PlanetPhillip » Archive » Poll Question 063 - More Half-Life 1 mods or more Half-Life 2 Mods?

Anonymous 28th December 2007 at 19:54 1

No questions asked, more HL2 stuff!
MMAN 28th December 2007 at 20:12 2

Well, this is easy, HL2. HL1 probably has more mods and levels than you could ever play, many of it at a very high quality.

Hl2? Not so much, and quality ones are even rarer.
Anonymous 28th December 2007 at 20:16 3

I prefer more HL2 mods aswell. I had a period that I would prefer HL1 mods but now it has been over because the engine and the mods themselves aren’t that gr8
speckman 28th December 2007 at 20:23 4

Hl2 definitely, they don’t have to be quality, just something that branches out from the standard “your a random person, now shoot anything that moves”.
Matt Glanville (CrowbarSka) 28th December 2007 at 20:48 5

Definitely Half-Life 2. HL1 is great and all, but Source is bacically an upgraded engine. Why would you want to downgrade?

I’m not saying that by being on Source automatically makes a mod better, but let’s say you had the same levels and enemies and whatnot for a HL1 mod and a HL2 mod. Well, I’d pick the HL2 mod any day of the week for obvious reasons. Physics, lighting, controls, graphics (yes, they ARE important in most cases), animation, etc.
firba1 28th December 2007 at 20:52 6

I think that either can be great, but it seems Half-Life 1, more than anything else, has had people make mods that really branch pretty far out. For example, Poke646 was a great mod, as was it’s sequel, Vendetta. Also, Half-Life 1 mods open up a mod to a wider variety of gamers. I still play Half-Life 1 mods, if they are good, and if we can see the kind of quality we got with Poke646 and Azure Sheep, I think that we can still have fun without awesome graphics. Also, I think that Half-Life 1 mods make us not so expecting of phenomenal graphics, so the mod developers can spend more time on gameplay, rather than getting the graphics up to par with Half-Life 2.

As for a mod I would like remade into Source, probably a sequel to Poke646: Vendetta, based in the Source, even though that’s not really a remake.
Splatzone 28th December 2007 at 21:03 7

HL1. As much as I love hl2, I feel mods for hl1 are… better somehow. I don’t think I have any hl2 mods whatsoever except from Gmod.
Luke L 28th December 2007 at 22:21 8

I’m tired of seeing great mods planned for HL2 only to watch as the team slowly peter away. HL1 seems to have more unique, and better quality mods made for it. And some of the additions and changes some teams have made to the engine mean it doesn’t look so long in the tooth.
patrickul87 28th December 2007 at 22:26 9

I would love more mods for hl1 made like paranoia mod.The mods that should be re-made for hl2 must be they hunger(all),heart of evil ,sweet hl,afraid of monsters,paranoiaand all other good hl1 sp mods
IDM 29th December 2007 at 00:34 10

Yes&Yes. Just kidding I Would definitely have to say HL2. Although I would like to see some HL1 scenarios done with source.
Manual_Monaro 29th December 2007 at 04:11 11

Half-Life 2. GoldSrc has served us well, but there are pretty much twice as many mods for Half-Life than Half-Life 2.

Both engines are flexible and quite easy to use, but if I wanted to make a mod, I’d choose Source, because of how much it offers compared to GoldSrc.

Nonetheless, GoldSrc is still a strong engine, and I can think of a few interesting mods being made for it right here and now. (And Paranoia came out only recently)

Perhaps there’s some sort of ‘rule of the thumb’ that can be devised when choosing an engine? GoldSrc is probably easier to use, easier to implement but probably better suited to the aforementioned “your a random person, now shoot anything that moves” motive.

Source offers outstanding and overly flexible facial animation, fluid body animation, a huge database of objects and textures from across Half-Life 2 and its Episodes (Think of all the varied environments in those games! Also, with Episode 2, think about how many great enemies are available now as well as some great new technologies for level design!)

To be blunt, it’s probably easier to tell a story in Source than GoldSrc. It’s also better for introducing memorable, believable characters, something that’s hard to do in Half-Life.

That’s just my two cents.

As for the Half-Life mods being remade for Source – I’d say: Absolute Redemption, Azure Sheep, Point of View, Mission Failed, Portrait of Freeman, Hour Glass, Nuclear Winter, Life’s End, Infinite Rift, Deliverance, Ispitatel 4, Peaces Like Us, Timeline 1, Timeline 2: Iced Earth, Timeline 3: Heart Of Darkness, Todesangst, Todesangst 2: der echte feind, DAV Sub (I think that’s getting a Source remake, though…), GMan Invasion, Gut Reaction

I’d mostly want Portrait of Freeman, Hour Glass, Nuclear Winter, Life’s End plus the Todesangst and Timeline series.

I thought of saying Poke 646 and Vendetta, but they feel very contemporary and I doubt they really need an upgrade.
Manual_Monaro 29th December 2007 at 04:16 12

Manual_Monaro Said:

I’d mostly want Portrait of Freeman, Hour Glass, Nuclear Winter, Life’s End plus the Todesangst and Timeline series.

Actually, add GMan Invasion to that list.

That’d be so awesome running through Half-Life 2 shooting at various Source rendered G-Men!
Anonymous 29th December 2007 at 04:43 13

1 baby!

there just seems to be a real crop of really bad HL2 mods… HL2 was just much less fun than HL1.
firba1 29th December 2007 at 04:47 14

Well I don’t think that Half-Life 2 was less fun than Half-Life 1, but I think that endless legions of some randomly HEV suit equipped guy in a post-apocalyptic setting got boring a whole lot faster than the endless legions of some randomly HEV suit equipped guy in a secret underground research building setting.
hero twin 29th December 2007 at 06:24 15

I get more immersed in half-life 2 mods, but I am so sick and tired of fighting the same combine with the submachine gun on flat ground with no cover. Zombies too for that matter.

I want interesting challenges. I don’t care if the player has a ‘back story.’ Gordon Freeman didn’t.
MMAN 29th December 2007 at 06:26 16

Like I said in some other poll, I think enemy variety is the main thing, Combine are pretty much the only enemy that can be interesting in semi-large numbers without scripting. Pretty much every other enemy requires some sort of scripted set-up to provide a fun, dynamic, fight unless used in very small groups.

That isn’t the case with HL1, where even someone who wasn’t so hot at scripting could get some decently fun gameplay out of the many Xen aliens along with the Marines with some clever placement. But HL2 just doesn’t work like that.
srry 29th December 2007 at 07:19 17

Half-Life. Yes, Source has far more potential, yes it has better graphics, but from my perspective, a developers perspective, it’s easy to see why so many Half-Life 2 mods just go with the City 17 theme. The content is not as flexible. A significant effort must be put into differentiating a mod from the Half-Life 2 universe, and most people just aren’t willing to go to all that trouble.

Personally, by the time Half-Life 2 was over, I was tired of shooting combine soldiers and running through destroyed cities. It just didn’t appeal to me anymore. Even if a Half-Life mod just sticks to the Black Mesa theme, that’s still far more interesting an environment for me, and most of the time you can be sure that the environments will have some degree of originality to them.
23-down 29th December 2007 at 14:03 18

I want to see more Hl1 mods. It’s still my favourite game. Hl2 is fantastic too. But there aren’t so many mods, and it’s a bit harder to build mods and maps for hl2, i believe.

And i agree with srry.

Hl2 has not much to offer. Just stupid combines and a few zombies that’s it. I loved every single monster in hl1. I miss them all in hl2.

Alien grunts, human grunts, blackops etc.

The story in Hl2 is fine of course but not in many mods for hl2… Many are just boring… Shoot and - or infiltrate some combine facilities. Humans are stone age beeings in hl2 i don’t like that fact.

Many mods in hl2 are just canceled of what ever reason. The game engine may be fine but to hard why else would so many mods beeing canceled?

Btw: @Planet Phillip: Remember i gave you this lost sheep, opposing force mod. Please add it to your databank (Snowy Rock).
Stef 29th December 2007 at 15:06 19

don’t really have a choice it’s mostly 50/50
Berrie 29th December 2007 at 15:52 20

I voted Half-Life 2. The capabilities of the Source engine are much greater than that of Goldsource.
Though making a mod on Goldsource probably is easier, thus ensuring that mods survive to see release. But that might be a Zeitgeist thing as well.

And btw: What’s with all the complaining about the C17 setting. I liked the Eastern European style and urban combat.

Also remember that this isn’t about the quality of the mods currently out there. It’s about where you would like to see more.
Seeing as HL 2 has seen less mods than HL 1 and it has even less good mods, I would like to see more.
Kasperg 29th December 2007 at 21:56 21

HL2. The enemies are probably better in HL1, but we’ve also had 9 years to see them in all sorts of situations. HL2 mapping requires a greater effort in almost every department of design, and IMO mod makers spend less time with experimenting situations and go for the standard formula.
I have no problems with the HL2 settings, I think they are much more coherent than Black Mesa. The places are not really the problem (both games look nice), it’s about what actually happens in those places.
A interesting fact is that people are playing the HL2 episodes, meaning the HL2 themes are still well liked.
Ezequielhl 30th December 2007 at 02:55 22

Half Life 1. Why? the Half Life 1 marine soldiers are fairly more intelligent than the Combine Soldiers from Half Life 2.

In Half Life we have much more enemies (one different than others), much more weapons, and that can really help for gameplay.

BTW, I still think the “Spirit of Half Life” tech can bring us very good moments, like in the mod “Portrait of Freeman”: It was really fun work aside with the marines ^^.

And the Half Life 2 mapping hasn’t a better quality than Half Life. I know this happened with Half Life in his golden era of mapping (I don’t think it ended anyway :P) too, but it’s been three years since HL2 release, and we RARELY see mods with new enemies (real ones, not new skin models), or new weapons.

Can anyone tell me: it’s more difficult to do a SP mod for HL1 than for HL2?
Kasperg 30th December 2007 at 06:07 23

@Ezequielhl: I’ve done both and it all takes more time to do for HL2. Not necessarily harder, but time-consumming no doubt. The standard of HL (1998) is fairly low if you look at it now. Even the official dm maps had lights without sources, and a lot of amateur mappers have at one point reached and surpassed the quality of the original. A little extra effort will make a HL1 stand out, and that’s an advantage.
On the other hand, you have HL2 which took 6 years to make, and the stardard mappers have to reach is higher. Props or no props, maps usually need to be bigger, have better lighting control, insane amounts of detail (graffiti, cables etc) which is tedious to place, and a more thought out npc setup to compensate for the worse AI compared to HL.
A reason why you’ll see HL2 mods fail is because of the goals they set themselves. Some require advanced coding, modelling, skinning which is not easy to pull off.
I can only speak for “The Citizen” regarding my hl2sp work. If you play that, you can see Chris Fox and I didn’t modify anything at all, and instead decided to see what new things we could do with what the default content offered, while adding the type of content we were 100% sure we could create. Maps, sounds and textures.
el_espaniol 30th December 2007 at 08:30 24

Half-Life 1 + OpenGL = Still an incredible gaming experience:…the music…the history-line…the AI of the enemies.
And it could be improved a lot…!!!
9-nine years after the release is THE GAME…!!!…:-)
Anonymous 30th December 2007 at 17:24 25

More half life 1 mod`s
Half Life 1 have bether story then Half Life 2
gonome 31st December 2007 at 11:01 26

Personnaly I prefer HL1 because my computer is weak. But add to poll point “HL1 and HL2 Mods Bots”…
planetphillip 31st December 2007 at 12:45 27

Today, the result are 60-40 for HL2. WHich is closer than I expected. I thought that perhaps it would be 70-30 or even 80-20.

I wonder what the percentages will be like in a few years for HL2 , EP1, EP, 2 and EP 3.

I had forgotten that some people’s PC might still have trouble running HL2 but nearly everybody’s PC will run HL1.
Chewie 31st December 2007 at 15:50 28

patrickul87 Said:

I would love more mods for hl1 made like paranoia mod.The mods that should be re-made for hl2 must be they hunger(all),heart of evil ,sweet hl,afraid of monsters,paranoiaand all other good hl1 sp mods

All of those sound like excellent choices. I particularly liked Heart of Evil and think it would be and interesting mod for HL2. As for me, I would go with more HL2 mods. just think of all of the physics-based puzzles you can include.
On a side note, I really cant wait for Black Mesa: Source to come out :). It looks so freaking awsome!
Straven 1st January 2008 at 00:09 29

I say Half-Life one mods for two reasons
1. to make mappers get creative with the engine and graphics to make it just as good as half-life 2 with the original feal.
2.So people like me who have ancient computers and can’t afford anything else have some thing to play!