@ (rot)(fodder
Here’s a mod that removes the pornographic graffiti from the game - https://hl2.gamebanana.com/skins/137168
FakeFactory has released a patch for his CM2013 Final mod. It’s been updated to v1.01 - https://cinematicmod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3956
So I had a look at the Cinematic Mod screenshots, and I’m of two minds about it.
On the one hand, the environments do look vastly improved. Let’s face it - Half-Life 2 is an old, dated game by this point. It looks its age. Sprucing it up is a good thing, even if not all the improvements seem very notable. On the other hand… MY GOD the character models are utterly dreadful! What the hell happened there? It’s like something out of Y3DF! I mean, if you’re going to model your character design after 3D porn, at least pick a decent artist to copy, like Umemaro or Chimera. Don’t be the guy who does BAXS. WOW that is just BAD! Not only are the character models themselves butt ugly, but they’re also thematically completely inappropriate for the rest of the game, and shockingly so. Yikes!
If all of that crap is optional, I might give the mod a shot, just to see Half-Life from another perspective. Wonder if this guy’s done anything to Ravenholm… On the one hand, that place REALLY needs a touch-up, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere. On the other hand, FakeFactory’s idea of a “cool” is pretty much the antithesis of what Ravenholm is, so this has the potential to go hilariously bad… I think I might play with the porn graffiti on, though, just to see what they are. As you can tell by my previous paragraph, I’m not exactly prudish, but it’s entirely possible they clash with the rest of the game’s style too much. Even if they would fit the king of graffiti I see on walls and buildings around these parts.
Yeah, all of the crap is optional.
Well, so far so good. The thing is pretty customisable. Getting rid of all the extra character models was pretty easy, but the thing crashes like crazy. I’d be interested in dropping a few first impressions if I can get it to work.
Frankly, I can see why FakeFactory gets a bad rap around these parts. A lot of the changes in the Cinematic Mod have nothing to do with Half-Life whatsoever. Father Henry (whom the mod refers to as “Monk” despite being a priest O_o) is given a black trenchcoat with sunglasses. Considering all of Ravenholm takes place at night, that’s twice as hilarious. The rest of the character models don’t fare much better, usually changing people into completely different people, with frankly badly-done model work. So far no surprises.
The guns were another big disappointment. As you might have seen elsewhere, I was really excited about getting higher-rez, better-animated guns than what Half-Life 2 has to offer, but the swaps aren’t very good. A lot of stuff is mostly the same but up-textured, like the Crowbar, Gravity Gun and Crossbow. Those are actually pretty good and highly detailed while retaining their beat-up old look. The automatic weapons, however, are swapped for contemporary-looking guns, which is frankly VERY out-of-place for a sci-fi setting like this, especially when you turn the Combine Machinegun into what looks like a large M16-looking rifle. The animations are really off, as well, though I suspect/hope that’s just issues with my installation. The basic pistol has a distinct delay between when the hammer strikes and when the gun actually fires. What this means is it basically doesn’t recoil or play a muzzle flash if you shoot it fast enough. I know llpon’s weapon animations are a divisive topic here, but after playing with them in Black Mesa, the Cinematic Mod weapons feel outright amateurish.
The map improvements look pretty cool, though. Yes, they change the feel of the game more than slightly, but that’s to be expected and it’s not always a bad change. City 17 was originally inspired by various Bulgarian cities, most notably the capital. Being that I’m from Bulgaria, all of City 17 felt very familiar to me, as it looks pretty spot-on to the real world, minus the actual street layout, obviously. The Cinematic Mod changes that quite a bit, but I couldn’t tell you which direction it pulls the environment in since it’s not as instantly recognisable to me. In either case, it’s a welcome bit of additional detail over Half-Life’s decade-old maps designed for far lower-end PCs and an inferior version of Source.
Once I actually get the Cinematic Mod working properly (Avast keeps blocking a specific file from the installer with a “suspected” worm, Avast being what it is), I might end up stripping the mod of everything sans the maps. If anything, it’s worth a shot, because what I tested so far is pretty cool.
Hence the mod is good, while using the “lite/light” version.
Yes, it seems like it so far. There are a couple of things I can’t find out how to tweak, however, and no - I don’t mean the obscene graffiti. The mod has a built-in VERY heavy head bob that none of the mod-specific options seem to disable. It makes me instantly seasick, meaning I either never sprint (impossible, since it’s required in a few places) or else grab a barf bag. Personal issue, but there it is. The other is an odd oversight. You can customise the models for civilians and Combine soldiers, but this doesn’t reflect on the game’s zombies at all - they still use the CM-specific character model bases. I would have expected that zombies would be inexorably tied to the models they’re based on, so customising one would automatically customise the other.
At this point, my experimentation with the Cinematic Mod weapons has more or less come to a permanent end. Combine Machinegun aside, they look pretty good but the animations just don’t work very well. All the weapons seem to have an odd delay between hitting the “Fire” button and when the weapon actually animates the sound and muzzle flash, almost as if Gordon is a little slow to respond. This is odd, because they still hit as if they fired instantly, making the whole experience feel a bit awkward. But again - that’s optional so I can’t really hold it against the mod. I was just hoping for a weapon mod for Half-Life, though, akin to llpon’s reanimations and weapon models for Black Mesa. I never realised how much I mised the separate pistol slide release on reload until I didn’t have it any more.
Just to be sure, did you uncheck the head bob option in the Configurator Tool?
Yup. Unchecked Head Bob and Weapon Recoil. If it made a difference, I couldn’t feel it. Incidentally, I disable Head Bob AND View Sway in Black Mesa entirely. I couldn’t play for very long with either enabled.
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And what I wasn’t expecting was that the Cinematic Mod actually breaks a lot of the scripted sequences in Half-Life 2. The instance where Lamarr is supposed to jump into the teleporter and much things up sees the Headcrab just standing and doing nothing. That part of Route Kanal where you shoot a mounted gun until an APC shows up and shoots rockets at you also doesn’t work. The APC shows up and… Does nothing. I simply gave up in the part where you’re swimming in water and a cop throws flaming barrels at you from above. The barrels blow open a grate for you to pass through, but it’s too high off the water and I never did find a way to get up there. That, and disabling the Cinematic Mod weapons causes the pistol reload animation to bug and distort.
The idea is solid and it does make the Half-Life maps look a lot prettier, but it ends up making the game look uglier because things which worked in the original game don’t in the mod. The models, for example. The “original Valve models” are not the original Valve models. They have been touched up with different textures and, in the process, lost most of their facial animations. I remember Barney as an animate, sarcastic guy with a corked eyebrow. The Barney I ran into spoke with a blank face and dead eyes, almost like the models used to back in the old Half-Life when they didn’t HAVE facial animation.
It could be I mucked up something in my install folder, but I ran into too many technical issues to be able to appreciate the frankly very pretty maps.
DADSTER YOU BEAUTIFUL PERSON
Couldn’t stand the thought of you running round and tossin’ ur cookies every 500 yards, or so 8| <X <X :cursing: . . . travel - - ->. 8| <X :cursing: (repeat) . . . . .
Glad I could help !
Since you’re playing CM2013, this “MASSIVE Props HD Overhaul” mod may deepen your experience. Purdy props are better than fugly ones.