Dead Lab

for Half-Life 2: Episode Two

9th August 2018

Set in a research facility, where experiments were performed on non-human organisms, you find yourself fighting the things you were supposed to be protecting.

Do you go to the surface for help or deeper into the complex?

Alone and confused, you must make wise choices and use your skills carefully.

Basic Details
  • Title: Dead Lab
  • Filename: sdk-2013-sp-dead-lab-beta-002.7z
  • Size : 1.81GB
  • Lead Developer: Roman Martynov AKA Goliaf AKA Dead_Nick
  • Date Released: 13 May 2018
About

This mod is NOT set within the fictional Half-Life universe.
You, along with your detachment, were trapped, waiting for reinforcements. Around zombies and various mutants.

While waiting for reinforcements, a military zombie attacks you, which deprives you of a detachment. You miraculously survived and now you have to independently get out of the laboratory, find the way to the surface, or, to descend into the very depths of the dungeons.

On the road to freedom, you are attacked not only by dangerous creatures, but also by other survivors who have become either possessed or those who no longer trust anyone.

During the game it turns out that you were hired to guard the laboratory that is developing biochemical weapons, but in fact it is not. People found an alien installation, inside which there was a living organism.

People made an experiment, tried to open a so-called “sarcophagus”, after which all this happened, but the monster, like the whole room, managed to freeze and prevent the spread of infection. But in the alpha version of the story is not disclosed.

Dead Lab Developers
  • Roman Martynov (Gooliaf): Leader, 3D artist, level designer. Import textures, sounds and 3D models.
  • Dmitriy Andreyev: Programmer. Creating shaders.
  • Ruslan Koller: 2D and 3D Artist, textures.
  • Artur Akhmarov: Rigging and import models. Sounds for headcrab.
  • Azamat Karimov: Programmer.
  • Maksim Kyargin: Music.
  • Pavel Obukhov: Level designer.
  • Dmitriy Timofeyev: Rigging, animations, import 3d models.
Developer’s Note

Modification for HL2 EP2 which completely replaces-the whole atmosphere of the game. The mod was created in 2012 and was developed until 1’4 after which the project was frozen, because I started to study 3D graphics, UE4 and mush more.

Half a year ago I decided to finish this project and release in the alpha stage. In this mod you will meet a large number of bugs, raw locations, problems with the plot.

Important RTSL Note

I have taken the unusual step of adding this beta release to the site because development will be slow and with mods this ambitious, there is always the chance it will never be finished.

In addition, I am told it provides around 3 hours of gameplay time as it is, so there is a lot to play.

It is also a very large file, so please be aware of that before you download it.

Gauge Users

This file is too large to use directly with Gauge. Please download it to your computer first.

Download Options

Download to your HDD [1.81GB]
You can still use it with Gauge once you have downloaded it.

Manual Installation Instructions

If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.

  • Copy the DeadLab folder into your …\Steam\SteamApps\sourcemods\ folder.
  • Start or restart Steam
  • Dead Lab should now be listed in your LIBRARY tab.

Videos

Coming Soon.

Screenshots

Coming Soon.

Reader Recommendations
Avoid It!
Think Twice
Maybe
Play It Later
Play It Now!

9 recommendations, average score: 3.89 (out of 5), standard deviation: 0.54 (what's that?)
Total Downloads
  • 1,767
    Overall
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Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 6 comment(s) with meta review data.

Installed:
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 6 Users

Time Taken:
Average: 3 Hours, 3 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 10 Mins by geezer1857
Longest: 5 Hours by vancanucksfan
Total Time Played: 18 Hours, 15 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
Jump to a review
Play It LaterMaybe?Maybe?Play It LaterPlay It Now!Play It LaterPlay It LaterPlay It Now!Maybe?

20 Comments

  1. I’m going to give this a go, big though it is, which brings me to a question Philip…it can’t be used with Guage (not that that’s a problem, it’s easy enough to do manually) but not being that tech savvy, why not ? I’m assuming you built Guage, or had it done for you, so can’t it be made bigger or something ? I don’t know how these things work….

    1. I can be used with Gauge just not directly. Let me explain. If you install it directly via Gauge, it downloads the file and installs it. That means you don’t have a compressed version of the mod on your hard drive. I don’t create a direct link for Gauge with it because anything over 25MB and I am likely increasing my bandwidth usage because if there is an issue with the download, Gauge would have to start again but if the file is downloaded directly and there is an issue, users should be able to continue from where the download was interrupted.

      So the restriction is created by me to ensure large files are downloaded first and then can be installed. This way, if you wanted to play it again in 6 months, you have the file on your computer, instead of having to re-download it again from my server.

  2. I see, well thanks for clearing that up…

  3. This mod is too scary for me, especially these new headcrabs.

  4. Play It Later

    An all around “okay” experience. Not great or super interesting, but still enjoyable enough.
    You fight zombies most of the way through and the game is clearly an HL2 modification. The hud is the same, and weapons and enemies are clearly reskins. There are a few puzzles or story/dream sequences, but it’s mostly standard combats against zombies during the whole game.

    Even if you’re mostly fighting zombies, it can still be very challenging at times, partly due to the cramped interiors and sheer numbers of opponents.
    About 1/4 of the way through you fight human enemies. The gameplay is much better that way, and I wished the devs added more of fhat. Unfortunately it’s over quickly.

    The atmosphere itself was very well crafted and it was genuinely scary at times. It felt a lot like STALKER. The level design is okay. You’ll probably be stuck quite a bit, but this is to be expected from TCs like these. I don’t think they had many playtesters and it shows. While HL2 combats against zombies can seem boring, I understand that it’s a different game and it tried to do other things. I enjoyed it for that reason but many people will find the experience frustrating.

  5. Anon_1690313

    Anyone else have problems with key bindings, specifically USE (e) that doesn’t work on ladders and the right mouse key not releasing items picked up (or doing anything else for that matter)?

    1. I have the problem with USE button. It doesn’t work on ladders too. I thought it’s normal 🙂 And I restored crosshair, because Ironsight button doesn’t work also.

  6. Maybe?

    It was enjoyable at first. Pretty scary, dark atmosphere, nice touch with soundscapes and the pacing. It gave me a lots of good jumpscares here and there. But after a while, it was starting to get annoying and boring. Same with the final puzzles/objectives where I find myself stuck and nowhere to go. No indications or “lighting” telling me what I was supposed to do.

    The placement of the enemies were a lot exaggerated in some areas where it did spawn a couple of zombies, but then 10 horde and 4 “heavyzombies (zombines)” at the same time. There was two times where I got stuck with a zombine NPC(s) and it just took a grenade off when him got up; leaving me low health or just insta killing me.

    I admit I had to noclip and “mat_fullbright 1” while doing two puzzles because it was just boring, complete darkness with zombies jumping in your face and getting stuck in puzzles where it just didn’t tell you nothing.

    I didn’t finish this mod. Level design was OK. Storytelling was horrible where it just drops you there and nothing more happens or tells you what is going on. Unnecessary number of zombies in small rooms. It was just getting more boring and annoying on the way. I almost review this mod to “Think Twice” because you really should if you don’t like those bad points I mentioned above. However, I’m going to leave a “Maybe” just for the effort this author did.

  7. Roy
    Maybe?

    I expected a long and interesting ride. I got the long ride, but not always the interesting part.

    This is another vote for it starts off interesting, but slowly peters out. Sometimes too many zombies and not enough ammo or not enough time to reload. Too much darkness, especially when your flashlight is always breaking. I also had to noclip and “mat_fullbright 1” in a few places too. A mod should be fun, not frustrate you without reason. Then suddenly it ends.

    I know, most of this is because it is Beta 2, but it is a big download after all. I think I should have waited until it was finished.

    It is not all bad. It had a nice layout and good use of textures. Most of the time it was spooky and it felt like real places. A lot of the time the atmosphere and lighting was pretty to look at. I did enjoy blowing up herds of zombies with grenades, most of the time me with them. I do not regret playing this, it was just a little lacking.

    I suggest waiting for the next release unless you are bored and need a fps fix.

  8. Play It Later

    Liked what I was able to play. Looking forward to it being completed. Enjoyed the transition from area to area. Had just enough time to clean out my soiled pants before the next guy jumped out. Reminds me alot of the Left For Dead games.

  9. Hec
    Play It Now!

    Wow! Lots to say about this! At first, I thought it was part of the 50SDOS event. Then I realized it is not part of that event, so I guess, this almost Total Conversion is released for this year.

    First, I guess is such an ambitious project, and already had a very early Alpha version whit more simplified maps. Actually, there’s a video walkthrough on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trk_8mgz-M4&t=995s

    I really think that, because this mod project is so ambitious and already so huge to play! It took me almost 5 hours of playing!! The authors really should leave this release as the final version, maybe they can enhance the ending part and totally add English subtitles in order to fully understand the whole story and the details of it.

    The basic layout is neat and I found at the beginning very strong elements of the great HL1 mod “Paranoia (1&2)”, also many assets and models were just taken from L4D Games -as the medkits-, it also has some touches of the beloved and classic “Cry of Fear” HL1 mod, especially at the delusion part where we are trapped inside a scary labyrinth, also the flesh stuff coming out from the floor looked a lot like the ones we found in CoF mod, even there’s a bloody hand stick to the wall model. Also reminded me of one very not well known also Russian HL1 mod called “Dopusk 31”, where we also fight inside a wrecked scary lab.

    I guess the developers perfectly can leave the maps like they are now. And just polish the story a little bit more and add English subtitles to make the context even more eerie and scary. As it is now, the mod has a great, great scary environment at most of the parts of the whole mod.

    The battles for me are OK but very, very hard at some maps, so be warned that if you like to kill swarms of zombies, and maybe a great fan of L4D games then this is gonna like you a lot. Indeed, there is a very scarce soldier to soldier combat at the final maps of the mod, but those were cool battles, I also think the developers have to explain the reason why other soldiers are trying to kill you if you are a soldier too, maybe they were some units of containment that were guarding the facility so no one could get in or get out, but as far as I know that was never explicit at the end, or if it was, as I don’t speak Russian I didn’t understand it.

    Ammo and medkits were also very scarce at some points and I guess the developers should fix that aspect in order to make the gameplay less annoying when you battle hordes of zombies at some points.

    The basic idea of the mod is like this: You are trapped and compromised at some point in the expedition inside that cursed facility, and you need to get out. Obviously, that’s not going to be easy at all, as you have to escape those freaking zombies and those horrid headcrab modified models. I guess that the basic idea is always present in the mod till you reach the surface at the end. But the only thing the authors only have to make the story more explicit now, and it’s going to be a great survival horror mod.

    So yeah, in conclusion, I liked it. I am also get used to play many L4D2 Campaigns, so this was not boring to me at all. Iguess this version only whit some medium polishing touches can be the perfect version of release. I hope the authors keep on working to have properly finished. I also encourage them to keep going despite the critics, that sometimes can be harsh inside the HL2 modding community, but if they never desist, then they can release a great survival horror HL2 mod.

    1. It is part of the 50SDoS event.

      1. Hec

        Oh yeah, I already see Phillip, I must have missed it on the list, I’m glad is part of the event, has many “sourcey” parts on it.

  10. Play It Later

    Looks very promising with some incredible atmosphere and nice textures. Loving the alternative weapons and monsters. Not 100% sure that it’ll ever be perfect on the Mac of course… but perhaps the later versions will be better. Until then a bit of fudging and wishful thinking is in order if you’re not on a PC. Anyhow, great beta and this is so looking good!!

  11. Play It Later

    There is a lot to like here but it isn’t perfect.

    On the plus side, the modified enemies are really good, I liked the Iron Sights on the weapons, and the setting was indeed quite scary at times. Plus there is a lot of play time here.

    On the negative side, this mod can get quite a little predictable. The author used the “enemies attack while you wait for a door to slowly open” premise way too many times. It got tiresome after a while. Also, it seemed like every time you pressed a button / pulled a lever another wave hit you. There were a large number of vents in the mod that look people sized but it doesn’t let you crawl in them. There are also some annoying invisible walls; most notably at the very beginning and the end.

    I found the fire section totally frustrating as I just kept dying and couldn’t do anything about it. So I gave up and used God mode to get by it. The mod also crashed near the end where you fight 3 poison zombies. As soon as I killed them everything froze up. Again turning on god mode and just running by them solved that issue.

    Despite the flaws I think it is worth the massive download and time investment to play it once.

  12. Great Mod! Atmosfer. Scary. Fast. Dynamic.

  13. Roman Goliaf

    Thanks for the feedback, in the new version everything will be taken into account and corrected.

  14. Right, well somewhat later (2 PC’s ago) I have to say this could have been brilliant.The environments were immersive and complex…but OH, so dark. It’s too busy, you don’t have time to have a good look around without some A-hole attacking you…less is more. I went to the walkthrough in the end to see it all as my little fingers couldn’t keep up with all they needed to do…it’s good, but WAY too complicated, more than it needed to be. I’m not surprised it wasn’t finished…I mean, your lifes work should be something important, right ?

  15. Maybe?

    Hit and miss. New NPC’s but same sounds. New guns with old sounds that don’t match the animation. Looks good. Play was ok. I was constantly distracted by the sounds.

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