I don’t remember the old weapon sounds, so I can’t really compare, sorry. As far as new models, it’s also tough to tell, since its been a while since I played the original Half Life. I do remember the god awful textures though, so I can testify for sure that they upgraded the textures. I just ran through the beginning of enhanced Half Life, and Half Life source recently, and the models look the same to me.
SMOD-Tactical is my favorite HL2 mod. It’s like play HL2 with all the Counterstrike weapons sprinkled in, plus the single-player levels are a lot harder to get through. There a quite a few weapons, models professionally done, and all have iron sights.
Gameplay video, from early alpha:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fggbzRupU8w
Of course, the plain SMod is also fun, which Tactical was based on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y989mPcYbjE
This video is a little long, but if you watch it a bit you will notice the flamethrower in it:
GMod is also somewhat good. Here’s a meager example of a music video from it:
I also added the link to Iris, which I read about in Games for Windows magazine. They recommended trying it out, even though its really short. It’s a prototype by a few university students. A project done for class to show how an adventure game would work using the Source engine. Apparently its super short, but I’ve been meaning to try it out some time. If I do, I’ll report back.
I gave SMOD and SMOD tactical a try last night. First of all SMOD is pretty neat. They give you bullet time like in Max Payne/F.E.A.R. which goes off the same meter as your flashlight and running energy. Secondly you can kick. And there’s a whole bunch of new weapons apparently. You’re supposed to play through the original Half Life 2 with the new changes, there are no new levels with the mod.
Playing through the beginning of the game, things are kinda interesting. When you first have your teleporter accident, they don’t let you just leave the opening area, you have to kick some boards down to get out of the area, hence learning about the kick button or getting stuck there. (hehe). When Barney gives you the crowbar, it’s kinda neat that the alternate fire on the crowbar is to hurl it. I’m not sure how the game will handle new weapons though. When I started a new game in a random level later in the game, I started with every regular weapon in the game, none of the new weapons. I only fought for a few minutes, but my enemies had ordinary HL2 guns, so I’m not sure where you’d pick up the new weapons.
I hate mods that make you type stuff into the console to get new weapons, so hopefully that’s not the case here. SMOD definitely bears further investigation.
On the other hand, SMOD-Tactical was a completely different experience.
First of all, it’s “realistic” so there’s no bullet time. There is still a kick though. The animations for the characters are really screwed up. When Alex is taking you to the teleporter station, she doesn’t walk normally. She’s carrying a huge assault rifle, and she only walks around completely hunched over with fixed expression on her face. It completely ruins any immersion in the game. Barney walks around the same way.
When it came time for Barney to hand me the crow bar, he threw down a knife instead. Nice animation on the knife. However, once you make it to the trainyard, it is COMPLETELY FILLED with enemy soldiers. Instead of Combine, they are dressed up as some kind of weird cops. I don’t like the look. They look kind of like the enemies in Sin: Emergence, but not as good. I managed to kill one and get his gun, but then everyone is alerted, and oh my god there’s so MANY of them, even on Easy difficulty I “realistically” die really fast before I have a chance to really fight back. I’ve tried getting through this part multiple times but there’s way too many enemies out there. They’re standing in ridiculous places too. There’s an overhead bridge, and one of them is standing on the very edge of the railing, looking like he’s floating on air. There’s also tons of them all along the tops of the rail cars in the trainyard. It’s completely unplayable.
Maybe if you start in some other level with more weapons other than just your knife, this mod could be interesting, but I recommend giving it a pass. It’s got horrible animations and bad enemy placement, and mixes realistic “things” with the scifi HL2 universe and just doesn’t feel right.
There are other SMOD variants out there. Like SMOD-Remastered, and SMOD-Remastered Redux. They’re all made by different people who take the work of previous versions and add more stuff. Not sure if that leads to a better mod, or just plain more stuff.
I must say, I’m pretty impressed by the original SMOD. It features a really nice original tune that fits well in the HL2 scifi universe. You can hear it in the menu. It also has a completely new font that looks really nice, and changes the feel of the game a bit. It has loading screens that help in creating this atmosphere. It could be a great mod, and deserves further investigation.
The only downside is: since there’s no new levels, only the original Half Life 2, should one replay the game using SMOD, SMOD remastered, or one of the other SMODs out there?
Downloading SMOD, Rock24 and Awakening right now.
What the hell is with people naming a file “setup.exe”? Boy, with a 254 character limit, that file name sure is clear what its for.
Would you like file.exe better?
Any impressions on Rock24? Looks like that one is complete and not a work in progress.
Well, Rock24Setup.exe would make more sense instead of me having to run the thing to find out what it is.
Wow, I am getting 500 k/s on the torrent download for Rock24… I did the direct download at work and it was just called Setup.exe, but the torrent one is Rock24_Setup.exe… 4 more minutes now.
Awakenings - same problems as Rock8man
SMOD tactical - I have killed 3 guys with a knife in the opening area, yet their weapons all disappear, thus I cannot get past the 4 guys on top of the trains as they just slaughter me
Rock 24 - second helecopter kills me and it looks like its going to take me further into the game but it doesn’t, it just dies on a black screen (that I can kill from Process Explorer)
Man, I am Teh Suck!
For Awakenings, do you mean you’re having the same technical problems launching the game, or did you mean that the voice acting in the intro was bad, but the gameplay was good so far, but really tough?
SMOD tactical - I don’t think their guns disappear, but they are really tough to find for some reason. You really have to go back and forth and vacuum the ground around their bodies in order to find the gun.
Rock 24 - I finally played this, its excellent so far. The same thing happened to me the first time Derek. The second helicopter is meant to knock you overboard, but that didn’t happen the first time I played. I think it was because as soon as the cabin blew up, I jumped past the flames and went to a different part of the boat until eventually I got killed because I couldn’t get to the ammo safely.
The second time I played, I stayed near the Ammo box right near where you pick up the rocket launcher. Then when the cabin blew up, I still stayed there, fighting the new helicopter, and then everything went off correctly as I got knocked overboard. Unfortunately, I’m stuck later in the next level because I can’t figure out how to initiate a jailbreak because I missed what the guy said to me about how to escape. I’ll play it again, and I have admit that aside from the technical problems in the first level with the helicopter and the boat, this mod seems really professional.
If I’ve got a key from a version of Half Life 1 that I bought back in the day (1999), and I go to Steam and enter it, can I play HL: Source from Steam for free, or do I have to pay something extra?
That won’t unlock HL: Source, but it will allow you to download HL1 through Steam (as well as Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and so on). HL: Source is another few bucks… and is totally not worth it.
I also have Blue Shift (and its key), so does that mean that I get the somewhat newer textures and such?
Actually, you can get the High Definition Pack even without Blue Shift. Check out this forum thread.
While you can install the HD Pack through Steam, that version is apparently broken. There seem to be two alternatives: (1) Installing the HD Pack the old-fashioned way, patching it with Gearbox’s patch, and putting just the right files in just the right place in your Steam directory. (2) The stuff in the above link.
Game launch problems.
SMOD tactical - I don’t think their guns disappear, but they are really tough to find for some reason. You really have to go back and forth and vacuum the ground around their bodies in order to find the gun.
Awesome use of the word vacuum there. =] Yeah, tried again, but its hard to vacuum when there are 4 guys ripping you up. I think I will just start a new game at a later stage.
Rock 24 - I finally played this, its excellent so far. The same thing happened to me the first time Derek. The second helicopter is meant to knock you overboard, but that didn’t happen the first time I played.
Ah, cool, well let me try and get knocked overboard this time.
I’ll play it again, and I have admit that aside from the technical problems in the first level with the helicopter and the boat, this mod seems really professional.
Yeah, its really solid. I am going to try it again.
Alright guys, I’m hioping Chet would pop by this thread because I’m having a whole bunch of technical issues with my steam and Source engine.
Any half life game I play, any mods, expansion, multiplayer game will crash to the desktop 10 minutes after actually being in the game with this messsage.
failed to lock vertex buffer in CmeshDX8:: lockvertexbuffer
Followed by
The instructions at 0x241143b4 referenced memory at 0x0f2f1d84. The memory could not be read
I’m not a programmer. I have no idea what these mean.
I’ve tried re-installing half-life 2 and what not, but it still shoots me this message after 10 minutes of play. I can’t seem to find any help at all in the world wide internet (probably cos my google-fu sucks) so any advice here would really be appreciated.
Thanks a bunch.
Reinstall DirectX?
Here is a page that helped me with one of my Half Life 2 video issues:
Start down at section 3 - Use Game Launch Options to Troubleshoot Components.
I have HL2 running again, but don’t quite have a final solution to my crash.
Minerva: Metastasis is now complete, and apparently quite good. I’ll definitely be giving this a spin soon. Probably this weekend.