#goldsrc mods

[thienvaldram]

Half Life – Residual Saga – Timeline Analysis

Introduction

The Residual Saga consists of three mods, plus a few older drafts that don’t fit into this analysis. The three covered specifically are Residual Point (From RL 2.05), Residual Life (2.05) and Residual Agent (Test Version 4). Despite their sheer scope and the almost unprecedented density of the lore of these mods, they are absurdly poorly documented in English in any capacity.

I’m not in any place to confidently relay anything to do with the more pertinent lore points like the weird temporal reboot between RP and RL, the whole Lautrec/Talisman and Sun Eater/Tiny Dwarf thing, the connections with Gadget and Third Force and whatnot. But what I can do is take all three temporally at face value, map out their timeframes, and try to map that onto the events of Half Life 1 as, whilst it is unclear whether or not the mods take place in the exact same setting as the events of the original game (or one another), it is worth taking a more thorough crack at it than the others who have tried as part of larger sync walkthroughs.

Addendum (If you want to play it yourself)

If you intend to play this version of Residual Point or Residual Life I recommend downloading the ‘FunGuy’ version on ModDB for… reasons that will become obvious if you read the comments of both versions.

Residual Point

RP begins with Jack Sohn heading into work at the Biodome Complex, seemingly working on those teleporters we see in Opposing Force when Shephard traverses the area. It can be reasonably assumed that the experiment malfunctions due to the Resonance Cascade and that the event takes place around the same time as it does in Half Life 1.

We then get a brief sequence in Xen, ending with the voice line from Half Life Blue Shift from Rosenberg encouraging Barney to return from Xen.

Now would be a good time to bring up the weighting in which voice lines can be given. RP, RL and RA are mods made by a Korean Mod developer who, whilst not speaking no English, does not speak full English either. With multiple recurrences of some lines, it is more reasonable to assume that the lines are a stand in for ‘generic chatter’ in at least some instances.

Residual Point’s Chapters are as Follows

Intro (Unnamed) – Morning

Insecurity – Morning

Incoming – Morning before incident, Unknown afterwards

Among the Ruins – Daytime (Black Ops Zombie appears)

Office Facility – Unknown

Obscure True – Daytime – Military First Appear

Residue Pit – Unknown

Bombing Surface – Evening (Or early Morning)

Recession – Unknown (ZECU First Appear, Black Ops First Appear)

Distortion – Unknown (Before Teleport/KO), Night (afterwards)

Upper Yard – Morning/Evening, then Night

Course to Lambda – Night

Into the Portal – Lambda Teleporter, then Xen

Dread Plot – Xen

Residual Point – Day (Portal Storms)

Going by that timeframe, we know the Black Mesa Incident of Half Life takes place over three days, the first consisting of Black Mesa Inbound through to On A Rail, the second beginning in Apprehension and lasting for the rest of Half Life 1, but for Shephard beginning with Welcome to Black Mesa and ending at We Are Not Alone. A second night is never shown in Opposing Force, but with the nuclear detonation taking place during the Day, one can assume the nuke didn’t detonate until the third day, with Opposing Force’s latter half, from Foxtrot Uniform to World’s Collide being the morning of Day 3 and Crush Depth to Pitworm’s Nest taking place over the second night. So by that timeframe we have…

Day 1

Intro (Unnamed) – Morning

Insecurity – Morning

Incoming – Morning (Resonance Cascade)

Among the Ruins – Daytime

Office Facility – Daytime

Obscure True – Daytime

Residue Pit – Daytime to Evening

Bombing Surface – Evening (We’ve Got Hostiles era Bombing run)

Recession – Night (HL1 Rocket Launch, then Black Ops Arrive, then ZECU first appear)

Distortion – Night

Day 2

Upper Yard – Morning, then Day and Evening whilst Underground, then Night once resurfaced. (Black Ops turn on HECU here)

Course to Lambda – Night (Same time as Lambda Core)

Into the Portal – Night (Lambda Core ending, then Sohn goes into Xen)

Dread Plot – Xen

Day 3

Dread Plot – Xen (cont into Day 3 Morning on Earth)

Residual Point – Day (After Gene Worm Defeat from OP4, before Nuke)

Nuclear Detonation (From Opposing Force)

This does result in oddities, namely that the Upper Yard Chapter takes Jack Sohn an entire day to complete, as long an amount of time as all of the previous approximately three hours of gameplay in a span of 20 minutes of gameplay. But that concession really must be made regardless on if one intends to fit Residual Point into HL1s timeline or not as it forces the Night -> Day -> Night mapping thing, were it not night after the unconsciousness in Distortion, that would allow for a teleporter break timeskip to the end of Day 2 or at the very least to extend the Recession chapter into Day 2 but with the current skyboxes this is the only real option.

Notably this placement also keeps consistency with most of the major events of Half Life 1, with early Pit Drone cameos being escapes from the Biodome (Can’t really explain that one Black Ops Headcrab Zombie in the earlier chapters which’d indicate a Day 2 placement but a Day 2 placement is impossible without fudging the skyboxes of either Distortion or Upper Yard. Either way, the Black Ops still arrive at some point between the Day 1 night time On a Rail Rocket Launch and the Day 2 morning at the end of Apprehension when Gordon is captured. As well as constraining the arrival of the ZECU to the night time of Day 1. Obviously the ZECU are not seen in Half Life proper, but one can assume the Nihilanth (or Residual Life Xen Route Boss) targeted them into specific areas of Black Mesa at specific times, and Gordon, Adrian, Barney, Gina and Colette never directly intersected those areas of Black Mesa in that timeframe. After all by the same metric, Gordon never encountered Race X during Forget About Freeman or Lambda Core despite them very much being at least somewhat active in that period.

Residual Life

Residual Life is far longer, more narratively involved and arguably more interesting than its predecessor. RL begins with Sora Kim waking up in her dorm and heading to work in the Lambda Complex, entering an elevator just after the Resonance Cascade. The elevator drops and Sora is knocked out. Waking up an undetermined amount of time later to get to the surface. Seems straightforward enough until you pay attention to the details on the surface, at first glance it seems like it’s the time of the We’ve Got Hostiles aerial bombardment but a closer inspection reveals it is in fact more likely to be that of Forget About Freeman. This is notable due to the presence of Black Operations who, in both RP and HL1 do not appear until the night of Day 1, after the timeframe it would have to be for that skybox to appear.

That at least narrows it down to either Day 2 morning or Day 2 evening. Similarly the yard chapters, No Way Out and Countdown seem to at first glance support a ‘Day 2 Daytime’ placement, around the time of Residue Processing – Surface Tension. But between the Black Ops killing the marines, something that only begins in Day 2 afternoon as per Opposing Force, and then most crucially the Nuke detonation which occurs in both Route 1 and Route 2, being the backing driving force behind the entire Countdown chapter through announcements that specifically refer to it as ‘Charlie Bravo’, concluding in it detonating whilst you try to disarm it in Route 1 or detonating as you flee underground in Route 2 indicating that the events of the daytime chapters actually take place after the ending of Opposing Force, during the era between the Gene Worm’s defeat and the nuclear destruction of Black Mesa, implying there were in fact multiple nukes shipped into Black Mesa rather than just the one we see in Opposing Force, with Route 2 implying large parts of the facility even persists after the detonations.

The Timeframe of Residual Life is then as follows

Day 1

Impossibility Dream – Morning

Black Mesa Inbound – Morning

Routine Work – Morning (Resonance Cascade)

Day 2

State of Emergency – Daytime

Legal Defence – Evening

“One is All, All in One” – Evening

Ground Zero – Evening

Between Worlds and Chaos – Xen

Day 3 – Route 1

No Way Out – Daytime

Countdown – Daytime (Nuclear Detonation)

Nuclear Portal – Xen

Ruins of Chronos – Xen

Ashes of Lautrec – Xen

Altar of Sacrifice – Xen

Impossibility Dream – Spatial Isolation

Epilogue – Night

Day 3 – Route 2

No Way Out – Daytime

Countdown – Daytime (Nuclear Detonation)

Chaotic Blue – Daytime

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust – Evening

Heart of Nightmare – Evening

The Centre of All Things – Evening

The Sun Eaters Pillar – Sun Eaters Pillar

Chosin Reservoir – Evening (confirmed to be a real BMRF location in Residual Agent)

The Sun Eaters Pillar (Part 2) – Sun Eaters Pillar

The Tiny Dwarf – Sun Eaters Pillar

The Sun Eaters Pillar (Part 3) – Sun Eaters Pillar

Impossibility Dream – Spatial Isolation

Epilogue – Night

Addendum, Double Nuke Theory

When doing a multi-mod timeline with a bunch of other mods, the timing of the nuke often becomes an issue. The premiere instance of this being Half Life Echoes, which shows the nuke as happening during the night despite Opposing Force’s nuke being during the day. Taking RL into account, it becomes clear that the initial nuke(s) in OP4 (And RL Countdown) fail to destroy large parts of the facility, opening up the possibility that a second, higher yield nuke was detonated the following night after the first barrage failed to stop the Portal Storms that by the time of Day 3 would probably already be ravaging the United States, hence the attempt to contain the disaster by nuking Black Mesa.

Thus the nuke shown in Echoes is not the first nuke but in fact a final ICBM that truly destroys Black Mesa, matching up with the implication in the HL2 era that Black Mesa is utterly gone. Sora’s final escape in the Epilogue would therefore (if real) be shortly prior to the final nuclear detonation.

Residual Agent

I had not played Residual Agent prior to this, nor to be entirely honest have many people. The developer of RP and RL only ever officially hosted RA on their personal Naver blog, making it prohibitively difficult, but not impossible, to access. Unlike RP and RL, RA is also a spinoff of Half Life Zombie Edition and is currently unfinished with far less gameplay than RP or RL. Its less-linear nature and tendency to loop back on itself makes skybox analysis much more difficult too but there’s still a few things we can glean.

For instance

The Black Ops are present

The Black Ops and HECU are working together

The skyboxes are morning/evening.

3 means it has to be one of the following

Day 1 Evening (We’ve Got Hostiles era)

Day 2 Morning (Apprehension era)

Day 2 Evening (Forget About Freeman/“We Are Pulling Out” era)

Day 3 Morning (Foxtrot Uniform Era)

Day 3 Evening (Post-Nuke, Chosin Reservoir Era)

Day 3 Evening can be ruled out right off the bat as the combatants don’t match that of Chosin Reservoir in RL, plus that’d drastically increase the likelihood Rezina-rhagithor 3320 (The headcrab protagonist of Residual Agent) and Sora Kim met which didn’t happen in either game.

Number 1 rules out a Day 1 time, since the Black Ops only arrive on the night of Day 1, number 2 meanwhile rules out Day 2 evening (Which is explicitly when the Black Ops turn on the HECU) and Day 3, meaning the most viable setting as of the current demo is Day 2 morning. This means that Rezina passes through RLs areas before Sora which tracks with the fact the ‘Circle of Death’ secret from RL is not yet unlocked in RA.

So we have

Intro (Chiola Breeding Citadel, Xen)

Field of Blood (Possibly Day 1 Night)

Reign of Blood (Day 2 Morning)

Lake of Blood (Day 2 Morning)

Path of Blood (Day 2 Morning)

To Be Continued…

[bsptourist]

gm_urbannights (a.k.a. ts_urbannights)

map author unknown ported by NOUG4AT

[monkeyislandtwo]

really big fan on how easy it is to edit the titles.txt

[akelaphobia]

Cry of Fear (2013, Team Psykskallar) (Co-op Campaign)

[arbtttrn6]

[RU] Я живой. Сегодня делал шкалу здоровья для противников (имя потом додам). Начал делать второй уровень. [EO] Mi estas viva. Hodiaŭ mi faris skalon de sano por malamikoj (nomon poste aldonos). Mi komencis krei duan ludlokon. [ISV] Ja jesm živ. Dnes dělal liniju zdravja za neprijateljev (imě potom budu dodavati). Počel tvoriti vtory uravenj. [HY] Jes ajsteh em. Ajsor anumej arohčasanduhak tšnamineri hamar (anuny heto ktam). Skeseci anel erkrjord hahteh.

[oxcjae]

Alas, a new Half-Life machinima (my first one in 4K) and a companion for "Dream Mesa", too!

For years now, I've considered delving more into green-screen production but barely had a spark of passion to get me going. As usual, the motivation hit me in a random moment.

While exploring house classics for another Purple Waves volume that I've just released, I came across Miss Kittin & The Hacker's gem of a track, "1982", in a random compilation album. It didn't make the cut for screwing, but its ear-worm beat made a home in my mind for the next couple of weeks. Didn't take long for me to boot up the ol' Gmod during a March weeknight and clear most of the production based off of a hazy vision. Using Half-Life's alpha models helped make it feel more interesting and abstract for me. Recording retro visuals straight from Windows Media Player sealed the 1998 vibe, and they synthesized perfectly with The Hacker's electroclash sound.

Almost seems like a challenge nowadays to produce on a whim and not overthink the creative process. Albeit, the needed finishing-touches were beginning to feel like a drag towards the end, but I've learned that "good enough" is a trustworthy standard if you're already an involuntary perfectionist. Overall, this project reassured me that green-screening isn't that tedious at all. Time will tell if this production process influences my future ventures.

[noblish]

HEY! i updated my paradox deadlock sven coop model! she's looking much much cleaner! enjoyy

[krissiefox]

https://www.tumblr.com/barneycalhounofficial A blog about Barney Calhoun!

https://www.tumblr.com/gordonsnap A blog with very nice Half-Life art!

https://halflifeconfessions.tumblr.com/ Players talk about their experiences with the Half-Life games.

https://the303.tumblr.com/ Blog about the GoldSrc engine and various Half-Life things.

https://fuckyeahhalf-life.tumblr.com/ Half-Life pictures and animations.

https://harrycallaghan.tumblr.com/ Harry creates songs and videos about Portal and Half-Life!

https://lambdageneration.tumblr.com/ Half-Life Community blog.

https://www.tumblr.com/genryswisdoms Small inactive blog about an odd man named "Genry" set in the Half-Life world.

https://halflifedump.tumblr.com/ Some Half-life stuff!

https://bsptourist.tumblr.com/ Maps & Scenery from Source Engine Games like Garry's Mod!

https://www.tumblr.com/wakeupfreeman Half-Life doodles

https://www.tumblr.com/badlydrawnhalfedlifes Half-life doodles and comics

https://portalgifs.tumblr.com/ Pictures and animations related to Portal.

https://www.tumblr.com/callmegaith A nice art blog with lots of Half-Life art, especially art involving the rebels from HL2!

[lambda-core]

"i don't get why people read the murderbot diaries books they're so easy" i also wasn't particularly challenged by the gameplay of the portal series because I'm used to doom mods and goldsrc engine shenanigans, but it stuck with me because it is a good game. How is this hard to understand

[mcwoundfucka]

While I wait for my TikTok account to get AGE VERIFIED I will be larping on Tumblr and talking about my silly little interests.

Ahem, CS 1.6 !! One of my BIGGEST interests since I was...around...hmmmm 11? I will be info-dumping about it under the cut, so if you'd like to know more about CS 1.6 & the older versions of CSGO then...HI! I'M THE MAN!

The game itself was originally just a mod for half-life ( that is another one of my interests. ), so naturally its ENTIRE structure is built around modding. I think that one of the biggest reasons CS 1.6 stayed alive for SO long. Their GoldSrc engine made it RIDICULOUSLY easy to mod. The moment you joined a modded server the game would auto-download whatever files were needed, meaning people could LITERALLY start playing any game without manually installing anything.

One of my PERSONAL favorites is Zombie Plague. TLDR, one player started as a zombie and had to infect others.

The netcode in CS 1.6 was... janky but precise??? Hit registration wasn’t perfect AT ALL but the low tick rate made flick shots feel incredibly...SNAPPY IG?? I DON'T KNOW HOW ELSE TO DESCRIBE IT. I mostly used to rely on muscle memory for headshots.

ALSO THE MAP MAKING... Hammer Editor ( Valve’s level design tool ) let people create maps with basically no restrictions ( imagine... like roblox's game-making tool ). That’s why there were SO MANY INSANE custom maps. AND, E_DUST2 ALMOST DIDN’T HAPPEN. IT WASN’T EVEN PART OF THE ORIGINAL COUNTER-STRIKE LINEUP. It was added later in Beta 7.

OH MY GOD. ALSO. ALSO. A THING I REMEMBER SO WELL IS THAT WALLBANGING WAS FUCKING INSANE. Bullets could pass through MULTIPLE walls and objects. ( AWPers on de_dust2 mid doors PISSED ME OFF. AND STILL DO. )

DUDE. I COULD RANT ABOUT CS 1.6 ALL DAY AND NIGHT. My pc broke a good...I'd say 6 months ago. I MISS PLAYING THAT GAME WITH OTHER PLAYERS. And bots...MODDED BOTS. DON'T. GET. ME. STARTED. I would usually spend my time playing it with bots because I hated interacting with real players 💔 The moment I started talking I'd get yelled slurs at I fear. FREAKS!! TOXICCCCC FREAKS MOST OF THEM!!! BOTS 4LYF

[ender-bugg]

GoldSrc mod type beat

[bsptourist]

scary_places

created by Nightmare

[akelaphobia]

The Wastes - Half-Life 1 mod (2000, Vera Visions)

If you like the look of this mod, I'd recommend checking out its standalone successor that's on Steam. It has bot support and is far more polished than the mod ever was. Updates are a bit slow but the devs are passionate about it and not giving up regardless of sales/playercount.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/793670/The_Wastes/?curator_clanid=33401179

Here's a few of my screenshots of the Steam version:

[arbtttrn6]

Разобрался с палитрами и теперь в будущей сетевой игре можно будет менять цвет на броне игроков.

[eddygould]

Cry of Fear — The Light https://imgur.com/a/3i2bXmR

In the self-sabotaging mind of Simon, light is his sole companion and guide. From the flashes of a camera revealing the inner darkness and the glowing cellphone screen with text messages left by his mother, to flares, then lantern, and right up to the serene morning rays of Kirkville upon the escape from the atrocities of night, doom, and gloom. I mean, in a game this dark, any source of light is literally the only way not to get lost.

Speaking of light properties in the mod, the player's camera here is also rich in various optical effects and filters such as blur and film grain, as well as notably the notorious hall of mirrors effect which is very prominent here, since the game is based on the GoldSource engine, and getting the most out of it.

Having grown from Afraid of Monsters and fine-tuning some of its ideas, Cry of Fear could be considered one of the most profound works of the modding scene. For me, however, it's the absolute pinnacle of independent development as a whole, blurring the lines between a mod and a full-fledged game. After all, Team Psykskallar provided entirely new imagery, gameplay and atmosphere to the point where the very concept of "mod" in this case became loose and purely technical. In fact, Cry of Fear is just a modern GoldSource horror game. And even after a decade, it still stays strong and scary.

Since this session is the 4th time I've dug into a GoldSrc game to capture the medium, it's both a perfect revisit and an epilogue to the in-game photography experiments I conducted in 2019. Something about this engine just resonates with me, and I will always prefer it to Source. Also, as a bonus and final chord I compiled a series of unreleased and scrapped screenshots, encapsulating the journey through voids, borders and distant nooks.

[mr-nutt]

You know what, since I did a second GoldSrc custom spray post, here's some more animated Source sprays! This time in G-Mod because I couldn't be bothered to boot up TF2 this time.