stuffys

well, I guess another week has passed quickly. Quite an eventful week. I downloaded this cool mod. Its called SMOD and its really fun. Here's a description (off Planet Half-Life of course)



So, you've completed Half-Life 2 and decided to play through it again. You love the storyline and the gameplay, but the problem is that you've already beaten the game in hard mode, you know where all the scripted sequences occur, and you know where all the enemies are located. What you need is for Half-Life 2 to throw surprises at you. If only the game could randomise the enemies or the weapons, give the enemies new abilities, or mess with your expectations a bit, eh? Not to worry! SMOD does all of this, and more!
SMOD doesn't add a new storyline or maps. To this you may say "Huh? What DOES it add then?" And I guess the simple answer is… whatever you want it to. SMOD has the special effects and gore of F.E.A.R, realistic weapons you'd expect to see in Counter-Strike or Day of Defeat, crazy weapons you'd expect to see in Worms, tools you'd expect to find in Garry's Mod, and also plenty of original features of its own. Nearly every feature that SMOD adds is an optional element that you can switch on or off using console commands or, if you are more ambitious, by the simple editing of a config file with a text editor. If you wish, you can make the game virtually identical to normal Half-Life 2, a wild roller-coaster ride of strange experiences, or even a nice compromise between the two.


Many of the game's maps have got new enemies, allies, weapons or items added. Most are placed in specific locations, but others are randomly placed within a map, guaranteeing that no two experiences of the game will be the same. If you use the exec level_smod or exec level_hard commands, then as well as being given new weapons, some soldiers will be given portable Combine shields that will protect them from frontal attacks, unless you waste enough ammo to smash the shield. The exec level_hard command will add both shielded soldiers and also some wearing red or dark blue armour to indicate that they much tougher than their normal counterparts. Which soldiers are given these upgrades is randomly determined as you encounter them. If you are very unlucky, you'll encounter a soldier in coloured armour who's also protected by a bullet-proof shield! If you wish you can even use the command npc_randomize_weapon 1 to randomise the weapons that enemies carry.
Later sections of the game include soldiers wearing optical distortion camouflage that renders them nearly invisible, and a new type of Combine Elite soldier that moves quickly and leaps high into the air, landing in various unexpected locations. There are special Combine scanners that fire lasers rather than just photographing you, and even stalkers, the much-anticipated, mutilated, human slaves that will be appearing in HL2: Aftermath, armed with welding lasers. There's even a few of the old Half-Life houndeyes thrown in to the mix for good measure. During the Canals section of the game, the Combine will steal your airboat and you'll have to drive a buggy through the canals until you can track down the thieves. This section also features a scripted sequence in which you are chased by a Combine APC and a gunship, and one of the Highway 17 chapters includes an APC that drives around and fires rockets at you as well as an added Combine drop ship that delivers an extra squad of soldiers. If you decide that you don't like some of these additions, you can rename or edit the appropriate text file in the 'mapadd' folder.


That is a pretty extensive feature list, but I haven't started on the new special effects or player abilities. The exceptionally good "bullet-time" causes each slow-moving bullet to leave a distorting vortex in the air. It's customisable, so you can adjust the speed of enemy bullets or your own bullets (and thus the difficulty of the game), and choose whether to have extra funky screen effects that make it look like you are in some kind of time warp. If your computer is good enough, you can switch on the option to have explosions cause distorting shockwaves in the air. The "Gordon kick" key allows you to relive Duke Nukem 3D by attacking enemies with your mighty boot while still holding a gun, or to effortlessly kick objects or corpses out of your way. You can activate more blood and gore, bodies twitching after death, or corpses causing pools of blood in water. There's gibbing—causing enemies to splat into chunks if heavily damaged. SMOD also allows you to adjust the rag-doll physics between: the half-life 2 defaults, 'realistic' ragdolls, and 'funny' ragdolls that go spinning and flying all over the place.

You can press a key and use iron sights, meaning that you actually look down the barrel of your gun instead of simply using the crosshair. The command r_zoomlenseffect 1 adds a lens distortion effect if you use a weapon's scope. Speaking of weapons, this game has a butt-load of 'em! As well as the normal arsenal, during the course of the game you'll also find AK-47s, MP5 sub-machine guns with grenade launchers, SVD sniper rifles, Alyx's automatic pistol, WWII grease guns and rifles, Worms banana bombs, deadly scissors that ricochet off walls and laser guns that get their power by draining your HEV armour. The laser is definitely a unique touch—it seems ludicrously powerful, killing entire squads of enemies in seconds… until someone actually manages to damage you and depletes your HEV power; you then find yourself holding a weapon without ammo! If you do think the laser is too powerful, you can always adjust how much damage it does with a console command.

You can aim more accurately with scopeless weapons by aiming down the gun barrel and using the iron sights.
If you use cheat codes like impulse 101, you'll gain access to an even wider range of weapons, including a new physics manipulator, a strider's cannon that can vaporise almost everything (even furniture or huge vehicles), laser-triggered mines, a flare gun that will set enemies on fire, a sticky bomb launcher, a PSP that ejects deadly exploding UMD discs, and a powerful shovel to bash your enemies with. My personal favourite of the 'cheat' weapons is the "stuff launcher", which normally launches watermelons at lethal velocities, but its alternate fire is a beam that disintegrates almost any object or character. Then when you press primary fire, you'll launch copies of that object! Now you can flatten enemies with litter bins, cars, combine drop ships, or fill a map with a thousand explosive barrels and detonate them in a orgy of destruction that will also totally kill your frame rate. Alternatively, you can create rather than destroy, cloning yourself an army of allies… though they will appear unarmed, you can simply drop a gun on the ground and then use the stuff launcher to clone the gun a thousand times, and watch your army pick up the weapons scattered around them.


Ok most of that may be jargon to you but who cares?


Moving on, my two books and two CDs off Amazon.com just arrived. "The Art of HALO", "Half-Life 2 Raising The Bar" and the Cds Halo soundtrack and Halo 2 soundtrack volume 2. Listening to it now. The songs are really nice.

Ok, I guess thats all for now.

Signing off