half life mods/mods in general

[nickfil]

I'm pretty new to PC gaming. As you can see from steam ID i've been playing a little TF2 and L4D, but mostly i've been playing the witcher (which i love).

My point is that i'm not really up to date on pc games, let alone mods. The last pc game i installed (before recently) came on a stack of 3.5 floppies. So... where do i go for mods? How can i tell if a mod is good? I hear half life has a ton of mods, but i don't want to waste my time with garbage....

i heard natural selection is good, but the download site is down. Might try that out later.

any suggestions for modding half life? Source mods?

[the7k]

I haven't gotten into HL2 mods, but with HL1 I used to play Science & Industry and Front Line Force a lot. Dunno if they are still played, but back in the day there were fucking unbelievably awesome.

For single-player mods, check out any work by Neil Manke. I loved the They Hunger Trilogy and USS Darkstar.

Also, for HL2 Single-Player mods, I remember enjoying Day Hard and MINERVA.

[Xonticus]

The funny thing about Half Life and it's mods, they were more just modifications, like the name entitles, to the game.... or even mods like Counter Strike which was a total conversion.

Before the likes of Steam, there were many scattered websites including Planet Half Life (havent been there in a while) but this one seems to be pretty good:

http://www.moddb.com/games/half-life/mods

After Steam came out, mods went weird for a while, trying to integrate support with the then-crappy steam. I remember when Counter Strike 1.6 came out on steam, MANY people hated it because it added the Riot shield, etc. Nowadays, every valve game is integrated into steam and thus the mods are also partially integrated. You can find the majority of the half life 2 mods etc in steam itself. Before half-life 2 came out, all of their programs and mods were independent of each other, and some say, easier to modify.

Since steam has been out for so long, mods on steam has become easier to make and integrate, so overall it was a good change.

As far as a mod ive played recently, I'd say Zombie Panic! Source. it came out before left 4 dead, but has a similar premise. I'd hafta say this one is more challenging!

[Mozgus]

Steam offers a handful of HL2 mods you install directly, so start with those, especially Dystopia and Insurgency. Some of those in that list are just links to the homepages though, like Fortress Forever.

Beyond that, just explore. There are literally hundreds of gems you can find.

[J T]

I usually just download the ones made available on Steam since a lot of others I've tried haven't been worthwhile. However, occassionally there will be a story in a gamer mag or website that talks about a good mod that isn't on Steam. One such mod is Portal:Prelude

http://www.portalprelude.com/about.php

[Mozgus]

I usually just download the ones made available on Steam since a lot of others I've tried haven't been worthwhile. However, occassionally there will be a story in a gamer mag or website that talks about a good mod that isn't on Steam. One such mod is Portal:Prelude

http://www.portalprelude.com/about.php

I dunno about that. I've heard from a lot of people that map pack is terrible. I heard much better remarks about this set:

http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/affinity-portal/

Portal: Prelude only became popular because of the title, and people's unanimous desire for more Portal story (or really just more Glados). It's actual presentation and map design is supposed to be terrible.

Also, planetphillip.com is a pretty good starting point for mods. Phillip himself has terrible opinions on what makes a good mod, so ignore him and just listen to the comments. For example, Phillip literally hates every multiplayer mod ever made. He's said it himself on the podcast many times.

[AwesomeMonstar]

I usually just download the ones made available on Steam since a lot of others I've tried haven't been worthwhile. However, occassionally there will be a story in a gamer mag or website that talks about a good mod that isn't on Steam. One such mod is Portal:Prelude

http://www.portalprelude.com/about.php

I dunno about that. I've heard from a lot of people that map pack is terrible. I heard much better remarks about this set:

http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/affinity-portal/

Portal: Prelude only became popular because of the title, and people's unanimous desire for more Portal story (or really just more Glados). It's actual presentation and map design is supposed to be terrible.

presentation wise i thought portal prelude did a great job. I mean, aside from the microsoft sam speech it definitely was impressive for a mod... Map wise the puzzles were lacking, less about thinking and more about ludicrous skill, like going mach speed in a ceiling to ground portal and then finally hitting the wall behind you with the right portal at the time. There were some good puzzles, but all in all, I definitely will not revisit that. Now the bethesda custom map, that was cool.

[BIZ]

SuperMOD (SMOD)

DIPRIP was cool, but not enough players last I checked

Fortress Forever was nice for like a few days until Team fortress 2 came out.

I used to do lots of old school capture the flag on hl2ctf.com, but there are hardly enough players now.