Half-Life 2: Enhancement Mod

[Porky-da-Corgi]

Hello all.
This is a mod dedicated to porting Half-Life 2 to the Alien Swarm engine, and revamping all graphics, models, textures, and maps to be of high quality, while still maintaining the look and feel of the originals.

Here are some screen shots, some are taken with DoF just for show:















The Goals of this mod are:
• Port HL2 to the more updated Alien Swarm engine.
• Redo every texture in the game to be high quality.
• Add more details to the maps, such as more props, 3D windows in the city, and smoothing out rough edges, like arches.
• Put in more secret areas.
• Add high quality models for at least the main characters and enemies (if not all characters and enemies).
• Add new enemies, such as Bullsquids and Houndeyes. (These will only be in select areas, or new optional areas in the game).
• Revamping the sprites and effects.
• Improving enemy AI (already done thanks to the engine port!).
• New high quality versions of low quality sounds.
• Adding in more H.E.V. suit sounds like in HL1. Eg: if you got hit in HL1 it would say "Minor lacerations detected, morphine administered", where as in HL2 it won't say anything.
• Dynamic shadows.
• Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Subsurface Scattering, and a special clothing shader- thanks to 1/4 Life and GearDev from the mod 'City 17: Episode 1'.
• An Enhanced HL2: Death Match- this will have an open beta and be a sort of 'glimpse' of the mod.
• Full body awareness, similar to that of Dark Messiah: Might and Magic.


This mod started out on FacePunch forums, and is also merged with Rebel’s Stories.

Mod leaders:
Ken Chan -Coding
IM BATMAN -Lighting
Fat-Corgi-Guy -Textures

The Team:
Zero Hour -Models
Bumbanut -Mod tester/idea-ist
Marbledemon -Mapper
Ericson666 -Animation
clicheusername -Mapper
brandonsh -Animation
Tinter -Models
rezOnance -Sound designer
Voltlight -Models
Nomad -Models
MacD11 -Mod tester/idea-ist
Stiffy360 -Mapper
The VMAN -Particle designer
Glitchvid -Textures
Sergesosio - Mapper/Models
Snood_1990 - Models
JeanLuc761 -Textures
HL2.exe has stopped working(cooler777) -Mod tester
Shirky - Mapper/Modeler/Texturer
UberMunchkin -Textures
BIG thanks to 1/4 Life and GearDev, for the use and implementation of their shaders!

We hope you like so-far of it!
Shader makers, programmers, modellers, and generally any help would be greatly appreciated!

[nub]

Have you considered trying to make use of Biohazard's deferred rendering mod? That would be a pretty significant overhaul to the visuals in my opinion.

[Oskmos]

Skybox needs to be fixed. I'ts stretched and it looks aweful! It needs to be fixed by valve as well... stupid of them to update the way skybox textures is used without updating the textures for hl2

[joe_rogers_11155]

Tracking...

[Gary]

This picture here scares me... The fake-CSM(hard to tell, but it might be) is a really bad system(and I know I've said I'm going to redo it better!). I thought most of it's short comings might be fixed by proper projection changes, I even thought maybe if I could blend the projections together it might be okay(which I never got around really doing, but I have a hacky theory!) , but sadly, flashlight projections are just expensive as hell.... I doubt it will practical to use in most HL2 situations.

I really want to see if it's possible to override the lightmap. If we could do that, then the flashlight projection could be much, much smaller. And actually be useful for nearly any scenario! Since the flashlight/CSM would only cover the area around the player, and lightmapping would cover everything outside of it. Sadly though, unless you could selectively override only the light_environment light, it would case problems with indoor lighting and such.

Maybe one day I will try again... but good luck, I'm pretty sure we talked about this idea a while back. I remember wanting to redo some of the hl2 maps with lots of projectedtextures and such.

Edit; Wait, you're not Ken. This was directed at him.

[Porky-da-Corgi]

Edit; Wait, you're not Ken. This was directed at him.

No problem, I'll show him your post, if he hasn't already seen it.

[Gary]

It's cool. I'm talking with him on Steam. Apparently I had forgotten what my old fake-CSM system even did.

[GyroMeepo]

This picture here scares me... The fake-CSM(hard to tell, but it might be) is a really bad system(and I know I've said I'm going to redo it better!). I thought most of it's short comings might be fixed by proper projection changes, I even thought maybe if I could blend the projections together it might be okay(which I never got around really doing, but I have a hacky theory!) , but sadly, flashlight projections are just expensive as hell.... I doubt it will practical to use in most HL2 situations.

I really want to see if it's possible to override the lightmap. If we could do that, then the flashlight projection could be much, much smaller. And actually be useful for nearly any scenario! Since the flashlight/CSM would only cover the area around the player, and lightmapping would cover everything outside of it. Sadly though, unless you could selectively override only the light_environment light, it would case problems with indoor lighting and such.

Maybe one day I will try again... but good luck, I'm pretty sure we talked about this idea a while back. I remember wanting to redo some of the hl2 maps with lots of projectedtextures and such.

Edit; Wait, you're not Ken. This was directed at him.

If it comes down to it we could maybe try to rip out CSGO's CSM system (it works with HL2's maps as I had ported trainstation_01 to CSGO long ago but stopped when I couldn't get sections to stop crashing or npcs to work).

We're probably also going to use deferred lighting for indoors (my job as soon as we all figuire out deferred ).

In the end, I'm glad you all seem like the mod! Like someone from the dev team said our biggest thing isn't textures, ligthing, or stuff like that but it's the fact that this is a big community effort and not one certain man doing it.

[Gary]

If it comes down to it we could maybe try to rip out CSGO's CSM system

I don't see how you plan doing that...

We're probably also going to use deferred lighting for indoors (my job as soon as we all figuire out deferred ).

The deferred mod replaces the old way of lighting. You guys will have to do a lot to allow both to wo together. Stuff like write shaders.

[GyroMeepo]

We're probably also going to use deferred lighting for indoors (my job as soon as we all figuire out deferred ).

The deferred mod replaces the old way of lighting. You guys will have to do a lot to allow both to wo together. Stuff like write shaders.

I have a week off school, so I'll have plenty of time to work at it

[Porky-da-Corgi]

A picture showing off the SSS in the mod:

BIG thanks to 1/4 Life and GearDev, for the use and implementation of their shaders!

[joe_rogers_11155]

So real!!

[DonPunch]

I wouldnt call that sss but it looks better than without it.

[Gary]

I want to see Vorts with it all over their body!

[MrTwoVideoCards]

Good to see our shaders being put to use. My biggest issue with Sub surface scattering though is that it doesn't look good on the older low poly model. Or well, as good as it could be. It looks like you guys have remade the normalmap, but sss is never going to look as good as it should unless you bake the normal from a highpoly source.