News

For the past two weeks, support for a revolutionary new feature coming to Worms 2 was quietly being tested on Frag-Net.

Things appear to be stable, so without further ado, the latest Worms 2 Plus patch is here!

Now you can play on-line without port-forwarding. This means from now on, when you are playing Worms 2 with the latest Plus patch, you no longer have to play with settings in your network router - it’s hassle free!

New in v1.7:

• Revamped online multiplayer!
  • Play via TCP over a Worm2NAT Relay Server (thanks to fkWorm2NAT by Dawid8)
  • No port forwarding required
  • IP addresses are now hidden
  • Multiple computers with the same external IP can now play on the same server and games
• IPX is now used for LAN/VPN games only
• Added 9 terrains from Worms 1/Reinforcements/United (Ported to W:A by CarmineLynx, converted using > W2TerrainConvert by Dawid8)
• Installation automatically sets the recommended resolution for your screen
• Settings app improvements - new option for separate Cavern map resolution
• Improvements for Wine in online games
• Improved the “disabled LAN” image in the menu
• Updated menu text to reflect the purpose of IPX
• Fixed:
  • In-game crash that occurred when you zoomed in during an online game
  • Layout of the game statistics screen for high DPI users (Dawid8)
  • TOOLS level (from W:A) now has it’s background image (Dawid8)
  • Issue with limits of “Amount of fire” and “Override fuse” in Weapon editor
  • Minor typo present on game statistics screen
• Updated cnc-ddraw to v7.1
• Updated C++ Redistributables
• Optimised modules: fkMissions, fkSettings (Dawid8)

We’d like to express our thanks to Carlmundo, Plus contributors, and the Worms 2 community for giving us the opportunity to serve this game with a shiny new backend.

You can go to the game page for up-to-date instructions on how to get playing using the update.

We have been serving as Worms 2’s on-line service since the October 2024 announcement, with a basic master and an IPX proxy.

It joins a range of other games that support us with ability to host matches without accounts or other compromises, as stated in our mission goal.

If you’d like to reach out and see about making your game run on-top the Frag-Net on-line service, talk to us here.

Playback.dem

Welcome to to our Playback for February 2025. Lots of things to digest this time around.

Frag-Net Status Update

IA Quake Mod Pages Updated

We’ve updated our some pages on our Internet Archive gallery. We’ve incorporated some of the missing files that Jason Brownlee found us last year, plus some of our own findings. Here’s the rundown:

Ninja Quake has a brand new version archived (which includes the QuakeWorld port beta), and some various patches for Navy Seals. We also now have the Winterized Map Pack for Fantasy Quake. Plus we uploaded our dump of the Half-Life Mod Database website hl.loess.ru, which has been in a broken state on the web for a while. We scraped the site a few years back when it was still working. Includes v1 and v2 databases.

We’ve also started indexing Quake III Arena mods, of which we count 151 in our current local archive. In size it sits at 34 GB so far. Mod pages for these will go online on the Internet Archive over the course of this year.

Game News

Remembering Viktor Antonov

In what tragically feels like our monthly obituary coloumn, we were all shocked to have learned of the sudden passing of Viktor Antonov.

For those unaware, he was one of the leading visual desingers on games like Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, bringing us such instantly unforgetting locations like City 17.

While a game like Half-Life 2 had 30+ people make it what it was, it’s not an exaggeration that it would not have been the same game without Viktor.

Rest In Peace.

The Sims Re-Releases

Electronic Arts has been drip-feeding us their back-catalogue on Steam starting last year.

This time around it’s actually an updated release of the original and hugely influential The Sims and its sequel!

People were quick to find issues with the releases, but we can assure you they run fine on Linux/SteamOS and they have been quick to release patches for them. So definitely voice your feedback as they seem to be listening!

February 27, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.
February 20, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.
February 12, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.
February 6, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.
February 4, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.

For the best deal (at the time of this writing), you can grab the birthday bundle. Which includes the complete editions of The Sims, The Sims 2 as well as a throwback DLC + License for The Sims 4.

If you feel more like reading, there’s always some Sims reading material over on Don Hopkins his website, who worked on the original game. Or maybe you’re a fan of prototypes and developer tools.

Either way, good time to check out The Sims again. Sadly FreeSO doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. Bummer.

So far, Electronic Arts has handled themselves well this quarter, I wonder what will be next on…

Command & Conquer Extravaganza

What? A bunch of C&C games get Steam Workshop support? Yeah, and then they released the source code for Generals as well as Renegade under the GPL.

We’ve noticed that ever since development of the C&C Remaster began, that there has been a more direct collaboration between the Command & Conquer community and Electronic Arts, which has now developed into something that got updates like the above off the ground. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Thanks to Electronic Arts and the engineers from the Command & Conquer community who have captured their structure successfully!

Team Fortress 2 SDK releases

The community was surprised to find that Valve would open up the game-logic to Team Fortress 2. They generally don’t release the sources for their stand-out multiplayer titles.

So what does the ‘gaming sphere’ have to say, what are the reactions by some in the community? Some people think of this is Valve ‘giving up’ on the game, others see it as the community taking over. Nevertheless, now there’s little in the way of mods like TF2 Classic making it onto Steam.

Personally, having seen Valve update games regardless of age - we’re not pessimistic about the future of Team Fortress 2. Overall the majority of people seem to like this move very much.

Unfortunately, the TF2 source code license is still the same old Source SDK one. This means there are restrictions on what you can do with it and rely heavily on Valve’s consent ultimately unlike with the GPL. This is typical for Valve, they generally don’t make concessions. So don’t try to port it to ZDoom or expect a stern letter from Valve.

That said, they should probably release the game-logic source code for some of their older games. Then people can at least help themselves fix trivial bugs like these. Let’s go!

Dark Messiah Advanced SDK News

Fantastic news for fans of Arkane’s classic fantasy game were shared by KingDavidW on ModDB. The author of the Co-op and RTX projects for Dark Messiah mods reports positively of the partnership between them, Ubisoft and NVIDIA. The resulting project, the Advanced SDK seems to be quite the nifty piece of kit, hopefully enabling you to create new missions with ease.

They were given access to source files of the Xbox 360 version which included bonus missions and alternate levels, and they’ll make them available on PC for the first time.

There’s legitimate hope in the air that a proper source code release is on the table. We’ll keep our eyes peeled.

If this development stuff doesn’t interest you, check out the Dark Messiah Co-op mod to play with something new.

Monolith Gets Shut Down Unexpectedly

Monolith Productions, creators of the Lithtech engine and a bunch of classic games, has been shut down by their parent company Warner Bros. Their recent output has reportedly been stellar, which makes this news surprising if it wasn’t for the countless other cases in this industry just like it.

While Monolith has not necessarilary been the same group of people that brought us games like Blood, Shogo, No One Lives Forever, AvP 2, and the surprise-hit F.E.A.R., it’s still a tremendous shame, and a testiment to the legacy of the studio. It breaks our heart to see another classic developer succumb to the late-stage scammy market, but Caleb and Cate will always remain legends!

With projects like NBlood, Raze, we have open source Blood covered, but Monolith’s famous LithTech engine is in dire need of an open source revolution. There are a few projects that are seemingly actively being worked on.

Land safe on your feet, fellow colleagues of Monolith!

“I live… AGAIN!”

Map-Center Quake Retrojam 3 is OUT NOW

There’s a new map pack for us all to enjoy!

This is the third Retrojam by the community over at Map-Center, and this time around they have supplied us with 15 maps (and their sources!) plus start map.

You can find the official download over at ModDB or over at Quaddicted

If you haven’t played the previous entries, you can find MC Retrojam #2 and MC Retrojam #1 there as well.

New Atari Jaguar Releases

You heard that right, if you own a Atari Jaguar you can enjoy some new physical releases!

We’ve got a reprint of Atari Karts (1995), plus 2 new games by developer PhoBoz named SpideX and Wormhole 2000 which are arcade-style space shooters.

These are being put out by Songbird Productions, part of a seemingly growing industry in developing new products for legacy console hardware. By no means are developers limited to the PC, mobile, and console platforms these days - we encourage you to look around outside of Steam and the usual marketplaces because there’s various cottage industries springing up, offering alternative ways of interacting with videogames.

You can find plenty of games for alternative and console platforms on itch.io as well. Take a look around and see if anything inspires you.

“I buy independent Mega-Drive games! Feed me Mega-Drive games!” - eukara

Sonic Unleashed Recomp

A popular new way of porting console games to the likes of PC (and of course other platforms) is called static recompilation and it’s been used for some Nintendo 64 games the past two years (thanks to a certain Wiseguy), but this time around we were surprised by a port of an Xbox 360 game: Sonic Unleashed led by Skyth.

The project in question is titled UnleashedRecomp and you have to supply your own game disc as well the console iself to be able to get the files off.

It comes with mod support, quality of life improvements, performance enhancing features, as well as native Steam Deck support out of the box.

Is this a sign of things to come? Will that era of videogames get a second life on the PC? It sure seems like that’s where we may be heading, thanks to people involved in projects like this and the entire technology-chain that makes feats like this possible.

Tech News

Steam Forbids Forced In-Game Ads

Valve has taken a renewed stance against a various type of in-game advertising, as the updated SteamWorks documentation now show.

Not Supported

• Developers should not utilize paid advertising as a business model in their game, such as requiring players to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play, or gating gameplay behind advertising. If your game’s business model relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to remove those elements before shipping on Steam. Some options you could consider include switching to a single purchase “paid app,” or making your game free to play with optional upgrades sold via Microtransactions or Downloadable Content (DLC).
• Developers should not use advertising as a way to provide value to players, such as giving players a reward for watching or engaging with advertising in their game.
• Developers should not charge other developers for access to Steam features. These include sale pages, bundles, store pages, franchise pages, etc.

Of course Valve doesn’t want developers to step around their demands for a 30% cut per product, so this is kind of to be expected. I guess this works out in everyones favor! Except for the shovelware developers, of course.

Our Steam Deck Battery Goes Pillow Mode

We can tell you about how we’ve prevented a Steam Deck battery from exploding if that’s news to you, but it may also act as a PSA.

The gist is:

If you don’t mind the louder noise, we recommend that you turn off updated fan controls in your settings.

The aging Steam Deck has been getting hotter. This seems to be a flaw with the updated fan controls. Some suspect it may be because it assumes you have a newer model of Steam Deck these days. It’s difficult for us to pin-point and that’s not the scope of this news post.

The fact is - people complained about the Deck, a miniatured x86 PC, to be not as quiet as say the Switch. Okay, Valve has made that happen - but the increased temperature inside the unit also wears down the battery quite a lot.

We have one Deck that had completely ballooned now due said heat, plus another one seemingly on the way. Sorry PC Gamer but it didn’t work out in the end.

How do you know if your Steam Deck is bulging? Check if the shell piece on the back is still flat. Once the battery pillows up, it’ll generally start trying to push the back-shell off.

Keep your Deck in your Dock all the time? The Dock will actually start pinching the screen on the bottom. Check for lines and other such marks at the bottom of the screen.

If you discover your Steam Deck to be bulging, you need to get a heat-gun alongside a small screwdriver set. We have some in the office, but you may have to go to iFixit and help yourself there.

Let the Steam Deck discharge safely. We recommend playing a really long video. You’ll also need to enable battery storage mode so the unit only turns on with a USB-C cable, to prevent accidental power-ons.

You also need a heat gun, or a substitute. You have to heat up the Deck frequently in order to get the glued-in battery off.

Yes, the battery size will keep increasing when heated up - up to the size of a small fist.

Be careful, first generation Deck has two ribbon cables glued to the skin of the battery. This was addressed with the later model - but if you do have it, just don’t cut into it.

Once that is done, you can technically put it back together. If you play docked all the time - you don’t even need a replacement battery right away.

Permanently removing the battery means turning the updated fan controls off permanently. If you don’t, we’ve observed very frequent overheating without the battery, even in older games such as Team Fortress 2.

Once we did that, things were stable. And no longer did that particular Deck have to worry about growing in size ever again.

Over & out

And that’s it! That’s all we had to talk about for this month.

The past year we’re seeing more and more people become disillusioned with the game industry - and have started taking matters into their own hands. Some are trying to change things from within, some are taking things outside of the industry or joining forces with the free-software community to build games collaboratively.

There’s some amazing projects being built, and we can’t wait to feature whatever the community puts out next.

See you next month!

This is our first Playback for 2025. We will cover some entries from December as well. We had stuff to do, folks!

Game News

How should we cover general gaming news anymore? That is the question we’ve been asking ourselves these days. We don’t want to solely be a source of biting commentary on the sad state of the games industry or report on nonsensical fads and funny money from WallStreet making us ANGRY!!! - either. That said, here’s some interesting stuff we bothered to note that we feel like highlighting.

Grand Theft Auto 3 - Dreamcast

Rockstar Games graced us with Grand Theft Auto 2 on the Dreamcast, and that kept us entertained for… checks watch …a while. Now we get a taste of what the sequel is like on SEGA’s latest home console.

Great conversion! Nothing more needs to be said, but we’re not the only ones who think so! People are all over it!

EARTH INVASION ’99

A new free game was released by Shp and Nacchan titled Earth Invasion 99, which is comparable to the Earth Defense Force series of games. It is powered by FTEQW, which puts a smile on everyones face.

Unvanquished 0.55.2 Released

In time for Christmas, we were graced with a new release of Unvanquished 0.55. Thanks to Sweet, bots can now fly jetpacks.

Fortress Forever v3.0.0-alpha4

Check out the updated Source 2013 branch of Fortress Forever, featuring the awesome viewmodel animation overhaul by Raptor Dan!

Help them squash bugs or feed them suggestions by reporting issues on their GitHub

Household Death Updated

You heard that right: Classic Half-Life multiplayer mod ‘Household Death’ got an update out of nowhere.

Half-Life - Dreamcast

No, we haven’t suddenly become a Dreamcast site, although that is very tempting at this point - there are actually fascinating new bits of information that have come to light regarding Half-Life’s development on the Dreamcast. Those extend to the development of Blue Shift, which was of course also released on PC. See! Managed to get that in.

3DO Interactive Core In Development

Totally unexpected, there is a new core for the MiSTer platform in development for a console that gets Marco all excited: The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. A video of the core in action can be seen on YouTube: srg320 - 3DO FPGA WIP

ScummVM 2.9.0 Released

New games supported! 15 in fact! Check it:

• The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik
• Backyard Basketball
• Castle Master
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Meeting Sea Rat
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Sea Rat’s Birthday
• Mask Show
• Moonbase Commander
• Orion Burger
• Rise of the Dragon
• The Space Bar
• Thimbleweed Park
• Total Eclipse
• Total Eclipse 2
• Unrest
• Wait for it! Issue 3. Song for a Hare

You can read the full release announcement of ScummVM 2.9.0 for more information.

Over & out

Let us know if we forgot something. We’re out for now.

Playback.dem

Another month has passed, and another playback is here. To be unusually frank with all of you, it has been an incredibly busy and deeply challenging year. Despite it all, we are powering through and strive to provide our fraggers with a unique and polished Gaming Epicenter as always.

Frag-Net Status Update

Downtime

We appologize for the recent outage that occured the other day. The problem was a bit tricky, but our clever sys admin jumped on the issue instantly, and was able to track it down. It seems our empire has grown considerable, and instances like our Forgejo needed some additional tweaking to prevent overloading our system and so far everything seems to be running better.

As always we appreciate your patience and want to thank you for using Frag-Net or idtech.space as a provider for your services.

20 Lines About Two Half-Life 2’s

We have been endlessly at work trying to get a public beta build of Rad-Therapy 2 (FreeHL2) out and playable. It’s not an exaggeration to say this is the first, full, free and open-source implementation of Half-Life 2’s physics simulation layer for open-source id Tech, and that has been an immense challenge. eukara no doubt has a lot to say on the matter when he finishes. We were aiming for a release on the big 20th anniversary, but instead Valve Time got in the way again… In the meantime, you can grab a beta build here that we did get out in time but please, READ INSTRUCTIONS FIRST!

Rad-Therapy 2 Tech Demo

1. Grab the latest FTE for your platform.
2. Place the FTE binaries into your Half-Life 2: Deathmatch directory. See Notes for help.
3. Place RT2’s package_hl2.pk3 to Half-Life 2: Deathmatch/hl2/package_hl2.pk3.
4. Place the (temporary) hl2.fmf to Half-Life 2: Deathmatch/hl2.fmf.

You can then launch FTE as-is (it should give you a game selection), or run it with:

fteqw -manifest hl2.fmf

…to have it start into Rad-Therapy 2 right away.

Notes: You can right-click the game entry of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch in your Steam Client to figure out the install location, under Manage >.

Singleplayer is not supported, but feel free to try and see what works! This is a tech demo, but as it’s running a regular release binary of FTEQW you can mix it with other supported content. Try running around Quake levels, by copying them into your hl2/maps directory! Seriously, go nuts and explore to your hearts content. Source code and a dedicated page will be live very soon.

If you’re wondering about the maps above: dm_7hour, dm_pooltime, dm_greenhouse, and the classic milleniumtower map.

Calendars

With the recent big stuff happening to Rad-Therapy, we have been rethinking about our Calendars section. It’s no secret we haven’t been updating it as much as we would like to. Yes, busy schedule has been part of the reason, but we haven’t found a real thoughtful way of integrating it into Frag-Net… until now.

At this moment, we are broadcasting a Message of the Day prompt that is loaded by games with our Frag-Net menu (it can also be implemented for other games). It will give you a cute little notice with an anniversary or two for now, but it will be the way to get a quick update on Frag-Net, Game Events, and more.

We will also be enhancing this system to actually post events, not just here but on our social media. We see it as being a great way to spread awareness for events not just we host but the communities at large do as well. See it in action… perhaps next post?

Game News

RIP Frazer “fraze” Hockley

The Quake community suffered another tragic loss, this time from the Australian e-sports scene.

ESReality reports that long time QuakeLive and Quake Champions player, Frazer “Fraze” Hockley, has passed away. We recommend you read the post, for it’s a touching goodbye that does a better job than we could ever do.

In Diabotical, Fraze was part of some of the game’s most unforgettable moments, whether it was his streams, his tournament matches, or his interviews. His gameplay was a perfect blend of high-level competition and entertainment. Similarly, in Quake Champions, he remained an absolute beast, quickly improving with his grit and grind approach and then consistently defeating top-tier players, and ultimately coming in 1st place in AQL4.

On a personal note, every time I faced Fraze in a match, you could feel his determination in game. Yet, no matter how intense the competition, he always took the time afterward to share some words about what he enjoyed about the game and have a laugh. His grit and relentless pursuit of excellence were qualities I think we all admired.

Fraze’s legacy goes beyond his accolades and achievements. I think I speak for all of the community when I say he was a beacon of inspiration, a mentor, and a friend to many. His contributions have left an ever-lasting mark on our community, and his absence will be deeply felt.

Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family and loved ones during this difficult time. Rest in peace, Fraze. Thank you for the memories, you will be missed, but never forgotten.

20 Years Of Half-Life 2

Wow, it’s been two decades since Half-Life 2 launched on Steam. Not only did we at Frag-Net celebrate, but so did Valve! A lot of us (even in the know) were just expecting a nice Quality of Life patch for Half-Life 2 and possibly Deathmatch (sadly the multiplayer part of the update did not happen… yet). Yet, Valve finally gave the fans a true gift, they gave us another documentary and revealed not publicly seen development footage that will inspire the community for quite some time!

Uploaded on YouTube the day before the anniversary, Valve kicked off the weekend with a feature length documentary featuring many of the original developers who crafted this great game. But that’s not all, Valve also showed off the famous 2000 version of the game only shown to press and developers.

That’s not all, the engine update is not only optimized, it brings in the Workshop support, along with commentary tracks by many of the original developers.

Fortress Frever v3.0 Alpha Patches

Fortress Forever has seen some updates in the 2013 branch! Here are the highlights of said branch:

• Based on 2013’s Source SDK
• Native Linux Port!
• Ambient Occlusion and HDR Lighting
• New viewmodel animations by Raptor Dan

Uberfest happened, TF2Maps.net JAM UPCOMING!

Uberfest happened in Germany this November, as well as finals for AsiaFortress.

If you’d like to participate in something smaller and upcoming, we’ll use this space to make you aware of TF2Maps.net 72 Hour Jam which begins on December 13:

As the year winds down, TF2Maps.net is proud to announce the return of their beloved 72 Hour Jam!

They’re supporting their friends over at Gamers Outreach once again. Anyone who donates $5 or more to the drive before December 31 is eligible to receive this year’s in-game charity medal.

Additionally, you’re able to earn a medal for sharing your creativity! Starting Friday, December 13, at 5:00pm UTC, you have 72 hours to make whatever Team Fortress 2 creation you can think of! Whether it be a map, asset, cosmetic, artwork — or even another game entirely — anything goes as long as it’s Team Fortress 2 related!

For more information, check out the thread on TF2Maps.net.

Rogue Point announced

Rogue Point has been announced. This game is being developed by the creators of Black Mesa, the famous remake of Half-Life on Valve’s Source Engine. It is to be published by Team 17 of Worms fame, which has in recent years become a publishing titan of its own. We wish them the best of luck, and we will report more as the game is going to be released sometime in 2025!

Stalker 2

The long awaited Stalker 2 finally released later last month. Everyones has been waiting years for this moment and we hope it’s everything you and the developers wished for and more. People seem to be enjoying it a lot!

BioWare unleashes a new Dragon Age

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been released last month! Is a new era of role-playing games heading our way? Let us know what you think in the Chat. As you can see, we had 0 time to play any of them. Arf! Arf!

Hell Freezes Over: Red Dead Redemption on PC

Nuff said.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 released

Treyarch and Raven have released the new entry in the spy slash action thriller series called Black Ops. We like these games and bet you do too. It is on Steam and you can watch the PC Trailer on YouTube.

Tech News

AMD releases AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D to rave reviews

If you’re looking to buy a GPU, you may wanna check out this mighty fine card, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Blue has a line-up for reviews for you to chew through. Buy one for you and your loved ones this christmas, so you can finally play Quake II with colored lig- err… I mean ray-tracing.

Arch Linux now provides a license for package sources

Arch Linux will now put a license on package sources. This is something other distributions have previously also done. It’s under a permissive license as well, so good on Arch!

Wayland support enabled in Wine 9.22

Wine 9.22 will be built with the Wayland driver included. Slow and steady, the migration is ongoing.

Over & out

This is the last Playback to be written in the year of 2024. We will return next year, with a new entry. We will try this experiment for at least a year and see what else we can improve about it. It may still end up becoming something else, so stay tuned.

Allow us some time to play the new game by MachineGames, of which we will no doubt have a lot to say next Playback…

Today (albeit with some debate) marks the 25th Anniversary of Quake III Arena, and the 20th Anniversary very first Half-Life 2 mod, JBMod which soon after lead to Garry’s Mod of course. This is freshly off the heels of the anniversary of Half-Life 2 and even DOOM 3 (which we haven’t mentioned yet, forgive us!).

To be honest with you all, we are overcome with a mixture of emotions: One of joy / disbelief our favorite games are so retro now, and concern over their future.

In advance, we are sorry for a news post like this instead of some cool event, there was quite a few reasons for this. Both personal, and later we’ll get to the well, technical… of sorts.

What’s With Games Like Quake III Arena?

Quake III’s lack of intergration with modern gaming social services and recognition from it’s own company makes getting the community together a difficult one.

It was already fragmented years before with Quake Live, before that game found itself in an identity crisis.

The community has done an amazing job at making these games open, ioQuake3 is the way to play Quake III on modern systems, no old hacks or bad code! Yet… you would think a game with an open stable engine with stable community master servers would have a stable sizeable playerbase, and perhaps they do. But, the current online session for new users goes like this:

1. Join a seemingly occupied Quake 3 server
2. Notice that your fellow “players” are acting strange
3. Recieve no feedback, yet the “bots” frag away
4. Half the other players are in spectator
5. Leave confused and or uncomfortable

The oddest thing about these “ghost” servers is their purpose, all we can think of is they must have been around to bad-faith-boost player stats on really antique trackers like GameSpy or more maliciously, boost e-sports stats.
Perhaps it is just some mistake and someone has left a number of broken servers running they have forgotten about. Regardless, it doesn’t matter, these servers SUCK and the experience is bad, it leaves people with a bad taste in their mouth where people think this is all Q3 is now. It’s kind of ironic too considering the game came built in with bot support, and it was great too.

There also isn’t a great way to browse and play the 25 years worth of maps and custom content within the game itself. Quake has QuakeInjector, Half-Life 2 now has Workshop, yet there is no built in downloader for services like LvLworld, one of the greatest and oldest surviving Quake III map archives. Managing custom content for open source games is still somewhat of a problem. How do you expect a newbie to understand that they just need to go LvLworld and install the PK3 without any introduction the base concept itself?

We could list off more issues here, but this isn’t meant to be a wall of shame and blame, it’s more about a realization or a wake up call if you will.

There are a few other ways of addressing this - projects like ioQuake3 should be complemented with a side that’ll make it more accessible. Selecting widescreen resolutions still isn’t a thing because no engine port wants to touch the default menu. There are problems worth solving there on both social and technical levels. We may not have all the answers yet, but maybe we can all have a discussion about building some sort of Community Edition which seems to work for some other games.

Will a remaster attempt to address these things? Maybe, but if it’s anything like the last efforts the community will no doubt still need to “do it’s own thing”, and do it well as that will always outlive any closed solution by a corporation. Speaking of corporations doing closed source remasters…

20 Years Of A “Half Life”

Half-Life 2 turned 20 years old last month. That is scary to us. That stupid old expression, “feels like yesterday” is only too true. Some of us here remember getting the limited edition for Christmas with big box and hat with t-shirt to boot. One of us personally wore that for years till it disappeared under mysterious circumstances…

Point is, we at Frag-Net are die hard fans. These games were our lives in a way. We built entire friendships, lovers, enemies, and even marriages (some still persist today) from these silly online entertainment products. We aren’t alone either, the amount of videos and content we and graciously others have archived documents countless communities and lives of players.

In a sad and deeply troubled world, games have always been a way to provide expression, understanding of problems, and even exchange ideas, much like the art and entertainment before it, just in a much much more impactful and direct way.

What Now?

The last ten years for the Source community, if we had to describe it, had also been one of self-realization about preservation and legacy.

Half-Life 2 has seen so many updates, being one of the first auto-updated games. From day one players were kind of forced to “move forward”. For the most part, this was actually a welcomed change believe it or not…

…because back then, installing patches was a pain. You needed to manually go online and grab installer files or wait for an update disc, and some games such as the first Half-Life had a separate tool that assisted you through the main menu. But the experience was always a bit messy. Steam really changed all that.

Recently we worked on our own video to highlight the past twenty years of mods that were created, and it was a chore to install and get running most mods, if they even do. The number of problems and pre-setup are extensive, ranging from installing different versions of not so small sized Source SDK, to running specific versions of Proton on Linux, to mods not loading due to some Steam API breakage (and we have a fix thanks to bt and mv). Still, hacks upon hacks with tons of wasted space with almost every source mod on steam containing an entire copy of Half-Life 2’s content! This is not sustainable for much of a playerbase, especially not for multiplayer mods, and it impacts users on all platforms to boot.

Thankfully, people have been having a go at converting mods, whether it is their own or mods they were fond of. Of course, the quality tends to be of varying degree, especially as Valve keeps updating their game default behaviour changes, it’s hard for hobbyists/tinkerers to keep up, and who can blame them? It’s not their fault.

A good addition to Half-Life 2 has been the Workshop, although it’s still a very messy affair of re-uploads. Time will tell if it becomes the desired destination for addons over places like GameBanana. We definitely appreciate it, as Valve has a good track record with hosting this sort of content.

Going forward though it would appear obvious that the path is Free and Open Source if we want any chance of Half-Life 2’s historic content surviving into the long future. With the year 2038 approaching rapidly and causing more issues with 32-bit programs, it will become less desirable to run the original binaries on raw hardware.

As no doubt you can tell, we will try to solve some of the problems mentioned above in our way, but this is something we can all contribute to. Even if you’re simply archiving files and/or organizing them on archive.org, or documenting games and mods while they still work - you’re all doing an important part in keeping some of our history alive.

Let us know what you think in the Chat.