Half-Life : Catastrophe Created 6 years ago2018-07-26 18:23:13 UTC by LeaveittoTobi

Hi everyone, I just want to introduce my mod (And myself) to the community, It's in early stages of development.
It will show the HECU's strong offensive for Black Mesa after the initial failure of the Recon operations. But I try not to give spoilers.

Some Wip pictures here:I already published it on moddb: https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-catastrophe

Any suggestions / feedback / constructive criticism will be appreciated and listened!

Welcome to the community. It's looking great, especially for something early in development. ^^

The only few things I've noticed are the lack of smoothing and moody lighting. You should compile with -smooth 85 for RAD, unless this flat shading effect is intentional (look at the barrel in the 3rd screenshot, and the Xen cylinder sample in the 2nd screenshot).

Thanks! it was not intentional, I learned mapping a week ago I will use smoothing from now on! is there any website with mapping tutorials?

A week ago?! Those screenshots are very impressive for somebody with 1 week of experience. Keep it up!

Also you're looking for mapping tutorials, we have lots of them.

It's not just impressive, it's mighty damn impressive.
There are some sites with great tutorials and guides. Firstly TWHL, then GameBanana (I've written some there) and ModDB. There's also Valve Developer Union and Sven Manor (which is more SC-specific, but I've seen GoldSrc-universal guides there).
I think you can also find older ones in TWHL's links section. (not sure if it got removed switching from TWHL3 to TWHL4)

If real-time help is needed, there are the Shoutbox and the TWHL Discord.

Yeah, can't deny this looks really good!

Wait, there's a TWHL Discord? Where is it?

https://discord.gg/8uyTp76

We're kind of missing an administrator though.

"Wait, there's a TWHL Discord? Where is it?"
There's a big link to it if you go to the homepage of TWHL 5.

If you hadn't told us you only started a week ago I would have assumed you've been mapping for years! That's some amazing work, and great use of the original HL textures! Looking forward to it!

Thanks a lot!! I'm doing my best and will try to do better those tutorials will help nicely! I will use the Shoutbox when I can't fix something or can't organize the script completely there are some very interesting things coming for the mod

Very impressive! I'm looking forward to seeing more screenshots and the eventual release!

As already written on moddb. These mod screenshots are indeed amazing..

Like others have pointed out for 1 week of experience this is groundbreaking. Can we at least assume that you're a mapper for other games & engines then? 'Cause if not then you must be a genius with some sort of photographic memory and a fast track learning ability, am I right?

Either way I'm looking forward to seeing your mod. If you started with this a week ago then you're most certainly on a good speed train right now.
Make sure to drive with said train as long and far as you can get before it runs outta steam. I started similar. Constructed more mod maps in the first 2 weeks than I did over the duration of several years.

You will never get that motivated again than in the first few weeks of your mapping career. So make good use of the time.

Hey cool is this for regular HL or Opposing Force?

Thanks! Vielen Dank 23-Down! I have no experience at all with anything I'm just very insistent with learning, and the only special ability I have is learning languages fast I must continue as fast as possible and release the mod before graduating in university (which will happen in 2 years and a half) once I finish the mod I will release all the map sources for future mappers

And the mod is for regular HL but it will include new codes, having new features and some things from Opposing Force

Do you conduct the coding aspect yourself??

If so I can send you a source code of this project here: (abandoned for now)

https://github.com/Hammermaps-DEV/opposing-force-rebuilded-sdk

My version is just x10 newer of 2017. It might safe you huge amounts of time. Plus the fact that it is based upon spirit 1.5 which by itself adds tons of new possibilities - it's a very clean code with countless bug fixes and so on. That plus the fact that it contains some of the finest re-creations of Op4 monsters I'm aware of to date. Sven Coop & Hl enhanced aside.

Yes so far is just me, I also learned a bit about how to modify models, I probably will try doing some simple custom animations for the sake of better looking combat

I didn't know a project like that existed If you could send it, it would save more than a year of time, I would be eternally grateful! all the credits would be included

Ok no problem. I'm uploading it right now.

The intend of that project was to provide a fixed up spirit engine (version 1.9 not 1.5) that adds - fixes and removes potentially unnecessary features.

We also tried to include the best hl1 assets the community ever came up with in a single and easy to use environment.
Be it npcs such as Barniel, new Zombie variations etc.. All in all nothing spectacular but for the simple mappers that lack coding knowledge it would've been a nice thing as all the new npcs would've been easily select able in the mod.FGD file + their sounds. While you can replace models easily in Spirit having them select able is just a mere Bonus. Not to mention that some had unique AI coding.

The project was abandoned when Solokiller began working on Hl-Enhanced and now SharpLife. Makes me wonder if we ever gonna get something usable. Seeing how he keeps switching and swapping projects or starting from scratch idk. We can only wish him best of luck.

The npcs are usable and the engine contains many play able features. Some old hl1 features were re-enabled especially regarding the movement of the player. Still it was unfinished. Reloading a weapon produces a spark for example that was used for testing various things. The Voltigore explosion effect is not a precise re-creation due to math. But other than that each opfor npc behaves the way it did back in Opposing Force just with better path finding.

If you would fix up the "player visible bugs" you might as well use it and progress from that state in there. The coding conducted by Hammermaps was very clean. So it should be easy for you to comprehend his style. Credits in general will have to be given to the model authors (Romka mostly) and him as main coder naturally.

EDIT: Whoops I provided the wrong link before.

Download: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1smLdf_iyg0iZ_p4-v9HCCZJj5vgcSyEQ&export=download

Immense Thanks! it is like a real treasure for modders, and it's very impressive, I will use it the best way possible and add more codes, all the credits will be given, again thanks!

You're welcome. I hope you can and you will finish what he started with this and then release it separately public some day so that all might benefit of it.

Good luck!