Rock, Paper, Shotgun

By Lewis Denby on June 2nd, 2010 at 10:52 am.

Forgive me: this week’s Mod News is a little more rushed than usual. The last week has marked my switch from “filthy student who writes about games sometimes” to “oh my great goodness, I need to actually start making a sustainable living out of this now.” Are you an editor? Then you should probably give me some work. I’ll do it on time, and everything! But anyway: among the panic, here’s some mod news I’ve managed to collect.

NEWS

So this is just delightful. Human Error was an almost brilliant HL2 single-player mod which featured a couple of familiar faces from the Half-Life 1 days. And now, because its team is wonderful, they’re giving away the source code for their beloved Alien Grunt and Alien Controller. It’s great to see mod teams helping each other out, and I hope other teams find a use for the critters.

Meanwhile, after a rather lengthy silence, HL2 mod Gravinull is back! [http://www.moddb.com/mods/gravinull/news/gravinull-new-road-new-progress] The developer got disheartened, it would seem, but then found out his mod was immensely popular, so started working on it again. That’s nice of him. Beyond that link is hot new information and a video. This also mysteriously turned up in the UserCreated inbox.

And after a whole /year/ of silence, Left 4 Deads 1 and 2 mod I Hate Mountains has re-emerged with a bunch of new media. I’m suddenly very excited about this. The trailer is absolutely exceptional, and it’s from the makers of Portal: Prelude, which was really quite good.

Finally in the world of updates-after-ages, this week marks the first time in forever during which I’ve not had to crawl through Robert Yang’s blog to do the mandatory Yang-related update. That’s because there’s /official news/ about Radiator Part 3! Er, where he mainly links back to the stuff he’s already explained on his blog. Either way, read stuff here, and be delighted that Radiator’s been selected to be showcased at an exhibition in Madrid alongside thechineseroom’s Korsakovia.

RELEASES

Remember Halfquake, the strange, surreal mod for Half-Life that set about confusing the player in every way imaginable? Well now there’s a sequel. Still a HL single-player deal, early reports suggest it’s still hard-as-nails and still bloody weird. Trailer and downloads on the ModDB page.

Elsewhere, there’s a demo of Crysis Wars mod Dead Corridor. It’s only the first level, and under half an hour’s play time, but developers Masterside Studio are hoping to use it to get some feedback and tweak the full version accordingly.

UPDATES

Let’s see, shall we? Resistance and Liberation, which reached Beta 1.1 last week, has reached Beta 1.2 this week. That was fast. Apparently the last version kept crashing on everyone, which this patch rectifies.

HL2 mod Dystopia has hit Version 1.3, as well. If you’re a Supporter, that is. If you’re not, you’ll have to wait a bit, or become one by donating some money to the project. This update marks a change of engine to the Orange Box version of Source, which will likely make the mod far more sustainable in the future. Good show, I say.

AND THE REST

Just the one And The Rest this week, and it’s a Jim Special! Over at Eurogamer, he writes things about the pretentious artsy mods that Rock, Paper, Shotgun does so love. Obviously, since yesterday’s news, both the Hivemind and the brothers Loman have made me sign a contract stating that I will link to and big up Eurogamer at every given opportunity.

I’d say there’s more on UserCreated, but it’d be a lie, because we’re as slack as anything. But do check back there, as you might sometimes be surprised. Which reminds me, actually: does anyone want to write for us?

Oh, and the answer to last week’s curiosity is: Deus Ex, Portal.