The Citizen: HL2 sp Created 16 years ago2007-11-08 18:18:15 UTC by Kasperg

As you might have seen in the journal entry Playbus wrote, this HL2 Sp Episode will be released very soon.
We have suffered a lot in the past few hours because of the SDK updates, but we've managed to pull through somehow.
You'll find the screenshots and preview trailer here:
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/the-citizen-half-life-2/

We admit that the content might look like generic Half-life2 (that wouldn't be bad, would it? :P), but we assure you that there's much more lying beneath, and lots of places and situations not featured in the screenshots or the video (surprises are always good).
On top of it all, we've made sure to add replay value for those who like to explore.
Be sure to check it out in a few days!

It's been a rollercoaster ride, but it's finally done! Woohhooooo!!!!

I hope you all enjoy playing it.

Which you'll be able to do soon.

Very soon.

It looks awsome. I'll probably give it a try. I saw the trailer and it looks amazing. Nice work!

I remember reading about this a few months back. Can't wait to play.

You two seem popular on Planetphillip

Some good ideas in that video. Especially the traps.

Sound acting sounded lulzable.

Voice acting is always tricky to get right without professional equipment or very talented voice actors. You'll find we did a decent job overall without none of those two. Some sounds and voices will be better than others, of course. But we'll talk more about it after you've actually gotten the chance to play

Screenies look very nice. Can't watch the video now, but I will. I hope the gameplay fits the visuals. :>

The crackling on the voices in the trailer does not happen in-game.

Something happened to the video when it got converted to a streaming format, I guess.

Ok, that's good to hear. Sounded like shit.

Downloading...

Wow, Phillip really went to town making more screenshots!

I wonder how long it takes anyone to get the secret ending

I watched the trailer and, to be perfectly honest, the dialogue was pretty cheesy. But it won't stop me from downloading it at all, the mapping looks great and i'm sure the gameplay will be too.

Will download tomorrow!

I'll be putting an entry for it in the map vault here later on today.

Well, im stuck at the beginning.
Whats the deal with those hacks? You can't even fight them. Lame.
And everything is locked.

The manhacks and the "Do not press" sign are an inside joke.
Keep talking to people around the building.

If you press a button that has a big sign above it which says "DO NOT PRESS" --- well, you deserve everything you get, really.

What did you expect? Of course people are gonna press it, with or without a big ass sign.

I admit we were going to place quite a few of those across the maps, but somehow we forgot.

Of course, but they won't press it the second time

As Kasperg said, it's just a bit of an inside joke we left in. Sorry if it doesn't appeal to you.

After waiting 25 minutes to start the download, i'm getting a trickle rate of 14KB/s.

This link might be better.

http://timmeh.me.uk/mirrors/The%20Citizen.rar

And if all else fails, you should get at least 25kb/sec out of this one:-

http://www.sendspace.com/file/uiy2k2

When Phillip offered to host, I assumed it would actually be on the PlanetPhillip server. : Seems not.

Hi,

Sorry there was some confusion about where the file was to be hosted. I know longer host files myself because it caused my hosting account to get suspended too many times.

That's why I moved everything to Filecloud. I know it's not perfect but it's better than not being able to download it at all.

I'm currently trying to uplaod it toi Filefront (Again), so hopefully it will be available there soon.

I get to the 5 toggleable switches. I play around with them a bit before I realize nothing happens

Maybe they're not there just to play around...

Espen:

o O o O o
O o O o O

Thats all im gonna say.

It's now available from FileFront:
http://files.filefront.com/The+Citizen/;9020696;/fileinfo.html

Thanks for the DL link, it had a healthy speed of ~500KB/s.

The mod comes with someone's config file, olol! Now enough for nit-picking, the atmosphere is incredible, even though I can't beat the manhck puzzle.

The mod comes with someone's config file

Oh yeah. That'll be mine. I forgot to take it out.

I can't beat the manhck puzzle.

Don't release the manhacks Obey the sign! OBEEEEYYYY!

Ok, played for about 10 mins. Very disappointed. Yes, even for playing for 10 minutes.

• It's very dark. Half the time you can't see anything you're doing.
• Voice acting is hard to understand from the thick British accents.
• It's unclear as to what your supposed to do right off the get go.
• I have no idea where I'm going.
• Nice config file. Who the fuck plays at 9 mouse sensitivity, with the mouse inverted? It's fucking insane. On top of that, why is ctrl and shift backwards? Wtf?
• "Do not press". Maybe it's supposed to be humorous, or an inside joke as you said. It's more of an annoyance if you press it, then run to the next room where it autosaves, then when you try to reload the saves to get away from the fucks trying to cut your face off the only available saves are the ones where you're right at the beginning of the game, or where you're getting assraped by manhacks again. Then when you try to noclip back to where you need to be without getting raped, you find yourself in some stupid jail with some guy trying to talk to you about who the hell knows.

Inside jokes are OK, just leave them out of public mods. Seriously.

+ Despite hard to understand, voice acting is nice.
+ Even though it's dark, mapping is great.

Maybe I'll give it another go tomorrow, but I think I'm done with it if it's a sign of things to come.

It's very dark. Half the time you can't see anything you're doing.

Do you have a CRT monitor?

Voice acting is hard to understand from the thick British accents.

Sorry. There are a lot of other accents too. Later on.

It's unclear as to what your supposed to do right off the get go.

That's kinda the point.

I have no idea where I'm going.

There is a roleplay element to this mod. I'm sorry if that's not to your taste.

Who the fuck plays at 9 mouse sensitivity, with the mouse inverted? It's fucking insane. On top of that, why is ctrl and shift backwards? Wtf?

That's me I guess you must think I'm strange!

So you're that noob who gets random headshots.

CRT shouldn't have anything to do with it. There's no light parts to make dark parts darker, as usual on CRTs, it's just all dark all the time.

And lets not blame monitors, because that's just a cheap excuse to get out of not properly lighting stuff.

turn your brightness from default 2.2 to better 1.8

So you're that noob who gets random headshots.

That's me!

Seriously though, I find anything below 9.0 to be pretty unresponsive. I don't actually move my hand much while playing. I like to be able to turn 180 degrees by moving my hand about an inch. When my mouse is dirty it's really annoying, because my movements are usually so small.

CRT shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Well no, it shouldn't, but it could possibly.

I'm not excusing myself. Look at the screenshots. If it's darker than that for you, turn the brightness up, both in-game and on your monitor if necessary. If it won't go high enough, your monitor is probably the reason.

Inside jokes are OK, just leave them out of public mods. Seriously.

Why is this a "public mod"? Playbus and I have worked hard on it for the past 8 months. It's loaded with personal touches, humor and original events to make it an enjoyable experience set in the seen-before HL2 universe.
You're getting 16 maps for free just because we want to share them with you, and all you can do is focus on the negative (which in turn is derived by wrong decisions, such as ignoring signs and trying to cheat).
Please grow up a bit. It looks like you've been against this mod since the moment the trailer came out:

Sound acting sounded lulzable.

Sounded like shit.

You don't agree? The trailer's voices sounded like shit. Even playbus said the sound got messed up.

Even then, I commended you on the voice acting, because for being a third party mod, it sounds like it's semi professional.

If this wasn't a public mod, then it wouldn't be publically released.

And if that's all you got outta my post, then you need to read more. See how it says how it was messed up where the autosaves were? That's basically the whole idea behind that point made. The autosave was simply in a bad place.

Our mistake then.

Another thing, everything released on the Internet is public, and I've seen hundreds of inside jokes in maps. Even retail games have them...

which in turn is derived by wrong decisions, such as ignoring signs and trying to cheat

Ignoring signs is one thing.

Trying to cheat is futile.

Well, almost futile.

But ultimately futile!

Muhahahaha!

I'm serious. You'll see

If you try to cheat.

Which you shouldn't.

public mods.

Yeah I agree. This isn't a 'public' mod. This is something we made together, for fun. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. I'll just get your refund.

Constructive criticism is still of course welcomed.

/edit

Since I read things again, I realise that Luke made a valid point as he pointed out again. That autosave could have been better thought out.

adds to bug list

Just don't press the button. Ok!?

Those signs usually are just a joke, like you're suppose to make something blow up in order to advance. Half-Life worked that way (that giant 5 room laser).

In Counter-Strike: Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes, there was a mission where the guards had alarm buttons. These big red buttons were everywhere around the map and it was so tempting to use them. Of course, that would end the mission and i'd want to slap myself for wasting 10 minutes.

Goldeneye 64, Dam level anyone? :>

I downloaded last night, and i have a class in an hour, but damnit, i'm going to play this instead of having a shower.

Oh, and I was going to give you Weebitmagic hostings like usual, Kasperg... But 12kbps upload at 1am kinda gets aggrivating, so I cancelled it.

If you do want weebitmagic hostings, ask and ye shall etc etc etc.

edit:
oh you son of a bitch.

THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR CEREAL

edit edit:

"of course, and so did the millions of people who played the game."

"riiiight"



2 easter eggs so far.. i wonder if i've missed any.

edit edit edit:

3 easter eggs now, although the third is hardly secret.

edit edit edit edit:

Well i've finished it, and i really hope it wins November's Map/Mod of the Month award, because i really want to video review it =]

SPOILERS BEYOND

The only bug notably worth mentioning was that you could ring the church bell repeatedly, resulting in unlimited reinforcements spawning who got stuck in each other, and there is nothing to stop you just running past the church.

With an ending like that, though.. Surely this unnamed citizen will return.

Truely epic from start to finish, and Argenia(sp?) has the best Geordy accent ever.

Also, you must tell me how you did the combine suit overlay. It's wonderful.

Glad you enjoyed it Hunteh

Shall we tell him how many secrets there are, Kasperg?

giggles like a schoolgirl

DOWNLOADING

DOWNLOAD FAILED

Mmm yeah, that fast download link seems to have died. There are some more in the thread.....but I don't think they'll be as fast. Sorry.

I'll talk to the server owner and see what's up.

With an ending like that, though.. Surely this unnamed citizen will return

Yes. You could say that quite a few brushes have already been built for his return...
If the Easter eggs really give you the will to go back and find them, then we're as happy as can be. Some of them are more than just a random hidden corner with items. But I'm not saying a word.

Filefront is going at 700 kb/sec. Which one is the broken one?

The main one in the Map Vault.

If it's not back up shortly I'll replace it with a temporary one.

The Filefront one was fine, I'd suggest that over the filecloud or whatever one.

Ok so I'm stuck after ten minutes as well. I too pressed the button and released the manhacks, but i solved that little problem by running downstairs and letting the manhacks loose on the civilians. They ignore me.

I got the first card, and open the door but can't get the second card to the door before getting killed by the officer with the manhack and pistol.

I feel like I should at least have a crowbar by now. Should I?

I don't think frustrating the player to the point where he has to quit and complain here before even beating the first level was your goal.