Okay... Half-Life 2 "Newbie"

[Guivre]

Okay, guys. I've been serching this forum for a while. I played the hell out of Half-Life when it came out years ago. I just got HL2 for Christmas and have been through it twice.

I've been searching through this forum to try to get information about what else I can do with the game. I must admit, it has been very difficult to glean any real useful information.

In order to help myself and any other new people, I would like to pose a list of questions and hope that someone would be kind enough to answer one, if not all of them in detail not just "oh thats tricky"

1) How does one extract music (mp3) and sounds (wav) from HL2? I read about a .gcf file from which they must be extracted. What tool do you use? Where can I get the tool??

2) What modifications are available? I have seen several mentions to "Gary's mod" or something like that. Where do you get this? What does it do?

The final question is a tricky one.

3) I played through HL1 and HL2 yet it still seems as though there is some of the story I am missing. I havn't quite peiced it all together. Is there a resource somewhere where someone has actually put together details that we do know about HL instead of odd-@ss saturday morning stories based on speculation?


Thank you for any information or links that you can provide.
Guivre

 

[Murray]

I can provide you with a link to the Half-Life 2 saga known this far.
http://fragfiles.org/~hlstory//

EDIT: There is a little speculation too I guess, but it is actually pretty good in my opinion.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Ill help you with the music one. You need microsoft Framework 1.1 and .gcf scape which is the program to extract the sound files from the .gcfs. Get this program along with the framework and open 'sourcesounds' to get the music. Good stuff.

Garry mod and Jb mod can both be found on Hl2w 0rld.com (no space, its filtered on this site) Also download a map called 'Building Blocks_Final' for those mods, which will make them more fun. Search the forums for more locations of all these files.

 

[diluted]

I don't think you can find garrysmod on hl2 world, they hate it there (and like jbmod.... for some reason).

www.garry.tv/garrysmod

 

[Ennui]

quick question about garrysmod - how do you play it on other maps since they don't have the spawn console? do you have to spawn everything yourself that way?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

quick question about garrysmod - how do you play it on other maps since they don't have the spawn console? do you have to spawn everything yourself that way?

Yeah but the rocket launcher spawns a few items you'd need, only about 10 though. And i dont think many people know the how to spawn those items in the console, ive never seen them But yeah if you play on the normal levels you have to use the rocket launcher and stuff you find.

 

[Ennui]

Yeah but the rocket launcher spawns a few items you'd need, only about 10 though. And i dont think many people know the how to spawn those items in the console, ive never seen them But yeah if you play on the normal levels you have to use the rocket launcher and stuff you find.

do the create npc commands work in garrysmod?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

yeah all the same, with the new version (v3) you can pick up the dead spawned npcs. Before you could only use the ones from the spawn machine on BB_Final.

 

[Guivre]

Thank you for the information thus far.

I have located GCF Scape. All I can find is links to the website of the guy who created the program. When visiting that site, I located a link to "Download" it but clicking it only returns to the same page.

If anybody would be willing to email it to me, or otherwise make arrangements on getting it to me, I would be very thankful.

I have downloaded the Micrisoft .NET framework without any problems.

I have not yet located the mods (But I havn't looked, either)

Another question: I saw someone with the "beefed up" gravity gun in the first level. Is that a mod or is it possible to do that after you have beaten the game once.

Thanks again... I'm off to read the back story...

 

[Vegeta897]

Hehe, read the news post on that site. Says the database is down.

But since I am so nice I found a mirror for you

http://www.lethalagentz.com/downloads.html

 

[Hectic Glenn]

And because im so nice i found an old thread with the blue manipulator answer in.(Answer below, thanks to edge for the clear explanation)

The entity is weapon_superphyscannon but it cannot be created manually such as the other weapons.

Getting the Blue Gravity Gun
Load HL2 using the -console switch
Open the Console
Type the following, map d3_citadel_03
Once you have the Blue Gravity Gun you can now change to any level in the game and keep the Blue Gravity Gun.

Using the "map" command however will not allow you to keep the Blue Gravity Gun. You must use the "changelevel" command.

In the console use the "changelevel" command to switch to the level of your choice. To start the game at the beginning with the Blue Gravity Gun use the following command. "changelevel d1_trainstation_01"

Interesting things to know regarding the Blue Gravity Gun
Grabbing or Blasting some friendly NPCs will create a corpse but the NPC will still exist. So you can pull 20's corpses out of the two guys on the train hehe.

DON'T ATTEMPT TO PICK UP VEHICLES. The sand buggy and combine vehicles will screw up the game if not crash it if you attempt to pick them up with the Blue Gravity Gun. Disable vehicles will not cause any issues.

 

[Guivre]

Thank you very much for the helpful information, guys. I have downloaded and used GCFScape to extract all of the MP3s and some of the .WAVS. Since the first Half-Life, I have wished I could use the WAV sounds for my Windows sound effects.

Now my dream is a reallity (he he)

Thanks again
Garrett