Three bits of Half-Life 2 Mod News
Posted by inpheaux on September 10th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Three mods to talk about today. First up: Day of Defeat: Source. We've been waiting for this update since it was first announced aeons ago, back before HL2 was even out. It's always been sitting there in our Steam game lists, just waiting to be turned on. Well, now we have dates. Valve says preloading starts next week, and that the final release will be at-or-around September 26th.
If you're one of those sad underprivledged people who opted for the HL2-Bronze package, you won't have to feel left out, as Valve are providing a wide variety of ways to get DOD: Source. For starters, it was included in the HL2 Silver and Gold packages, so if you've got either of those, you'll be able to preload it next week and you'll be able to play it for free when it's released.
If you've got Bronze, or don't have any manner of Half-Life 2 purchased at the moment, you'll be able to buy DoD: Source a la carte for $19.95 via Steam. If you're scared of the whole "buying games through Steam" deal, know that DOD: Source will be included in the Counter-Strike: Source standalone retail package, also currently slated to be released on September 26th for $39.99.
That's it for official stuff, now to Other Stuff. Last night, the demo for Dystopia was released. Dystopia is a multiplayer HL2 mod, which conveniently belongs to my personal favourite sci-fi sub-genre: Cyberpunk. For the uninitiated: think Ghost in the Shell, Neuromancer, Shadowrun (but without the magic bits), Snow Crash, etc. Dystopia is a class-based objective-based multiplayer mod, which pits teams of punks vs. corporate security. It's got all the basics you'll probably expect from such a multiplayer mod (new weapons, levels, classes, models, skins, etc), but Dystopia goes beyond and brings a rather unique set of extra features to the table.
On the character side, it has implants. Implants let you soup up and customize your character by giving them extra abilities and powers. For instance, there's the MediPlant implant that gives you regenerative powers and the ability to beam health to nearby friendlies. There's also stuff like leg boosters, which make you run faster and jump higher. Implants are also what allows you to jack-in to the cyberspace network of the game. Hacking (or decking, as it's referred to in cyberpunk parlance) sends you into a whole extra cyberspace area of the map, and is required to complete certain objectives.
In cyberspace you can do all kinds of neat stuff, like hack assorted turrets and get them to switch sides, confront and kill other hackers, and do all kinds of other things to disrupt play out in reality. It isn't completely available in the demo, but the devs promise that some objectives in other levels will require cooperation between deckers and grunts, so a decker will have to do his job, while some grunts protect his jacked-in body, and other grunts elsewhere in the map finish the other half of the objective. I'm not sure if this kind of cooperation is going to really fly online, where it's far too common to find some idiot jumping up and down in the spawn room trying to shoot everything that moves, but I can see it being incredibly fun for lan parties.
Anyways, the demo is out right now, and you can get it from any of the 20 some mirror locations as listed on the Dystopia website, but if that seems to be going a bit too slow for you, just head over to your game file repository website of choice, it'll probably be there. Oh, and don't be worried about having a hard time finding a server to play on, a few hours after it was released there were tons of servers running it. Right now, i cound around 130 servers, with ~70 servers open.
Finally, for those of you looking for a single-player experience, the first of several episodes of the Minerva series was released last week. Minerva is set to be a series of HL2 single player maps, but what sets it apart from the standard fare is that . . well . . it's good. There's some really good scripting, great level design, and great musical cues. As an added bonus there's a story, and it's not just a premise, there's an actual story being told, which will continue on the project's site in-between episodes. The first episode, "Metastasis 1" is available now via http or BitTorrent. If you've got some time to kill, I suggest checking it out, it's well worth the hour or so it'll take you to go through it.
So that's it for the moment. Since these three are all just introductions or announcements, we'll be sure to keep you all updated on them as final releases and new levels roll out.
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