How to set up Spirit of Half Life? Created 3 months ago2024-09-14 13:22:24 UTC by jeffrey

Can't find any info on how to fully, completely, set up Spirit.

When you say "set up" I assume you want to use Spirit as a base for your mod.

Spirit of Half-Life is a mod like any other. The directory should be placed in your steamapps/common/Half-Life directory. If you want to map for it, then point JACK/Hammer to the appropriate mod directory like so. (You will want to rename the directory to your mod's name though, save having to change all of this later.) When adding the game data files, rather than adding the halflife.fgd from the JACK directory, use the spirit.fgd in the spirit directory. (Ours is renamed thecore.fgd in this case because we've made code changes, the default is spirit.fgd) After that, assuming you've done the usual setup correctly, you should now be able to start mapping with spirit's entities.

I can use jack with spirit thankfully, but when I compile and try to load the map it gives this error and crashes:

] map spirit_test
======Parsing file: C:/Program Files
(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life\jeffreyquest\sound\materials.txt
======
======Parsing file : C:/Program Files
(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life\valve\sound\materials.txt
======
couldn't exec maps/spirit_test_load.cfg

Are there any errors in the compile log?

No, also the same loading error happens when I try to load any other spirit map.

Hmmm. That sounds like an issue with the installation then, rather than your JACK setup. Spirit is either a bit or a lot of a mess depending on the version you're using...

I downloaded 5.0... How should it have been installed?

When you say 5.0, do you mean Spirinity 0.5.0? A mashed together version of Spirit of Half-Life with the Trinity renderer? I've never worked with Spirinity, but I believe it's the same principles as Spirit. Everything in the download should go in its own mod directory in your Half-Life directory. That's it. Restart steam and it should appear in your games list. NOTE: I've just done this setup myself and got the same errors as you when attempting to run any map out of the box. Then it crashes to desktop... That seems terribly stable.

I'm afraid I've reached the end of my ability to help here. I don't care for these kinds of engine mods or renderers and I'm not going to waste time learning their quirks and solutions.

Thank you, downloaded the correct version and it's now working.

May I recommend to use featureful SDK instead. It uses plenty of the SOHL features but adds all Opposing Force stuff on top including new mapping possibilities to make our lives as mappers easier and it even brings new coded monsters to the table.

https://github.com/FreeSlave/halflife-featureful/wiki

☝ Seconding the above. Freeslave had done a fantastic job indeed. 💯