their detailed reviews and honest comments.
I wonder, if the mod really requires it’s own bin folder. cause of not, I’d change the AppId to 218.
We’re kinda at a point now, where released mods should be source 2007…
However I haven’t played it yet, so I’ll make a true comment. 🙂
quit playing, because I didn’t have any fun anymore…
I was supposed to look for a fuse…
Please use prop_door_rotating next time, it makes stuff so much easier… 🙁
Thanks for another good mod,Liked the puzzles gave a break from combat had to go back and explore to find the fuse.Only have one glitch a save loaded with white cubes had to go back one.I have’nt updated steam in a year so it was nice to see a new release run with no problems.Did you design this mod with the update version?
Thanks for the response, Chris Fox. Do you perchance have a link to the wounded rebel VA’s website, or to his e-mail or something? I’d be most grateful to be able to contact him for a central role in a mod project of my own, I was thoroughly impressed by his work in TCII.
Michael Hillard ( onlyintheory dot com) is a very talented voice actor from whom we might be seeing a lot of work when Black Mesa is released. As Chris said, he’s usually quite busy so keep that in mind if you don’t get a reply from him straight away.
As four your feedback, it’s much appreciated!
There are a lot of recurrent problems being mentioned in the comments which had in fact been a matter of doubt and speculation among us before this pre-release (yes, I like to see it as a pre-release). I’m glad we’re getting a more or less unified response to these problems and will know exactly how to tackle them.
As Chris said, we had to release this for obvious reasons and It can be seen as something good or something bad.
However, unlike most retail games (before the era of massive patches, that is), we have the ability of correcting any and all errors we find and incorporate these improvements into the final version. I’m really not sure how many people will replay these 9 maps for the Easter-Egg Hunt, but we will be releasing them again in any case, making these particular issues be a part of of the Dev process and not the final verdict as it might seem now.
Thanks very much for the reply! I’ll be sure to shoot him in an e-mail sometime, and I’ll definitely be mindful of his tight schedule. Not planning on an episodic release model, so there’s a fair amount of flexibility in what I can do.
While the overall impression I have of the world that this mod is set in (since it’s pretty far from what I’d consider to be canon Half Life 2) is good, the mod itself is choppy and difficult. I had to resort to god mode several times just to figure out what to do next, and not get killed while doing so.
The variety of characters was nice, I find myself wincing at some accents, but hey. They’re unique characters.
The maps themselves once more were very good. A little dark in some places, and somewhat confusing in others where I was meant to find a door that just didn’t pop out at me (and wound up searching way too much to get to it, when I did realize where it was).
The pigeon coop was very interesting, though it caused me some trouble. I was killed immediately by the first rollermine that got shot into the room, but for some reason when I loaded it back up, I couldn’t get back into that room and had to wander around noclipping until I found where I was meant to go. Thanks to phillip and the spoilery pictures for that because I wouldn’t have known where to go.
All in all, it’s still well worth playing. I do wish though that the flow of progress through the whole thing was a little more smooth. Considered as a work in progress, with C1 and whatever comes next, I hope that they mesh together well.
where do you go once you get the radio andletter at rhe beggining of the wing chapter?
I wonder why this mod has been downloaded 1000 Times and only 14 recommandations, less than Sebastian -_-
Are people afraid of posting bad or harsh reviews?
I think many people play the mod, but don’t rate it, or even comment about it. I’ve certainly played mods and not posted any comments about them before. Often this is because I just didn’t think I had anything to contribute to what had already been said.
Are people in general afraid of posting harsh reviews on the internet? I would say no. Ripping on others, or the works of others (deservingly or not) is a part of popular culture today, as much as it sickens me to say it. The internet enables the inner-critic in everyone. Not everyone takes up that mantle, though.
One of my favorite mods! Loved the puzzels..really took some thinking on some of them.
The more modern apartments looked nice and refreshing.
The thing that bugged me the most was some of the heavy English accent that was not 100% understandable.
I thought “Larry” was the guy in the white shirt and I kept dying in the last fight or the real Larry died and I did not know who he was.
I’d just like to say how much I am enjoying playing “The Citizen 2″. It is as good as the first one, which I finished thanks to an update patch and proving to be better the further in I get.
Loved the beginning sequence as your carried into the rebel base and treated, then, like a mug, your go first and BLAM! Sideways through a window……..
But that section in the loft after releasing the messenger pigeon was, to frank a bit harsh. Rollermines are too hard to tackle in a confined area. with some combine elite and manhacks without the gravgun. Especially when an awkward jump is required to flee the danger zone! I am ashamed to say I ” nocliped” out of there feeling dirty and cheap as I met up with the others.
The strider in the town square was a nice touch. I read some reviews where people had trouble with this bit, not finding certain things in order, etc. when I entered this building I saw a room blocked off by some bars in the broken wall and my only thought was how to get in there, I ran past the terminals, keeping an eye out for stores and perhaps a rocket launcher. On the ground floor I spotted the way out, but I wanted to check the lift, mmmmmmm they look interesting, then the other office levels I saw earlier. Then its find this, take this, insert here, strider and ha ha! I think maybe some players need to explore more……………
Loved the ice rink was really nice but could have done with a LIGHTS ON! “it’s A TRAP” thingy to make it great.
The casino level has a macabre touch to it, with the odd people hanging around amongst the shadows! The creepy thumbing of a hidden menace behind those double doors had my quaking, until some crazed creature ran out to be instantly zapped by a plasma grenade! Flooded casino floor was quite odd. I liked it!
The posh apartments had some nice dcor and a troublesome health pack, so I dropped it and checked out the very arty pool area. Was I surprised to find someone who wanted it? No. but like a lot of people I suspected, “Oh no it’s bugged!”
So far I love this mod. The voice acting is just right and that strange language they’re speaking, English I think, seems perfectly comprehensible to me.J
Chris “Playbus” Fox and Jose “Kasperg” Ameyugo thankyou and keep up the good work.
I guess I should finish the mod before rambling on………….
Now I’ve just finished I can rate this mod.
Following the very dark and gruesome casino was the theatre, which was equally as dim. I spent most of my time pausing, awaiting a recharge to use my torch instead of exploring. To all modders; if you want a dark and creepy atmosphere, please give the player a torch that stays on when switched. it’s even creepier to just have a small arc of light to see with. Good fun level with a few zombies to kill.
The flooded area caught me off guard, I ran straight in and got zapped dead!
The car park was very nicely lit and well flooded to, with a little too much electricity for paddling! Patience and double crate ballet got me through after a few wrong turns.
Some gunplay and an evening with a stranger led to a rude awakening from a rude Scotsman who called me a “spanner”! Then it was running with a hail of combine bullets chasing, not a good idea to try and fight back here.
Finally out on the street and, for once an easy stretch to some much-needed ammo and health kits.
Alas from here I found the mods endings a major disappointment!
The idea of the three choices of mission was ace and I was initially happy to get more than a single ending, but it was not that easy.
I chose the sniper mission and saw Larry executed, while I did my best with Gordon’s crossbow. Then it was out in a major firefight with hordes of combine, but when they were all dead, nothing! Just a stalled game with one of my guys standing behind a fence looking at me!
So I tried a little dress up and walked around like a Dalek with pink eye. I did this fours times and all I got was a recurring, “Larry is dead”
So I had a go at demolition and had a success, a living Larry and a major fight to my death! Again and again I died, thinking ” am I supposed to fight or hide in the sniper room or back in the base?” I decided to fight so I evoked “god” mode and had at them and still I ran out of ammo! I had to “impulse 101” twice before I finished off the impossible numbers of combine pouring out of that force field. And, I’m not sure of this, but I swear I saw a ghostly form of a strider behind that field towards the end!
With the combine gone, I found my guy standing beside a truck and followed him to the credits. Finished!
I loved “The Citizen” and I enjoyed this one except for the endings. During the outrageously high level of combat I thought, “This isn’t Sparta, this is madness!”
This seemed much shorter than “The Citizen”……….
what happen with the download??, I can’t open the zip file because it says its damaged, what can I do, I downloadit from the pp link btw
Hec, do you have 7-zip? It’s a free program you need to open Phillip’s .7z files. Or it may be that your download dropped before it was finished, because both files tested without errors in 7-zip.
Oh the problem was fixed, thanks for the recomendation, now the downlads work fine 4 me
I’ve got one question, the credits music, called “mtg” in the sound files, is that an original composition or did you take that from elsewhere?
All the music in the mod is either default HL1 and HL2 tracks or royalty-free music by Kevin McLeod.
Ok this is a must play why?, because it’s great and beautiful, also is a rebel classic mod for excellence, this part was cool and medium time gameplay time so I think it’s a perfect lenght for the mod, you can easily can finish in a 2 hr playing session or 2 separeted game sessions.
I loved the 3 diferent crussial actions at the end, that I have to state all of them were cool, if u want to play them all like me, be sure to save the beggining of the sp_square map of this mod.
That part of the cassino map was a great spooky environment for the mod I love the design of the maps and the feeling of all of them.
Finally I hope the citizen team develope soon the III part of the mod because this will be a classic trilogy, anyway i’d like to see it running on the ep2 organge box graphs basis just to see more cool effects, it was really odd, that this mod, were released on the HL2 basis, because most of all mods are launched with the Ep2 related engine so I think this could improove so much better the mod, the rest was great and free of buggy things, so play it now!
Moving to the OB engine is something we would really love to do. But there’s a problem. The bigger the mod and the more custom content you have (materials, scripting etc), the more likelihood of bugs there’ll be.
In our case, running the maps under the Ep2 engine created too many problems (some with no apparent solution) to be a considerable option. This goes from NPC animations not showing up, materials with transparencies becoming twice as opaque, and a very long list of all kinds of unrelated problems.
I think the Strider Mountain team tried to make the move but met some of the problems we did back in the day.
Random Quest II, however, might be made from scratch under the Ep2 engine.
Oh ok, I understand, yep at last everithyng goes with that annoying updates issue that valve hasn’t care of yet, but for me as a gamer, there is not problem because TC part 3 will be really great for that im sure and if that is it, its ok to use the HL2 base because your saga is really good is a classic, no matter in which engeine is based..
Much better than expected, this mod manages to capture your imagination from the beginning. The level design is top-notch and there are some nice adventure elements to it (especially with the inventory, if only in a rudimentary way). The only thing missing are some hints from time to time. It took me forever to figure out what to do after the final battle, which was great otherwise. Looking forward to Part 3 – keep up the good work guys!
The mod was pretty dam good 😀
A fun mod. Well paced with some well thought out, original content. The endlessly spawning opponents did get tiresome in places, but overall, well worth a play.
i have a problem when I run it it says”runtime error this application has requested runtime to work” help please
I thought the first Citizen was an incredibly well crafted and tight mod. This second part continues in the same fashion but obviously not enough time has been spent on playtesting, because certain objectives and script triggers are either not working or just not obvious.
I have been running around the steet trying to find this console to open the gate. It is probably right before my eyes in an obvious position. The script where the guy confirms you have found the circuit took a very long time to trigger. The loft sequence needs redoing.
This is a very impressive mod. I thought the voice acting was very good and it was very well thought out. The final battle was very intense. One of the best HL2 mods I have played. I hope the developers come out with the Citizen III soon.
Pingback: The Citizen 2
Only 1,500 downloads on moddb and nearly 3,000 here? Impressive.
It was released here first by about three days, which is when most of the downloads happen.
Hope for the last part in 3 days
Don’t hold your breath!
Another year, another Xmas without Citizen 3… 🙁
Are you seeing a pattern? Guess what for 2013…
it’s not over.
Never seen this issue before. I downloaded the zipped file, extracted it to my Source Mods folder, restarted Steam and…The Citizen 2 is not in my list….odd. Tried re-downloading and re-extracting – to no avail.
Any suggestions?
Valve broke it with an update, so get used to this sort of mod failure as you’ll be seeing more rather than less. If the gameinfo.txt formatting isn’t exactly as they want it this week, or the mod calls for an engine branch that valve have abandoned/wrecked then typical symptoms include the mod not showing in the steam library list. Sometimes they can be “fixed” to run reasonably, other times they are just too broken. Unfortunately I think that this is one of those “other times”. I tried some traditional “fixes” but the mod was still broken at critical points (then it crashed – whenever you attempt to kill a zombie with “..UTIL_SetModel : notprecached:..”), rendering it pretty much useless. The only chance is if the author sees fit to re-create it but as that often entails major reworking, that’s pretty unlikely. You can try “fixing” it for yourself if you like, you may have different results – see here. Edit gameinfo.txt in MS Notepad/Wordpad or similar.
I copied the file into my sourcemods folder but it isint showing up in my library
Valve broke it with their updates. By making some a few simple edits to the mod’s gameinfo.txt file you can get it to limp along for a bit, but it breaks terminally later on. All you can do is load the successive map manually (giving yourself the same weapons as you had before) via the console, but short of re-writing the mod, really it’s broken – unless someone wiser can post a better fix!
From the relevant forum post:
————————————————–
Mod: The Citizen 2
Postby Sparks ” Sun Feb 17, 2013 1:51 am
Mod: “The Citizen 2” http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/the-citizen-2-half-life-2/
File: hl2-sp-the-citizen-2.7z
Date: 24/12/2010
Source: PP
Fault: Mod disappeared from Steam Library – not able to launch.
Fixes tried: Changed AppId and searchpaths as follows, in GameInfo.txt:
FileSystem
{
SteamAppId 218
ToolsAppId 211
SearchPaths
{
Game |gameinfo_path|.
Game |all_source_engine_paths|sourcetest
Game |all_source_engine_paths|hl2
}
}
Result: Mod now shows & launches, BUT after you get blown up in the corridor, the female NPC tending to you doesn’t appear until the end of her script. Also, critical NPC sitting wounded in shower won’t get up & unlock door after being healed. Finally, first encounter of zombies (in enclosed stairwell with rollermines) causes game crash with desktop windowed message “353/ – raggib: uTIL_SetModel: not precached: models/headcrabclassic.mdl” on map_Casino02
Console just before crash:
——————-
Attempted to create unknown entity type npc_headcrab!
NULL Ent in UTIL_PrecacheOther
Loading game from //MOD/SAVE/sp_casino.HL1…
Loading game from //MOD/SAVE/sp_presquare.HL1…
ERROR: couldn’t open.
Attempted to create unknown entity type npc_headcrab_fast!
NULL Ent in UTIL_PrecacheOther
Redownloading all lightmaps
——————- CRASH!
Mod Status: Broken
Another year, another Xmas without Citizen 3… :/
Strangely, I wondered about the same thing a few days ago. I looked into it, and it’s worth visiting Kasperg’s ModDB page (search for Citizen on ModDB).
Basically, Kasperg and Chris Fox took a long break from modding and back in October, Kasperg decided to revisit his picturesque Frank Lloyd Wright map. I can’t find the reference right now, but he mentioned that, apparently, Random Quest II is in development and most likely will be completed before the final Citizen.
While this mod has it’s problems, what I really like about it is the importance placed on the story. Too many mods have no story, but no matter how well the mod is designed, without a story it loses that human element.
The lead voice actor does a great job, and the choice of making his character a ‘person of color’ was forward thinking.
Looks and plays good.