You are a maintenance worker on space Colony 42.
Whilst fixing something, the communication room receives a transmission.
This transmissions leads to what seems to be an alien invasion.
What does your future hold?
- Title: Colony 42
- File Name: hl1-sp-colony-42.7z
- Size : 65.00MB
- Author: Jeff Lyons AKA JeffMOD
- Date Released: 17 May 2015
Technically, this is described as an Alpha release, but it seems that the author has decided not to finish it.
There are lots of extra files the player doesn’t need but have been included by tyhe author in case other modders wish to continue his work.
For those that are interested, there is a nicely formatted PDF of developer’s notes in the archive.
This file is too large to install directly from MapTap but once you have downloaded it to your computer, you can still sue MapTap to install it.
Download to your HDD [65.00MB]
You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
- Copy the COLONY42 folder into your …\Steam\SteamApps\common\Half-Life\ folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Colony42 should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
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WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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2,842Overall
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142365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 7 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 21 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 47 Mins by PlanetPhillip
Longest: 2 Hours by vancanucksfan
Total Time Played: 12 Hours, 12 Mins
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I was quite excited to play this as I was hoping for a story and some good old fashioned HL action. Unfortunately, the mod consists too much of corridor, locked door after corridor, locked door.
The enemies are often grouped together and were rarely challenging or exciting.
The author seems to have spent too much time making a simulation than an actual fun mod.
Of course, it’s a learning process for the author and I applaud the fact he made something, but I also feel this is a good example of an overambitious project created before the author had experience in gameplay.
The best I can say is MAYBE.
Using Gauge
Medium
47 Minutes
Just got into the intro map and have problems with mouse movement, no continuous 360 degree turning radius! Ran into this before, awhile back. I have to use the mouse for movement (my fingers don’t work well on the KB) maybe just old age! Any ideas?? A default in the mod??
I had the same issues ages ago and suddenly it was okay, so I am afraid I don’t have anything helpful to suggest – sorry.
I’m old too and I dislike the keyboard. I use a mouse in my right hand to turn left and right and look up and down and I use a joystick in my left hand to strafe left/right and move forward/back, the joystick also has jump/duck/use item/quicksave and the mouse has primary/secondary fire/reload/flashlight. I had to make my own config files but it makes the games a lot more enjoyable for me.
First off, I’d just like to say that I am so happy that this saw the light of day. JeffMOD has been a member of TWHL for as long as I can remember, is a very active mapper and jumps at the chance to bash something together in GoldSource. He has come such a long way since he started working on C42 and he himself admits that it doesn’t reflect his current abilty. The mod was officially canned about a year ago I believe, but he ultiimately decided (with some persuasion from yours truly) to release what he had.
Though it’s technically a pre-alpha, I will review it as a complete mod as Jeff has stated that he will no longer be working on it himself.
The first thing that I can say right off the bat is that this mod has the same issues as Toadmann’s mod Azure Sheep. A lot of it takes place in corridors which lead to yet more corridors. While this was boring in Azure Sheep due to the featureless walls, Jeff’s attempt to maintain the sense of place by adding multiple locked doors make progression downright frustrating at times. This could have easily been rectified by placing obsticles along the way which require the player to find a way around them, even if it just means cutting through a couple of living quarters.
It’s a real shame since the sense this being an active working place is fantastic in the pre-disaster section at the start. Little notes left around for collegues, scientists attempting to get into their labs (which the player is able to resolve) and so on. Everything after that though, including the event that causes the aliens to appear, just kind of happens. I can only assume that the intention was to flesh out the story afterwards because for the most part I was utterly lost and wasn’t sure what my ultimate goal was.
Overall, the mapping and lighting is rather basic, though there are occasional sections which look far more polished and detailed. It’s very easy to get lost and some players may get frustrated by this. My play time was significantly drawn out during a section where I was looking for a keycard. This took place around a featureless corridor section which gave very little in the way of landmarks to guide me and prevent me from going back on myself multiple times.
I’m going to give this a maybe, simply because anyone outside of TWHL who didn’t see the mod’s pregression over the years might not get as much out of the experience of actually playing it.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
So happy to see this get released!
It was a very ambitious project to undertake alone and you should be proud that you got it this far! That said, it’s certainly not without its flaws.
The pre-disaster chapter actually had me really pleasantly surprised. The mapping is blocky and the lighting is criminally bland, but you’ve actually done a really good job at creating a ‘living’ world to explore. Almost every NPC encountered during this chapter is just resolutely getting on with their day and it never feels like they’re just standing around waiting for their turn to be seen by the player.
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The references throughout are excessive and heavy-handed, with some falling into the category of ridiculous, but actually I found them really endearing for the most part; though I have to ask: is there anybody on the Colony 42 station who is not a member of TWHL? 😀
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Were it not for the intro text, however, there is little to indicate that the story unfolding takes place on a space station. It’s not until the very final hallway of the mod that we start seeing some space-age looking architecture and viewing ports. Everything else about the station feels fundamentally and disappointingly terrestrial, with standard box rooms and endless hallways with 90-degree corners.
I enjoyed seeing Urbles and myself have a little conversation in the control room. I’d genuinely forgotten that I’d recorded a few lines for this, though given that the original files on my PC are dated as January 2009(!!!) it’s no surprise that I’d forgotten!
Unfortunately once the combat begins, the mod takes a bit of a nose-dive in terms of enjoyment. Whilst exploring the largely open maps during the pre-disaster chapter was fun, once it becomes a matter of figuring out where to go to progress, it gets insanely irritating. I was constantly left wondering if I’d gone the right way or if I’d missed something and this was not helped by the lack of an overarching objective.
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The combat, too, is all rather samey. Highlights were few and far between as most encounters happened in the bland hallways that make up the majority of the level design. A couple of good door-scares with zombies and wide open vort fights were entertaining, but on the whole gameplay really suffered from repetition.
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The model reskins were cool, though I’m still not sure if there is any notable behaviour difference between the different colours of vortigaunt, and it seems a shame that you didn’t extend the colour change to their zappy discharge, which stayed stubbornly green throughout, despite my best efforts to coax them into changing colour.
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One of the best philosophies I stand by with modding is giving everything in the world a story, and there are times when you’ve really, really nailed this. Be it simply the right props for the right rooms or more extravagent carnage (highlights include a room torn to pieces by an employee who has just received a letter from his girlfriend letting him know she’s leaving him & an unfortunate scientist who’s triggered a shotgun attached to a tripwire), this attention to detail stood out to me as being the best aspect of your design.
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You should also be pleased about some of the props you were able to make with just basic brushwork and good texturing. Everything from toilets to coffee machines are elegantly represented by some really neat brushwork!
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I’m not sure if there was going to be a more overarching story that got cut for this release, but I never really got a sense of what Colony 42 was, what it was doing or indeed what the disaster was that had caused the influx of aliens and ‘splosions. There are a couple of hints towards experimentation along the lines of the Lambda Complex, such as tamed houndeyes and chumtoads, but otherwise I was left in the dark. It’s obviously a massive facility, given its inclusion of everything from eateries to an entire shopping mall, but there’s nothing to explain why such a station exists.
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Overall, you know exactly what the problems with this are, and I can see why you fell out of love with it. It’s not representative of your current skill level, and I was really pleased to read your addendum in the credits – you’ve got exactly the right attitude. Be proud that you released it, and seeing something of this scale leave development hell is truly inspiring. Bravo, sir!
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
This mod has a lot of content but most of it isn’t that interesting. Just big and for the most part empty rooms with an occasional enemy that is easily killed. The weapon changes were kind of different, with the rocket launcher sound being used for the shotgun and crossbow. But after a while that got tiresome too. I got stuck a few times in places and overall I thought the mod could have used more beta testing. I realize this isn’t a completed mod so I will just say you might want to try it if you have some free time.
Manually
Easy
2 Hours
this is a fun pack
even if you got a lot of repetitive places, gameplay experience most run and kill and some issue like if you kill an enemy close to a door you can’t pass it anymore and the shotgun got the crossbow sound and vice versa, it was enjoyable to look to all those additional texture and tiny detail and progress to finish the experience
looking to the fact that this mod was done as a learning experience it’s worth a detour 🙂
Using Gauge
Medium
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
I wanted to like this. I really did. Some things looked really promising, like the “Escape from a Spaceship” scenario and that awesome menu (WON version). Sadly, I just couldn’t rate it a PIN or a PIL at least.
The mapping is OK, but it still had a lot of issues, like too many corridors and sometimes cheap enemy placement. I liked how every Vortigaunt looks differently and I generally liked the new model skins, apart from the weapon ones. They were very glitchy, to the point of unusable. Also, the ending is crap and incredibly bland.
Overall, this is one of the biggest disappointments when it comes to HL modding. You may enjoy the first few minutes, but other than that, you should play at your own will.
I’m amazed to see many maybes recommendations. And myself I considered for a while also to give this a maybe; but after deep thinking this truly doesn’t deserve that at all.
At the beginning I got quite excited because this looked like an old school HL mod where space is the perfect environment to have some action, but then the only enemies were xenians and they were frankly very boring to fight against.
I also found this mod had A LOT of coding errors, at least in the weapons available, because the shotgun didn’t make a sound when it was shooted, and just make funny lighting sequences, besides I had a quite serious bug in the section where you pick the Tau cannon, in there if I quick save I had to start the map all over again, which it was to say the least, very annoying.
Well, I think I’ve said much about this mod, for me it’s a long boring buggy mod I didn’t suggest you to try, it doesn’t even have a proper end!!
Think twice, or play it only if you can’t handle to avoid your HL1 fix.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 25 Minutes
Now before each of you wonder why am I giving this a “play it later” rating let me explain…
I actually did enjoy the mod while it’s labeled unfinished and even an alpha release.. I think that this makes it even more impressive because the mod is fully playable and also has numerous scripts involved be it a scientist that tells you to go away from his hiding spot or an Alien grunt that pushes another poor soul down to their death. So in essence even as an alpha mod this mod is still way more polished and playable than many other mods released these past years.
Still you certainly do notice that this is indeed an unfinished product and the story remains no where to be seen once the action starts. But the initial intro was rather entertaining and even included nice voice acting pity that it didn’t continue in the same quality.
It’s also true that there are countless corridors to be explored tons of rooms. Yet I rather get something like that than tons of doors you can’t enter because that would be the other side of the medal then everybody would be just complaining about that. “Endless corridors with rooms you can’t enter.”
Anyway here my pro’s and contras for why I actually enjoyed the mod quite a lot.
Pro:
-Custom model skins
-Some nice voice acting early on
-It has a beginning and an end even though that end surely wasn’t originally planned like that
– The fights may have not been a real challenge but also weren’t that bad I’ve seen much worse in other mods
Contra:
-It’s an unfinished Alpha release
-Very promising story startup but then once the action starts forgotten to develop any further
-Throughout the entire mod only 6 enemy monster types to encounter 2 of those 6 wont even fight back (houndeye & chumtoad)
I think it’s rather pity that Jeffmod didn’t finish this. In fact with the amount of maps he had and the fact where it ended he could’ve let the mod come to a regular end fairly easily. A simple announcement message to evacuate the station would have sufficed. Considering that the final map played on the outer edges of the station. It would’ve made a perfect place for escape pods and shuttles. A little Outro showing the shuttle leaving the station or crash landing on an Alien planet till the players gets rescued of a marine ship etc.. And the mod would’ve been complete. It could’ve easily become a 2nd Darkstar mod with just more polishing and focusing on what was present instead of trying to add more and more maps.
But be it as it is. I hope we may see some full fledged mod from Jeffmod some day in the future as he is a good and active mapper.
Manually
Hard
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Bland corridor with doors, a lot of them locked. That’s what you get in this mod, and little more.
To be honest, the mapping itself is pretty well done, in terms of architecture. The hallways are clean, have reasonable routing, etc. In terms of overall layout, in a couple cases I found myself wandering in circles looking for how to proceed. A lot of the areas look “same-y” and even though I didn’t get lost per se, I certainly did meander around looking for what to do next. Probably added 25 minutes to my playing time (not kidding).
In my own maps, I try to do my best to avoid areas that are just “filler”. This mod feels like it’s ALL filler. The “meat” does show up in a couple places. There are a couple minor puzzles to work out here and there. The combat is pretty scattered and unfortunately not really challenging.
Sad to say it, but this mod just feels all around dull. I know a lot of work went into it, but I think a lot more work would be required to pare things down, add interesting setpieces, encounters, or puzzles, and build up to a climax. The ending as-is isn’t even anti-climactic, it’s simply there.
In all, I would not really recommend playing this given its alpha status – and its complete lack of satisfying gameplay.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
avoid it.
Manually
Medium
2 Hours
God damn… It’s hard to argue with such an in depth review from a spam numbers username…