Dystopia Mod Released for HL2

fistfullast33l writes "Dystopia, a Matrix meets TRON mod for Half Life 2, has finally been released to the public today. This has been one of the more beautiful and original mods under development for HL2 so far. Files are available all over the place but check out their homepage for more details." From the article: "After 9 long months of heavy development and another year of planning and designing before that, it has been a long and challenging road to this point. We're extremely excited to let the public see what we've been so busy working on all this time and hope that you enjoy it as much as we do. This demo version is limited to only 1 map; Vaccine, but features all of our high powered weapons and extensive range of implants."

Comments

Amazing

[Satertek]

This mod is amazing. The production values are on par with most (and above many) retail games. Looking forward to its full release.

Re:Amazing

[ZeroPost]

I'll second that. Definitely worth a download, as it's the best third party mod out for HL2 now. (Although there isn't much competition...)

This is amazing

[Mukaikubo]

I've been playing this mod for most of the night, and I have to say I'm absolutely loving it. The balance on the map's a little off, but it's very fun on either side.

Heavy with minigun = doom

This may be worth noting.

[Elyscape]

While noted on the website, the /. post neglected to mention that this is merely a demo. I do not mean to deprecate the Dystopia team's work in any way, but people should bear in mind that this is not yet the finished product.

Re:This may be worth noting.

[moonbender]

The developers say:

Dystopia will always be free if you're running it on top of HL2.

We've called our first release a demo because we wanted people to realise that we've got a far more polished and stable release than a normal mod beta. Dystopia has been in a closed beta for 6 months now, and the demo release is being released to the public to let everyone get a taste of Dystopia.

A cyberpunk game?

[The Evil Couch]

Sign me up!

While this game doesn't look as deep as I'd like to see from a cyberpunk setting, the graphics are really well done and it seems as though they've put a great deal of work into getting the one map that they have really well set up. It looks to have a fair amount of depth, as far as team-based FPSes go.

The fact that they actually have deckers and allow for the deckers to be put to good use in cyberspace makes for a really great concept.

I don't know why the article summary references the Matrix. Shadowrun and other cyberpunk sources are clearly much bigger influences on the development team. Their portrayal of cyberspace does look a lot like TRON 2.0, though.

MP ONLY

[dbhankins]

So that those who prefer SP games don't get their hopes up,

IT'S MULTIPLAYER ONLY

Not that that little nugget's on the front page or the Slashdot article summary... at least it's on the About page near the top.

Re:MP ONLY

[Ford Prefect]

So that those who prefer SP games don't get their hopes up,

IT'S MULTIPLAYER ONLY

Of course, if you want some single-player HL2, there's always my episodic MINERVA (less cryptic site), which had its first chapter released just over a week ago.

And yes, the first map is a bit of a homage to Halo's Silent Cartographer (it was originally nicknamed 'Flatulent Geographer' for a start), but they should all come with a liberally Marathon-flavoured dollop of mystery and intrigue, through text messages sent by an unnamed third party which guide, goad and cajole the player through the story.

Entirely different approach to Dystopia too: while they've got some immensely talented modellers, texture artists, sound engineers etc., I'm repurposing existing HL2 content for my own needs. There is some new music, but that was an unexpected gift from someone who really liked the look of the mod when first publicised by Valve themselves. Everything else is done by me - it's the closest you'll get to a one-man mod these days... ;-)

Still, there's half-an-hour to an hour of gameplay there, so do have fun!

Dystopia, my take.

[Kindgott]

I downloaded Dystopia around the hour it came out, and jumped into a server as soon as one with an empty slot became available. While it doesn't have a unique concept, it's a fairly decent mod, so far.

Releasing this as a demo may have been a mistake for the team, since there are a bit of "known issues" that cause the game to crash, or just slightly inconvenience people. In the day or so I've had it, the mod has crashed no less than eight times. Perhaps they should have called it a "public beta" instead. Another interesting issue I had come across was a server on which the doors on the level had more kills than the players.

Teamplay, like on most internet games, is hit or miss. When you've got a good team that's working together, it's awesome. When you have a bunch of idiots that are doing things like monopolizing the hack points without knowing what they're doing, it's infuriating.

The following forum post on their site, here, gives me an uneasy feeling. I don't think the game merits a retail release, and fear if they license the Source engine it will be doomed to failure instead of being an enjoyable mod for anyone to enjoy. Most people I've talked to on servers do not forsee Dystopia being worth buying if it is not released as a free modification.

Is Dystopia good? Yes. Can it be a lot of fun? Most certainly. But it has its problems which I hope can be hammered out between now and its "real" release.

Re:Dystopia, my take.

[Mukaikubo]

I'll buy it at retail if and only if the devteam can come up with an interesting single player campaign to go with the multi.

Demo or Beta

[Bios_Hakr]

So, a demo leads me to belive that the expect people to pay for a finished version. I can't really see myself paying for a mod for a game I already paid $60 for.

Better than NS

[AngryScot]

This is the best mod since natural selection was released on 2001. I think there could be a few changes to let you know whats going on in cyber space but other than that I love it :D

Re:They put effort into it to develop it..

[RedLaggedTeut]

The point is they put work into it, and they control the sources to their game, so yes, they can ask money for it.

Whether Valve asks them for a part of the money, or whether they make them release the game under the GPL is up to Valve. As you wrote yourself, its up to Valve, and Valve seems to be fine with it

By the way, you are still allowed to ask money for programs under the GPL, it is just harder to continue finding people who pay your price.

Re:Single player Mods?

[Quill_28]

Most of the mods are still being worked on.

Here is a list I have found

http://games.moddb.com/61/