Blue Shift as a "mod" Created 9 years ago2014-11-27 21:28:27 UTC by MMProductions

Hello, everyone. Here's my second thread/topic on TWHL.

I'm a beginner on video-game modding, as I said on my debut topic posted a few weeks ago here.

One of most curious things evolving the Half-Life game series is the fact the second famous expansion pack for HL, Blue Shift, have just one playing mode, the Single-Player.

But some people were unsatisfied with that, and I don't know why Gearbox didn't put Multiplayer mod on BS

But there's a curious thing I discovered yesterday. I have installed the WON version of Blue Shift on my computer these days. As everyone knows, it is SP (Single-Player) and SA (Stand-Alone title). However, I like BS as it is

But, due to my curiosity, I copied my "bshift" folder and put it on my HL (WON version too) directory, just to see what would happen.

So, I selected the custom game menu on original HL, and selected "Blue Shift", then clicked "Activate" button.

Strangely, the BS original menu appeared without errors, apparently. After that, I clicked "Done" button to return to the main menu.

And I saw a thing doesn't appear on original BS menu. In other words, the "Multiplayer" and "Custom Game" buttons.

After that, every time I tried to run the game, e.g. selecting a "New Game", "Multiplayer Mode" or the "Hazard Course", the game crashed, and a window popped up saying: "Could not link client.dll function: HUD_PlayerMove."

I wonder why this strange thing ocurred with me. I don't refer to the fact of the game crash, but to the main menu layout being the same as BS one.

If the BS "Custom Game" and "Multiplayer" buttons appeared for me, maybe both should be the unused options that was cut during BS development, I think.

Maybe the HL custom game engine has read it as a "mod", a thing that also occur with Opposing Force, but OF is a expansion pack made by Gearbox too.

I don't know exactly why this happened. I don't know how, but it happened

So, that's all. Hope someone can help or clarify my doubt. Feel free to coment here

There is a mod that is called "Blue Shift: Unlocked" that makes Blue Shift into a mod.

Umm... I was gonna post something, but I think that mod is probably your best bet by the sounds of it. Especially as I don't know much about the actual .dll files...

Thanks for replying, fellas, hehehe

I'll try this "Blue Shift: Unlocked" mod later.

Also, I mentioned above on my post about the "Multiplayer Mode".

If Blue Shift is Single-Player, I don't know if I can even find at least a Multiplayer mod for Blue Shift.

Everything I found is a Co-op mod for Blue Shift on ModDB, though it is a bit buggy.

By the way, where can I download "Blue Shift: Unlocked"?

I would like to test it.

I remember years ago that you could play online multi player "blue shift" in servers was this a rare "mod"?

I don't know. I didn't checked it yet. Maybe.

I think the reason Blue Shift didn't feature multiplayer is because it wasn't really any different to the original HL gameplay wise.

It was a map pack with some new models. There is nothing in Blue-Shift that couldn't be done with HL1 because the enemies and weapons are all the same.

Opposing Force on the other hand added new weapons and mechanics which made the MP aspect more entertaining. Blue Shift MP would just be HLDM with Barney's hands.

Thanks for replying, Urby!

I think too that's the reason why Gearbox didn't put Multiplayer Mode on Blue Shift.

Maybe for the BS developers, it wouldn't make much sense implementing MP on Blue Shift, as you said, as BS uses the same features as HL1, but few things changed.

Among these topics out there, I posted a thread/topic about my wish/dream of creating my own HL mod

This thread didn't had replies a few months ago. But I'm back.

I mean I installed recently WON version of HL on my computer, as I said before. I also installed Blue Shift, Opposing Force, and a few old HL mods (WON version too, all of them).

Here's a quote of a phrase I said several months ago on this topic. I'll post some pics of what I've done recently:

But, due to my curiosity, I copied my "bshift" folder and put it on my HL (WON version too) directory, just to see what would happen.

So, I selected the custom game menu on original HL, and selected "Blue Shift", then clicked "Activate" button.

Strangely, the BS original menu appeared without errors, apparently. After that, I clicked "Done" button to return to the main menu.

And I saw a thing doesn't appear on original BS menu. In other words, the "Multiplayer" and "Custom Game" buttons.

HL main menu (WON version I installed recently).OpFor main menu (WON version too).BShift main menu (WON version too, lol :p)

And about of me "putting 'bshift' folder into HL folder...", I mean this:

Original BS menu:The stupid trick I made, lol Modded BS menu (hence the name of the topic "Blue Shift as a 'mod'"):And I wonder: why did this happen with me? Did anyone else do/try to do that? It seems to be very weird, right?

I expect the menu options were all designed separately, before BS was made into a standalone expansion. It being standalone is also probably the reason for the crash when you try to play it as a mod - unlike mods and Op4, the dlls are probably made to only work from a modified HL executable, and the base HL.exe is missing something - If I had to guess, I'd say they moved a function from the game dlls and put it into the exe specifically to prevent it being run as a mod.

However, the only thing I know for a fact is that each time I see the old WON menus, I cry a little inside because they aren't in the Steam versions.

If I recall, Bshift actually uses a custom version of BSP which is incompatible with Half-Life. I remember that decompiler tools like Bsp2Map needed to be updated to support the new format. It might have been done to prevent people "pirating" the game by playing it as a HL mod. I could be wrong, though.

Pretty sure SteamPipe Blue Shift runs as a mod, though. I wonder if they updated the HL code to support both BSP formats, or compiled/converted the bshift BSPs into the original HL format?

Yeah, Blue Shift and Opposing Force are both mods on Steam HL.

While we're on the subject - Why are so many people amendment to stick with WON HL? You can get the entire goldsource collection on Steam for the price of a book.

Adamant, perhaps?

I stuck with it for quite some time because I didn't want to have to re-setup everything in (then) Hammer. I also thought it was faster to load, which I think I still stand by. I swapped because any time gained in the loading was well misplaced when changing to the lower-resolution main menu and back is annoyingly slow.

Adamant, perhaps?

That'll teach me to post using my phone...

While we're on the subject - Why are so many people amendment to stick with WON HL?

Because one of the attractive elements on WON version of HL is the old main menu, that had/still have a cool layout and buttons, unlike Steam version, of course. Something like that.

I think the reason of people staying with WON HL it's because its aesthetic is very old school, cool, awesome and bring to them several old childhood memories related to gaming, hehehe

But I think that wouldn't hurt to use both versions, WON and Steam ones.

Most HL fans has complained that Steam version of Blue Shift doesn't feature that classic blue HUD, instead that, using the rough HL yellow HUD.

IIRC they've fixed the HUD colour. Pretty sure it was blue last time I went through.

It is. I've heard the reason WON users don't like Steam was becuase early Steam versions was a lot more different from the Won version then it is now.

Unless you mean Blue Shift specifically, the current Steam version is exactly the same now as it was.
The WON menu really needs to be seen in action to be fully appreciated, though.

I do miss the WON menus.

I started to play Half-Life after the era of WON. So I don't know what's so special about it. If anything, it's more buggy and worse gameplay then the more updated Steam versions.

Disagree completely. If anything, it's less buggy and more natural in movement than the Steam versions.

I honestly can't tell the difference in-game.

yeah, steam half-life is a total piece of shit

Steam HL has multiplayer. Otherwise they are no different in terms of gameplay.

WON HL has multiplayer too. And in fact, I played it multiple times, while I never once managed to get any Steam variant to connect to something that wasn't a dedicated server.

I have WON HL installed in my comp, and it is awesome because every time you change mods you get to see a cool menu

I have WON HL installed in my comp, and it is awesome because every time you change mods you get to see a cool menu

I did like that. But I prefer the higher res menu backgrounds in Steam, as well as being able to add music.

Earlier versions of WON HL don't have the client prediction (which breaks how weapons work in idle - a prime example is the .357 magnum - Gordon never used to like pulling back the hammer of the gun constantly while interrupting other animations.) that was added, nor does it have the extremely bad "fix" for bunnyhopping that involves totally ruining otherwise perfect movement.

But everyone knows bunny hopping is bad and for those who doesn't have anything better to do then just completely ignoring the spectacular scripted and AI gameplay events created by Valve.

Yeah, if you do a speedrun, you miss out all the fun.

because people who speedrun are obviously doing it on their first playthrough

Yeah, if you do a speedrun, you miss out all the fun.

I am a speedrunner.

I've beaten Half-Life in 52 minutes approx. But if I play a game/mod for the first time, I spend a lot of time on it because I like to explore and want to enjoy it.
I do speedruns just when I've seen EVERYTHING of the game/mod.
Also because if you want to do a good speedrun you have to know the game pretty well. There's no point in doing speedruns if you don't know anything about the game.

Don't have a bad opinion about speedrunners, we love to play and enjoy games aswell (more than doing speedruns, actually).

But everyone knows bunny hopping is bad and for those who doesn't have anything better to do then just completely ignoring the spectacular scripted and AI gameplay events created by Valve.

Bunny hopping is what made games like Quake; in fact TFC is barely even playable on Steam because bunny hopping is horribly ruined it almost makes me take down my TFC server (even FF added back bunny hopping and endorsed it). If you don't see the appeal of bunny hopping, then you've completely missed the point of fast paced first person shooters altogether my friend.

Also regarding WON HL, don't you guys hate how Steam HL is horribly injected with DRM? WON is not only a DRM-free version of Half-Life but it is the most classic in my opinion. That's why even on Linux I prefer to play it under Wine, Half-Life is just a steaming pile of dog do-do on Steam.

Bunny hoping is more of a multiplayer technique though, isn't it?

I like speed running myself, particularly games I know really well. It's cool seeing entire chunks of games being skipped because of some completely insane hack. Super Mario 64 beaten in five minutes with 0 stars is awesome.

I'm no fan of Steam's DRM, but I can't say there's a huge difference between WON and Steam aside from that.

Am I missing something? Steam DRM?

I wish the Valve Anti Cheat system also applied to bunny hopping.

Ok, now you're just being a troll. Shut up, please.