Spirit of HL Created 20 years ago2004-08-12 04:34:10 UTC by Litterbox

Okay, I've been hearin' a lot about this whole Spirit of Half-Life thing, and certain parts of it really grabbed my attention. I'm just curious -- is it worth it?

Will it narrow your audience a bit, assuming you need to have downloaded Spirit to play?

A brief list of Pro's and Con's would be great.

Thanks.

Well, it's not commonly used standalone, and is mainly designed to be used in mods and things such as that.

It has some features which are very useful, however, but if your map is not part of a Spirit mod, then it would definitely narrow the audience.

It's up to you, but i'd vote against it unless you are making a mod or something of that sort.

Pro- there are many and many advanced things that you can use; just some examples:
-A great particle system
-movewith function: you can bind an entity to another (example a breckable glass that move with a door)
-Use of custom models and custom beaviour; you can have barney that attack you and marines that help you.
and many other things (someone has made also a working veichle)

Cons: a documentation not really complete.

It depends on what you're aiming for. Spirit isn't meant for multiplayer although it seems to work correct for most of the entities.
If you want singleplayer maps however, it does open a whole new set of options. Maps for SoHL aren't really common as far as I know, but providing your work as a mod folder works fine. For example, several mods are based on Spirit code...

It's really up to you. I'd say: go, check it out and decide for yourself.

I see. Well, here's my dilema. While I enjoy single player maps as much as the next guy, I find myself making more multiplayer-based maps. CS, and Sven Coop in particular with the occasional bit of DoD and NS tossed into the mix.

Any idea if any of those mods use Spirit?

DoD uses or used Spirit, but only a very early build. If you are planning to do something with Spirit you'll have to make a minimod. At this point several minimods are being created where some of them are solely based on the Spirit code (so, no extra coding). These kind of mods include even RTS games

Dod has used an older version of Spirit. I think that most of the features are not usable/included in other mods.

off topic: anyone mapped for DoD, and do you like the gameplay?

Off topic...
Yeah, I used to map for DoD 1.3 and it was great fun, not all that much different from mapping for HL or CS, but it seemed more realistic to me. I liked the end result, textures and models... the goal system was easier that TFC.

On Topic.
Spirit is a brilliant modification option. It is relatively easy to use and adds functionality.
It hasn't been taken up by most of the community.
A reason for that might be that most people new to mapping feel that Spirit will solve all their problems, when the reality is that it creates more if you don't understand the basics.
As for downloading it... Not really, most people who release a Spirit based Mod include the dll in the download, so the player doesn't actually need Spirit.
There were a lot of members here at TWHL that tried to map with Spirit but I haven't seen anything come of it... Although one of the recent compo entries used Spirit.
Some people love it... Some hate it.
I think it is worth trying, if only to look at the test maps.