An Introduction To Half Life 2: Alternis news

Hey there!

Thanks for checking out Half Life 2: Alternis!

This article will serve as a proper introduction to this Sourcemod.

How the project started

Around a year ago I was rewatching some Freeman's Mind episodes, and in Freeman's Mind 2 : Episode 3, Ross crawls through a vent in the side of that red/blue warehouse building on d1_canals_01 (after the part where some metrocops come out of an alley behind you), and makes a comment on the nonsensical nature of the vent which he is crawling through:

"What the hell kind of vent is this?! It's not venting anything! You're supposed to lead me to some warehouse where I can sneak out the other side, not back into the fire!"

This quote alone inspired me to make a prototype map of what it would be like if that vent actually lead to a warehouse, and what it'd be like if it had led to an entirely different route you could take to get to the end of the map. Later I've realized that this same principle could be applied to the entire game, and thus the idea for Half Life 2: Alternis was born.

So I began working on the mod on-off whenever I could, eventually deciding to implement even more features inspired by Freeman's Mind such as the power transformer you can shoot on d1_canals_05 to disable the electrified shipping container.

However, around a month later the project came to a halt due to some serious burnout, and a few other problems I had to deal with at that time. Since then, the project sat dormant within my Source modding folder, until now.

Recently I've rediscovered my passion for modding, and Alternis being my most fleshed out Sourcemod so far, I've decided to just go for it, and make a Moddb page, so I'll be able to actively develop this in a proper manner.

What's to come

Now, let's look at the future of Alternis,

First of all, I intend to work on Alternis whenever I reasonably can. There's no doubt it'll take quite a bit of time to completely finish the project but I'll try to release devlogs at least every 2 months, and maybe even a demo whenever the project gets to a point where I'd be able to do that properly. (Maybe around when at least 6 chapters are in a mostly finished state).

Second, I'm not an extremely skilled Source-modder by any metric, I've dabbled a fair bit in hammer and such and I know my way around Source, but I'm definitely not what you'd call an expert by any means, so this will most certainly be a learning experience for me aswell.

Additionally, at this stage absolutely nothing is nailed down, the logos for example could (and will most likely) be changed down the line so don't take anything for granted yet.

Lastly, here are a few of my main ideas which will most likely be a part of this mod in the future:

• Entirely new maps for alternate routes in Water Hazard & Highway 17
• A driving section inside City 17 during the uprising? (Not entirely sure about this one, inspired by the HL2 Beta levels where you drive to the citadel)
• Expanding Ravenholm a bit more, like adding the E3 2003 Ravenholm docks for example.
• Lots of little changes to most if not every map in the game

Now to be fair, most of this stuff will be figured out on-the-go, but those are some of the main ideas I had for long, and if you happen to have any suggestions feel free to leave a comment, I'll most definitely be reading those.

However, that about wraps it up, as I've said I'll be working on this project whenever I'll be able to, and I'll try to get some more screenshots & videos up in the following days and get the first devlog out as soon as possible.

But until then, thanks for reading.