As the title says, what’s the best graphical mod/update for Half-Life 2. Planning another playthrough shortly and would like to beef up the visuals if possible. I know it’s not completely necessary but giving the aesthetics a boost does no harm.
Already played with CM a little while ago, are there any other mods worth noting?
Thanks.
If you’re talking complete overhauls like Cinematic Mod, I don’t know of any. Probably just because CM is just the most well known. If there was another really popular one I’m sure we’d know of it. But you can check gamebanana.com, they have lots of skins for weapons and stuff that you might be interested in.
I’d love to see if there was a mod that fixes some of the animations for characters. The metrocops keep teacup-and-saucering and everyone constantly has fingers on the triggers of their weapons. If there was a mod that fixed it so everybody showed proper trigger discipline, including player viewmodels, added casings for the 9mm pistol, made the SMG’s grenade launcher either a separate weapon or modeled an actual launcher onto the MP7, that would make me really happy.
You must scour the various modding communities of this web to pick and choose your favorite skins. Type what you want into youtube to get access to the more obscure stuff. Check the HL2 section of FPSB and the skins section of the Garrysmod forums. All of these outlets host audio, GUI, and script enhancements as well.
Kenny, there exists numerous complete weapon reanimation peojects, many of which fix shell ejection on the usp and there are countless smg replacements that have grenade launchers on them. You’re not fucking looking.
Also why the fuck would Average Joe Q Public, rag-tag rebel-guy have trigger discipline.
Why would anyone outside of law enforcement or military service even care. Unless he’s some airsoft-toting wannabe spetsnaz gamer douche, he probably doesn’t even know what it is.
Guilty as charged. I haven’t been looking, and I’ve been a nazi about trigger discipline for movie projects I’ve worked on because seeing Hollywood get it wrong so often pisses me right the fuck off.
Plus, any gun owner should know stuff like that. It’s just proper safety, so it’s not military or LE exclusive, it’s just common sense.
These are just regular people picking guns up off the street, and they probably only know how to use them from watching Escape From New York.
It would be unrealistic for them to be skilled gun handlers. Doesn’t really matter anyway, HL2 NPCs are apparently impossible to properly reanimate outside of scripted sequences. I’m pretty sure it would involve replacing the universal skeleton they all wear, and to my knowledge that’s never been done.
Hm, I went on a similar quest a while back and found it quite a pain in the arse. I considered cinematic mode, but I found it too change too much stuff beyond just the graphics. As such, I did some scrounging and found this thing called “Filip Victor’s Half-Life Update”, or something along those lines.
It’s nothing really grand, but it’s still a nice boost, some textures are better, the face meshes of no-name NPCs are much greater, and then there are some general updates with lighting and such.
You might have heard of it already, but I’m just putting it out there. You should be able to find it just searching on google.
Hope I could be of help.
I’ve never really had any problem with how HL2 looks. I suppose most people feel that way with the lack of very many graphical mods for it.
HALF-LIFE 2 UPDATE: https://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1093025
Steam group: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Half-Life2Update
Thanks for the input guys, I’ll have a look around. I really wish CM only changed the aesthetics and left it at that. Too many gameplay changes to make the mod worthwhile though unfortunately.
Exactly the same problem I had with it, I wish it was all optional and you could choose and pick the things you want, and leave the rest.
That guy is amazing at creating textures, modelling and building scenery, but his direction sucks and he has a very weird taste.
You can find all kinds of graphical stuff for Garry’s Mod, and then just play the game on there. Unbind and get rid of your sandbox stuff and you’re good to go.
This is a fair point. But the Combine, consisting of ostensibly well trained ex-military personnel and augmented citizens who went through retraining would likely have recieved such a level of instruction. And the metrocops, for all their complete uselessness as marksmen, would still have been taught basic gun safety.
True. They do use a set of animations compiled as an animations.mdl file. Changing the animations themselves would require a full decompile of all the soldier models and re-animation of each, then a full recompile. That would be a royal pain in the ass. If I was any good at animation I’d at least try to do that myself, since I do own Maya, but it only mildly annoys me in the case of HL2.
I’ve played through the game at least 5 times (which is low, I think) and have never stopped to say “Hey, those people shouldn’t have their fingers on the triggers if they’re not shooting at anything.”
Me neither…
Is it out yet?
Edit: No, I guess not.
Should be soon though, Q1 of this year according to the steam forum post.
The first few Fakefactory CM versions (1-4) were good , but you don’t want Cinematic Mod so here : https://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1093025
EDIT : I know it has been posted before , and it’s not really a big update but it fixes all the graphical bugs and reflection and higher poly models.
I think the official update Valve put out made it look plenty better
I know you guys will scream “blasphemy” at this but you don’t have to use anything but the environmental/engine upgrades in Cinematic Mod. CM 9 through 11 (the most recent one) have a configuration program to get rid of the awful “HD” character replacements, the unfitting soundtrack, and the weapon changes. This leaves just the environmental upgrades all of which (IMO) except Ravenholm look excellent.
Seriously? That’s great, I guess I could check it out now. Too bad they didn’t put that little bit on information in the so-called “info” section on the site…
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