Half-Life 1 Still Popular? Created 17 years ago2007-01-04 02:57:12 UTC by hlife_hotdog

I have only just joined up to TWHL and I'm thinking that it'll all be HL2 and nobody will download my maps! But alas! I look and see that nearly all the maps are HL1! I can't get Half-Life 2 because I don't have an internet connection to my computer and Steam won't let me play if I don't, but the big question I want to ask is WHY is Half-Life 1 still popular? Mind you, I am relieved that I won't be called outdated any time soon, but I am wondering...

This has been answered time and time again, all with slightly different responses, but I think most people here would agree that it really just comes down to the feel of the good ol' Half-Life engine. That, or some people's computers just can't run Source.

they can't work out how to use displacements so they run back to their brush-based hideyholes

Or if you're like me, you've never even attempted to make one of those darn newfangled "displacement" thingamajiggers.

Why are people so scared of displacements? I used them without even reading any manuel, and it is just make block, set a few things, then just make bumps and texture.

I'm not scared! I'm not scared of anything! How dare you insult my manhood like that!

As I said before though, I never even tried to make a displacement.

I have. What can I say? I just don't like working with source. Pre-Rendered Prop models make it too impersonnal and its too easy to make it look good. All i do for source are materials.

HL1 mapping requires hours of dedication to get a room to look right.

entity setups in hl1 suck major ass.

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ASS!

You're ass major suck!

Why?

Please explain...

HL1 mapping requires hours of dedication to get a room to look right.

Source rooms require the same amount of time, if not more, thanks to the huge amount of detail you can inject into them. And yes, it uses props, but the engine has to compete with modern day engines and look good and props are the best way to do it. Hell, Source is crippled enough already because it runs on the old BSP rendering system, which, I maintain, was done to appeal to the modding community.

why is HL1 still popular?

Because Hammer 3.5 is fantastic, whereas Hammer 4 is a buggy pile of crap.

Unfortunately, i advertise myself as both an HL1 level designer and a Source level designer, so when clan's ask for maps, i generally have to put up with hammer 4 >_<

But really, Half-Life 1 is an astoundingly good game which is nothing short of fun to map for.

Well for an engine, that was developed in 1998 - HL is quite goddamn spectacular.
It's 8 years old, although you can still create amazing enviroments with it. I think it's the fact, that you're pushing the engine to the edge everytime you create something, that makes the mappers stay with HL1.

Half-Life 1 is an astoundingly good game which is nothing short of fun to map for.

That's it, right there. That's the reason I stick with it. every time I use Hammer, I think "goddamn, I'm just having so much fun doing this!". It's mostly the fact that I learned the engine so quickly (yet so well), and that I've gotten so familiar with it that's appealing to me. For the most part, I don't have to think much about what I'm doing, I can just map my heart out, and create whatever comes to mind. It's an amazingly simple engine, yet it still has so much potential.

Personally I find the Source tools to be quite an improvement (apart from the buggy nature of the automatic updates of course). Once you get familiar with the novelties (entity I/O, dismaps, props, etc.) it's much like good old HL, in terms of stretching limits and finding new tricks.

On the other hand, it can feel pretty intimidating and alien to someone who's been mapping for HL for 4-5 years. It has taken me a while to adapt, but now that I'm used to it, it's hard to get back to the limited HL engine if I really want to express myself.

As far as props go, they're much like prefabs: it's easy to overuse them, but when used right they're a blessing. Displacement maps are a huge improvement over the old terrain techniques: they turn a time-intensive, compile-speed-increasing method into a breeze. The new entity I/O looks confusing at first, but once you understand that 'triggering' is just giving the target entity a nod, where an 'output' is sending them a comprehensive message, you'll see the benefits.

But I think there are several reasons why HL is still appealing to many. Once you're happy with something, you don't need to move on to new things for the sake of it. Everyone his own taste.

agreed. once you get used to the advantages of source, HL is just plain annoying to map for.

Correction: compile-time-increasing instead of compile-speed-increasing...

Well, I don't really find HL annoying to map for - it's pretty easy because I'm so familiar with it - but whenever I want to do anything serious, HL is too limiting for me now.

I mean, carrying around power tubes to activate traps with, that's virtually impossible in HL. And it's those kind of things that I like to try out these days. However, I've got my brother (11) mapping for HL now, which is quite fun to see.

HL1 is just a great game with great mods.
I don't really care about the outdated graphics.
HL1 still looks decent. I like the somewhat cartoony vibe.

HL2 has great SP, but the mods are lacking and HL2DM is boring. This is basicly the reason I map for HL1.
Once TF2 comes out, i'm going back to source mapping.

I originally started mapping for HL2.
I didn't really care about looks back then and I was also mapping for GMOD so I was using the I/O system quite a lot. I personally think the I/O system is easy to handle.

The multimanager system in HL1 on the other hand, is still really confusing for me, while i've been mapping for HL1 & mods quite a while now.

Making a room in Source mapping isn't so easy as you HL1 only mappers claim. So yeh we have props, but they're like prefabs. They're handy but if you overuse them they'll make things worse.

Mapping is fun?
I disagree. It gets really boring after 10-15 minutes..

Why I map then you ask?
I enjoy my compiles, I enjoy to see what i've made.
I love to play my own made map with other peoples.

Yep, I am one of the very few people here who actually prefers Half-Life over Half-Life 2...

When you play mods like Poke646/Vendetta, you understand the potential it still has.

Half-Life 2 is just a rich kids game

I also prefer the original Half-Life's storyline over HL2's. It's a lot more atmospheric, eerie, creative and inspiring. HL2 seem's a little too much like a chanel 5 movie to me... /rant

(You watch how much shit I'm gonna get for saying all this! )

Mapping is fun?
I disagree. It gets really boring after 10-15 minutes..

Then you fail as a mapper. Go find another hobby.

Half-Life 2 is just a rich kids game

ROFL. U fail. It's cheap. (Atleast here in The Netherlands..)

I also prefer the original Half-Life's storyline over HL2's. It's a lot more atmospheric, eerie, creative and inspiring.

Xen sucked balls.

You watch how much shit I'm gonna get for saying all this!

Then you fail as a mapper. Go find another hobby.

Read before you talk. Kthxbye.

Why I map then you ask?
I enjoy my compiles, I enjoy to see what i've made.
I love to play my own made map with other peoples

uhh, hl1 storyline was......nonexistent for the most part.

we get the storyline for HL1 from HL2 :/

Penguinboy, you're an idiot.

Well, I don't really find HL annoying to map for - it's pretty easy because I'm so familiar with it - but whenever I want to do anything serious, HL is too limiting for me now.

Same here. None of my recent Source maps are really possible with the outdated HL1 engine: St Mark's, Serene, Carceri, Kaufmann House, Railway 21...
If you have imagination, there's a lot you can still do for HL1, true. But if you have even more imagination, there's a whole lot you just can't do with HL1.

I completley agree with Kasperg.
I love mapping for half life one because sometimes i get ideas walking around or even in class sometimes, so i hop onto my laptop and map them out real fast just to see how they look.

Most of the time i just dont feel like opening steam to get to the sdk to get to hammer. And then you have to load hl2 after each compile and yadda yadda.

I takes too long to map for hl2 (for me) because i usually run a test compile every 5 minutes or so.

Plus i've gotten to know the Goldsource engine so well that moving on to source would almost be like starting from the beginning, and i dont want to do that.

I've been messing around with models and displacements, and sometimes i just make a group of physboxes above an env_explosion just to see how far they launch, but thats about it.

All the inputs and outputs scare me.

I like mapping for HL better.
I like playing HL online better.

I don't see any reason to switch to source.

Let's rush the HL:S building!

Main reason for me is that I don't play HL2. I've played through it a few times, and played online a bit, but it just doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't feel the same.

And Counter Strike is still Counter Strike, no matter how much you sugarcoat it with nice graphics and shaders. There is as far as I'm concerned no reason at all to map for CSS, because everyone will still only want to play de_dust.

What the hell dude? What kind fo a qeuestion is that? Half Life is still popular because it's the greatest game ever made!
I like mapping for Goldsrc because impressive brushwork is all the more satisfying when you can pull it off, plus it's always fun to see how far you can push it.

WCD ftw

Oh, Sari, CS and CSS are very different. The weapons are the same but everybody knows that the fire rate for most of the weapons is different, as well as the recoil system and the reload times for the weapons.

I have no paticular loyalty to HL or the original storyline--I never thought it was that great--, but I think I heard someone else recently say it best, saying something like:

People continue to map for HL1 because it's so easily customizable.

I would love to map for an engine that handles larger outdoor environments--like Unreal? Battlefront-- or themes I enjoy more like Jedi Academy, but there just doesn't seem to be nearly as much support for mapping other fps games out there (none that I know of anyway).

Agreed, HL1 is so much easier to mod etc.

I prefer mapping for source though, I think its just the physics that I

I like source multiplayer more than HL1 multiplayer,
But I prefer HL1 singleplayer, its my favorite game of all time ^^

I dunno why I get really attached to certain things, but HL1 is one of those things

I could teach you how to map for Jedi Academy, Rowleybob.
It's very easy considering it uses the same engine as HL1.

(although both heavily modified the engine in different directions, the basics are the same)

Only if you can use VHE Huntee!!1 (Or possibly if you can convice me Radiant is okey .)

Oh, Sari, CS and CSS are very different. The weapons are the same but everybody knows that the fire rate for most of the weapons is different, as well as the recoil system and the reload times for the weapons.

I've played both games, thank you very much. Counter Strike blows, the community even more so.

i tried to set-up an .fgd to use in VHE, but i'm not experienced enough to do it... I'm positive it's possible, though.

I don't map for HL (because I don't have it : ) but I know that Source is fun to map for because it's always a fun challenge to map something to look as realistic to real-life as possible. I often times map an enviornment simply to see how life-like I can make it.

To make a true comparison, though, I need to grab a copy of HL and map for it.

I could teach you how to map for Jedi Academy, Rowleybob.
It's very easy considering it uses the same engine as HL1.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't HL1 running on the Quake 1/2 engine? Jedi Academy runs on the Quake 3 engine. It's essentially the same BSP principle though.

Mapping for HL1 is good fun anyway. If it's singleplayer, just split the level into parts and go bee-zerk on the detail (almost anyway). Take my new Santa's Revenge mod for example, reasonable level of detail, five levels, half-decent entity usage, all made in a little over two weeks! TWO WEEKS ! I was up to midnight though several times and I did hurry through the compile proccess, but it just goes to show, you can do almost anything with HL. Anyway, once you've downloaded around three hundred and fifty maps like I have, you can see the effort some people put in their projects and the others that people fling out into the world after shoving them down the toilet. But anyway...

HL1 ftw

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't HL1 running on the Quake 1/2 engine?

It is indeed running on a heavily modified the Quake 1 engine, with bits of quake 2 code, if my memory serves me right.

Counter Strike blows, the community even more so.

Amen!

I prefer mapping for HL1 myself, I don't find Source intimidating, I just find it boring. Prop alignment just kills me, I should not have to align each and every prop by the unit, the whole process takes FOREVER, and even then in-game things look wrong. Mapping in Hammer 3.x is very straightforward, create brush to size, adjust size until happy, apply a suitable texture, repeat as neccessary. Source is technically superior in all aspects, but I just don't find it fun to map for. I like the fact I can push the engine to it's limit with HL1.

Oh btw Ant, I believe GoldSrc was originally based on Quake I and elements from Quake II were gradually incorporated near the end of development.

I believe you are correct.

props suck just ignore them.
(lulz)

Prop alignment just kills me, I should not have to align each and every prop by the unit, the whole process takes FOREVER, and even then in-game things look wrong.

Move them with Alt and don't bother about too precise placement. I'm happy with it when it looks fine, I do most prop placement more on feeling than on measurement. Either way, it's still a time-saver over having to create the props from brushwork in the first place. But hey, everyone his own taste.

I've played both games, thank you very much. Counter Strike blows, the community even more so.

Well I've played your mom! Oh SNAP!

I don't map for HL (because I don't have it ) but I know that Source is fun to map for because it's always a fun challenge to map something to look as realistic to real-life as possible. I often times map an enviornment simply to see how life-like I can make it.

To make a true comparison, though, I need to grab a copy of HL and map for it.

If you like working with brushes and point entities you will probbaly like Goldsource mapping a lot more than Source mapping. It's the props that annoy me the most about Source mapping, too. Props are great, but Source mapping takes prop use waaaaaay too far. Most Source maps are made almost entirely of prop models with very little actual complex brushwork.

I stand corrected =]

The mistery has finally been solved! Who would have thought...