Half-Life Chat V11 - 20th anniversary edition - Games

I can't believe I'm sympathising with Randy fuckin' Pitchford.

Nobody is the bad guy in their own story.

wonder if they tried to talk to marc laidlaw

Sgt Mitchell would like to have a word with ya

Well the Gearbox stuff was new. And I thought the Black Mesa content was interesting. And it did a pretty good job of proving that, here we are, 20 years after the first game and 11 years after the last, the fanbase is still here. And it's still strong. Not many game franchises can say that.

I dunno, the Project Borealis stuff was cool and its not like I'm biased at all, no sir.

I also think the Project Borealis part was pretty neat, totally not biased either, absolutely not

The whole point of the video is that there's still history and people connected to the game worth celebrating without having to necessarily deal with the development history of the game.

Hey you lot I am very excited to have my mod Half-Life Echoes in the shortlist for the mod of the year over at moddb.com If you have played it, liked it, and want to support it, chip in a vote for it at: https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes If I made the top ten, I would be over the moon!

Echoes is such a well put together and detailed mod, it got me back into Source modding again.

limmy is playing hl2 on his stream. seen a couple of other streamers i like playing hl2 for the first time and really liking it. its really good to see. limmy was getting frustrated at dying over and over and said he was done, only to keep playing for another 3 hours.

Well you've definitely got my vote friend. It still baffles me how detailed and tightly scripted Echoes is. Just last night I spent some time in the Lobby splashing around in the fountain and listening to the reactions of the nearby maintenance crew. It's funny, but it also makes the world feel more believable.

Echoes felt in many ways like an alternate-universe envisioning of a Half-Life 1 expansion, it was that good. The formula for the pacing was top notch, the gargantua sequence alone from start to finish was incredibly well crafted and is honestly my favorite memorable experience in your project. That gargantua climax with the gluon gun in the box that you knew would blow this sucker up, the intensity as the pounding was reaching it's epoch was so satisfying and left a huge dorky smile on my face. In fact I think I maniacally laughed out loud it was so amusing to me. I hope you win this, I even logged into my old moddb account just to give you a vote. People like you are genuinely keeping the Half-Life spirit alive and well, one of the most important token video game experiences of all time. And you made it that much more interesting, bravo.

I consider Echo's to now be in my Half Life playlist when I revisit the series again akin to every other expansion. Hell for me I consider it an expansion itself.

Honestly, not only does Echoes deserve its place on the list of Top HL1 mods of all time, but it came out of nowhere. MrGnang came out of nowhere and released his first mod ever, and it is literally the best HL experience outside of 90's Valve.

What mod was it, sorry to ask

Just a note for anyone who wants to play games that are dropping Windows XP support; you can use SteamCMD to download older versions using the download_depot command. Launch SteamCMD and type "help download_depot" for a description of the command. To get the manifest ID - which refers to a particular release - you'll need to look up the depots you want to download for a game and look at the manifest on SteamDB. For example, if you wanted to download an older version of Sven Co-op, you'd look at one of these: https://steamdb.info/depot/225841/manifests/ (you'll also need to download the other depots, such as those containing binaries) So even if you've uninstalled the game or if it's been auto-updated to a newer version you can use SteamCMD to download an older version. As long as Steam itself still runs on Windows XP the game will still launch, but you'll only be able to play on servers running the older version. Based on the support article (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFCM-4577) it looks like Steam won't run anymore at all on XP, so it probably won't matter. But in the event that Steam can still run but not update this will let you play those games. I'd still recommend upgrading to a newer OS since XP isn't that great at supporting any programs using newer technologies.

...apart from making Black Mesa facility way more detailed than the original, so HD models don't look out of place

Only one that looks off is gman, that's it. Hardly something to complain about.

There's mods for the mod to 'fix" that anyway, if one's really so uptight about it. Me personally, I was just never a fan of the swap of the Glock to the Beretta, and the MP5 to the M4 when it came to the HD pack.

People complains unironically about the HD models? Outside of maybe being annoyed by the Glock->Beretta and MP5->M4 switch, why even bother to being angry?

Gordon has a flashback to his H.E.V. suit training, at Black Mesa's absurdly dangerous training facility. https://youtu.be/HJyhsYBiykQ

I don't think HD models "ruin" the mod or anything, but man the default models have a fantastic awkward charm that makes the HD ones seem completely bland. I'd take this https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/257085/9e0b31d9-5917-414a-9cb3-03563274411a/image.png Over this https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/257085/eae9cf23-3851-4a85-92cc-88bec9d60711/image.png any day of the week. If I'm playing HL1 in the first place over black mesa it's because I want the authentic goldsrc jank. Both models look ugly, after all they're from the early days of 3d gaming. But original models are amusingly ugly, where the updated ones are just...moderately ugly.

then change the models. its a half-life mod, mod it.

I only associate one of these models with this sound https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/441/729b5001-645d-466c-9d97-afe135a94637/scream05.wav

But scream05 is only used once in all of Half-Life for one of the two scientists who get pulled into the vent in Office Complex, and classic or not, neither of those two Scientists is the Nerd/Glasses variation. 🤔

Can we as a collective at Facepunch meta the Bad Reading glasses to call out nerds like this guy

Personally, I'm more of a fan of STAHP https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109665/dda25db4-374a-4e33-b2ca-2a68a829010f/sci_pain3.wav

that's not wise at all since the mod content could have more/different anim names

I don't think it'd take much to check, and maybe even recompile the models with the new animations if necessary.