Half-Life 2 Wars needs you!

[Ennui]

Half-Life 2 Wars is a well-established Source mod which brings the Half-Life universe to a full-featured RTS setting. We have had a number of public beta releases starting in late 2007, and are currently gearing up for our next major release, Beta 2.0, which will be the first major release since Beta 1.0.4 in early 2011.

Beta 2.0 is an important milestone for our small dev team - it is the first public release of HL2 Wars to feature full-fledged multiplayer gameplay with both Resistance and Combine factions fully playable. Gameplay is roughly comparable to a cross between Starcraft and Dawn of War.

We have several hundreds of thousands of downloads and we have come in the top 10 on Mod of the Year awards over at ModDB twice (10th in 2008 and 9th in 2010). Beta 2 is going to be our biggest and best release yet, along with a coinciding launch of a new website and community portal. If you are looking for a mod team where your work will get attention and play time, look no further - this is the best time to join up with us there ever has been!

If you haven't played Half-Life 2 Wars, check out some videos or download it at our site or moddb (you can also install it through Desura):
http://hl2wars.com/
http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-2-wars

We are really looking mostly for level designers to make multiplayer maps for 2-6 players, but we are also looking for 3d modelers and voice actors of sufficient experience and talent, as well as other positions, so if you want to contribute and have something to offer, please don't hesitate to get in touch!

LEVEL DESIGNERS
- Intermediate to expert knowledge of Hammer editor and Source mapping
- Self-motivated with enough free time to stick with the project for several months
- Examples / portfolio of previous Source level design work required (preferably FINISHED maps)
- Ability to create materials and/or prop models a huge plus

[Gary]

If I didn't hate Source so damn much, I would be far more inclined to help. Though if you do have some concept art/level layouts you don't mind sharing I would like to try to make a map for you guys.

Oh and aren't you guys looking into the Alien Swarm engine? I assume this based off this awesome video.

[Sandern]

If I didn't hate Source so damn much, I would be far more inclined to help. Though if you do have some concept art/level layouts you don't mind sharing I would like to try to make a map for you guys.

Oh and aren't you guys looking into the Alien Swarm engine? I assume this based off this awesome video.

There are a few issue's with moving over to the alien swarm engine, so this release will still be on the 2007 engine.

The first issue is the lack of custom shader support needed for the fog of war and team coloring through shaders. This issue should be resolved soon (valve time), since they are working on adding support for it

The other problem is that you can't load the hl2 content in the alien swarm engine and on top of that not all models are supported (causing crashes when trying to load those models). So we would need to fix/convert those models and include them with the mod.

[Ennui]

If I didn't hate Source so damn much, I would be far more inclined to help. Though if you do have some concept art/level layouts you don't mind sharing I would like to try to make a map for you guys.

We don't really have anything like that around, since we generally let developers go with their own initiative on stuff like this. However, I can tell you some ideas I've had floating around my head for map settings and stuff, and I'm happy to look over layout sketches.

We really are lacking 4 player maps (should work for both 1v1v1v1 and 2v2) and it would be nice to have a more urban map, although that is obviously quite a bit more work than one set outdoors due to the large size of our maps.

You can learn more about the gameplay and resource system etc here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16755412/HLW-DesignBeta2.pdf

You can also access our dev build to mess with if you want, there is SVN info on our forums: http://www.hl2wars.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=972

Lastly there is documentation on our wiki, some of it is probably a bit outdated: http://www.hl2wars.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

[pk_hunter]

I'd be happy to voice act. Done plenty of projects - two of which were commercial, not mods. Also done a few voice-overs for independent films.
Accent is educated Glasgow Scottish. Very bassy. Semi-pro equipment (can be seen in the video).
Here's an example of me recording lines for the game Orion: Prelude.

[Major Banter]

HOLY FUCK PK I WANT YOUR BABIES.

In all seriousness, I think I can fudge a Scot into my mod somehow. I want your dulcet tones.

Ennui, if you could put out a dev vtf or something so I can take a look at the complexity of the HL2 wars maps, I might be interested.

[Gary]

Cool, thanks for the info. I'm gonna look into that today.


Definitely want to mess with the Alien Swarm dev build.
e: The console is broken(can't see what I am typing). How do I go into RTS mode(all I can do is walk around as ASW players)?

[Zecrah]

I can voice act. And have access to a full recording studio to do it in. Apparently, according to various people and Major Banter, I sound like a Radio One presenter.

[Stormy]

Voice actor eh Zecrah? Got any demos?

[Ennui]

Zecrah and pk_hunter, mind PMing me your email address so that I can send you some sample lines to record? Alternately you guys can just email us: hl2warsmod (at) gmail.

[Zecrah]

Voice actor eh Zecrah? Got any demos?

Nope. :> I did have, until Audacity crapped on them and then I lost them all to HDD failure.

[pk_hunter]

You use a full recording studio with... audacity? :/

also PM sent.

[Zecrah]

No, that was when I used to record at home.

But Audacity is pretty good ^^

[Zecrah]

I emailed you by the way.

[Ennui]

Here's a video of a full test match we played yesterday. It shows the current state of the mod. Don't read too much into the gameplay, we only recently got all of the units/tech trees fully implemented and they are FAR from balanced... but you can see the basic form of the game here. Also check out our super awesome building models... dev textured 256x256x128 blocks! woo!

Watch in HD!

For the voice acting guys that expressed interest, thank you and we have not forgotten about you! Voice acting is currently a pretty low priority on our collective to-do list, so you may not hear from us for another month or two, but rest assured I have you all on a list and will be sending out an email / PM once we have our dialogue/script for Beta 2 prepared and ready to record... if waiting a month or two is an issue for anyone, let me know and I can try to get that stuff to you sooner.

We also still would LOVE some new maps... you will need intermediate experience/skill with Hammer but that's about it. Our maps are very large and require a lot of large-scale displacement work and prop placement, as well as a solid grasp on optimization, but if you are worried about the design part of things I can help you with that (map layout + some basic design theory for our mod's resource system).

Besides that, we could also use a 3d modeler to make building models for us. We are also fine with a mapper creating these models via the propper tool for hammer.