The mod is finally out… it´s more like a demo, but playable
https://www.moddb.com/mods/they-hunger-again
However, there are some bugs and mistakes and the game itself is too hard…but as for my opinion It´s a good remake
I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to do this, but I’m gonna have to tear this apart, because They Hunger was probably my favorite HL1 mod and I want to see it done justice!
Here’s hoping some devs check this thread.
Also, for reference, I’m writing this after having played the 1.1 release.
Okay, first off, gameplay balance. Pretty sure it’s already been stated that this is being addressed, but it needs to be brought up anyway.
- The crowbar has the super-slow HL2DM fire rate and short range. This is not good for fighting zombies, where you need to be able to pop in, hit them, and juke out before they can counterattack. I nearly died in the tunnel after the church because the crowbar isn’t an effective weapon anymore.
- The pistol (which I nearly missed, if not for an issue I’ll bring up later in the level design section) also needs a buff. It’s got a low fire rate, low damage, and poor accuracy. You should never have more than one of these weaknesses unless you massively buff the remaining factor. It’s also using the default HL2 weaponscript, so it has 18 rounds per magazine instead of the 17 of the original game (which can be made to be lower, so long as the damage is boosted slightly past the currently needed one to offset the lowered amount of rounds)
- The shotgun has 4 shells, because I don’t know why. Really, this decision baffles me. It’s not more realistic, it’s not better for the gameplay, it’s just kind of there.
- Zombie cops (which, let’s be honest, are just reskinned metrocops currently) use the default HL2 firing behavior, making them super deadly because you have low health when you encounter them due to the crowbar and lack of pickups along the way, which also makes the pistol even more agravating because I have the same gun why can’t I fire that fast aaaaaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh.
- The flashlight has been disabled. In an action-horror game, with dark environments, the flashlight has been disabled. Why. Would. You. Do. This? Are you guys sadists?
Sound. Not really much to say here.
- Most of the sounds in the mod are pulled directly from They Hunger. I can see why, but I’m a bit disappointed. The TH sounds are low quality due to Goldsource engine limits, and I would have really liked to hear new VAs try their take at the classic zombie sounds.
- The shotgun is using the stock HL2 sounds. Nothing really wrong with this, but it’d be nice to have a new one that’s a bit more powerful sounding.
- SMG sound. I’ve already read that it’s probably going to be addressed, so that’s good.
Level Design. This is the big one.
- I found a lot of inconsistencies with small crates being breakable, unbreakable, physics props, static, all while looking identical to one another. Please don’t do this.
- Cross-hole doors are brush-based. As a result they seem a bit too thick and blocky. Please replace them.
- The church is really small, missing rooms, and there’s no way to get into the bell-tower. The revised zombie intro was neat, but I still prefer the original.
- The water pumping station. I assume this was meant to replace the bridge area, but it’s quite small, cramped, and you’ve obviously clipped off the area we need to go back to after we get there. On further inspection I’ve discovered that you wanted us to jump between the pipe’s supports, but since you clipped off the pipe so we couldn’t jump on it, and the area didn’t have the side sections or cliffside from the original, I just noclipped past it on my first playthrough because I had gotten stuck and assumed there was some kind of puzzle I either wasn’t getting or had failed to trigger.
- Most level transitions are teleports, rather than seamless transitions. I’m going to give the benefit of a doubt and assume this is because the levels are still WIP
- I’m also going to blame WIP for why sequences and areas like the drainage tunnels, secondary church area, outhouse man, and falling guy in Devil’s Rift are missing or out of order.
- In most areas with displacements I find myself having issues traversing the terrain. Most notably, in the swamp I kept either getting caught on stuff, or having the physics system force-jump me onto floating debris, and in Devil’s Rift I kept slipping and falling off cliff faces and to my death. I’m one of the, like, 5 people who don’t have an immense hatred towards the first-person platforming in Xen, so I’m sure I’m not going to be the only player who has issues with this.
- The train sequence sucks. No high speed choo-choo.
(I realize this is most likely due to HL2’s codebase not having a func_train_controls entity, but please make the train have a higher speed to compensate.) - Some objects, such as fuseboxes you have to interact with, aren’t obviously usable, and look identical to objects just there for set dressing. It took me 2 trips between the train and the control room to realize how to open the gate to continue. Like with the crates above, consistency is needed.
Graphics. Not a whole lot to say about this either.
- The viewmodel hands look like zombie hands. The player character either needs to run his hands under a faucet, or get some driving gloves like in the original.
- While the environments are a step up from They Hunger, they’re still quite blocky and lacking in detail, and I feel like you guys can do better than that.
Okay, there’s the negatives. Now for the positives!
- The pistol model is nice, and while the fire animation is too slow (see gameplay balance, above) I really like the attention to detail with the hammer.
- SMG model is nice as well
- The car is nice
- As are most environment textures
- I don’t know if it’s necessary for gameplay (either in the current build of the mod or in general), and I almost missed it, but the gasmask is a neat idea.
- The swamp was super atmospheric, and I liked the little buildings built into the cliffsides there and such.
- It’s more They Hunger, which I have been craving for oh so long.
The mod still has a ways to go, but with a bit of care taken to fix these issues and refine the good parts, I think this can be a really good remake that keeps the spirit of the original alive…and eating.
version 1.2 is out. Return of the flashlight 
In addition to all that Jeff said, a few more issues that popped out to me:
Sense of Space[/size]
It almost feels like they kept the scale of the original GoldSrc version in places, it felt super claustrophobic in spots. In addition, a lot of things just didn’t make logical sense.
Why is there a boat fuse box panel hanging in a catacombs?
Why is there a ladder in a furnace meant for cremation?
What church is only accessible through multiple winding tunnels that are interspersed with graveyards? (I realize some of these are from the original, but in the more visually capable Source they really stick out like sore thumbs.)
The water in the swamp was also ridiculously clear, to the point that it was easier to see while under the water rather than above it.
Sounds[/size]
Besides many of the lower quality ones from the original They Hunger, some of the sounds were just… odd. A few levels had ambiance that I can only describe as a loop of dogs constantly barking, with a man every so often yelling at them to shut up.
The zombie cops also completely just used the Civil Protection lines.
Custom Assets[/size]
Or in many cases, the lack thereof. But besides many things that should be models, many of the models were just… problematic. For starters, the zombies and headcrab. Now some of the zombie models were pretty good, but others… one zombie in particular has concrete organs and a suit made out of laminated burlap. And the headcrab is, well, just that, a headcrab with a sorta antlion guts overlay, whereas in the original they were more like severed heads with spider legs.
Some gravestones were brush based when there’s some pretty good models that could’ve been used already in Half-Life 2. As well, the ammos, health vial, and barnacle all used their models straight from HL2, as well as at one point one of the Russian cars from HL2 showed up, which just didn’t fit in at all.
As well, other than some red coloring (that missed some things like the AUX power), the HUD was totally unedited from that of HL2, so things like the unused Suit and SMG grenades still showed up, as well as the icons for the default HL2 weapons. Speaking of…
All of the weapon models were taken from GameBanana,and while they certainly gave proper credit at the end, (Some of the credits appear to be wrong) I don’t know that they were actually given permission, and even if they were, they should really, really try to make their own, otherwise it just feels half-assed.
Vehicles[/size]
The train’s speed was certainly annoying, but not as annoying as the fact that at one point I fell off, was unable to jump back up into it until I did manage and was promptly crushed by it from the inside. Besides that, a lot of the track turns were very poorly laid, and the train even clipped into the world on some turns. The scripted car at the beginning suffered similarly, and they could really stand to spring for some damaged versions of the starter car/police car. Oh right, and give the train some proper controls, not just a red board.
All that said, they did do some spots really, really right. Portions of the train tunnel, Devil’s Rift, and a few others were just gorgeous. While it still needs a lot of polish, this really has potential, and I hope they keep it up.
Hey guys, I’m a former dev on They Hunger Again who has since left the project entirely. My contribution was somewhat small, I only did the first map after you swim up from the car crash, until you exit to the outside for the first time through the cross-door.
Let me be the first to say, I asked multiple times for the lead devs to take some time, let us expand and polish everything up before release, re-add cut areas, and generally work out the kinks.
As you can probably tell, this did not happen. I was told multiple times that ‘everything will be fine as is, don’t worry about it and just let what happens happen’. I myself was working on a total remake of They Hunger before I was recruited to this one, and I had plans to expand and bring everything up to Source standards, à la Black Mesa. However, this mod had much more progress (or so I initially thought) and I gave up my work to join this team.
I will clarify, I don’t mean to trash talk this mod or anyone associated with it; I’m still proud of most of the work we did, and I think the good points of this mod shine. Unfortunately, the bad parts definitely tarnish what’s good about it.
I have doubts that the project will continue any further, never mind doing Chapters 2 and 3. I sincerely apologize to anyone who was let down by THA, but I think this can definitely be a learning experience for the team, and I believe we’ll go on to bigger, better things in the future.
Best of regards.
I was watching this mod for a long time. It started as an unusual reply on Mapcore’s thread about They Hunger Lost Souls. I was hoping for a real TH remake, like with more immersive environment, high-skilled usage of Source itself and remade sounds, guns and all! I pictured it in my head as something Lost Souls had offered in those screenshots and when I got to see the snippets from the THA, I was super hyped. The worries started when it was announced to be “shorter” than the original. I thought that if they plan to release this quickly, some changes in terms of length might be done, but I’ve never thought for a second that the devs would cut out as much of the original as possible! I don’t want to trash talk too, but for me, this mod is really fine if you don’t look at it as a They Hunger Remake, more of a Reimagination or something. I have worries about its future too, simply because the work put in the mod itself is somekind of underestimated. Yeah, it was average, but hell, it has its own good sides. The mod at the beginning feels great, the catacombs and the first church area are almost just like the original, but after that it feels like " Oh damn! We need to speed up the development! ", which means cutting out some of the most familiar places like drainage, secondary church area and such. The swamp is just freaking great! Too bad it’s claustrophobical and does not resemble the old one. It would be awesome if they would add those areas again in an update or something, but that’s most likely not going to happen.