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TECH DEMO - Version 1.0

Half-Life Arrangement Tech Demo (Ver 1.0)


· Total Half-life conversion.
· Great singleplayer campaign, with complex story involving lots of characters and locations.
· Realistic and fun gameplay.
· Drastically improved AI.
· Unlockable content.
· Player profiles.
· Dynamic sound tracks.
· Bump and specular mapping, realistic flashlight and lighting.
· Post-processing effects.
· Tons of weapons & items with different dynamic customization and addons.
· Non lethal weapons and NPC surrendering system.
· Rainbows: An operative system which allows the player to interact with computers in a way never presented on game's history. Take a look here.
· Easy to customize game options.
· Particle systems.
· Stealth mode (you can hide in shadows)
· Character growth: you can earn experience points which improves your character's skills.
· Professional level designers, programmers, composers and voice actors cooperates in the project.
· Totally new HUD which disappears dynamically and features overlays (blood splatters, raindrops and more)
· Realistic and immersive camera movement.
· Weather effects.
· LOOT system with item drops, included rare weapon skins you can customize in-game, on the fly.
· Custom soundtracks, featuring professional musicians as Rich Douglas and Marcelo Fernandez:

Enjoyed the music? Click here and here to download them!


Development stopped as a Half-Life mod. Considering working on a full game, on Unity, in the future.

Half-Life mod previously developed by:

Claudio 'SysOp' Ficara, RED_NED, Alex "HAWK" Bakanov, Joël "Shepard" Troch, Killer_Zeta, FoxTrop, with help from a dozen of collaborators over the forums :)

We wish to thank Half-Life Creations for inconditional support and ARRANGEMENT's community for always being there to help!

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arrangement logo black

I really hate these kinds of projects that look promising, then the main developer disappears from earth, the project gets caned then everyone's sad.

Then it happened to me.

To be completely honest, I was a bit embarrassed to say what I've been trying to say, after such a long time. The more time it passed, the worse it got. I was planning to do a video, to have something substantial to show those who are still interested, but never got the time to do it. So, here's a few words about the whole thing.

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So, what happened?

Back in 2014-2015, the project had most of the features I wanted to put in. Too many to count, but essential, nonetheless. However, the source code was a mixed bag of old legacy code, old hard-coded stuff and lots of buggy features. Was unstable. So, Alex joined the team and started from scratch.
That gave impressive results. Not only we had amazing visual features, but also some features were re-worked (such as the weapon system). At the same time Joel got amazing coding skills and created probably the best music system I've seen so far.
However, most of the gameplay features were missing. These missing components led to these so-called "soft locks". For example, in the game we had computers. Very usable computers. These weren't coded in, so the player wasn't able to progress forward.
So, in one hand, a buggy code base, in the other, a stable proper code base, with missing features. There was no way to win. There were multiple attempts to jump start the project again with no real success.

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There was a "Coming soon" teased, what about it?

That was the plan, at the moment. I honestly thought most of the missing features could be added back in in time, but they were too many. And at the same time, I had to focus on finishing the levels, and managing the whole project at the same time. It was too much to handle, but I thought it was possible. I was used to being under a heavy workload and we were having good results.
However, when the project reached a higher point, in quality terms, all the other components needed to match that up, otherwise there would be huge discrepancies. For example: we had implemented a new texturing system, to allow higher definition. Cool, so we use new textures for this new section. We do fancy bump mapped, super hi-res fancy weapon textures. No problem. But what about all previous levels? What about all the other models/props? I thought "I'll get them done when they need to be done". So now, re-texturing pretty much the whole game became another thing to do.

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I'm new here, what is this project all about?

ARRANGEMENT started as a Half-Life mod (formerly known as ARRANGE MODE). Is a tactical FPS shooter, heavily focused on combat and story. A mixture of Max Payne, Swat, FEAR 1, No One Lives Forever, Splinter Cell games.

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Are you working on other projects?

For those who are new, I started some version of this project when I was 16. I'm 35 now and I spent all my years working on games/applications for different platforms. While I did learn lots of things, finishing a project is a skill in itself. So, I decreased my scope a lot, and focused on things I can actually finish. While I worked on a bunch of small personal projects, most of my time was spent on contract work to pay the bills. These projects were done using other engines, such as Unity, which allows creators to cook up quality projects in no time. Unity is the game engine we would use for the revival of this project.

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Here's a small picture of what I've been doing over the years:

firefox 30FGJNnATX

What's next, then?

I'm planning to release the unfinished versions of the project, which just survived a hard disk failure (in your face, entropy). These will contain features not present in the latest release. Would be interesting to toy around. Don't expect a quality release, but most it will work out just fine. A more like "what it could have been if everything was put together".

Project is not cancelled and we wish for it to see the light, as there wasn't a game like this and we still have something to say. I got very experienced in Unity, and as a developer in general, so that's a huge plus.

As for the future, I would like to tackle this project on, but in a proper way. Hiring people and working full time on this. This will not happen, unless there's funding, via crowdfunding or publishing (but due the nature of some platforms, it must be a commercial project). Both of these options are viable nowadays, times have changed.

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Closing words

Thanks for joining me on this ride and sorry we couldn't deliver this as a Half-Life mod. I tried. I really really tried for more than a decade. The community, the skills and the friends are the best things I got from it.

In a way I failed, in the other, I got things I never expected and couldn't be more grateful for those. I'll always remember this period of my life as the most exciting one. Oh boy, it was a journey.

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TL;DR:

Project is not cancelled, just can't be continued over GoldSrc.

All unfinished and unreleased versions will be uploaded soon. Uploading 2013 Source Code next.

  • A full game, on Unity is a viable option. We might go via crowdfunding or via publisher, in the future, but no concrete plans at the moment. We really really want to get it done, regardless.

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Introducing SSAO+ and LOOT system

Introducing SSAO+ and LOOT system

News 12 comments

Since a couple of weeks before, we been teasing you with something called SSAO. What exactly is that, and why is so important? Grab a cup of tea, big...

Introducing HDR, weapon skins & gore system

Introducing HDR, weapon skins & gore system

News 19 comments

For those that still have doubts that GldSRC is not up for today standards, a couple of pictures to change their minds. Plus more info about some un-seen...

Mod of the Year 2015 - Story teaser

Mod of the Year 2015 - Story teaser

News 11 comments

Countdown is over! MOTY awards just started and here's our trailer for it.

Technical feats and thank you!

Technical feats and thank you!

News 12 comments

As many of you did see in a previous update, we are excited to share a few technical improvements we did the last couple of weeks. Cool pictures in. Take...

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ARRANGEMENT 2008-2013 Demo

ARRANGEMENT 2008-2013 Demo

Demo 7 comments

A humble, far from perfect version that stripped HL content but had most the features the project needed. Is a better balanced version overall.

ARRANGEMENT 2004-2008 Demo

ARRANGEMENT 2004-2008 Demo

Demo 19 comments

A version that mixed the tactical game we wanted to make, with stuff from Half-Life universe.

Tech Demo - Patch #1 (crash hotfix)

Tech Demo - Patch #1 (crash hotfix)

Patch 7 comments

Hotfix for the tech demo that should fix the crash. Read the full description for installation instructions.

ARRANGEMENT - Tech Demo (Ver 1.0)

ARRANGEMENT - Tech Demo (Ver 1.0)

Demo 46 comments

Not the full release of the game! Today we bring you this small tech demo, so you can see first hand a glimpse of what AM would contain. Idea for this...

Extra Original Sound Tracks (by Marcelo Fernandez)

Extra Original Sound Tracks (by Marcelo Fernandez)

Music

Original sound tracks made exclusively for ARRANGEMENT. By Marcelo Fernandez - www.marcelofernandezmusic.com Enjoy!

Complete OST + Bonus songs (Rich Douglas)

Complete OST + Bonus songs (Rich Douglas)

Music 12 comments

Rich Douglas is an independent composer and audio technician focused on providing unique music and sound effects for video games, film, and television.

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 1,656)
borealias
borealias - - 12 comments

oye, ¿y el código fuente de esta versión? NO queremos el código de la build de Unity, solo la versión de Goldsrc

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shepard62fr Creator
shepard62fr - - 491 comments

Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update Notice

Running the 2013 tech demo (and probably older) version on the newly released Half-Life 25th anniversary update will crash Arrangement when starting a map.

This was "expected" due to all the technical changes Arrangement made. For curious people that want to run Arrangement, please switch your Half-Life installation to the "steam_legacy" beta branch.

Reply Good karma+2 votes
Vakoda
Vakoda - - 20 comments

It's sad that this happened, but all these phrases about "inactive development" and "project is not canceled" are just a play on words. It is better to say that POSSIBLY someday you will come back to the project on another engine and that's all. The project is dead and that's it, don't give people unnecessary hope for nothing. Maybe it sounds rude, but I don't like such self-deception and others too.

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Shadow_864
Shadow_864 - - 367 comments

A revolutionary mod, but it's a pity that it died
And they make this mod on the Unity engine
This time it's not mod, but it's a separate independent game
I wonder ... Why not Xash3D?

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borealias
borealias - - 12 comments

Xash3d has serious legal problems with stole code from darkplace, source 2004, HLSDK, etc...

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Нарцис
Нарцис - - 2 comments

Why on unity? Why not xash3d?

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shepard62fr Creator
shepard62fr - - 491 comments

Many reasons: more freedom, modern platform (the "core" of Xash is still Quake), being able to see the changes live in the editor rather than waiting 5/10/15 minutes for obsolete tools to compile.

I worked with Xash before, it's not a "magic fix" for projects like Arrangement.

Reply Good karma+1 vote
sainthappyfaces
sainthappyfaces - - 4 comments

Hey! I checked out this mod years ago, I'm very happy to hear it's going to continue, and not one bit upset it's going to be through a different engine.

Good luck, brother!

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SpazJR61
SpazJR61 - - 411 comments

Ah yes
Typical cool half-life mod being stuck on development hell for way too long (17 years, dude, y'all surpassed duke nukem forever's development time)

Not surprised to see it's being cancelled
because there's a lot of cool Half-Life mods either put to indefinite hiatus or straight up cancelled, this one being the latter

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SysOp. Creator
SysOp. - - 1,039 comments

Well, isn't like we have nothing to show for it. There's actually a few finished missions and the like.

But also, the landscape of mods and development in general has changed. We could have released a first chapter, and could have used any of the many different ways to back a project (patreon, kickstarter, etc), but these tools weren't available for us at the time.

And also... it was a project we made in our spare time, with no resources, in our tiny garages. Not fair to compare it to AAA productions.

Wish everyone a happy new year!

Reply Good karma+3 votes
SpazJR61
SpazJR61 - - 411 comments

I'm just saying how this mod stuck on development hell for way too long.
And I'm tired of people constantly mistaking comparing one part as comparing the entire thing.

Also, I'm not trying to insult anybody else, if it's a bit rude, sorry for that.
I know the GoldSource's limitations, so that's understandable why the mod was cancelled.

Reply Good karma Bad karma+1 vote
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