HALF LIFE 2 CUSTOM MAP MOD
HALF LIFE 2 CUSTOM MAP MODS

I liked it so hopped on board there and helped out.' I started doing some PhP stuff for the website and then got into the programing side a little more as the years progressed. I got on the team and the first level I made was Osprey Attack. 'I came across Sven Co-op and got involved with making levels and I tried to make some weird stuff. 'Basically I started as one of those annoying players in the forums and I think I might have been 12 or 13 years old back then,' says McDermott. He discovered Sven Co-op and quickly noticed that, even within the scope of its first year, it was fast evolving - breaking from the original conceit of simply adding co-op play to Half-Life, and increasingly becoming a means for modders to throw overpowered weapons, gaggles of monsters and all sorts of unorthodox items and features into the hallowed grounds of the Black Mesa research facility.

HALF LIFE 2 CUSTOM MAP MODS

A self-confessed Half-Life fanatic, McDermott dived into the game's modding scene by way of popular mods such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic. One player who showed a particular interest in its early years was Dave McDermott. Familiar foes from Half-Life return, however the difficulty has been increased to suit co-op play. Besides the Half-Life campaign, the game's levels comprise missions that are generally separate from one another.

HALF LIFE 2 CUSTOM MAP MOD

It clinched Mod of the Week on the IGN-owned Planet Half-Life website, and was featured in a number of specialist magazines such as PC Gamer and PC Zone. By December 1999, an established but ever-burgeoning Half-Life modding community had formed and Sven Co-op had earned its place at the heart of it.

On May 2 of that year, Sven Co-op, as that package became known, launched its first version 1.0, and although Fearon admits he didn't intend his mod to reach anyone beyond his immediate circle of online friends and acquaintances, as more and more servers cropped up, more and more mappers and modders appeared to take note. From there, it sort of became a community-driven thing.' I couldn't work out a good way to have them help with the level itself, so I just suggested everyone submit their own levels that I'd then submit with the package. 'Folk started asking how they could help with it. 'People were far more interested than I thought they'd be,' he says. Fearon - who went by the online pseudonym Sven Viking - designed his first cooperative Half-Life map and published it on his site. And so, with a scant understanding of coding by way of crude experimentation in his youth, he set about changing that. Much to Fearon's frustration, Half-Life didn't support cooperative play by default. 'I loved playing local coops like Rainbow Island on arcade machines when they were still around.' 'I'd always been interested in coop games,' he tells me. In early 1999, when Y2K threatened the world and Fatboy Slim's Praise You topped the UK singles chart, Fearon ran a fansite named Atomic Half-Life dedicated to Valve's then newly released sci-fi shooter. It took Dan Fearon 17 years to get his game on Steam.

Half life 2 custom map