Half-Life: Before (Half-Life)

I recommend playing this mod. It is very small - there are only two cards in it - so it won't take much time (half an hour maximum). I warn you right away that the first card does not shine with anything outstanding, although it cannot be called bad, and it has a couple of chips. But, Oh My Gordon Freeman, how I laughed when the second map was loaded, that was a takeaway !! 11 By April 1, the mod is just right: D I strongly do not recommend watching my screenshots (still don’t master - there are more than two hundred of them!), and read everything I hid in the spoilers, too. It's not difficult to play, so I recommend that experienced players turn on the hard right away.

The mod can be downloaded from the moddb:
www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-before
(if the moddb writes something about members only, close the window, click Download and immediately click on the "try another mirror" link, and then choose any server you like)
For a mod with gameplay for half an hour from two cards, it weighs a lot, but the author, fortunately, was aware of this and posted the "lite" -version on the moddb (although unpacked it takes a little less, 40+ mb vs 60+).
In addition, the mod - SUDDENLY - is available through Steam:
store.steampowered.com/app/261980/ A

mod based on Spirit, it doesn't seem to work for WON-ku (the author took care of creating a splash picture for the Wonka, on which he wrote a warning about the need for a version 1.1.1.1 - as far as I understand, this is the version number of Steam's hl.exe).

Hint for those stuck on the first map
If you get stuck and don't know where to go, take a close look around you and look for a crate. In two places of the first map, you just need to move the pushable box in order to climb higher.
Well, there is also an explosive box - of course, it needs to be blown up so that you can return.

Plot and stuff
Plot? Who cares about this anyway ?? 77 !! 11 ...
...
What, do you care? What about spoilers?
Spoilers here
Oddly enough, despite its tiny size, the mod has some kind of plot. The plot is written right on the picture in the game menu - how convenient! Although I didn't quite understand how this all relates to the events in the game itself, but oh well. Judging by the pictures scattered across the first map, the xenov creatures are just the result of genetic experiments. Each of them is affectionately called genmods, and they are all assigned a sequential number. Rave? Rave. With the plot of the CL does not at all correlate in any way. However, when I played the mod, I basically did not have the feeling that I was playing in the CL, everything was too different. MB, partly because I'm not used to HD-pack (and indeed some models in it I don't like, these alient grunts, for example, I don't take seriously at all), partly because of other models and sounds. In addition, it is unusual to see rain in a half: ) The effect of rain, by the way, is not bad, only it sucks that it goes indoors ... The map also does not look like anything that we saw in CL, although, in principle, the ship on which the action takes place evokes thoughts about Borealis (Borea? damn, forgot how to do it). Plus the music that plays in the quake style throughout the game. The author realized this moment in an interesting way, the music changes as the player progresses. Another interesting trick: when a player grabs or drags a box, a trigger goes off and enemies appear. Quite unexpectedly it turns out, it seems that he seems to have already been running around, got everyone wet everywhere, but here is such a surprise :) evokes thoughts of Borealis (Borea? damn, I forgot how to do it right). Plus the music that plays in the quake style throughout the game. The author realized this moment in an interesting way, the music changes as the player progresses. Another interesting trick: when a player grabs or drags a box, a trigger goes off and enemies appear. Quite unexpectedly it turns out, it seems that he seems to have already been running around, got everyone wet everywhere, but here is such a surprise :) evokes thoughts of Borealis (Borea? damn, I forgot how to do it right). Plus the music that plays in the quake style throughout the game. The author realized this moment in an interesting way, the music changes as the player progresses. Another interesting trick: when a player grabs or drags a box, a trigger goes off and enemies appear. Quite unexpectedly it turns out, it seems that he seems to have already been running around, got everyone wet everywhere, but here is such a surprise :)

Bugs
In the readme, the author pointed out as many as five bugs (isn't it too much for a mod of two cards?), But I caught only one of them: controllers do not fall to the ground.
Nevertheless, just in case, I would advise you to save before jumping into the HOLE.

Technical details and other spread of thought along the tree
Mod includes more than two hundred files (including a wadnik with 200+ textures), with a total weight of more than 60 meters, most of them are occupied by models (120 pieces for 20+ MB), sound and music in MP3 format (15 Mb), as well as a wadnik with textures (9+ Mb), are not included in the texture maps. The mod also contains custom skies and sprites.
The models are mostly torn from the HD pack (by the way, I suddenly discovered that the HDP that I have and the current HDP in Steam are different: for example, the Gmen model has changed, and the new one is worse), but there are also a bunch of new ones, all sorts of variations and just reskins. I have a suspicion that not all of them are used in fashion. For example, what for is there a monstrous 1676-polygonal snark.mdl model with a 512x512 texture, which I have not seen in fashion? The model, by the way, is suspiciously familiar ... I have this in the HD-pack for HLS.
There is also a high-poly (3k +) model of Gordon, beautiful, but with a flaw - a stripe traces Gordon's face and neck. The model seems to be noticeable (but not clearly visible) at the end of the game (at the beginning, and in thirdperson, the standard player.mdl is used, although gordon.mdl seems to have all the animations).
In the game cache that I downloaded, in this folder there were extra copies of models - all belong to 9mmhandgun: p_model, v_model and w_model - all three had copies, no different from the originals (they are called that, "* _9mmhandgun - copy .mdl "). For some reason, in the resource background folder, there is an upscaled version of the standard CL backup (files 1280_ *), which is also not used, so you can also remove it. And in the sprites folder there is a sprites subdirectory that contains copies of almost all the sprites. Thus, the mod can be lightened by more than five meters, simply by destroying all these meaningless and useless copies. And I have not yet remembered about saving in the SAVE folder - well, finally, imagine if the CL was bundled with a save in the middle of the game. Or immediately to the closing credits.

The set of models generally raises questions. The proximity, in general, of low-poly HDP models with monstrous pistol and crossbow models (at 4k + polygons each) cannot be justified. Familiarity with turrets (sentry.mdl) in fashion is completely puzzling - why do they have such a strange texture? The turret.mdl model seems to be still normal, but it is displayed somehow incorrectly in the game (though I played Software, mb, some glitch of it).
In addition, at least some (if not most) of the "new" models and other content, obviously, was not made by the author of the mod, but this cannot be understood from the short readme (only the authors of the music of one model are clearly indicated there, some sounds and textures - again, it is not clear, all or only parts, all the rest are listed in bulk in "special thanks", although the names of the files can be understood, for example, that some of the models and sounds were made by BuZZeR). In addition, I guessed that the sprite nm_rain2.spr was borrowed from They Hunger (only there it is called nm_rain.spr). For some reason, sprites contain a bunch of clearly developer sprites like multimanager.spr, trigger.spr and pathcorner.spr. The names of some textures in the wadnik also sound not in favor of the author: such meaningful names as 1, 3, 8, 29 and especially, 2332 (which suspiciously - down to the last pixel - resembles texture "3") plunge into the horror of any more or less experienced mapper. Is he very comfortable with such names ??! It is also depressing that the author did not bother to compile materials.txt, which is why non-standard textures sound the same and, for example, beating a box, you will not hear the characteristic crackle of wood (and very strange damage decals appear on the box ... reminiscent of those for glass).

You may ask: what is it all about? Who in our time of terabyte hard drives is worried about the extra ten or two files for a couple of megabytes, and why so focus on this?
It's clear that everyone messes up. Some are young, some are stupid, and some are just tired. In the usual case, this is all true and should be treated with understanding ... but Half-Life: Before is not an ordinary mod. If you go to the author's page, you will see that he positions himself as a "professional" who has worked in the gaming industry for about five years. As a professional, moreover, who made his way to Steam Greenlight, he should set an example for all newbies and ordinary amateurs. As a professional, he should be in the habit of carefully checking and preparing his work before submitting. And, of course, he must understand that he should be careful when using other people's materials in his work.
It is all the more strange to see such a low quality of the release. Just think: a mod of two cards - in which there is almost more someone else's content than the original, plus a bunch of useless junk and garbage, bugs and shortcomings - is uploaded to Steam! In this situation, it is, rather, a pebble not so much in the author's garden (although, if I were in his place, I would have thought three times before sending such a rather mediocre - albeit witty - and besides, a tiny mod in Greenlight), as the Steam itself ... This definitely indicates: something has rotted in the kingdom of Valva ...
I think many will agree with me that if something lies in Steam, then we expect that it is a really high-quality - it does not matter, single-player or multiplayer - mod, developed by an experienced and close-knit team practically from scratch, which has and actively uses almost exclusively its own , unique content. Even if not at the level of Cry of Fear or Paranoia, but at least at the level of They Hunger, Half-Quake or even Azure Sheep. Otherwise, Steam will have to turn into a moddb mirror, and the Valves will be forced to host all the mods on their own (however, I will not say that I am against: D at least some benefit from their digital dictatorship system!).

It is worth noting that in the lite version there is practically no garbage (but there is no music and HDP), but in Steam you have no choice which version to download.

How I found this mod
I wanted to make myself a fresh pirate, climbed onto KSmania to download the game cache and was very surprised to find among the official goodness a mod called Half-Life: Before. It turned out even funnier that this is a mod from the ru̶s̶s̶i ik̶o̶g̶o̶ Ukrainian mapper under the nickname Gua (that's why the mod files are full of Russian and Ukrainian names (td_kirzachi.mdl :)). I even had his page on cs-mapping.com.ua in my bookmarks, but now it doesn't work for some reason, HZ WTF. Prior to that, Gua's mod had a few cards for counter, the Vampire Slayer mod, and even a single map for They Hunger - th_escape. Unfortunately, from his website you can download only the controv mappack, the rest of the links are dead, nevertheless, vs_hangar can be found on gamembanan, and I found vs_blairwitch at some Latin American forum (IChSH, dedicated to half, counter and, suddenly, GTA) on the outskirts of the Internet, as part of a mappack. MB, you will find a better source.
As for the map for They Hunger, I unexpectedly found a Russian site, the author of which posted several single-coil maps for this mod (apparently, previously downloaded by him from the now deceased City17.ru), which I considered lost, including, and Escape:
hl-faction.ru/mods.php
I seem to have played some of them, but I don't remember much, in any case, it will be interesting to look at them.

Interesting fact
In fact, not two, but three cards are in fashion, but the last one is non-gameplay. A camera just flies along it and shows the nicknames of people who may have helped the author make the mod or simply borrowed their content. Very reminiscent of the greetings of demosceneurs, I liked it:
http://pix.playground.ru/tag/gameend/
But what surprised me is that this map is a clear descendant of the aew_lab map, which is part of the rather old mod amckerns Explosion Wars. The mod is interesting in that it was created in nine hours (IChSH, it also has only two cards). That's all there is to this mod. Well, ok, also aew_lab - in principle, not bad in design map, but small. How, apart from maps, this mod differs from the usual CL, I still do not understand.
As I understand it from the phrase:
"The mod, of course is built around DaveJ open source, so I give massive credits to him for aEW version 1, though a full retexture has been done to aew_out"
Both maps of the mod were created by DaveJ and published as (or together with) source codes, possibly as part of some SDK prepared and published by him. Unfortunately, I did not find more detailed information, although I know for sure that DaveJ published ETC and ETC2 in the form of source maps and code (only the second had its own code) - perhaps aew_lab, aew_out and gameend originate from them. Santa Barbara.
Only, unlike amckern'a, Gua did not give "massive credits".
In general, it's even funny: amckern's mod also consists almost entirely (even to a greater extent) of someone else's content. The same player models were taken from Sven Coop. The author even "made" bots, taking rhobot as a basis and, possibly, somehow modifying them (but again,
And what is most interesting - this mod also received some fame. As the author writes:
"aEW Has been on the PC Gamer UK Cover DVD Issue 130
A small review was made, by the cover editor, and can be read in the 130 Issue".
Hmm, 2003-2013, modders keep their traditions.

And yet, despite the devastating review I got, the mod still made me laugh as hell, and I really recommend going all the way. Perhaps this is just the case when a short duration is a plus, not a minus.

Screenshots
Still, I advise you to play first.
First card
Second card
Third card
All