VERSION 1.4 NOW AVAILABLE.

No new maps this year. Work, personal, family life & self care has overtaken my spare time to work on this as a hobby. My dad contracted cancer last December. It's been a mess this year caring for him, working, and trying to find a fulfilling life in general for myself, I will continue this project to completion, but this year it's a break for my mental health, and wanting to work on this as a hobby has felt really unfulfilling with so much going on.

Anyway, kind of small but pretty cool update to the current game; I've added using the mouse to scroll up/down to cycle through weapons like the original HUD in Half-Life. 

You can now scroll weapons with your mouse! Especially useful in the later levels (Spoiler!!! Weapon 7, Hivehand not yet)

Rant about the game/progress so far: after adding the rocket launcher in update 1.3 for the "Surface Tension" map I felt pressing "6" on the keyboard to switch to it was really awkward while using W,A,S,D controls and a mouse, so hopefully people use this.

I know more maps would be nice. I need to find the spare time and patience to implement / convert as much of Half-Life as I can into the finished project and keep it fun. Feel like I want to skip the parts that seem tedious, I've got more liberal within the last few map updates in skipping bits and pieces...it's a tricky project, much doesn't seem to convert into fun 2D gameplay aside the set-pieces, and some are not easy to work on, so some remixing is definitely required (You'll notice this remixing if you play the "Residue Processing" chapter that I changed it up quite a bit) This is something I care a lot about. Never wanting to lose the distinct features of the original game, yet never wanting to dull them down by sticking to literally flattening the map down into 2d where possible. It's a totally different feeling.  

For this 2D remake, or de-make, the part before teleporting to Xen, and using the double jump in a 2d space with the Alien controllers rushing in is my favorite test map I've made...the design, I've got infinite respawning Machine guns on either side of the map, A.I enemies floating in and floating around naturally, glowing light in the background, it's hypnotic... and pure gaming. I can't wait to add it and get past the monotony of handling "Surface Tension" in 2d and the dam, tentacle & minefield section. Many test maps are playing well, some haven't been designed yet but I'll figure it out. The next map for Surface Tension is not fun to figure out how to design in 2d and retain the set-pieces and the keep it fun. I feel the first half of this 2d game I was too heavy on being close to the map structure and pacing of the original game, and it kills some of the fun, I feel "Residue Processing" map 2 was where I started to actually try something very different, because I couldn't find a way to replicate the original, and it felt good to break away a little and give this game its own feeling and show my own style.

Anyway, stay tuned, I'll likely chip away more at it this over my Christmas break and hopefully get all the way to building maps in Xen for version 1.5. Can't wait to be double jumping around firing a machine gun endlessly spawning alien controllers on Earth and later into Gonarchs giant sack. xD. Good stuff to come. Give me time. Hope you enjoy what's there so far. Thankyou for reading, thanks for your support. 

To me Half-Life is still one of the greatest games ever made, and if you have read all this and haven't played it I hope you're able to one day and experience how special Valve's game is still is to this day, and hopefully understand why I wanted to try to remake it in 2D and do something that felt like it does the original justice. 

Happy 26th bday Half-Life! 

- Jim